Why Europe Balks
By Daniel Pipes
January 28, 2003
Leading French politicians made some remarkably defeatist pronouncements
last week.
Rejecting any U.S. military action against Iraq, President Jacques
Chirac said that "War is always the admission of defeat, and is
always the worst of solutions. And hence everything must be done
to avoid it." Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin put it more
emphatically: "Nothing justifies envisaging military action."
To all this, the German chancellor beamed with approval.
In response, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed
France and Germany as "old Europe." The Post blasted them as the
"Axis of Weasel." Cartoonist Tony Auth dubbed them the "Axis of
Annoyance."
An even better name would be "Axis of Appeasement." "Appeasement"
may sound like an insult, but it is a serious policy with a long
history - and an enduring appeal highly relevant to today's
circumstances.
Yale historian Paul Kennedy defines appeasement as a way of settling
quarrels "by admitting and satisfying grievances through rational
negotiation and compromise, thereby avoiding the resort to an
armed conflict which would be expensive, bloody and possibly very
dangerous."
The British Empire relied heavily on appeasement from the 1860s
on, with good results - avoiding costly colonial conflicts while
preserving the international status quo. To a lesser extent, other
European governments also adopted the policy.
Then came 1914, when in a fit of delirium nearly all Europe abandoned
appeasement and rushed into World War I with what Yale historian
Peter Gay calls "a fervor bordering on a religious experience."
A century had passed since the continent had experienced the miseries
of war, and their memory had vanished. Worse, thinkers such as
the German Friedrich Nietzsche developed theories glorifying war.
Four years (1914-18) of hell, especially in the trenches of northern
France, then prompted immense guilt about the jubilation of 1914.
A new consensus emerged: Never again would Europeans rush into
war.
Appeasement looked better than ever. And so, as Adolf Hitler
threatened in the 1930s, British and French leaders tried to buy
him off. Of course, what worked in colonial wars had utterly disastrous
results when dealing with an enemy like the Nazis.
This led to the policy of buying off totalitarian opponents being
discredited. Throughout the Cold War, it appeared the Europeans
had learned a lesson they would never forget. But forget they
did, soon after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
In a brilliant Weekly Standard essay, Yale's David Gelernter
recently explained how this happened. The power of appeasement
was temporarily hidden by World War II and the Cold War, but with
the passage of time, "The effects of the Second World War are
vanishing while the effects of the First endure."
Why? Because, writes Gelernter, the First World War is far more
comprehensible than the Second, which is "too big for the mind
to grasp." Politically and spiritually, it feels increasingly
as though World War II never took place.
In fact, Gelernter argues, "It's the 1920s all over again," with
that era's visceral loathing of war and readiness to appease totalitarian
dictators (think of North Korea, Iraq, Syria, Zimbabwe and others).
He finds today's Europe "amazingly" similar to that of the 1920s
in other ways too: "its love of self-determination and loathing
of imperialism and war, its liberal Germany, shrunken Russia and
map of Europe crammed with small states, with America's indifference
to Europe and Europe's disdain for America, with Europe's casual,
endemic anti-Semitism, her politically, financially and masochistically
rewarding fascination with Muslim states who despise her and her
undertone of self-hatred and guilt."
Gelernter proposes that 1920s-style self-hatred is now "a dominant
force in Europe." And appeasement fits this mood perfectly, having
grown over the decades into a worldview "that teaches the blood-guilt
of Western man, the moral bankruptcy of the West and the outrageousness
of Western civilization's attempting to impose its values on anyone
else."
Which brings us back to the unwillingness of "old Europe" to
confront Saddam Hussein. World War II's lesson (strike before
an aggressive tyrant builds his power) has lost out to the '20s
attitude ("nothing justifies envisaging military action").
This self-hating weakness will lead again to disaster, no less
than it did leading up to World War II. The United States finds
itself having to lead the democracies away from the lure of appeasement.
Iraq is a good place to start.
This article was originally published in the The
New York Post on January 28, 2003
