“Munich” again? Hold the angst. Historical analogies are treacherous because “like” is not “same.” Still, the disastrous appeasement of the Thirties does yield insights into our era. Hitler et al. are safely buried. But today, a new cast of characters has moved onstage. Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, and Supreme Leader Khamenei’s Iran are chopping away at the longest great-power peace of all time.
So, a quick look at the past – at the deadly drama titled “A Balance of Power Unhinged and Deterrence Lost.” In Europe, the profiteers were Germany and Italy, in Asia it was Japan. The best review is Winston Churchill’s When England Slept. When Neville Chamberlain signed away Czechoslovakia, Churchill thundered: “The government chose shame. They will get war too.” He should have targeted the rest of the West, as well.
The next act started with the German invasion of Poland in 1939, less than a year after the Munich Agreement. With Britain barely holding on, the Wehrmacht grabbed most of continental Europe, while Italy forged into Africa. In the 1930s Japan had unleashed a genocidal rampage across China, followed by conquest in South-East Asia. It took the surprise strike at Pearl Harbor to rouse the U.S. in late 1941.
Analogies are not proof. But they concentrate the mind. Hence to the present, which limns three parallels.
First, yesterday’s “Axis” is back, this time with Russia and China in the global and Iran in the regional arena. Their purpose is to bring down the international order built and buttressed by post-WWII America. This is like the WWII aims of Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo to dismantle the world order established by the Western powers.
Second. the West has been snoozing again, cashing in its “peace dividends” after the last Russian soldier had pulled out of Central Europe in 1994. U.S. defense spending as a fraction of GDP has declined from 8 percent in the 1980s to just below 3 today; the average in Europe has been around 1.5. Once a million NATO soldiers had stood guard at the East-West divide running through Germany. Today, the Germans could at best send three divisions into battle, their panzers have dwindled from 3000 to 360. Meanwhile, Russia’s defense-outlays have risen to 6 percent. In the 2020s, China’s spending has soared at an annual rate of 7-8 percent. A non-official tally reports “at least double-digit [year-on year] growth."
Third, given the Western draw-down, hesitation exceeds determination, recalling the 1930s. Regard the West’s contortions in the European and Middle Eastern theaters. In the third year of Russia’s war of conquest, Ukraine is fighting for sheer survival. In Gaza, the U.S. wants to exact a long-term cease-fire from Israel, which will save Hamas, an Iranian proxy, from extinction and thus embolden Tehran. In Asia, Taiwan, where Beijing keeps upping the ante, is but a stepping stone on the way toward global preeminence.
So, the real stakes could not be higher. How is the West dealing with the triple challenge that transcends Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan by an order of magnitude? Recall again the Thirties when the rape of Czechoslovakia, “a far-away country of which we know we know nothing,” as Chamberlain had it, bred appeasement. Recall also Japan’s campaign of mass slaughter in China, starting in Nanking in 1937. The West's response to Japan’s aggression was near non-responsive. It wasn’t until 1941 when Japan launched its surprise strike against the Western powers did they took the threat seriously, with bloody consequences.
These distant battlegrounds obscured the global threats. The Reich wanted hegemony in Europe, and Japan in Asia. Today, Gaza is anything but a local battle pitting Hamas against Israel; it is about Tehran’s quest for regional dominance. The point is to bring down Israel, then to extrude America offstage. China’s claim to Taiwan comes with an imperial message: “Roll over, America, the Western Pacific is our lake!”
Nor is Ukraine a mere pawn whose loss could be shrugged off. Putin’s drive will not end in Kyiv. His expansive ambitions have been well-documented in his speeches, and his moves have followed the rhetoric. First, he subdued Georgia in 2008. Then he corralled Belarus as a quasi-satrapy. He grabbed Crimea and Ukraine’s Southeast in 2014, ignoring softish Western sanctions.
Putin keeps intimidating the Baltics, never mind their accession to NATO. He has recruited NATO member Hungary as an aide against the EU. In short, Putin is out to restore the old Soviet Empire. It does not take a Ph.D. in International Politics to grasp the moral of this tale: Opportunity makes for a thief, as it did in the case of Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini. Keep going while the going is good.
To be sure, Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron in Paris, and Olaf Scholz in Berlin are not carbon copies of Chamberlain who joined the Global Hall of Shame when dumping Czechoslovakia, as “a far-away country of which we know nothing.” Unlike in the Thirties, Western leaders surely understand the stakes this time, but they do not fully grasp the unforgiving rules of today’s great-power game.
These bid them to finance, supply, and arm Ukraine to avert the country’s demise by sheer attrition. Not goodness, but self-serving interest demands that Kyiv must not fail, let alone fall. While Ukraine is fighting for itself, it also defending the West. At the Alliance’s eastern edge, this tormented nation is bleeding and dying for the rest of Europe. Kyiv is an unanointed ally because it has no other choice than to resist. NATO leaders will rue the day when Russian armies are ensconced on the Polish border. They should have taken Strategy 101.
The maxim for the U.S. and its allies should be “whatever it takes” – short of wading into the war against Russia. This is a no-no in the shadow of the Bomb. But avoiding a general conflagration is precisely the reason why the Alliance must pay and provide. That self-evident logic. It demands more than just defensive hardware the West has been sending since Russia’s full-scale assault in March 2022. Every West Point cadet learns that offense is the best defense. So, Kyiv needs strike-aircraft, heavy armor, and long-range weaponry, which could upend Russia’s order of battle in the rear.
For two years, the U.S. granted only short-range ATACMS (precision-guided tactical missiles), withholding the longer-reach version. It has delivered only 31 Abrams tanks. Russia could field about 12,000 main battle tanks. Germany holds back on the Taurus cruise missile with a range of 300 miles, which could hit Russian deployments farther back. With one hand tied behind his back, Volodymyr Zelensky cannot stop, let alone reverse Russian advances.
Why so stingy? Western powers don’t want to rile the Bear too much because Putin keeps threatening NATO. Europe’s Big Two – Paris and Berlin – play a bizarre game. Macron talks tough, but sends in little (just $ 3 billion for arms as opposed to almost 50 from the U.S. Olaf Scholz, whose country is the fulcrum of the European balance, bestrides the stage as Friedenskanzler (chancellor of peace) in the tradition of Bismarck, which lives on – ever since Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik: “never cut the tie to St. Petersburg.” At last, Joe Biden stands ready to hand over long-range ATACMS. Alas, this change of mind does not undo the sorry record of “too little, too late.” This is no way to make Ukraine survive.
Now to Gaza, 1,300 miles away from Kyiv. The short take: Israel must not crush Hamas. Toward Israel, American policy has been oscillating between assurances and threats of punishment. It is no secret that the Administration would love to bring down Benjamin Netanyahu and replace him with a more pliant PM.
The U.S. acts like a lead player reading from the wrong script as if Gaza were but a local fight. It is not. Moshe Dayan once called the Levant, which joins three continents, the “elephant path of history,” where empires have warred for millennia. In the current drama, the Qassam Brigades (like Hezbollah in Israel’s north) are proxies for Iran, America’s worst foe in the region. For the greedy mullahcracy, which may already have a “Bomb in the Basement,” Israel is the “Little” and America the “Great Satan,” who may already have a “Bomb in the Basement.” So, why would Biden seek a long-term cease-fire to save Hamas, Iran’s spearhead, from its well-deserved demise?
The larger game is not about a Gaza Strip measuring 140 square miles but about the Middle East from the Med to the Gulf, where Russia and China would love to cut the U.S. down to size. Putin and Xi are not just watching from the sidelines. They are always looking for chinks in America’s armor, they engage in a brisk arms trade with Iran, including the delivery of ballistic-missile technology to Tehran. How will Mr. Biden keep the mullahcracy from taking the last step toward full-blown nuclearization, given that the reconstitution of Hamas would translate into an Iranian victory?
Precisely because of Iran, Washington’s fickle friends from Cairo to Riyadh would like nothing better than to see Hamas defanged, the handmaiden of their nemesis. If Hamas survives thanks to American pressure on Israel, Iran scores. Arab potentates will seek safety elsewhere, and there goes America’s clout in this critical space. Also, you don’t want to weaken Israel, your one and only trusty comrade-in-arms – and with one of the world’s finest armies. Forrest Gump might muse: “Stupid is as stupid does.”
Are we back to the Thirties when the then-revisionists plowed ahead unscathed? This analogy could be put to death by a thousand nits, but an enduring truth remains. Just as in the past, the global balance of power is the real issue. Only the props and players have changed, not the eternal laws of world politics that demand containment and deterrence.
Why ignore the experience when Putin has put his economy on a war footing while his army is grinding down Ukraine? When Iran is tightening the ring around Israel and the wider region by making its stand-ins die – the three H of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis. Tehran’s surrogates in Yemen are shooting up cargo ships on the Red Sea, a premier global trade route China is playing a subtler game, coupling rapid rearmament with muscle-flexing in the Pacific and global diplomatic-economic expansion. The game is Chinese ‘Go:’ encircle, block, and paralyze. No need to go to the mat when ‘Go’ works just fine.
Where do the historical analogies begin to creak? Russia does fit the pre-World War II model because it has shifted from pressure to attack – like yesteryear’s Fascist Trio. By contrast, Iran and China are exploiting indirect power. Why did such caution not reign in the distant past? Two words: nuclear weapons. These have imposed unprecedented restraint. Note that Putin does not threaten tactical nukes; only his mouthpieces do. So, the good news: If World War II was preordained, No. 3 is not on the table.
Today, it is aggression by other means. How to stop it? In the time-honored ways of great-power politics. “Si vis pacem, para bellum” – if you want peace, be ready for war, the Romans taught. After a seemingly endless peace among the mighty, the West has to relearn that rule. Don’t pretend that Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan are “far-away countries;” instead, obey cold-eyed self-interest! Above all, rearm and resist the revisionists.
Can an ever-expanding democratic welfare state – ever more butter, too few guns – live by that commandment? Let’s make it simple. Deterring war is cheaper than having to fight one, and the price of indifference rises as aggression proceeds unchecked. If it does, war, as the Thirties suggest, may only take a nap. Western leaders do have to win elections, yet not at the price of losing the peace. A decent global order demands a sturdy balance of power, deterrence, and will. Churchill was right.
Josef Joffe is a Distinguished Fellow at Stanford who has taught world politics there as well as at Harvard and Johns Hopkins/SAIS
