I learned a few days ago that the Euroweenies have paid more to Russia for energy than theyve paid to Ukraine over the past three years. Europe is not capable of sustaining this war without us, nor do they have to will to ramp up their spending, and we are done being their piggy bank/whipping horse. A farce that began and was sustained due only to the lies and provocations of the O’Biden regime. A tragedy of epic proportions. The war will probably be over by May and we will all forget it ever happened. Then on to the next war/grift.
Before the sellout at Munich, Czechoslovakia had great mountain fortifications, home-grown armaments, and troops of its own and at that time could have held off Germany with minimal outside help. If the UK, France, and USSR could have coordinated a little, the Czechs could have won. Moreover, elements of the German military were actively looking for a way to get rid of Hitler:
You are correct, but the Western help is a huge "IF". It is true that if Germany attacked its western borders would be undefended and the Allies could have walked into Berlin easily since the invasion of Czechoslovakia would take all what Germany had at that time...
With respect to Churchill's barb, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else," one might reply with the wisdom of Sir Humphrey Appleby, "And you can always rely on the British to loudly proclaim that the right thing to do is obvious—after it's too late to do it."
I am not a student of history like Steve but I am not so sure things would be rosier if usa had pursued other path post Truman, Acheson. Impossible to know. We defeated one of greatest evils - communist ussr & our military has kept world more safe than less safe over decades. Our economy sparks global wealth creation that has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. Of course we made mistakes in war against Islam, but answer is unrelated to Wilsonian idealism. It is religious war. There is no permanent answer b/c human nature is tainted by sin. And future strategy is not idealism versus realism imo. This is false dichotomy. We recede from world & it will become darker. This I am sure. See interesting 3/7/25 trump is overturning world order article in Wall Street journal about Trump’s spit ball thinking. Trump eat or be eaten - you versus me - view of world is more Hobbesian & this requires more government - not less.
Excellent piece Steve. Thank you for framing this discussion. Have you engaged Mr. Yoo to draft a countervailing response?
An alternative approach starts with why should Munich 1938 be the prevailing historical construct to assess Trump administration foreign policy? What seems relevant is yet again our European allies are unable to mount an independent, credible "peace through strength'" deterrence against a miscreant in the European theater (Putin).
The Ukraine situation doesn't date to 12 months ago or even three years hence. It started more than a decade ago when Victoria Nuland awoke one morning and decided it was time for another color revolution. (Or quite likely the day we convinced the Ukrainians to give up their nukes in the absence of a defense treaty.)
Where are our emergent JFKs today authoring perceptive college theses? (Hint, they may have spent their twenties participating in America's forever wars.)
Liberal International Order (LIO) is grounded in the perception of 1938 Appeasement. Realist foreign policy anchors the difficult decision to partner with Stalin in 1942, when the US & UK were not ready to independently defeat two total war regimes, as well with Nixon/Kissinger detente with China in 1972, when American was weakened by almost a decade of war in Indochina and was struggling in the Cold War.
LIO has failed, whereas Realist precepts led to the final victory in 1991. LIO lets Europe think you keep the peace by platitudes and sternly worded post-conference condemnations. LIO leads to admitting a quickly industrializing, authoritarian China into the WTO on the premise that once they get rich the CCP will just fade away. LIO is gay & trans pride flags flying over our embassies in Moscow and Kabul and Riyadh and Budapest.
LIO started with Wilson and died with Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Good riddance. Long live Vance and Gabbard's and Hegseth's 21st Century Realist foreign policy doctrine (and possibly Rubio). Trump is a transitory figure, whereas these millennials will be the three musketeers to a young Churchill and Roosevelt who dominated the first half of the 20th century.
Does this new doctrine need to be informed by history?
In a century where artificial intelligence; inexpensive satellite lift costs to geostationary orbit; and massive crippling cyber attacks will be the dominant levers of war, we may have have reached that Fukuyaman Moment: Truly the end of history that serves any usefulness for assessing tomorrow.
As always, Winston Churchill carried a parachute and left a crack in the door. Yes, Munich was appeasement - a nifty headline. No, not all conflicts over there that do not involve us directly are a cause for war.
Truth: Hitler had a vision and most understood it from around 1935 onwards. Putin had a vision and most understood it from 2014 onwards. The issue: how far would, could they go?
Obama sent sheets (a really bad signal). Trump sent javelins (better). If an outsider was going to do something — arming Ukraine in force should have begun years earlier.
Recognizing Hitler’s megalomania looks brilliant now. Recognizing its full meaning, was slow in the circumstances. Churchill was a master, … equivocator. Brilliant from time to time. Wrong often.
What vital national interest or national interest is presented by Ukraine. Feel good, promoting democracy, stopping Putin before he arrives at Berlin? Putin was power until the end of the first month of his Ukraine War, as his troops and armor broke and bogged down. Now he is pathetic and irrational. Murdering his own and others for his preservation.
Trump understands this — and “Margaret,” he really doesn’t care what went on before. Trump is focused on now. Europe is most exposed here and stirred up the talk (along with Democrats beginning with Clinton) of Ukraine integration into the EU and NATO. But Europe cannot project power, and may never be able to militarily, demographically, or politically, but even if they honor a new round of promises to build defense, it will take them years.
So, Trump finds peace, it is tenuous, it gives up what was already taken and will not be handed back without tanker ships of blood, and Europe’s gets a window to do whatever they decide to rearm. And take what Churchill wrote years later and his caution about dabbling in far off wars, and know that is experience talking. No more Crimean Wars.
Finding peace here will not involve European soldiers on Ukraine ground, … so expect the worst or no deal. Putin is years away from retirement, and there is no retirement for authoritarians.
Nobody ever asks if a little appeasement might have prevented the First World War. Or the Franco Prussian War (literally started over a perceived insult). Or Vietnam. Or the Iraq War.
My friend is walking around with a cane and can't leave the house because we couldn't "appease" Saddam.
When I was born, Russia was in Berlin! Now it's in the Donbass. But if I notice this I'm basically a Nazi I guess.
I analogize the situation in Ukraine as akin to the situation in Finland circa March 1940. Finland fought surprisingly well during the Winter of 1939-40 against the Soviet Union, but Finland was exhausted by March of 1940 and it had to cut a peace deal with Stalinist Soviet Union. Finland relinquished a significant slice of its southeastern territory and lease another significant slice of territory to the Soviet Union in the Treaty of Moscow of March 12, 1940. That is where Ukraine is now.
Absolutely brilliant, Prof Hayward! I do hope you will forward it to the sclerotic mandarins at the WSJ who are in the middle of a massive meltdown over the disruptions to their precious international "free trade" system and Endless War policies. I have read WSC's memoirs but never had seen that comment he made to Mr Griffen in 1936 regarding Wilson. A solid repudiation indeed!
Any "martial valor" that the Europeans had is long gone. I have heard many people ask what has happened to testosterone levels among men in Germany, Britain and France. That is an easy one. Their best lie under the fields in Kursk, Stalingrad, Leningrad, Warsaw, Berlin, Flanders, The Somme, The Marne and in Arnhem.
I was a student at the Free University of Berlin 1965-66. In political science classes at the Otto-Suhr Institut, there was ONE outspoken conservative student. All the rest were Leftists, they all marched in anti-US parades protesting the Vietnam War. Of course there was self-selection as studying in Berlin got you a deferment, at least from the draft for the Bundeswehr.
Trump is threatening to leave Europe to their own devices, but he is not isolationist. His announcements about Greenland and the Panama Canal show he means business in the Western Hemisphere.
My source is J.F.C Fuller's "Decisive Battles in History." He apparently got it direct from Griffen himself. Not sure if Griffen published it in the Enquirer, which went defunct in 1957. The Enquirer was pro-British/pro-Churchill near as I can tell.
Let's dismiss the provenance of the observation - the question really is it a valid assessment of the impact of Wilson's 1917 decision or not? Who cares if Churchill said it. It could just as likely be an observation by Keynes, or some mid-tier gnome from the UK or US foreign policy establishment in the 1910s...
I think it is an intriguing counterfactual and the most spectacular example of Foggy Bottom/Langley VA blowback, if valid. Add this to the toppling Mosaddeigh, arming the Afgans and Islamists in the 1980s, building up American troops throughout the middle east subsequent to Iraq War I, taking down Saddam and Gaddafi, or Nuland's Ukrainian color revolution of 2014.
Too many people enter CIA and State Dept HQs each morning thinking they are this generation's George Keenan, rather than contemplating why so many foreign policy experts worked all hours July 1914 only to end up bogged down in a stalemate by 1915.
The quote has an air of inauthenticity, and smacks of pacifist disinformation to the purpose of keeping America neutral in a war that was clearly on the horizon.
For what reason would W.C. make such contemptuous, alienating comments regarding a nation he knew England would soon need as an essential ally?
In any case, the comments seem verifiably inaccurate and certainly don’t reflect the views of the allies in 1917 who were begging the U.S. to enter the war and break a stalemate that had no signs of ending.
This doesn’t mean the quote has no relevance to today’s situation, but it is suspiciously convenient for advocates of abandoning Ukraine to its fate.
The genius architect of Gallipolli and the Soft Underbelly thinks that the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the spring of 1917 (subject to dispute of authenticity). Yeah of course they would. If the Americans had turned down the invite and said Buzz off, we're not coming to your party, the French, Dutch and Belgians would happily have said OK Bill, here's half our countries, enjoy. The Poms would happily have said, OK Bill, you've torpedoed so many of our merchant ships, you've killed so many of our youth, our pride and joy the Royal Navy only got to have one real go at your Kriegsmarine and came off slightly second-best and they have vowed never to rest until they have settled it once and for all, but let's shake hands and be friends. Right.
I was interested in the cartoon that accompanies this post. It is by Michael de Adder, whom I first encountered as cartoonist for The Gazette, the student newspaper at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in the early 1980s. His drawings were cruder then, but firmly leftist in orientation and sentiment. The artwork is slightly better, but the politics, now on display in "The Hill Times" (a Canadian version of "The Hill" in the USA), haven't changed at all.
I learned a few days ago that the Euroweenies have paid more to Russia for energy than theyve paid to Ukraine over the past three years. Europe is not capable of sustaining this war without us, nor do they have to will to ramp up their spending, and we are done being their piggy bank/whipping horse. A farce that began and was sustained due only to the lies and provocations of the O’Biden regime. A tragedy of epic proportions. The war will probably be over by May and we will all forget it ever happened. Then on to the next war/grift.
Before the sellout at Munich, Czechoslovakia had great mountain fortifications, home-grown armaments, and troops of its own and at that time could have held off Germany with minimal outside help. If the UK, France, and USSR could have coordinated a little, the Czechs could have won. Moreover, elements of the German military were actively looking for a way to get rid of Hitler:
https://www.c-span.org/program/book-tv/the-oster-conspiracy-of-1938/153903
In contrast, Ukraine's goose is nearly cooked. Much of our money and materiel fell into a black hole of corruption.
You are correct, but the Western help is a huge "IF". It is true that if Germany attacked its western borders would be undefended and the Allies could have walked into Berlin easily since the invasion of Czechoslovakia would take all what Germany had at that time...
In any case, no one was as shocked as the German General Staff that Hitler got away with it. This happened again and again.
How should Trump extend this neo-Churchillian approach to China?
Good question; I may attempt an answer in a subsequent post. I have more to draw on from Codevilla's book on several subjects.
With respect to Churchill's barb, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else," one might reply with the wisdom of Sir Humphrey Appleby, "And you can always rely on the British to loudly proclaim that the right thing to do is obvious—after it's too late to do it."
I am not a student of history like Steve but I am not so sure things would be rosier if usa had pursued other path post Truman, Acheson. Impossible to know. We defeated one of greatest evils - communist ussr & our military has kept world more safe than less safe over decades. Our economy sparks global wealth creation that has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. Of course we made mistakes in war against Islam, but answer is unrelated to Wilsonian idealism. It is religious war. There is no permanent answer b/c human nature is tainted by sin. And future strategy is not idealism versus realism imo. This is false dichotomy. We recede from world & it will become darker. This I am sure. See interesting 3/7/25 trump is overturning world order article in Wall Street journal about Trump’s spit ball thinking. Trump eat or be eaten - you versus me - view of world is more Hobbesian & this requires more government - not less.
Excellent piece Steve. Thank you for framing this discussion. Have you engaged Mr. Yoo to draft a countervailing response?
An alternative approach starts with why should Munich 1938 be the prevailing historical construct to assess Trump administration foreign policy? What seems relevant is yet again our European allies are unable to mount an independent, credible "peace through strength'" deterrence against a miscreant in the European theater (Putin).
The Ukraine situation doesn't date to 12 months ago or even three years hence. It started more than a decade ago when Victoria Nuland awoke one morning and decided it was time for another color revolution. (Or quite likely the day we convinced the Ukrainians to give up their nukes in the absence of a defense treaty.)
Where are our emergent JFKs today authoring perceptive college theses? (Hint, they may have spent their twenties participating in America's forever wars.)
Liberal International Order (LIO) is grounded in the perception of 1938 Appeasement. Realist foreign policy anchors the difficult decision to partner with Stalin in 1942, when the US & UK were not ready to independently defeat two total war regimes, as well with Nixon/Kissinger detente with China in 1972, when American was weakened by almost a decade of war in Indochina and was struggling in the Cold War.
LIO has failed, whereas Realist precepts led to the final victory in 1991. LIO lets Europe think you keep the peace by platitudes and sternly worded post-conference condemnations. LIO leads to admitting a quickly industrializing, authoritarian China into the WTO on the premise that once they get rich the CCP will just fade away. LIO is gay & trans pride flags flying over our embassies in Moscow and Kabul and Riyadh and Budapest.
LIO started with Wilson and died with Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Good riddance. Long live Vance and Gabbard's and Hegseth's 21st Century Realist foreign policy doctrine (and possibly Rubio). Trump is a transitory figure, whereas these millennials will be the three musketeers to a young Churchill and Roosevelt who dominated the first half of the 20th century.
Does this new doctrine need to be informed by history?
In a century where artificial intelligence; inexpensive satellite lift costs to geostationary orbit; and massive crippling cyber attacks will be the dominant levers of war, we may have have reached that Fukuyaman Moment: Truly the end of history that serves any usefulness for assessing tomorrow.
As always, Winston Churchill carried a parachute and left a crack in the door. Yes, Munich was appeasement - a nifty headline. No, not all conflicts over there that do not involve us directly are a cause for war.
Truth: Hitler had a vision and most understood it from around 1935 onwards. Putin had a vision and most understood it from 2014 onwards. The issue: how far would, could they go?
Obama sent sheets (a really bad signal). Trump sent javelins (better). If an outsider was going to do something — arming Ukraine in force should have begun years earlier.
Recognizing Hitler’s megalomania looks brilliant now. Recognizing its full meaning, was slow in the circumstances. Churchill was a master, … equivocator. Brilliant from time to time. Wrong often.
What vital national interest or national interest is presented by Ukraine. Feel good, promoting democracy, stopping Putin before he arrives at Berlin? Putin was power until the end of the first month of his Ukraine War, as his troops and armor broke and bogged down. Now he is pathetic and irrational. Murdering his own and others for his preservation.
Trump understands this — and “Margaret,” he really doesn’t care what went on before. Trump is focused on now. Europe is most exposed here and stirred up the talk (along with Democrats beginning with Clinton) of Ukraine integration into the EU and NATO. But Europe cannot project power, and may never be able to militarily, demographically, or politically, but even if they honor a new round of promises to build defense, it will take them years.
So, Trump finds peace, it is tenuous, it gives up what was already taken and will not be handed back without tanker ships of blood, and Europe’s gets a window to do whatever they decide to rearm. And take what Churchill wrote years later and his caution about dabbling in far off wars, and know that is experience talking. No more Crimean Wars.
Finding peace here will not involve European soldiers on Ukraine ground, … so expect the worst or no deal. Putin is years away from retirement, and there is no retirement for authoritarians.
As my late father frequently said, “The French are always there when they need us.”
Nobody ever asks if a little appeasement might have prevented the First World War. Or the Franco Prussian War (literally started over a perceived insult). Or Vietnam. Or the Iraq War.
My friend is walking around with a cane and can't leave the house because we couldn't "appease" Saddam.
When I was born, Russia was in Berlin! Now it's in the Donbass. But if I notice this I'm basically a Nazi I guess.
I analogize the situation in Ukraine as akin to the situation in Finland circa March 1940. Finland fought surprisingly well during the Winter of 1939-40 against the Soviet Union, but Finland was exhausted by March of 1940 and it had to cut a peace deal with Stalinist Soviet Union. Finland relinquished a significant slice of its southeastern territory and lease another significant slice of territory to the Soviet Union in the Treaty of Moscow of March 12, 1940. That is where Ukraine is now.
Absolutely brilliant, Prof Hayward! I do hope you will forward it to the sclerotic mandarins at the WSJ who are in the middle of a massive meltdown over the disruptions to their precious international "free trade" system and Endless War policies. I have read WSC's memoirs but never had seen that comment he made to Mr Griffen in 1936 regarding Wilson. A solid repudiation indeed!
Any "martial valor" that the Europeans had is long gone. I have heard many people ask what has happened to testosterone levels among men in Germany, Britain and France. That is an easy one. Their best lie under the fields in Kursk, Stalingrad, Leningrad, Warsaw, Berlin, Flanders, The Somme, The Marne and in Arnhem.
I was a student at the Free University of Berlin 1965-66. In political science classes at the Otto-Suhr Institut, there was ONE outspoken conservative student. All the rest were Leftists, they all marched in anti-US parades protesting the Vietnam War. Of course there was self-selection as studying in Berlin got you a deferment, at least from the draft for the Bundeswehr.
Trump is threatening to leave Europe to their own devices, but he is not isolationist. His announcements about Greenland and the Panama Canal show he means business in the Western Hemisphere.
"Trump’s critics across the political spectrum are charging that his seeming deference to Putin and pressure on Ukraine.."
Is He?
"Perhaps something like this will yet be said of Trump’s startling about-face in American policy toward Ukraine and Russia."
Has He?
Steve--Are you confident about the veracity of the quote from WSC to Griffin?
My source is J.F.C Fuller's "Decisive Battles in History." He apparently got it direct from Griffen himself. Not sure if Griffen published it in the Enquirer, which went defunct in 1957. The Enquirer was pro-British/pro-Churchill near as I can tell.
Let's dismiss the provenance of the observation - the question really is it a valid assessment of the impact of Wilson's 1917 decision or not? Who cares if Churchill said it. It could just as likely be an observation by Keynes, or some mid-tier gnome from the UK or US foreign policy establishment in the 1910s...
I think it is an intriguing counterfactual and the most spectacular example of Foggy Bottom/Langley VA blowback, if valid. Add this to the toppling Mosaddeigh, arming the Afgans and Islamists in the 1980s, building up American troops throughout the middle east subsequent to Iraq War I, taking down Saddam and Gaddafi, or Nuland's Ukrainian color revolution of 2014.
Too many people enter CIA and State Dept HQs each morning thinking they are this generation's George Keenan, rather than contemplating why so many foreign policy experts worked all hours July 1914 only to end up bogged down in a stalemate by 1915.
Richard Langworth made the case that the quotation was not reliable, citing WSC public statements and litigation with Griffin. https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-152/tangling-with-the-media-the-curious-case-of-of-william-griffin/ Another writer made the case for the quote, based on circumstantial evidence: https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-152/griffin-and-churchill-another-view/ Bottom line: the quote may merit an asterisk as contested.
I'll append a note.
I knew McMennamin a bit back in the 1990s. A solid, serious guy.
The quote has an air of inauthenticity, and smacks of pacifist disinformation to the purpose of keeping America neutral in a war that was clearly on the horizon.
For what reason would W.C. make such contemptuous, alienating comments regarding a nation he knew England would soon need as an essential ally?
In any case, the comments seem verifiably inaccurate and certainly don’t reflect the views of the allies in 1917 who were begging the U.S. to enter the war and break a stalemate that had no signs of ending.
This doesn’t mean the quote has no relevance to today’s situation, but it is suspiciously convenient for advocates of abandoning Ukraine to its fate.
The genius architect of Gallipolli and the Soft Underbelly thinks that the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the spring of 1917 (subject to dispute of authenticity). Yeah of course they would. If the Americans had turned down the invite and said Buzz off, we're not coming to your party, the French, Dutch and Belgians would happily have said OK Bill, here's half our countries, enjoy. The Poms would happily have said, OK Bill, you've torpedoed so many of our merchant ships, you've killed so many of our youth, our pride and joy the Royal Navy only got to have one real go at your Kriegsmarine and came off slightly second-best and they have vowed never to rest until they have settled it once and for all, but let's shake hands and be friends. Right.
I was interested in the cartoon that accompanies this post. It is by Michael de Adder, whom I first encountered as cartoonist for The Gazette, the student newspaper at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in the early 1980s. His drawings were cruder then, but firmly leftist in orientation and sentiment. The artwork is slightly better, but the politics, now on display in "The Hill Times" (a Canadian version of "The Hill" in the USA), haven't changed at all.