This is a great and very succinct take on why negotiating is not appeasement. A sample:
But here's my point: don't let all those MBAs fool you. Conservatives hate to negotiate. Negotiating means listening to the other side. Negotiating means giving up something to get something. It means making concessions to things the other side wants in return for something else. It often requires patience, and it often demands that you think ahead and look to the future.
Conservatives are bad at all of these things. So they call it appeasement. A term which means conceding to demands from the other side in order to keep the peace. Like when your spouse asks you to take out the trash while you're watching the game. For conservatives, taking out the trash is a sign of weakness, of being whipped. So you pretend that you didn't hear. For liberals, if you take out the trash it's a win-win: you've successfully completed a household task AND you get to watch the game in peace.
So what gets lost in all this appeasement brouhaha is that the Brits in the 1930s were actually trying to create a win-win with Germany. They weren't rolling over and crying "uncle." They placed a bet, and lost.
First, by offering concessions to Germany, they were trying to placate the German people by offering a solution to some of the grievances and resentments that stemmed from the unfairness of the Treaty of Versailles. The theory was that Hitler's rise to power was based solely on the anger of the people and that as Germany came back into the European fold his position internally would be weakened by more democratic forces.
Second, the Brits were concerned about the Soviet Union and the fact that the whole of central and eastern Europe was wide open for Soviet expansion. In their minds, a re-militarized Germany would pose a threat (and a distraction) to the USSR and create a buffer between the Soviets and the west.
So they were playing a global game of Risk, and ended up losing on both counts: a). Because Hitler took the concessions AND reneged on the deal, and b). By drawing the Soviets into WWII, we ended up with the Cold War era iron curtain and east-west divide, which they were trying to avoid in the first place.
In this instance appeasement was a bad thing, but not for the reasons the Conservatives would have you believe. It was bad in the same way that arming Iraq to fight Iran for us turned into the 100 year Bush-McCain war. It was bad in the way that arming the Afghan rebels to fight the Russians for us gave us Bin Laden and the Taliban. It was bad because the English underestimated Hitler and tried to manipulate him to their own purposes. It was pure Neo-Conservatism global gamesmanship.
But the lesson they've taken away instead is that the other side will always lie, the other side will always cheat. Nevermind the fact that Gorbachev negotiated in good faith (as did Krushchev during the Cuban Missile crisis). In the end leaders like Reagan and Kennedy showed good judgment (a quality completely lacking in the current President). More importantly, negotiating means you can't propagandize, you can't demonize, you can't bluster, which is all that the conservatives are actually good at. In their minds, as long as you can call the other evil, you can at least pretend you're winning - even if reality is telling you things contrary to that particular belief. You can maintain the illusion of being a super power, even as your standing slides, and your economic base collapses underneath you.
What's needed is someone who can face the facts, look for low hanging fruit (as the MBAs say), take short-term losses if necessary, and look for the long-term win-win scenario. Re-strategize, re-assess, and re-think everything we've done up to now.
Think about the future that extends beyond the current election cycle. Not just through negotiation but also through realism and the ability to adapt to the new threats of the 21st century.
(Nice. Reagan as Chamberlain. Isn't it amazing that the Conservatives are so one note and nasty, that they'd even smear their greatest hero just to score a political point.)Ronald Reagan, whose election in 1980 was seen as the culmination of the conservative movement, dubbed SALT II "appeasement" as well, but the trope would come back to bite him. Although Reagan pleased the right enormously during his first three years in office with his military expansion, his call for rollback and his advocacy of missile defenses, conservatives reacted with horror once he began serious negotiations with the Soviets. When he and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, which for the first time eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons, Buckley's National Review dubbed it "suicide." The Conservative Caucus took out a full-page newspaper ad saying Appeasement is as unwise in 1988 as in 1938." It paired photos of Reagan and Gorbachev with photos of Neville Chamberlain and Hitler.
Containment, negotiation, nuclear stability--each of these things helped protect the United States and end the Cold War. And yet, at the time, conservatives thought each was synonymous with appeasement.
But here's my point: don't let all those MBAs fool you. Conservatives hate to negotiate. Negotiating means listening to the other side. Negotiating means giving up something to get something. It means making concessions to things the other side wants in return for something else. It often requires patience, and it often demands that you think ahead and look to the future.
Conservatives are bad at all of these things. So they call it appeasement. A term which means conceding to demands from the other side in order to keep the peace. Like when your spouse asks you to take out the trash while you're watching the game. For conservatives, taking out the trash is a sign of weakness, of being whipped. So you pretend that you didn't hear. For liberals, if you take out the trash it's a win-win: you've successfully completed a household task AND you get to watch the game in peace.
So what gets lost in all this appeasement brouhaha is that the Brits in the 1930s were actually trying to create a win-win with Germany. They weren't rolling over and crying "uncle." They placed a bet, and lost.
First, by offering concessions to Germany, they were trying to placate the German people by offering a solution to some of the grievances and resentments that stemmed from the unfairness of the Treaty of Versailles. The theory was that Hitler's rise to power was based solely on the anger of the people and that as Germany came back into the European fold his position internally would be weakened by more democratic forces.
Second, the Brits were concerned about the Soviet Union and the fact that the whole of central and eastern Europe was wide open for Soviet expansion. In their minds, a re-militarized Germany would pose a threat (and a distraction) to the USSR and create a buffer between the Soviets and the west.
So they were playing a global game of Risk, and ended up losing on both counts: a). Because Hitler took the concessions AND reneged on the deal, and b). By drawing the Soviets into WWII, we ended up with the Cold War era iron curtain and east-west divide, which they were trying to avoid in the first place.
In this instance appeasement was a bad thing, but not for the reasons the Conservatives would have you believe. It was bad in the same way that arming Iraq to fight Iran for us turned into the 100 year Bush-McCain war. It was bad in the way that arming the Afghan rebels to fight the Russians for us gave us Bin Laden and the Taliban. It was bad because the English underestimated Hitler and tried to manipulate him to their own purposes. It was pure Neo-Conservatism global gamesmanship.
But the lesson they've taken away instead is that the other side will always lie, the other side will always cheat. Nevermind the fact that Gorbachev negotiated in good faith (as did Krushchev during the Cuban Missile crisis). In the end leaders like Reagan and Kennedy showed good judgment (a quality completely lacking in the current President). More importantly, negotiating means you can't propagandize, you can't demonize, you can't bluster, which is all that the conservatives are actually good at. In their minds, as long as you can call the other evil, you can at least pretend you're winning - even if reality is telling you things contrary to that particular belief. You can maintain the illusion of being a super power, even as your standing slides, and your economic base collapses underneath you.
What's needed is someone who can face the facts, look for low hanging fruit (as the MBAs say), take short-term losses if necessary, and look for the long-term win-win scenario. Re-strategize, re-assess, and re-think everything we've done up to now.
Think about the future that extends beyond the current election cycle. Not just through negotiation but also through realism and the ability to adapt to the new threats of the 21st century.
