Munich again
Neville Chamberlain rises again!
Like, looking at this weird photo used by yahoo news today — ghostly out of focus apparitions of Trump and Biden — I can just imagine in the coming century a warning thrown out — out of all real historical contexts — to heed the message of 2016 or 2020 or 2024 — maybe a candidate Biden woulda been able to stop Trump by winning a three-way primary against Clinton and Sanders despite the Democratic establishment’s shoving him off — maybe something he ought have done in his presidency shoulda been pursued to stop Trump from winning in 2024 —
On the bright side to this scene of future historical analogy bingo game horror, Munich is shoved down a step.
Responding, since he was named — But skip to the comments:
Alas, I wish they were indeed isolationists. But the MAGA right is as much into great power competition as neocons.
Looking back on the Munich agreement with perfect 20/20 hindsight is the problem. It was actually the correct call at the time. And part of the rational calculus of negotiation and diplomacy. The Western powers did not want to fight a war over ethnic German lands…they also wanted to make sure that Hitler understood that any more such moves in Europe would lead to war. It was a rational and decent agreement. Now Hitler of course went on to violate the agreement 1 year later by invading Poland (non-ethnic german land) thus starting WWII. And the allies thus naturally had good reason to declare war on Germany then. But it it was not the Munich agreement that was the problem…it was the correct call at the time…it was that Hitler went on to violate that good faith agreement.
Actually it strikes me as the pondering of military strategiums and moral equivocation in America in the 1850s against the “moral rightness” of the “right side of history”. The Great Compromise of 1850 — Henry Clay betrays abolitionish principles. Or… buys the North a decades’ time in a spot where the South had all the military advantages.