Bruce Thomson who is affiliated with the Hoover Institution,
and writes for their online magazine called “Defining Ideas” wrote an article
under the title: “The Lessons of Munich” and the subtitle: “What we can learn
from the twentieth century's greatest diplomatic disaster.” It was published on
January 9, 2014.
What Thomson is doing in this article is take on Secretary
of State John Kerry who spoke of a “Munich moment” as well as Daniel Pipes and
Bret Stephens both of whom mentioned Munich and the events of the 1930s in
their respective columns – at one time or another – to draw analogies, and
argue that the West is repeating the mistakes of that era; mistakes that led to
the horrors of the Second World War.
Thomson begins by cautioning that analogies are not always
exact by asking the question: “When, if ever, are historical analogies useful
for understanding present circumstances?” He then gives a lesson as to when the
art of using historical analogies in order to interpret and guide the present,
began to take shape by mentioning the works of a Greek and Roman historians.
But these two made a mistake, says Thomson because “they assumed that human
nature would remain constant in its passions, weaknesses, and interests despite
changes in the political, social or technological environment.”
He borrows the concepts of “exact knowledge” and “variety of
particular cases” from the Greek historian, and adds to them his own view which
is to the effect that “greater knowledge of human motivation and behavior, and
more sophisticated technology, are changing and improving human nature” to then
suggest that “events of the past have little utility in describing the
present.” But he quickly refutes this notion by asserting that “improvement of
human nature is a cultural idea, not a scientific one.” And he points the
finger at the gruesome twentieth century to back this point.
Great! So now that he is sitting on both sides of the fence
at the same time, he can talk from both sides of the mouth without looking like
he is being hypocritical. And so, he paves the way to his punch line by
asserting that “as long as the important differences between past and present
events are respected, the similarities can be useful for understanding our own
predicament.”
To assure the reader that he will be objective in his
assessment of the past and present circumstances, he gives the example of a
historical analogy that failed. It was the ill-informed view of Nathan
Sharansky, he says, upon which the Bush Doctrine was based with regard to
promoting democracy in the Middle East . It was
thought that what was done in Germany
and Japan could be
duplicated in Iraq and Afghanistan ,
but the attempt resulted in a big failure. And Thomson explains the failure by
pointing at the differences between the two historical situations.
He returns to the Munich
analogy, this time to use the Bret Stephens argument as a springboard to
rehabilitate the point that Stephens was trying to make but failed because of
mistakes contained in his argument. Whereas Stephens was more interested in
promoting the idea that the West should arm itself, thus argued that World War
II happened because the allies were not well armed, Thomson who is more
interested in maintaining a Western boot on Iran 's
neck argues that if not Britain ,
at least France and the rest of the allies, were well armed.
He goes on to say that the allies only needed Britain 's moral support to stand up to Germany , thus
open a second front to Hitler's army, a move that would have defeated him early
on in the war. And so, Thomson concludes that the war took the turn that it did
because “capitulation of the British and the French illustrates the perennial
truth that conflict is about morale.”
He agrees with Stephens that the leaders of Britain and France did not have the public
support they needed to stand up to Hitler, and this is where he sees the close
analogy with current events. He put it this way: “Thus Munich
exposes the fallacy of diplomatic engagement that periodically has compromised
Western foreign policy … For diplomacy to work, the enemy must believe that his
opponent will use punishing force to back up the agreement … This truth gives
force to the Munich analogy when applied to
diplomacy with Iran .”
That is his punch line.