In Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of these important conditions existed when U.S. forces invaded. The leaders of these countries are Muslim, thus establishing an important connection with the mass of their people. Unlike Nazism and communism, which were political fads, Islam is the faith of 1.5 billion people, and boasts a proud, fourteen-centuries-long history of success and conquest. For millions of pious Muslims, the answer to their modern difficulties lies not in embracing a foreign political system like democracy, but in returning to the purity of faith that created one of the world's greatest empires. Moreover, no Muslim country has suffered the dramatic physical destruction that Germany and Japan did, which would illuminate the costs of Islam's failure to adapt to the modern world. Finally, such analogies downplay the complex social and economic values, habits, and attitudes--many contrary to traditional Islamic doctrine--that are the preconditions for a truly democratic regime.
More recently, people are invoking the Munich analogy to describe the Syria and Iran crises. But these critics of Obama's foreign policy misunderstand the Munich negotiations and their context. The Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens, arguing that Obama's agreement with Iran is worse than the English and French betrayal of Czechoslovakia, based his assessment on his belief that "neither Neville Chamberlain nor [French prime minister] Édouard Daladier had the public support or military wherewithal to stand up to Hitler in September 1938. Britain had just 384,000 men in its regular army; the first Spitfire aircraft only entered RAF service that summer. ‘Peace for our time' it was not, but at least appeasement bought the West a year to rearm."
Stephens, however, is missing an important historical detail that calls into question this interpretation. France in fact did have the "military wherewithal" to fight the Germans. The Maginot line had 860,000 soldiers manning it--nearly six times the number of Germans on the unfinished "Western Wall" of defensive fortifications facing the French-and another 400,000 troops elsewhere in France. Any move east by the French would have presented Germany with a two-front war it was not prepared to fight. Nor would Czechoslovakia have been an easy foe for Hitler. As Churchill wrote in The Gathering Storm, the Czechs had "a million and a half men armed behind the strongest fortress line in Europe [in the mountainous Sudetenland on Germany's eastern border] and equipped by a highly organized and powerful industrial machine," including the Skoda works, "the second most important arsenal in Central Europe." Finally, the web of military agreements among England, France, Poland, and the Soviet Union was dependent on England backing France, which would not fight otherwise, and without the French, the Poles and the Soviets would not fight either. Had England lived up to its commitment to France, Hitler would have faced a two-front war against the overwhelming combined military superiority of the Allies. And he would have lost.
The lessons of Munich, and its value as a historical analogy, have nothing to do with a material calculation. Rather, the capitulation of the British and the French illustrates the perennial truth that conflict is about morale. On that point Stephens is correct when he writes that Chamberlain and Daladier did not have "public support," and he emphasizes the role of morale in foreign policy. A people who have lost the confidence in the goodness of their way of life will not be saved by the material superiority of arms or money. And, as Munich also shows, that failure of nerve will not be mitigated by diplomatic negotiations. Talking to an enemy bent on aggression will only buy him time for achieving his aims. Thus Munich exposes the fallacy of diplomatic engagement that periodically has compromised Western foreign policy. Rather than a means of avoiding the unavoidable brutal costs of conflict, diplomatic words often create the illusion of action, while in reality avoiding the necessary military deeds. 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. Hitler correctly judged that what he called the "little worms" of Munich, France and England, would not use such force, and were only looking for a politically palatable way to avoid a war. Similarly today, the mullahs in Iran are confident that America will not use force to stop the nuclear weapons program. Iran's leaders are shrewd enough to understand that the Obama administration needs a diplomatic fig leaf to hide its capitulation to their nuclear ambitions, given his doubts about the rightness of America's global dominance, and the war-weariness evident among the American people. Unfortunately, this deal allows the Iranians to continue spinning the centrifuges and inching ever closer to the capacity quickly to build a nuclear weapon, even as they receive the much needed funds that will come from sanctions relief.
The weakening faith in American goodness that afflicts millions of Americans, and the use of diplomacy to camouflage that failure of nerve and provide political cover for the leaders charged with protecting our security and interests, are a reprise of England and France's sacrifice of Czechoslovakia in 1938. That similarity and the lessons it can teach about the dangers of the collapse of national morale and the risky reliance on words rather than deeds are what continue to make Munich a useful historical analogy.
