![]() The charge of appeasement even falls on those who broadly favour President Joe Biden’s prudential approach, supporting Ukraine with arms, aid and intelligence, while avoiding measures that might elevate the risk of going to the brink. To favour anything less than eviction of Russia from every inch of Ukraine’s soil is to appease, and to appease is immoral and futile. In the West’s debate about how far to support Kyiv, a common framing from maximalists – those who call for the removal of limits – is heroic Churchills versus feckless appeasers, in the face of Adolf Hitlers. In our folklore, though, it is history’s supreme lesson of war and peace. ‘Strength’ means being unbending, militarily robust, and maximal about war aims. Its core proposition? That the only virtuous and safe posture is strength. It works as the equal and opposite to kneejerk claims that all wars are Vietnam and all supporters are warmongers. Above all, talk of appeasement is a charge of immorality, extended to behaviour that limits commitment. We identify it with Churchill’s predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, and the Munich Agreement of 1938 that he helped negotiate, to prevent or postpone war by ceding Czech territory to Adolf Hitler. It is a strategy of accommodation that can come at others’ expense. ![]() ![]() But is it true?Īppeasement is the policy of making concessions, often unilaterally, to render an adversary more peaceful. ![]() Many of those who revere him, like those who despise him as a warmonger, take at face value the image that Churchill crafted of himself in his schemingly edited memoirs, as the resolute anti-appeaser. If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has confirmed one thing about Anglo-American collective memory, it’s that we regard Winston Churchill, British prime minister and hero of the Second World War, as an emblem of unyielding, belligerent defiance to the end. What does it mean, exactly, to be ‘Churchillian?’ It is a question we in the West evidently take seriously, to judge from the public appetite for Churchilliana in films, books and as a general reference point. ![]()
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