By Ryan P. Christiano

In an address before The House of Commons, on the 1^st of March 1848, Lord Palmerston declared: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal, and those interests it is our duty to follow”. Which theory or theories of International Relations motivated the Iraq War, and more narrowly, inspired President Bush? The President’s State of The Union Address; four short months after the attacks of September 11^th, declared that a new ‘Axis of Evil’ exists in the world after 9/11. In the 2003 State of The Union Address, the President declared that America and her allies were the only things that stand between a world of peace, and a world of chaos and constant alarm; and that Iraq now threatened the world with chaos and constant alarm.

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“Trust but verify.” Those were the watchwords of President Ronald Reagan when he embarked upon the historic series of negotiations with the Soviet Union that would culminate with the START I Treaty designed to reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons deployed by the United States and Soviet Union. Today a tempest in a teapot has ensued over President Bush’s remarks before the Israeli Knesset comparing negotiations with hostile foreign dictators as tantamount to Neville Chamberlain’s alleged “appeasement” of Adolph Hitler at Munich in 1938. (more…)

Yes you indeed did read that correctly. I am an “appeaser” as that term should be understood properly from a historical perspective. So much hot air and verbiage has been spewed both over the television airwaves and in print this past week since President Bush’s speech before the Israeli Knesset which in most circles was viewed as an attack on the likely Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama that the time is ripe to examine that oft-maligned term and give it some perspective.

Most people associate the term with, of course, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s alleged coddling of Nazi dictator Adolph Hitler at the Munich Conference of 1938 that ceded the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Germany. It is suggested that in doing so appeasement of this nature invariably leads to destabilization and war in the long run as supposedly such men as Hitler are incapable of being appeased. In the debased culture of contemporary political discourse the shorthand is that any talks with unsavory regimes are to be eschewed as a sign of weakness. Conservatives of the stupid school (of which I count myself an opponent) of foreign policy suggest that appeasement is a peculiarly liberal (read: Democratic Party) tack that will leave America weaker. This is not only historically untrue it is also rubbish of the first order ideologically considered.

Leaving aside the fact that Chamberlain was a Tory British prime minister having succeeded the more liberal pacifist coalition government of Stanley Baldwin by pledging to do more to rearm Great Britain, the roots of sensible appeasement go back to the previous century and the inventive and productive foreign policy of another much-maligned figure Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich of Austria. Today Metternich is viewed by leftist ideologues as a reactionary and apologist for the ancien regimes of Europe and indeed he was “guilty” of the latter charge but that’s ignoring the landscape in which he worked.

Metternich’s greatest fear was that the nationalism unleashed by Napoleon’s conquests would result in a new nationalized Europe of perpetual war and disorder and as we have seen in Iraq, little good can come of disorder. After the crushing Austrian defeat at Wagram which ended the war of the Fifth Coalition against Napoleon, the newly-appointed Metternich had little choice but to appease Napoleon so as to preserve Austria to fight another day and this he did brilliantly first by arranging the marriage of Austrian Archduchess Marie Louise to Napoleon (thus giving the upstart Corsican an air of legitimacy by a tie with the ancient House of Hapsburg) and the Treaty of Schonbrunn which concluded the War of the Fifth Coalition while seemingly harsh for Austria preserved the Austrian Empire and brought a lot of unhappy German subjects into Napoleon’s orbit. Most importantly in positioning Austria as a future “armed neutral” juxtaposed between Napoleon and Russia he assured the greatest possible freedom of movement Austria could imagine at the time. And when Napoleon eventually overreached and invaded Russia and sealed his defeat and first trip into exile it was Metternich and Austria who reaped the benefits. Ultimately, of course, the endgame would play out at the Congress of Vienna that marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars and ushered in a century of peace in Europe (interrupted only by the Austro-Prussian War that would make the beginning of modern Germany and the Franco-Prussian War a few years later).

Now as we all know (or should know) the greatest American foreign policy mind of the past century, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, was/is a Metternichian to his core having written his doctoral thesis at Harvard on the Congress of Vienna. Kissinger too was roundly condemned by the arch-conservatives who would later rally to Ronald Reagan for his policy of détente with the former Soviet Union. But here again one should examine the historical record. Albeit belatedly, Kissinger did succeed in getting the United States out of a disastrous war in southeast Asia and most importantly with Nixon opened the door to China as a counterweight to Soviet influence worldwide.

All of this brings us to the current contretemps. As Col. Jack Jacobs wrote here over the weekend both Obama and McCain are wrong. McCain is wrong to state that we shouldn’t be talking to the likes of Iran (which, in fact, we have been for some months with little to show for it as regards Iraq) and Obama is wrong to suggest that diplomacy in and of itself is likely to lead to salutary results. What is needed now is to identify our strengths and weaknesses vis-à-vis our positions on the ground in the region and to enter into talks based on a realization of same while at the same time examining a series of points on which we might make common cause with both the Iranians and Syrians. That will be the subject of another essay I shall offer shortly on this crucial issue of the coming electoral campaign.

Author’s Note: While the views expressed in this article are my own I am indebted to my old grad school professor, Enno E. Kraehe, Willam W. Corcoran Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Virginia, for many things including my understanding of this crucial period of modern European history and for imparting such pearls of wisdom that the Holy Roman Empire was not “very holy, very Roman or much of an empire” and that Frederick the Great is never referred to by that moniker in Austria.