Stephens: Worse Than Munich
Nov. 25, 2013 6:47 p.m. ET
To adapt
Churchill
: Never in the field of global diplomacy has so much been given away by so many for so little.
Britain
and France's capitulation to Nazi Germany at Munich has long been a
byword for ignominy, moral and diplomatic. Yet neither
Neville Chamberlain
nor 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.
The signing of the
Paris Peace
Accords in January 1973 was a betrayal of an embattled U.S. ally
and the abandonment of an effort for which 58,000 American troops gave
their lives. Yet it did end America's participation in a peripheral war,
which neither Congress nor the public could indefinitely support.
"Peace with honor" it was not, as the victims of Cambodia's Killing
Fields or Vietnam's re-education camps can attest. But, for American
purposes at least, it was peace.
By
contrast, the interim nuclear agreement signed in Geneva on Sunday by
Iran and the six big powers has many of the flaws of Munich and Paris.
But it has none of their redeeming or exculpating aspects.
Neville Chamberlain after signing the Munich Agreement, Sept. 30, 1938.
© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORB
Consider: Britain and France came to
Munich as military weaklings. The U.S. and its allies face Iran from a
position of overwhelming strength. Britain and France won time to rearm.
The U.S. and its allies have given Iran more time to stockpile uranium
and develop its nuclear infrastructure. Britain and France had
overwhelming domestic constituencies in favor of any deal that would
avoid war. The
Obama
administration is defying broad bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress for the sake of a deal.
As
for the Vietnam parallels, the U.S. showed military resolve in the
run-up to the
Paris Accords
with a massive bombing and mining campaign of the North that
demonstrated presidential resolve and forced Hanoi to sign the deal. The
administration comes to Geneva fresh from worming its way out of its
own threat to use force to punish Syria's
Bashar Assad
for his use of chemical weapons against his own people.
The
Nixon
administration also exited Vietnam in the context of a durable
opening to Beijing that helped tilt the global balance of power against
Moscow. Now the U.S. is attempting a fleeting opening with Tehran at the
expense of a durable alliance of values with Israel and interests with
Saudi Arabia. "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People" is the title of a
hilarious memoir by British author
Toby Young
—but it could equally be the history of Barack Obama's foreign
policy.
That's where the differences
end between Geneva and the previous accords. What they have in common is
that each deal was a betrayal of small countries—Czechoslovakia, South
Vietnam, Israel—that had relied on Western security guarantees. Each was
a victory for the dictatorships: "No matter the world wants it or not,"
Iranian President
Hasan Rouhani
said Sunday, "this path will, God willingly, continue to the peak
that has been considered by the martyred nuclear scientists." Each deal
increased the contempt of the dictatorships for the democracies: "If
ever that silly old man comes interfering here again with his umbrella,"
Hitler is reported to have said of Chamberlain after Munich, "I'll kick
him downstairs and jump on his stomach."
And
each deal was a prelude to worse. After Munich came the conquest of
Czechoslovakia, the Nazi-Soviet pact and World War II. After Paris came
the fall of Saigon and Phnom Penh and the humiliating exit from the
embassy rooftop. After Geneva there will come a new, chaotic Mideast
reality in which the United States will lose leverage over enemies and
friends alike.
What will that look
like? Iran will gradually shake free of sanctions and glide into a zone
of nuclear ambiguity that will keep its adversaries guessing until it
opts to make its capabilities known. Saudi Arabia will move swiftly to
acquire a nuclear deterrent from its clients in Islamabad; Saudi
billionaire
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal
made that clear to the Journal last week when he indiscreetly
discussed "the arrangement with Pakistan." Egypt is beginning to ponder a
nuclear option of its own while drawing closer to a security alliance
with Russia.
As for Israel, it cannot
afford to live in a neighborhood where Iran becomes nuclear, Assad
remains in power, and Hezbollah—Israel's most immediate military
threat—gains strength, clout and battlefield experience. The chances
that Israel will hazard a strike on Iran's nuclear sites greatly
increased since Geneva. More so the chances of another war with
Hezbollah.
After World War II the U.S.
created a global system of security alliances to prevent the kind of
foreign policy freelancing that is again becoming rampant in the Middle
East. It worked until President Obama decided in his wisdom to throw it
away. If you hear echoes of the 1930s in the capitulation at Geneva,
it's because the West is being led by the same sort of men, minus the
umbrellas.
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