[April 16, 2015] Senior leadership, by its very nature, is political in many aspects. This means that the most important issues of any nation should be publically addressed, strategies developed, and plans created to ensure the safety and survival of that state. Foreign policy is the mechanism of senior leaders to do just that. Recently, the U.S. foreign policies regarding nuclear negotiations with Iran have been compared to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 policy of appeasement with Adolf Hitler.
This shows a lack of historical understanding of the times of PM Chamberlain. To illustrate, we know that in 1938, Britain was economically and militarily weak while Europe was under threat of fascist forces. Nazi Germany was the free world’s greatest threat and it possessed the military-economic-strategic muscle to back it up. Chamberlain negotiated an agreement with Hitler from a position of weakness. It was Britain’s assessment that Hitler’s military could not be defeated until 1941 or later, if at all.1
Today, the U.S. indisputably has the strongest military in the world. Economically, the U.S. is the strongest or perhaps second only to China (depending on how it is measured). And, the U.S. has a formidable strategic position in the world. Furthermore, the U.S. is generally seen as a force of good, even when its policies and strategies are unpopular. In any sphere of influence there is no rival.
The positions of 1938 Britain and 2015 United States are not comparable except in one aspect. Both Chamberlain and the U.S. negotiated with a rogue nation and did so in secret. After the terms of Chamberlain’s 1938 Munich Agreement was announced publically, Chamberlain said, “Peace for our time.” World War II began shortly after his speech. This clearly demonstrated the weakness of Britain.
Some details of the secretly-negotiated Iran nuclear agreement have been announced, although the agreement has not been approved.2 While the circumstances under which the negotiations are unclear, they were different from Chamberlain’s deal with Hitler. There are many nation-state leaders across the world who now say that the outcome of the agreement with Iran, nevertheless, may eventually be rather similar to that with Nazi Germany.
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[1] http://www.biography.com/people/neville-chamberlain-9243721
[2] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-nuclear-negotiations-whos-telling-truth/