Moin zusammen,
da ich grade die #297 gehört habe und am Ende der Diskussion zur Ukraine / dem offenen Brief recht kritische Stimmen zu „Appeasement“-Politik (vor allem durch Ulf) aufkamen möchte ich gerne folgenden Absatz aus dem Buch „Rationality of War“ von William Spaniel hier einmal zitieren (Chapter 7: Thinking Strategically about War):
Appeasement Is Not a Bad Word
If you read a history book on World War II, you will likely find the story of Nevelle Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler. In September 1938, Chamberlain (the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the time), Hitler, and other world leaders gathered in Munich to reach a consensus on the fate of Eastern Europe. Ultimately, Chamberlain consented to the Nazi takeover of ethnically German parts of Czechoslovakia. Upon returning to the United Kingdom, Chamberlain triumphantly held up a copy of the Munich Agreement to the press and declared that he had established “peace for our time.”Less than a year later, Hitler invaded Poland, touching off World War II.
The lesson, as it is often told, is that appeasement is a horrible tactic. Hitler supposedly interpreted Chamberlain’s acquiescence in Munich to be weakness and challenged the United Kingdom by taking more extreme measures. Therefore, we should never give an inch to our international rivals, lest they demand more from us.
This is an absurd conclusion. Bargaining broke down because Hitler believed he was stronger than anyone gave him credit for.
[…]
Throughout this book, I was careful to avoid using the word appease. I instead replaced it with various synonyms—satisfy, negotiate, bargain, settle. But the terminology is inconsequential. Going forward, states have two choices. First, they can never negotiate with potential challengers. The potential challengers will then calculate their expected payoff from war, realize they will get more from fighting than maintaining the status quo, and launch invasions. The satisfied states will then look back in retrospect and wonder why they did not just give some concessions to the challengers to pacify them from the start.
Second, states could just bargain in the first place and save everyone the costs of fighting. Believe that appeasement is bad at your own peril.
Wichtig: dieses Zitat sagt nicht das man immer nachgeben soll. Es versucht nur den „schmutzigen“ Touch den das Wort „appeasement“ hat etwas zu relativieren. Für alle die eine etwas formalere und wissenschaftlichere Sichtweise auf die Frage warum Kriege eigentlich ausbrechen suchen kann ich das Buch nur empfehlen.
Viele Grüße