President Bush on Foreign Policy

President Bush gave a controversial speech yesterday while celebrating the 60th anniversary of Israel. The President used the speech as an opportunity to condemn those who would negotiate with “terrorists and radicals.” After linking Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Osama Bin Laden, President Bush stated:

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorist and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks rolled across Poland in 1939 an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

A few questions have been asked about this part of the speech. Was Bush directing this comment at Presidential candidate Barack Obama? Also, what is the difference between “negotiations” and “appeasement”? Many pundits have discussed these issues; I don’t need to add to that discussion here. Instead, I’d like to explore the historical misunderstanding of the President’s statement.

Hitler’s horrific rise to power in the 1930s was made possible by the poor foreign policy of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. After World War I, the victorious Allied powers wanted to make sure that a similar war would never happen again. At the “peace” Treaty of Versailles, American President Woodrow Wilson called for the treaty to include open diplomacy “that shall always proceed frankly and in the public view” with Germany and other Axis powers. He didn’t want to punish Germany for the war; instead, he wanted to help rebuild Europe, including Germany. Wilson stood alone on this view. Other Allies wanted to punish Germany for the war, making an example out of Germany for any nation that had ideas of war. Germany signed the “peace” treaty under protest. The treaty had disastrous consequences for the Germans: they were punished for the war; they had to give up large portions of their wealth, crippling the German economy; and Germany had to give up large portions of its country to other nations. Without open diplomacy and because other nations united in blaming German for the evils of the war, there was little hope for Germans – until Hitler came along. The seeds for the evil policies of Hitler were sown by Allies blaming and isolation of Germany.

So, why hold open diplomacy with our enemies?

Foreign relations is a tricky business with no easy answers, but the rise of Nazi Germany shows that when we isolate our enemies and punish them for the evils of the world, we sow the seeds of war. Maybe if the world had followed President Wilson’s advice and not punished Germany and had kept open relations with our enemies, maybe the most disastrous war ever could have been avoided.