The Obama administration is reportedly weighing whether to send lethal aid to bolster Ukraine in its struggle against a Russian-backed rebellion in that country’s east.

Some policymakers advise against this move, arguing that it would provide too little support to tip the balance in favor of Kiev, while doing just enough to provoke Russian President Vladimir Putin into turning a provincial war into something much larger – and hotter.

“If I want,” Putin is reported to have warned European leaders, “I will take Kiev in two weeks.”

Others worry about the opposite – that a flabby response to Putin’s orchestrated takeover of the Crimean Peninsula and the eastern Donetsk Oblast would amount to “appeasement.”



“We run the risk of repeating the mistakes made in Munich in ‘38,” British Prime Minister David Cameron told fellow European leaders last fall. “This time we cannot meet Putin's demands. He has already taken Crimea, and we cannot allow him to take the whole country.”

Former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, now president of the European Council, tweeted a few days ago: “Once again, appeasement encourages the aggressor to greater acts of violence.”

So which is the greater danger – defiance or appeasement?

To answer this question, we could do no better than consult the words of the ultimate expert on appeasement, Sir Winston Churchill. In the late 1930s, Churchill eloquently denounced Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s craven efforts to mollify Nazi Germany – efforts that culminated in allied agreement to consign Czechoslovakia to the tender mercies of Adolf Hitler. Once Churchill became prime minister, he rejected further appeasement in the form of an armistice with Nazi Germany advocated by the arch-appeaser, Lord Halifax. Churchill recognized that such a deal would isolate Britain from its empire, vitiate its ability to fight and lead to the slow strangulation of British freedom.



It is this “never give in” spirit of Churchill that we vividly remember today, inspiring many to echo the current British prime minister in denouncing anything that smacks of “appeasement.” Three-quarters of a century later, echoes of this word have become reflexive if not mindless.

Though little remembered today, Churchill had more to say about appeasement as leader of the opposition during some of the most dangerous days of the Cold War. The United States, which had acquired the atom bomb during World War II, allowed its conventional forces to shrink precipitously in the five years after the war. The Soviet Union had become the world’s second nuclear power in 1949 and maintained a looming conventional military presence in Eastern Europe that made Western Europe look like a tasty morsel ready to be eaten.

When the United States became entangled in war on the Korean Peninsula, Churchill worried that Britain’s ally and protector would be too distracted to defend Europe. In late 1950, British fear of invasion was as palpable as it had been ten years before.

Churchill told Parliament that Soviet strength had steadily emerged “as a rock shows more and more above an ebbing tide.” Russians “in one form or another” controlled half of Europe and China, but showed “no signs of being in any way satiated or satisfied.”



On the other hand, Churchill advised his colleagues to see the world as the Russians saw it – a remark that if made by an American politician today would invite a whirlwind of abuse as namby-pambyism. But Churchill, as always, was keen in his appraisals. “There is no doubt that trying to put oneself in the position of the other party to see how things look to him is one way, and perhaps the best way, of being able to feel and peer dimly into the unknowable future,” he said.

Churchill set out the means to strengthen the West in the face of the Soviet challenge, which included transforming NATO from a paper institution into a real military force, establishing an EU-like “United States of Europe,” and devising a British nuclear deterrent.

But Churchill also added some nuances to his view on appeasement. He said:

Appeasement in itself may be good or bad according to the circumstances. Appeasement from weakness and fear is alike futile and fatal. Appeasement from strength is magnanimous and noble and might be the surest and perhaps the only path to world peace.



When nations or individuals get strong they are often truculent and bullying, but when they are weak they become better mannered. But this is the reverse of what is healthy and wise. I have always been astonished, having seen the end of these two wars, how difficult it is to make people understand the Roman wisdom, "Spare the conquered and confront the proud." …The modern practice has too often been "punish the defeated and grovel to the strong."



I believe Churchill would see today’s Russia as a hybrid of the defeated weak and the proud strong. He would note what defense analyst Loren Thompson calls Russia’s “paranoid political culture,” as well as the ferocious passion with which Putin and Russians cling to their grievances as the losers of the Cold War. Churchill would likely see the futility of using force to evict Russian-backed rebels from parts of Ukraine that were long part of Russia. Most of all, he would be wary of Russia’s modernized nuclear arsenal, its hair-trigger record of near launches, and its doctrine of using nuclear weapons in conventional war.

In short, I don’t believe Churchill would advise bringing the world to the brink over Donetsk, no matter how deep his sympathies with the beleaguered Ukrainians.

Churchill would certainly urge Western leaders to fill in a NATO force that has been hollowed out by neglect. He would undoubtedly cheer recent measures to reinforce NATO’s defense of the Baltic Republics and Poland, and urge us to make our commitment to our treaty allies unambiguous. He might pick up his pencil and doodle ideas to neutralize Putin’s “little, green men” if they pop up on NATO soil. He might caution Putin that deeper moves toward Kiev could result in lethal aid.