Michael Wackenreuter is a national security and international policy intern at the Center for American Progress and master’s student at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Critics cried hypocrisy when it was revealed that the Obama administration had delivered a payment of $400 million to the Iranian government just before the release of three U.S. prisoners last January. To many Republicans, the episode has come to represent nothing more than a “ransom payment”—the kind the administration says it doesn’t do as a matter of policy—and one with the potential to set a dangerous precedent going forward.

The truth is, what President Barack Obama did was more like standard operating procedure for presidents, who must often enter into notoriously “gray areas” of diplomacy with hostile powers. Think of it as the art of the side deal. From the earliest times, presidents have quietly cut private pacts to push big big diplomatic goals through—often with a lot of secrecy, and sometimes in violation of the country's own stated diplomatic rules.


In the case of the Iranian payment—was it a form of ransom, or not?—it didn’t help, of course, that the administration changed its story. Administration officials initially characterized the timing of the payment as part of its ongoing effort to resolve a decades-old dispute involving an unfulfilled arms purchase that took place just prior to the Iranian Revolution—one that had the potential to cost the United States billions of dollars if it continued unresolved. But last week the State Department conceded “that it delayed making a $400 million payment to Iran for several hours in January ‘to retain maximum leverage’ and ensure that three American prisoners were released the same day.”

The argument of the critics is a familiar one, with its implicit disdain for the complex elements of international politics, of which the Iran nuclear deal—and this episode in particular—are unmistakably a part. This vein of American hawkishness has its historical roots in what the authors Fredrik Lovegall and Kenneth Osgood aptly describe as the “Ghost of Munich,” when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain "made his infamous deal with the devil, allowing Hitler to annex a large chunk of Czechoslovakian territory in return for a pledge of peace."

Despite the fact that President Franklin Roosevelt himself “initially greeted the pact with equanimity,” and that it “infuriated” Hitler by providing “England with a breathing spell to build its strength in preparation for the likely showdown with the Nazi juggernaut,” the popular verdict on the issue of appeasement soon became clear: It is something that governments should never do. And yet that blanket injunction has perhaps unfairly sullied the image of what is often a valuable tactic. As Roosevelt later put it, “Normal practices of diplomacy … are of no possible use in dealing with international outlaws.”

Further compounding this impression for many Americans has been the popular history, propagated by Robert F. Kennedy and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., among others, surrounding the Cuban missile crisis. In the midst of that fateful period, President John F. Kennedy himself appeared to be explicitly drawing on the lessons of Munich when he remarked, “Aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war.” In the analysis of RFK and Schlesinger, it was only through President Kennedy’s uncompromising leadership that he was able to induce the Soviets to “blink” by getting them to withdraw their nuclear missiles from Cuba.

The truth about the Cuban missile crisis—and many others—is very different. Indeed, it may be the residual effect of the disparity between this popular narrative and what actually happened during those fateful “Thirteen Days” that, along with the “Ghost of Munich,” accounts for many Americans’ misguided disdain for diplomacy today. For as we now know, the resolution of the Cuban crisis came about only when the United States agreed to remove its own Jupiter nuclear missiles from Turkey. It’s just that JFK insisted this be kept secret at the time for fear of being labeled as another Chamberlain. That such “appeasement” can now be said to have led to the de-escalation of the most frightening and dangerous moment in recent world history has done little to change historical perceptions, however. Nor has the fact that the “weakness” displayed by President Kennedy during the crisis in no way damaged the United States’ successful efforts during the Cold War.

Since then, U.S. presidents from both parties have operated in this gray area of diplomacy to resolve several notable crises, albeit with varying measures of success (as well as probity). In the U.S.S. Pueblo incident, in which a U.S. Navy vessel was seized by North Korea, President Lyndon Johnson authorized a “pre-repudiated” letter of apology to the North Korean government in exchange for the release of dozens of U.S. sailors who had been held captive for almost a year. In 1980, the Carter administration negotiated an agreement to free the hostages held in Iran involving the release of $11 billion to $12 billion in Iranian assets, which was subsequently upheld by President Ronald Reagan. More controversially, in the mid-1980s the Reagan administration authorized the sale of weapons to Iran to secure the release of several Americans held hostage in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal.

And most recently, in 2001, President George W. Bush authorized a letter that apologized for the breaching of Chinese airspace in order to secure the release of 24 American service members who had been held captive for two weeks (even though the U.S. violated Chinese airspace only after a Chinese plane crashed into it in international airspace).

Despite all of the hand-wringing that accompanied each of these episodes, the reputation and national security of the United States has remained very much intact. Moreover, when one considers that the “payment” involved in this current controversy was Iran’s money in the first place—and that if it had not been delivered, the United States would have likely been liable for a substantially larger sum as a result of a decision by an international tribunal—it is apparent just how overwrought much of the indignation surrounding this incident has been, especially compared with the actions of Obama’s predecessors.

Although it may be too much to ask, it would be helpful for our foreign policy discourse going forward if our more excitable members of the political and media class would widen their historical aperture to see beyond the “Ghost of Munich.”