When people talk about the policy of appeasement, they refer to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who in 1938 signed the Munich agreement, which handed over the Sudatenland area of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany. However, following Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939, it was Chamberlain who declared war on Germany. Appeasement ultimately didn’t prevent war, as both Chamberlain and the British people hoped and believed would happen, and it was shown to be the wrong policy. It cannot be compared to what is happening with Donald Trump’s appeasement policy towards Russia.
For one thing, Britain was not at war when Chamberlain tried to appease Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Now, Russia is very much at war, following their illegal invasion of Ukraine and the killings that have followed. More than that, Russia is now ruled by a fascist dictatorship, its president a mass-murder and KGB thug, Vladimir Putin, who should in the dock at The Hague for war crimes. He authorises the killings of those who oppose his regime, as we know in the UK, not always at home. Donald Trump inviting Putin to the negotiating table is rewarding him for his appalling actions. More than that, Trump’s actions only reaffirm what we all know. America is becoming a fascist state, too.
Just look at the recent visit to Europe of vice president J D Vance. When he was in Germany, did he speak with chancellor Olaf Scholz? No. He chose instead to meet the far right AfD leader Alice Weidel. If you are reading anything in to that, you’re not paying attention. He is telling us who he is, as he did at a recent security conference when he launched into a bizarre attack on the lack of freedom of speech in Europe, while presumably not having the time to refer to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia being a place where speaking your mind gets you killed.
And in case you are wondering, are things really that bad, then I’ll tell you loud and clear that, yes, they absolutely are because numerous other countries are facing up to the reality that the far right are on the march, including here at home. The Netherlands, Italy, Hungary, Argentina, France have seen the populist far right gain support. In Britain, we have a Tory party disappearing to the far right where it competes with Nigel Farage’s far right company Reform UK Ltd, which masquerades as a political party. And there’s Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson, the jailbird who leads the even further to the right movement.
James Bond villain Elon Musk is not only the richest man in the world, he is also the most powerful unelected person in the world. Along with Trump and various other tech bros, they have seized control of the American government machine and are ripping it apart. Trump isn’t joking when he says he wants Canada to become a US state, or that he wants to invade Greenland or that he wants to forcibly move migrants to camps in Cuba. We cannot carry on sleepwalking because if we do, there’s only one way this can end.
If we think we can ignore all this stuff and it will somehow all go away, then think again. America first will massively affect the world in all sorts of ways, not least economically and militarily. As America itself will soon discover the price of eggs won’t fall if they go it alone and pretend the rest of the world does not exist.
When Trump sells out Ukraine to the Russian bear the old war order will collapse. The land of the free will look only inwards allowing dictators, like Putin, to flourish. Sooner or later, and really it must be sooner, the free world needs to get its shit together.
We already knew who Putin was and now we know who and what Trump was, and is, an egomaniac, a narcissist and a fascist dictator. We cannot simply allow Trump to cede Ukraine to Russia, particularly during a negotiation not involving Ukraine. We cannot condone the likelihood, the near certainty, of Trump holding a summit with Putin, a man with blood on his hands, reintroducing him to the world as the international statesman he isn’t. Above all, we must not submit to appeasement which we know only works one way.
I never thought there might be a World War Three, but I am not so sure now. The rogue states include the world’s behemoths, from Russia, China, North Korea, potentially even India and now definitely America. And that’s without even talking about Iran, Netanyahu’s perverse version of Israel and the states referred to previously.
The real answer to this is peace through strength. We need unity with the rest of the free world and to increase military spending accordingly. Our special relationship with the USA, if it ever existed at all, died years ago. Of course, we still need to engage with the likes of Trump who, you can reasonably argue, is only fulfilling his promises to American voters with his scorched earth America first government, if only to try to moderate his damaging extremism, but that only goes so far.
I’ll end with the words of the great poet Michael Rosen:
I sometimes fear that
