As we approach the one year mark on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, more westerners have advocated for appeasing Putin.  They fear for escalation, arguing that further western military support will lead to World War III and nuclear destruction.  They argue this is Ukraine’s war to fight, naively thinking if we simply give Putin what he wants, he will go away.

But appeasing Putin is like appeasing Hitler in 1938.  As if people need to be reminded, Putin invaded Ukraine.  He has brought war to a continent that has been mostly peaceful since 1945.  

Some may want to blame NATO or “western aggression”, but as previously described, NATO has never posed a credible security threat to Russia.  It’s a defense alliance. 

Nobody forced Putin to amass 190,000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s doorstep late last year.  Nobody forced him to invade Ukraine in February, while targeting civilian areas, committing war crimes, and other heinous acts bordering on genocide.  Putin has said himself he doesn’t think Ukraine is a real country.

How do you appease or negotiate peace with someone harboring such extreme and unhinged views?  How effective have appeasement peace efforts been with strongmen in recent history?  And what gives these western interlocutors the right to self-determine the future of Ukrainian statehood when by all accounts Ukrainians want to fight for their right to self-government? 

The harsh reality is that Putin will not stop his aggression even if he is given control of Ukraine.  One only needs to look at recent history with Hitler to understand why. 

Neville Chamberlain’s ghost

There were arguably many times when Hitler could have been stopped prior to invading Poland in 1939.  Some may point to his military occupation of the Rhineland in 1936 and the western response of almost complete inaction. 

Others may point to the Munich Agreement in 1938, where the western powers, and specifically British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, met with Hitler and agreed to cede to him the Sudetenland in exchange for peace.  Hitler had made increasing demands and threats of military action if this German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia was not handed over to Germany.  

To put it in further context, this agreement over the Sudetenland came shortly after Hitler had just taken control of Austria through annexation.  Hitler wanted “Lebensraum”, or “living space”, for all German speaking people.  He wanted to unite them.

Does that sound familiar to Putin wanting to unite all Russian speaking people?  It should.

Neville Chamberlain wanted to avoid a second world war at all costs.  He infamously looked Hitler in the eyes, sized him up, and concluded that Hitler was a man of his word.  That he was assured that Hitler would make no further territorial demands in Europe.  

A year later, Hitler invaded Poland. 

Anyone who advocates appeasing Putin at this hour needs to appreciate the serious risks and the disastrous history of appeasing strongmen like Hitler.  It’s like negotiating with a terrorist.  One demand flows to another and then another.  It goes on and on because the strongman terrorist realizes something – they can continue to build leverage.  

Once given an inch they can take a mile.

Putin does this very effectively, especially with his nuclear saber-rattling.  Any attempts to appease him will resurrect Neville Chamberlain’s ghost to haunt the world again.  For Putin does not simply want territory in eastern Ukraine, just as Hitler wasn’t satisfied with some territory in western Czechoslovakia (i.e., the Sudetenland).  

Putin wants to destroy the western world order

Any argument that pushes peace at the cost of Ukrainian sovereignty must address this serious risk.  If a western appeaser or Putin apologist thinks that sacrificing Ukraine will make the rest of the world safer, they must be prepared to explain why they are not Neville Chamberlain from 1938.  

How can they be so sure Putin will stop in Ukraine?

There are already Russian-backed separatists in other former Soviet Republics like Moldova, which borders Ukraine.  Belarus is already a Kremlin-controlled puppet state.  Putin has previously invaded Chechnya and Georgia.  He grabbed Crimea overnight while the world watched.  

Anyone who thinks that Putin’s Russian imperialism is limited to Ukraine is naively mistaken.  Ukraine may be a major prize for the Russian autocrat, but the biggest prize is upending the American-dominated western world order.  In its place Putin wants to implement a system based on authoritarian nationalism.

He wants the ability to quash democratic movements before they can even start.  Putin blames democracy for many of his perceived social ills, like increasing global respect for LGBTQ rights.  He sees democratization as an existential threat to his authoritarian hold on power.  For Putin, it’s the difference between chaos and order.

To influence and upend the western world order, Putin will need more than Ukraine.  He will need allies like China, but he will also need more resources.

The current Russian economy needs war to thrive

What will happen should the price of oil drop below $60 per barrel?  This is the recent price cap implemented by the European Union and G7 to punish Putin for his actions in Ukraine.  

Russia is a petrostate, and now that its economy operates in increasing isolation from the globalized world due to sanctions, it’s more dependent than ever on high oil prices.  War is profitable for Putin in that sense.  

Although it is unclear how Russia will ultimately respond to the recent price cap, its economy needs high oil prices to thrive.  War helps.  Should Russia end its “special military operation” in Ukraine, it wouldn’t necessarily have this economic advantage.

So anyone thinking that Putin will completely opt for peace even if he gets everything he wants in Ukraine is not considering the macroeconomic implications.  War is in Putin’s best economic interests.  Just as it was for Hitler’s Nazi Germany. 

Many westerners supported appeasement with Hitler too

Western appeasement of strongmen is nothing new.  When Austria and Czechoslovakia were being overrun by the Nazis in bloodless coups, citizens of Britain and France were comfortable in their homes and largely advocating to give Hitler what he wanted.  Why risk war?  

It was a reasonable question, especially following the horrific war that was supposed to end all wars.  No sane person wants war.  Nobody should advocate for it unless they are prepared to accept its consequences.  

But anyone advocating for peace in the face of an unreasonable aggressor must also be prepared to accept those consequences.  

What does peace in Ukraine look like?  Does Putin just take the Donbas and keep Crimea?  How would Ukrainians feel about that?  Especially following almost a year of bloody war where many civilians have been massacred and cities have been destroyed.       

Western appeasement of Putin, and many of those advocating for peace, do not want to consider its inherently dangerous risks.  They don’t want to admit that the strongman on the other side of the peace table is shrewd, calculating, and has a dark history of mafioso thuggery.  

But then again, so did Hitler.  And if an esteemed statesman like Neville Chamberlain can be fooled, it should be no surprise that countless others can be fooled too.