Trump’s Munich: Appeasement, Ignorance, and the Cost of History

Trump as peacemaker? That’s what some would like to believe. But history tells another story.

Munich. Chamberlain. The handshake that gave Hitler everything he wanted without a shot fired. A mistake, they called it later. But mistakes like that don’t come cheap. They cost lives. They cost nations.

And here we are again. A strongman on the march, a deal on the table, a fool eager to sign it.

Robert Kagan spells it out plain:

"Putin doesn’t just want land—he wants the old empire, the Soviet specter rising again. And Trump? He’s the man who might just hand it to him, not out of strategy, not even out of fear, but out of sheer, blundering ignorance."

Chamberlain appeased, but he never switched sides. This time, it’s worse. A Churchill or FDR of our time? They haven’t shown themselves.

A great power, led by a man chasing TV ratings and poll numbers, blind to the cliff’s edge. The generals see it. The world sees it. And if history is any guide, the reckoning won’t wait long.

Trump has spent a lifetime dodging real battles, crafting paper-thin crises for the cameras, spinning every stumble into a grand performance. But fate has a way of granting fools their wishes. He wants a moment to prove himself? He’ll get one. And when the true storm comes—a crisis too vast for slogans, too real for showmanship—he’ll stand at the center, arms outstretched, thinking himself a titan.

But hubris has a cruel sense of humor. The stage Trump craves will be his undoing, and history will carve his name not among the strong, nor even the shrewd, but among those who mistook luck for genius and led nations into ruin.

Read Kagan's piece here:

Trump Offering Putin Another Munich