Obama's Appeasement Strategy

Barack Obama's indirect acknowledgement that he believes in appeasement has earned him some negative attention in the right blogosphere, but he is not necessarily wrong in his insistence that his approach deserves more respect than it is usually accorded. Appeasement got its bad name from Churchill and his allies who were upset about Neville Chamberlain's Munich Agreement with Hitler in 1938. The agreement was that England would acquiesce to Hitler's lebensraum requirements in Czechoslovakia, allowing him to annex the Sudetenland, or German-speaking portions of that county, in exchange for only a promise. Churchill said it was akin to feeding a crocodile in the hopes that it will eat you last.

Churchill's implicit assessment here is that Hitler was an unreliable partner for any agreement and that his behavior could not be changed in a useful direction by any compromise that was offered. But how did he know that? I'm with Churchill here, but not everyone is. Apparently it has now become fashionable to speculate that World War II was unnecessary, or at least inferior to some possible alternatives. I don't know whether Chamberlain shared this assumption, but there could have been any number of reasons why he adopted the appeasement strategy. The kindest take is that Chamberlain hoped that Hitler was honorable but knew that the British were unprepared to fight. The right strategy in that case would be for Chamberlain to pretend to believe, hiding his fear and guile. Perhaps, Time would be more his friend than Hitler's. Hitler would, for a while at least, be mollified and turn his attentions elsewhere. Unfortunately, Chamberlain squandered the extra time by sticking with cronies and excluding Churchill from power. And in all likelihood, Chamberlain was not faking. He was, at least in my opinion, simply self-deluded, thinking that the best hope for avoiding war was to avoid any appearances of preparing for war. Understanding Hitler as we do at this remove of time, it is hard to forgive Chamberlain. Revisionism aside, it was a mistake … but others havemade the same mistake – with Stalin, with Castro, with Putin, with Arafat. Arguing to the contrary, however, there have been cases where it wasn't a mistake – with Sadat, with Gorbachev … who else? It can happen.

My real concern here is the nature of appeasement, and that brings me to Game Theory. International relationships often correlate well with a peculiar game called the Prisoner's Dilemma. In this game, modeled after the situation of captured criminals, A is paired with a B, a partner in crime. A does not trust B, but depends on B's cooperation. For a given iteration of the game, A is confronted with a single choice. Not knowing what B will do, A can take either a take cooperative or a hostile position with respect to B. The payoffs are these: If both cooperate, both do tolerably well. If they are equally hostile, both do poorly. If the responses are asymmetrical, i.e. under the condition of betrayal, then one prospers and the other does poorly indeed.

A typical strategy of responses can either be blind or triggered. Hitler's strategy was blind. He just took what he wanted. His strategy was blind to the benefits of cooperation. An alternative blind strategy might be randomized choices, where cooperation and hostility are played without regard to the partner's actions. Another blind strategy is to always cooperate. It works quite well in a cooperative world. But in a mixed or hostile world, it could be called by another name – "surrender". Ask yourself this, can an eloquent speech in the House of Commons turn a hostile world into a cooperative world?

The other large class of response strategies is "triggered". That is, you respond to your partner's actions. The actions of your partner, determine your next choice. This strategy could contain a random element, and it could certainly be ineffective or counter-productive. It could be wimpy or punitive. To be effective, your strategy, most likely, will involve some sort of punishment for the partner's previous betrayal. The Grim Trigger strategy, for instance, switches from cooperative to hostile forever once hostility is detected. A modified form would revert to cooperation once the partner had "paid" for the first betrayal by losing every advantage that had been gained. Further modifications involve the number of betrayals before punishment is invoked and the number of gestures of good faith which are needed to get out of the doghouse.

According to game theorists, the optimal strategy, over a wide domain of assumptions and reward schedules, is a triggered strategy called "Tit-for-Tat". This means that you respond to every hostile play with a subsequent hostile response, and every cooperative play with a subsequent cooperative response. This is the method most widely practiced by governments and their tedious diplomats. If you put missiles in Turkey, I'll put missiles in Cuba. If you arrest a spy, I'll arrest a diplomat and call him a spy. The benefit of this system is that two partners playing this strategy will benefit consistently. The trouble with this system is that it can lead to a negative spiral. People can forget who started it and get locked into reciprocal hostility. You have a Hatfields-and-McCoys situation where people have forgotten the original crime and maintain a regimen of hostility for no reason beyond tradition.

This is where appeasement comes in. If sometimes you vary from the algorithm by offering an olive branch, you might be able to break out of the cycle. Turn the other cheek. Give peace a chance. Forgive and forget. … Appeasement strategies might involve ignoring the first hostile move, or even more than one – Tit-for-Two-Tats, perhaps. Jesus suggested that seven times was not enough. It depends on relative costs. It depends on specific situations. And it depends on seeing through the clinical world of game theory for the emotional aspect of the situation, if such a thing can truly be. Can't we be friends, we might ask. These slack, forgiving strategies, in the real world, are probably more effective that Tit-for-Tat, simply because a lot of perceived hostility is simply miscommunication. Good judgment allows us to be more forgiving. And some hostility, for that matter, is mere posturing for the home audience.

So,any strategy more responsive than "surrender", but less rigorous than Tit-for-Tat, can be considered a form of appeasement. That covers a lot of area, and requires a lot of careful calculation based on some true insight.

And that's where Obama comes in. He does not share the widespread assumption that Iran is uniformly and unrepentantly hostile. He might be right. Now, if Iran is actually on some sort of reasonable trigger protocol, how do we convince them to slack off? Do we punish them or placate? Since we don't talk with them, do we even know what they want? It depends on whether you've been watching.

I'm of the opinion that the powers-that-be in Iran are incapable of responding to any peace overtures. Even monumental demonstrations of good-will, such as Israel displayed by ceding Sinai to the Egyptians and Gaza to the Palestinians, will be ineffective with Iran, just as they were with Hamas, just as they were with Hitler. But, I could be wrong. Obama could be right. Unless Hillary can pull a rabbit out of a hat, I think we're going to find out. Let's hope for the best.

Tags: Appeasement, Obama, Hitler, game theory, tit-for-tat

Fred Reed's Fulminations

Here is a delightful rebuttal (click on article #380) to my previous post. Fred Reed has written an article that attacks Ralph Peters' pieties about war. This is the first time I've seen anything by Fred Reed. He reminds me of a comedian, George Carlin or Lenny Bruce or even Mark Twain. He's not a happy camper and he's absolutely right about the world and how it works.

Ralph of course speaks of the sacrifices our boys are making. They aren’t making sacrifices. They are being sacrificed. Sacrifices are voluntary, but if the troops decline to fight, they go to jail. The mechanics go this way: Having an all-volunteer army minimizes objections to the war since no one of any influence has to go; if a lot of high-school grads from Tennessee are getting killed, well, it’s not a good thing of course, but who really cares? This facilitates hobbyist wars. A voluntary army is a small army, so you have to send the same troops for tour after tour until they are half-mad and their families wrecked. Who cares? They are just rednecks anyway—not our sort of people, nobody a general would let his daughter date.

He is absolutely right about the disgraceful behavior and general stupidity of our leaders, and, in particular, our way of staffing the military, the whole national chickenhawk movement. What he is wrong about, however, is fundamental. Our governance is in fact superior to most other places. Whatever our faults and moral failings, the US is up against other forces which are even more reprehensible. You only have to look at the deteriorization of Iran and the once productive Southern Rhodesia, for example, to realize that unseating the evildoers is insufficient to bring about a happy outcome. You can't walk away from these things just because you know that your own motives aren't pure. The vacuum will be filled. And the place from which the vacuum is filled is far worse that we are, far worse perhaps than you can imagine. Let's take Pakistan as our recent example on that.

We owe it to ourselves to listen to and internalize the message that Fred Reed is sending, but I believe Ralph Peters is wiser and closer to the proper policy perspective. If you can read only one, go for Ralph.

Tags: Iraq, Ralph Peters, war myths, Fred Reed, moral high ground, chickenhawk

Words I Wish to Hear from Bush

The South of Iraq has suffered from a triple car-bomb attack, killing many. In all likelihood we will soon have evidence that the perpetrator is Iran. Bill Roggio at the LongWar Journal thinks so. Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club agrees.

If we find the smoking gun, there will still be nothing we can do, but there are many things we can say. I have given up hoping for George Bush to become a Great Communicator, but if I could put words in his mouth, here is what I would have him say when the time comes.

Bush Address I Hope to Hear -- to the Nation Concerning Iraq and Iran

Fellow citizens, I'm addressing the nation today in order to share with you some of my concerns, concerns that will naturally be inherited by the next administration. I have spoken before about the need to defend ourselves, not when the danger is before us, but well before a threat becomes imminent. That remains the policy of this administration. It is, unfortunately, not an easy task to understand such threats, and it is not always clear what we should do about such threats when they become known. Uncertainty bedevils us. The various intelligence groups that struggle every day with the need to interpret clues and information gathered throughout the world often disagree with one another and advocate contrary course of action. I, as President, must sometimes make hard decisions, as I, and Harry Truman before me, have told you before. The buck stops here.

But that is not the subject that I want to bring before you today. We have a case before us where the facts are clear, the data is certain, the perpetrator identified. No substantial questions arise in the minds of my advisors. A foreign entity has deliberately attacked, killing and wounding scores of men women and children. We were confused at first, but now we know who did it. But the reason I am discussing this issue today is that the people attacked were not US citizens. They were not Americans. They were not members of our armed services. The people that were killed and wounded were citizens of an ally of ours, the democratic state of Iraq. Forty lives were snuffed out in the the southern city of Amarah on December 13, at the marketplace – because of nothing they did – purposely, and without justification. We imagine, though we don't know for sure, that the intended purpose was to manipulate Iraqis into blaming someone other than those who are truly responsible. It's a common tactic in war and on the playground. The bully strikes someone from behind and then blames it on an innocent individual who has somehow fallen short in the eyes of the bully. It's a tactic that often works, but not in this case, because we know who did it.

The foreign aggressor responsible for this heinous act is, you might have guessed by now, the Islamic Republic of Iran, or rather its leaders, the Mullahs and President Ahmoud Amahdinejad. If this attack were made against the people of the United States of America, I would not be standing before you, asking that you understand my concerns. Knowing what we now know, I would be in the Situation Room, and we would be at war.

It was not against us. No Americans or American service members were killed or wounded. And I am not suggesting, certainly not hoping, that this will lead to war with Iran. The Iraqis do not have the luxury, at this point, of retaliation. And we will not do it for them -- at least not yet and not now. What I am doing is presenting the facts to you and asking you to think about them in the context of our ongoing struggle, our struggle against the evil practices of Terror. Consider what it is that we should be doing. Let us reflect. Let us reflect together about the weight and import of our actions since 9/11. Let us consider the evil that we face, the evil practice of unmitigated terror that we have seen emanating from certain fanatic groups in the Middle East.

In this particular case it is not some shadowy group hiding among the people, lurking in the dark. It is not a loose network of deranged extremists, citizens of nowhere, welcome nowhere. It is an identifiable nation, a coherent and powerful entity with all the resources that a state can muster. We have seen the hand revealed – that of a nation that is using terroristic violence as an extension of its foreign policy.

There are those who claim that we are no different. They point to incidents of misbehavior or mistaken behavior and claim that the US is the evil one. … At the beginning of my presidency I identified three nations as belonging to an Axis of Evil. … Do you believe I was wrong? Do the American people believe that America is truly the evil one? … There are many doubts in this world, because the world is a confusing place, but Americans know, deep down, that the central animating spirit of America is suffused with goodness.

I can't begin to tell you how many actions of goodness and valor have come to my attention since I have taken on the burden of this office. I know, and I believe you know too, that we are indeed an exceptional people, trying to do the right thing as best we can. We have many allies that support us in this effort in their various capacities, for which we are very grateful. Someday soon, sooner than you might imagine, Iraq will be among those who support the cause of justice and peace in this world, and it will be strong in the Spirit of Truth and Decency.

That transformation would not have been possible if we had not taken the necessary actions. And sadly, there are always necessary actions to contemplate. The consequences of our actions are these: The sorry state of Saddam has passed from this world, never to return. It has been replaced by a nation directed by honest freedom-loving people who are willing to fight for their freedom. I pledge, today, that we will continue to help the Iraqi people in whatever way we can, and in whatever way that we believe can serve the cause of Justice.

We have already done too much, some of you might say. The evil is too entrenched, the confusion too widespread. To you I say, we have done a good deed here – a hard one, to be sure – but a good deed nonetheless. And we will stand with the Iraqis as long as necessary, against all the cruel and devious forces of evil that confront them. Until one day, all of America can truly come home and stand under a banner that says, "Mission Accomplished!"

May God bless the United States of America and may God bless you all, and may God bless and defend the democratic nation of Iraq.

Tags: Amarah, Qods, Axis of Evil, carbombs, mission accomplished