How we use history for our own ends.  Today, and very often over the last 60 years, the specter of Adolf Hitler has been the ultimate boogeyman to invoke in order to drum up support for not negotiating with regimes we dislike or find dangerous as well as the ultimate justification for military attacks on regimes perpetrating abuses against people.

 

Hitler and the Nazis have become an almost unique symbol- the symbol of evil personified.  No other leader in world history is evoked with such disdain (or frequency) as is Hitler. 

 

I think the Munich Agreement where British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain negotiated away part of Czechoslovakia (though he only envisioned the sacrifice to be the Sudetenland where there were many ethnic Germans and he never intended it to be the whole country) was a mistake of gargantuan proportion.  I think it is an a very instructive example of how to calibrate diplomatic negotiations and how to recognize those that can be legitimate interlocutors and those whose claims are infinite (see Kissinger in a World Restored).

 

Hitler was infinite, Chamberlain failed to realize this and was duped as were many other Europeans still nursing grievous wounds after the First World War.  However, not every regime that is difficult has the same univeralist claims. 

 

I think Iran may be one with universal claims (or at least some portions of its leadership seem to possess such claims), consequently, negotiation with Iran must only move forward with clear lines drawn as to what is the most any eventual agreement might be.  I would also say no President should ever talk to Ahmadinejad, any negotiation must be with the Supreme Leader, Khameini (that can be discussed elsewhere) and only after preconditions are definitely established.  Finally, in no way shape or form can the military option be removed as a precondition to face to face negotiation. 

 

However, the Hitler analogy is not probably accurate with North Korea.  Kim Jong-il seems more interested in survival not conquest in the name of an ideology that he seeks to spread (as were the Nazis and, it appears, some Iranians).  Though, again, the implicit threat of force must remain on the table and be considered serious for discussions to be fruitful.

 

Thus, negotiation is a case by case situation where an examination of the motives of the leadership can tell one much of what may be possible to achieve.  Some odious regimes can be reasoned with and/or intimidated.  Some cannot.  Interestingly, I wonder, had Chamberlain made clear that war would be the response to a full scale swallowing of Czechoslovakia (though perhaps still giving the Sudetenland Hitler was asking for) what would have happened?  What if a coalition of England and France had positioned themselves militarily before making concessions so that Hitler would not have been able to consolidate his gains on the road to Poland (which was next and did break open World War II)?  These are counterfactuals, but they offer insight as to how diplomacy, even talking to Hitler, was not ipso facto wrong, but that it was terribly implemented by a leader who was naive regarding the nature of his negotiating partner.  Consequently, the Ghosts of Munich and the lessons of "appeasement" may be murkier than is usually admitted, but remain a good guidepost for assessing what the correlation of forces in a given situation should be. 

 

In the end, the Hitler analogy is appropriate in certain circumstances, not all.  We should take care to use it when it is most true lest it lose its rare power to elucidate legitimate diplomacy from illegitimate diplomacy.