Seductions of Appeasement

by Victor Davis Hanson

Appeasement defined the global conflicts of the 20th century. Time after time, America and other forces for freedom and democracy withheld their power in efforts to appease the most evil regimes in recent history. Over and over again, the policy of appeasement has ended in disaster. Now, conservative giant Victor Davis Hanson asks: why is appeasement so seductive and where will it take us in the 21st century?

In this collection of Hanson’s best columns from the last four years on the policy of appeasement today and in history, the path becomes clear. If America continues down the road of appeasement with radical Islamic groups and aggressive regimes in Russia and North Korea, the world will see a conflagration rivalling World War II.

The 20th-century world—after horrific losses—made it through its last appeasement disaster; but will we be able to recover to face and ward off the present gathering storm?

"Victor David Hanson is perhaps the most prescient essayist of his generation. His columns have always been must-reads for anyone interested in Western civlilization, strategy, and America's place in the world. How wonderful it is to now have such crucial reading all together and at our fingertips."

- Michael Rubin
Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute

"Hanson has something useful to say on every major blunder from the muddled way America left Iraq to the misguided effort to engage Iran. And, he says it in a way that is well worth the read. "
-- James Jay Carafano, Ph.D.
Vice President for the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, and the E. W. Richardson Fellow at The Heritage Foundation


"Victor Davis Hanson writes with the encyclopedic knowledge of a seasoned historian, the perceptive sagacity of a policy analyst, and the fierce conviction of a committed patriot. In this latest collection he draws on the insights of the past to caution against the follies of the present, and point towards a more hopeful future. The seductions of appeasement are a perennial peril in statecraft, and Hanson shows how they can be resisted, and why they must."
- William Inboden
Executive Director, Clements Center for History, Strategy & Statecraft; Distinguished Scholar, Strauss Center; and Associate Professor, LBJ School

Genres: History, Nonfiction

114 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 16, 2015

About the author

Victor Davis Hanson was educated at the University of California, Santa Cruz (BA, Classics, 1975), the American School of Classical Studies (1978-79) and received his Ph.D. in Classics from Stanford University in 1980. He lives and works with his family on their forty-acre tree and vine farm near Selma, California, where he was born in 1953.