It has been a while since Western politicos began reaching for Munich whenever the word ‘diplomacy’ is uttered in international politics. You could set your clock by it: the moment someone suggests that diplomacy might serve us better than maximalist war aims or endless, useless, deadly conflict, a chorus of self-styled Churchills promptly materialises to warn of ‘appeasement.’ But the invocation of Munich is not an argument. It is, increasingly, a reflex—an incantation meant to deprive us of common sense. ‘Munichmania’ is what one might call it: the persistent, unthinking habit of comparing every territorial disagreement to the Sudetenland, every unfriendly leader to Adolf Hitler, every possible diplomatic settlement of intrastate conflict to 1938.
To mistake contemporary Russia for Nazi Germany is to substitute analysis with infantility, and reason with bravado. Today’s Russia is a fundamentally realist power; it is not a revolutionary empire marching under an ideology of racial annihilation and global conquest. Vladimir Putin—whatever his faults and however harsh his methods—does not dream of building a fascist imperium from Lisbon to Vladivostok. He is neither an adventurist seeking to conquer the world, nor a fantasist desiring the impossible. As Henry Kissinger once put it, “Putin is a serious strategist, acting on the premises of Russian history.” He is essentially a prudent, rational actor committed to retaining influence over regions no Russian leader—liberal, tsarist, or communist—ever regarded as negotiable. One may abhor this reality. One may despise the invasion. But denying Russia’s most basic strategic concerns serves no one, least of all the Ukrainians.
To reject diplomacy out of fear of reenacting Munich is to learn precisely the wrong lesson from history. The danger of 1938 was not too much realism—it was too little. It was the failure to understand the adversary’s nature, intentions, and capabilities. And that is what we risk repeating today, not by negotiating, but by refusing to do so.