The President caused quite a stir when he used the analogy of Chamberlain's trip to Munich to argue against negotiating with terrorists, but I think he passed up a better example.

The Chamberlain example was not bad, but in some ways it was a poor fit. Chamberlain was dealing with an expansionist nation, a situation Europe had seen many times, and so he had no reason to believe that Hitler was in any way unique. And as Bismarck had been satisfied with the unification of all German speaking states¹, Chamberlain thought Hitler could be satisfied once all the irredenta were returned². Chamberlain, making the mistake of taking Hitler's rhetoric at face value, believed Hitler wanted only to restore the former German empire, to get back what had been lost after the last war. In Chamberlain's mind, this limited German goal allowed for negotiation, and had Hitler been sincere, it would have. The problem was that Chamberlain badly misread Hitler, and could not see that his rhetoric disguised his real goal of a German dominated Europe.

That is a poor fit for the situation in Israel, or of Middle Eastern terrorism in general. The terrorists, even when negotiating, make no secret of their goals, they are not playing Hitler's game of making limited claims to disguise their goals. They state outright that they want to push Israel into the sea, to destroy the great Satan America,  and to bring Islamic rule to as much of the world as possible³. I suppose in the case of a few specific groups, if we were willing to surrender Israel to them, we may be able to negotiate, but only if we were willing to help them eliminate Israel. And even then there are more than enough other groups who would still despise us, so it would buy us no peace, just deprive us of a valuable ally in the region.

All of which makes the Chamberlain analogy a bad choice. But the better choice was probably not a viable option for the president as he did not wish to insult a living former president. You see, the better analogy for the Carter Middle East strategy, which is also shared by Pelosi and Obama, is the Oslo peace accord.

For those who do not remember, Israel was almost at peace prior to Oslo. Egypt had been at peace since before Camp David, and Jordan had been observing a de facto peace as well. Syria was aware of their relative weakness, and their involvement in Lebanon left them even weaker. The remaining Arab League nations may have still despised Israel, but without the cooperation of her immediate neighbors, they had little hope of staging another invasion.

On the terrorist front things were similarly quiet. Admittedly there was some terrorism, but by the time of Oslo, it was more peaceful than it had been for some time. After the invasion of Lebanon and the eradication of the PLO bases there, the PLO was largely shattered, its leaders in exile. The defensive buffer along the northern border kept Hezbollah and Hamas away from civilians, and Jordan provided no real haven for terrorists since the PLO had made themselves unwelcome there.

All of which makes the Oslo Accords the most puzzling diplomatic initiative ever.

Israel was enjoying more peace than they had in some time, their terrorist enemies were either in hiding or, at worst, separated from the civilian population by a wide militarized zone. So, what would any wise statesman do? Bring back the defeated terrorists, restore them to power and turn over 30% of the nation to them! Isn't it obvious?

I know why Clinton involved himself in the Oslo accords, as it was part of his efforts to build a legacy. Having seen how much mileage Carter got out of Camp David, almost enough to make people forget how disastrous the rest of his presidency was, Clinton decided to schedule his own Camp David. And I can understand Arafat. He has been defeated, was in exile, teetered on the edge of irrelevance, and hew as suddenly given the opportunity to not only revive his movement, but be handed almost everything he had asked in the past? Who wouldn't take that opportunity.

What I can't understand is why Israel would enter into these negotiations. yes, the Palestinians were discontented, but they were less violent than they had been in a long time. And yes world opinion was against Israel, but it was always against Israel, and still is. Oslo changed nothing there. But perhaps that was the incentive. Israel was told they would finally make the world love them by entering into the Oslo accords, and they foolishly bought into it.

It doesn't matter. Whatever the motives, it seems to me Oslo is the best analogy for any negotiations with today's terrorists. Look at the two sides. Israel, a modern, civilized nation with no ambition but to be left in peace and the PLO with nothing to offer but a cessation fo hostilities. It is almost identical to our current position with regard to the terrorists. And, just as the PLO learned that they could break their promise and exact additional concessions, so will the terrorists.

And that is the problem with any negotiations with terrorists⁴. Once you negotiate with them, you have already conceded too much. First, you have told the world that you accept that their position has some validity, which makes it harder to argue against them in the court of world opinion⁵. More importantly, you have told them that you fear them enough to be willing to give up something to make those attacks stop.

And once they are armed with that knowledge, what is to stop them from exploiting it to the hilt? All that negotiations with terrorists will ever exact from terrorists is a promise to be good, maybe the surrender of some weapons. But weapons can be obtained, and promises can be broken.  As soon as the terrorists know the other side is afraid, why would they stop? They can attack again and again, and negotiate again and again, until they have everything they desire. It would make no sense to stop attacking until they are completely satisfied.

Nor do the terrorists have anything to lose. Again, they are more like the PLO than Hitler. The western world could threaten Hitler with attack, occupation, bombing, anything that would harm his nation. What can we do to threaten terrorists? We don't even know where they are. They have no lands to defend, or for us to occupy. We have nothing to hold as surety against good behavior.

In short, if we negotiate with terrorists, we give up real value for a heap of hollow promises. How does that work out to our advantage?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Technically, Bismarck was pursuing the kleindeutsch solution, which excluded Catholic lands. He did eventually incorporate Catholic Bavaria in the Prussian dominated German empire, but the Austrian lands remained independent. The opposing grossdeutsch solution would have included Austria as well.

2. On the other hand, Chamberlain should have realized, with irredenta communities as far afield as the Baltic states and the Balkans, that Hitler's claims would not be satisfied without the surrender of more than some Czechoslovak border lands.

3. Admittedly, not all groups share all these goals. Nominally secular groups, such as the PLO, do not endorse spreading Islam as a goal,

4. I wrote elsewhere of the problems with negotiating with rogue nations such as Iran, so I will deal here only with terrorist groups.

5. Personally, I could not care less about world opinion. But as those who push negotiations also make a big deal about how the world sees us, I figure this may be something they would wish to avoid.