The title of this post says it all. What’s more, I’ve denounced this European appeasement in numerous commentaries. But I summarized my denunciation and presaged what this appeasement portends in “Checkmated on Crimea, Obama Plays for Rest of Ukraine” on March 7, 2014.
Europeans appeasing Putin
Now comes another case of European appeasement. Germany is refusing to join the United States in imposing “industry-sector sanctions” against Russia.
Moreover, German corporate executives dispatched Chancellor Merkel to Washington to convey their refusal to President Obama. Except that their European plan for dealing with Putin makes no more sense than a hapless mother pretending her unruly child is only a little bit pregnant.
As the Ukraine crisis has worsened, German officials have faced a barrage of telephone calls from senior corporate executives, urging them not to take steps that would damage business interests in Russia, people familiar with the matter say.
(Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2014)
Sure enough, Merkel met with Obama at the White House yesterday. But I hope he prevailed upon her to ignore the venal concerns of German corporate executives.
To do so, Obama only had to point out the untenable hypocrisy in German corporations doing business with Putin. After all, Putin annexed Crimea and is attempting to conquer the rest of Ukraine. And this is eerily similar to German corporations doing business with Hitler. That is, after he annexed Sudetenland and was attempting to conquer the rest of Czechoslovakia.
As we know, the rest is history. Will they never learn?