Statesmen gathered to consider ceding to an aggressor part of an allied country without consulting that country’s leaders. The gathering was not the 2025 Riyad summit in Ukraine, but the 1938 Munich meeting to decide the fate of Czechoslovakia.
After gaining power, Adolf Hitler had rearmed Germany, occupied the Rhineland and annexed Austria through the Anschluss — clear violations of the Versailles Treaty.
Allied acquiescence to these moves emboldened him. During the summer of 1938, he demanded that Czechoslovakia cede the Sudetenland with its large German population to the Reich and threatened to take it by force if necessary.
With Britain and France as its allies, Czechoslovakia refused. Europe teetered on the brink of war.
Then at the eleventh hour, Hitler’s ally Benito Mussolini, the fascist ruler of Italy, proposed a four-power conference to resolve the issue. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of the United Kingdom and Premier Edouard Daladier of France raced to Munich to meet with the two dictators.
After just one day of negotiations, they signed the Munich Pact on Sept. 30, accepting Hitler’s territorial demands. Czechoslovakia had no say in the matter.
Chamberlain returned to London a hero, declaring to the British people that he had secured “peace for our time.” Hitler had already stated that the Sudetenland would be his “last territorial demand” in Europe.
From the political wilderness, Winston Churchill told Chamberlain, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”
Truer words were never spoken. In March 1939, the Germans seized the rest of Czechoslovakia unopposed, and in September, they invaded Poland. Emboldened by past success, Hitler doubted whether the Allies would oppose him.
“Our enemies are … not men of action, not masters. They are little worms,” he told his generals. “I saw them at Munich.”
Appeasement did not deter Hitler, and it will not deter Putin. Despite the compelling example of Munich, Ukraine could suffer the same fate as Czechoslovakia.
This week, Russian officials met in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with a U.S. delegation consisting of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. No Ukrainian or European representatives were invited.
The parties agreed to appoint “high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible.”
They made no mention of including Ukraine in these talks.
A negotiated settlement with the loss of territory is probably the best outcome Ukraine can expect. But as Zelensky made clear to JD Vance on Friday, no agreement would be accepted without Ukrainian participation. “Europeans needed to be at the negotiating table too,” he added.
Zelensky is probably reconciled to the loss of territory. Russia will not relinquish the Crimea, which it seized in 2014, and Ukrainian forces have been unable to recapture territory lost after the 2022 invasion.
The real issue is “security guarantees,” a promise that its allies would enforce an agreement with Russia. Without that, any peace deal would be no more than a temporary ceasefire.
With Anglo-French support, Czechoslovakia had a fighting chance, but when its allies abandoned it and gave away the Sudetenland with its mountain fortresses, the country was defenseless.
Zelensky faces a similar threat and has good reason to fear his country may also be abandoned.
In his phone conversation with Putin, Trump said NATO membership for Ukraine was “impractical,” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth followed that with a statement that NATO forces should not be deployed to Ukraine as peacekeepers.
Before any discussions began, Putin had scored a significant victory. Trump has ended Russian isolation and made a huge concession on NATO. Zelensky can object to whatever deal the parties reach in Riyadh, but as long as Ukraine depends on U.S. military aid to survive, he may have little choice but to accept it.
The administration has already floated a quid pro quo deal: 50 percent U.S. ownership of Ukraine’s rare-earth minerals in return for U.S. forces to guarantee any peace agreement.
Whether or not the U.S. sends and troops, continued military aid may be contingent on Zelensky accepting this outrageous deal.
An agreement reached at Riyad might produce a ceasefire, but it will not bring lasting peace to Eastern Europe.
Putin will be emboldened just as Hitler was after Munich. After rebuilding his forces, he will set his sights on new conquests.
The tiny country of Moldova would be an easy target since Russia already has de facto control of its breakaway region of Transnistria.
Georgia in the South Caucasus is also vulnerable. Russia controls two secessionist provinces, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It defeated Georgia in a brief war in 2008. The U.S. and its NATO allies were powerless to intervene.
Putin could also strengthen the Kremlin’s hold over the Central Asian republics, which some experts believe weakened because of his preoccupation with Ukraine, either by strengthening economic and military ties or through occupation. As with Georgia, the Western alliance would be powerless to stop him.
The Baltic Republics and Poland are understandably anxious about whether an emboldened Putin would move against them.
They remember Trump’s campaign promise that he would tell Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to European countries that do not meet NATO spending guidelines and his announcement that as president he would not be bound by the organization’s collective defense agreement.
Vance’s offensive speech in Munich last week sent shock waves through Europe, casting doubt on the new administration’s commitment to the alliance. French President Emanuel Macron has called for an emergency summit of European countries to discuss security concerns. For the first time since the creation of the alliance in 1949, America’s European allies can no longer count on the U.S. to come to their aid. The Paris meeting would do well to heed Zelensky’s advice: it is time to create a robust European defense force. Such a force would not only deter Putin but prevent them from being bullied by the U.S.
No matter what they decide in Riyadh, if anything, the American negotiators should remember the lesson of Munich: Appeasement never works.
Tom Mockaitis is a professor of history at DePaul University and the author of “Conventional and Unconventional War: A History of Modern Conflict.”
