Appeasement

Effectively managing international relations requires skillful peacemaking, conciliation, and settlement. Appeasement, another term for these activities, derives from the French “apaiser.” Dating to the late Middle Ages, it served to describe even constructive forms of concession making in diplomacy up through the early part of the twentieth century. In 1920, for example, Winston Churchill advised then British Prime Minister David Lloyd George that “I should be prepared to make peace with Soviet Russia on the best terms available to appease the general situation, while safeguarding us from being poisoned by them” (Gilbert 1991: 1920). Subsequently the term acquired distinctly derogatory connotations. Now it is invoked to dismiss efforts to bring about the resolution of a dispute without recourse to military force. Then US President George W.