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Appeasement in International Politics. By Stephen R. Rock. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2000. 237p. $29.95.
David Cortright, University of Notre Dame
Since Neville Chamberlain's concessions to Adolph Hitler in Munich in 1938, appeasement has become a term of disrepute. The word is almost an epithet, denoting weakness in the face of aggression. Generations of scholars and policymakers have learned the lesson that appeasement emboldens the aggressor and makes war more likely. Academic attention has focused instead on deterrence theory and the role of coercion and compellence as key elements of international politics.
In recent years scholarly interest in inducement policies has been rekindled. Stephen R. Rock's new book is an important contribution to this emerging literature. Rock challenges the assumption that concessions do not work, and that hostile leaders cannot be appeased. He reminds us that appeasement was once an accepted practice of European diplomacy and was considered an effective means of reducing tensions and removing the causes of conflict. Through analyses of five cases-British concessions to the United States in the late 189Os, the appeasement of Germany before World War II, the Anglo-American acceptance of Soviet demands at Yalta, the American "tilt" toward Iraq in the late 1980s, and the use of incentives that led to the 1994 Agreed Framework containing North Korea's nuclear program-Rock offers lessons on the benefits and limitations of conciliatory strategies. He develops theoretical propositions and policy guidelines to aid scholars and policymakers in assessing the merits of inducement policies.
As Rock notes, appeasement is a subcategory of the broader...