The Fatal Consequences of Inaction

A century ago, the world lurched through a series of escalating crises that made the Second World War all but inevitable. The interwar period offers a stark lesson in what happens when nations, driven by the desperate hope of avoiding conflict, choose appeasement over strength. The result was not peace—it was catastrophe.

In the 1930s, aggressive powers systematically dismantled the post–World War I order. The League of Nations, created to preserve global stability, failed at its most basic purpose. When Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, the League responded with little more than symbolic condemnation. Japan simply withdrew from the organization and continued its conquest. This unwillingness to act sent a clear signal to rising dictators: territorial aggression would not be met with meaningful consequences.

Italy’s Benito Mussolini absorbed that message. His 1935 invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) was met with ineffective economic sanctions that neither slowed his campaign nor deterred his ambitions. Instead, the West’s weakness strengthened the partnership between Italy and Hitler’s Germany.

Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler pressed relentlessly forward in Europe. His remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936—a direct violation of the Versailles and Locarno treaties—was a defining turning point. Had the Western powers acted, German generals later admitted they would have withdrawn. Instead, the absence of resistance emboldened Hitler, shifting the balance of power decisively in Germany’s favor.

Economic devastation also fueled the rise of extremism. The Great Depression shattered livelihoods, exposed governmental weakness, and paved the way for radical movements that promised national revival. In Germany, Hitler exploited desperation, stoked resentment over Versailles, and scapegoated vulnerable groups to consolidate power.

The Western democracies, terrified of another massive war, embraced appeasement as a strategy for preserving peace. This culminated in the 1938 Munich Agreement, where Czechoslovakia was sacrificed under the illusion of “peace in our time.” Rather than preventing war, the agreement convinced Hitler that Britain and France lacked the will to fight. The Spanish Civil War soon became a proving ground where Germany and Italy evaluated the weapons, tactics, and terror—blitzkrieg, mass bombings—that would define the global conflict to come.

By the time Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the damage was irreversible. Diplomacy that might have mattered years earlier was now meaningless. The world had learned, too late, that appeasement does not prevent war, it guarantees it.

This history is not abstract. It casts a long shadow over present-day leadership. President Trump has demonstrated a willingness to act decisively and protect American lives, rather than gamble them away through hesitation or political calculation. This stands in sharp contrast to modern examples of appeasement: President Obama’s abandoned “red line” in Syria and President Biden’s ineffective warning to Russia before the invasion of Ukraine. These failures projected weakness, inviting further aggression.

The Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan deepened the consequences. The chaotic evacuation cost American lives, enabled unvetted immigration, and continues to yield tragic results, most recently the brutal attack that mortally wounded a National Guardsman in Washington, D.C.

So, spare us the hollow and empty rhetoric that many Democrats label Trump a dictator or a fascist. He is neither. The notion that Donald Trump is driving a transition to fascism is too fanciful to take seriously. You don’t have to embrace tariffs or ICE roundups to see that he was elected to address real concerns such as  restoring our economic independence and restoring our borders. Our court system and legislative processes may be slow, but they are sufficiently robust to prevent any orchestrated descent in authoritarianism. Moreover, Mr. Trump’s temperament isn’t the stuff of which brutal dictators are made. Let’s face it, he likes to be liked. 

As history has so vividly demonstrated,  real danger lies in weak leaders who repeat the mistakes of the past – those who choose appeasement over strength, and in doing so they are the ones who place our nation at risk.