To End the Iran War, We Must Look Beyond Munich

The Iran War Other historical analogies offer more relevant lessons. (Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sulgrave Institution of the U.S. and Great Britain/Creative Commons) In 1919, John Maynard Keynes left the Paris Peace Conference convinced the Allies were making a blunder of historic proportions. In The Economic Consequences of the Peace, he prophesied that the terms imposed by the victors were so punitive they would wreck the defeated Germans’ economy and set the stage for another world war. He was right, and there is a lesson here for President Trump's war with Iran. Supporters of U.S. militarism frequently rely on the Munich analogy to justify Middle Eastern wars. The argument goes like this: Neville Chamberlain's appeasement in 1938 emboldened Hitler to amp up his aggres