Godwin's Law states that, as an online debate grows longer, 'the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1'. In 2006, American blogger Brendan Nyhan proposed a corollary: 'As a foreign policy debate with conservatives grows longer, the probability of a comparison with the appeasement of Nazis or Hitler approaches inevitability.'
It's only been a matter of hours since President Obama announced the scrapping of the ground-based missile defence sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, and already The Weekly Standard has come to the party: 'As with Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler, appeasing the Russians is not likely to produce any positive results.'
There are echoes of the Afghanistan debate here: sure, American policy is self-defeating and counter-productive and there is a cheaper option that would achieve the same goals, but reversing our current course would look like weakness. So let's stay the course.
That's my vent out of the way. I'll have a more considered analysis of this move later in the day.
