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“Appeasement” of Russia Paying Dividends

If every foreign leader had Adolf Hitler’s approach to international politics, then it would make sense to treat every foreign leader like Adolf Hitler. But somehow the American right doesn’t understand that Hitler was an unusual kind of guy, and insists on viewing every effort to engage in practical international behavior as the second coming of the Munich Agreement. In the real world, Obama’s approach is working:

President Obama, in his first visit to the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, made progress Wednesday on two key issues, wringing a concession from Russia to consider tough new sanctions against Iran and securing support from Moscow and Beijing for a Security Council resolution to curb nuclear weapons.

It shouldn’t be this hard to remember, but international conflict tends to hurt both sides (certainly Germany wound up much worse off as a result of starting WWII) and cooperation hurts both sides. Cooperation is often hard to achieve, but usually it’s possible and it’s always worth trying for.

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