Appeasement is never a dirty word to those whose genuine
weakness offers few appealing alternatives.
We, who can defend ourselves, understand them. But why even Europeans, for whom we
transformed their wars into peace five times in the 20th century,
(WW1, WW2, Cold War, Bosnia and Kosovo), don’t understand us?
The answer to this puzzle may be in
genetics. Most of us Americans, even
the ones who were born in Europe, are different than most Europeans because we,
or our ancestors, came to America precisely because we did not want to appease
whoever was our enemy. This unplanned
triage occurred during the last 500 years simply because only the people
who had courage to leave everything behind for the sake of freedom and
independence came to America. The "couch potatoes" (albeit
not exclusively) preferred the comfort of home.
Thus evolved the "homo
Americanus ”, a person with self assurance and confidence, and with genes that
enable such character. Not that the
rest of the world is without people with such genes -- the sifting process of immigration simply ensured that such
characteristic prevails in most Americans.
The "homo Pacificus", on the other hand, represents the person
who preferred the comfort of peace and security of home, even if it came with
less or no freedom. Looking at it from
this point we can understand the present European foreign policy of "we
prefer to hide from bear than attack it".
Through this natural selection
America has had much higher concentration of risk takers,
resulting in its incredible creativity. The final phase was
inevitable - the world's only superpower.