A lesson from World War II: Appeasement never works

News Snapshot:

Will today’s Cold War confrontation end auspiciously, the way the first one did, or will it slide through strategic miscalculations on both sides into a third world war? Adolph Hitler’s misjudgments before World War II could be matched by Vladimir Putin’s and Xi Jinping’s today. At each step in Hitler’s preparations for war against Nazi Germany’s neighbors, the international community wavered, convinced itself that his assurances of peaceful intent were sincere, and simply wished the problem away. Neville Chamberlain’s “peace in our time” proved evanescent. Until the last few years, the West made the same mistake regarding the hostile intentions...