The HindeSight Letter
ISSUE 120 - FEBRUARY 2025
OVERVIEW
In September 1940, a group of Yale University law students founded the ‘America First Committee’ which became the largest and most influential non-interventionist group with notable Americans such as Ford Motor Company founder, Henry Ford serving on the board. US ‘isolationism’ had been the prominent policy since the end of WWI. US President Woodrow Wilson who had taken the US to the European war in 1917 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in forming an organisation to foster world peace, ‘The League of Nations’-the predecessor to the United Nations but the US Senate never ratified the US to actually join the League of Nations or sign the WWI Versailles Peace Treaty. During the 1920’s and 1930’s, the US signed several Neutrality Acts putting into place much restriction on military resources with the intention to keep the US and Americans ‘out of more European wars’. Despite the support for the Great Britain by WWII US President Franklin Roosevelt through arm sales programs such as Lend- Lease, believing that a Great Britain defeat in Europe would be detrimental to US interests, it was only the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour that saw the US finally enter the war and the days of isolationism were gone leading to the position of the global policeman and protector ever since.
In Great Britain, the 1930’s saw a somewhat similar policy, that of ‘appeasement’ pursued by many politicians. While Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is best known for the appeasement of Nazi Germany, especially regarding the 1938 Czechoslovakia crisis, it was also the policy of his predecessors, James Ramsey Macdonald and Stanley Baldwin. At the heart of both countries’ policies was the desire for continued peace after the human tragedies of WWI but also the lack of financial resources readily available at the time. Despite how history ultimately played out and appeasement generally since accepted as a dirty word for betrayal, the British population at the time was hugely behind the policy of appeasement with Hitler’s European expansion.
With the events regarding the Ukraine-Russia war since Trump’s arrival in the White House seemingly bringing diplomacy by chaos, the Trump-Zelensky meeting is being seen as a potential fragmentation in the post WWII state affairs with NATO’s future at the heart of the world’s defence policy. Of course, I don’t think the meeting should have been broadcast to the global media but I’m certain that heated exchanges like those seen regularly occur in diplomatic circles, mostly unknown to us. Opinions are like a*******s, everyone has one and my opinion may certainly differ from the expected but I would like to think that a real understanding of history within a real expectation of the outcome range would be far better discussed that is being touted our side of the Atlantic currently.
The much disputed 1987 book, “The Art of the Deal” that is credited to Donald Trump and did much to make him a household name may well be at the heart of US President Trump’s belief that only he can get a ‘deal’ done with Russia to bring the Ukraine-Russia war to some type of negotiated peace. But, he doesn’t have much competition. The Biden administration didn’t speak to Putin at all since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, apparently not even the ‘back channels’ were kept open. How is that really possible with the other possessor of 6,000 nuclear weapons? We can agree or argue all day long about the reasons or the illegitimacy of Putin’s invasion of a sovereign country from our moral high ground, but it happened, it has been going on for three years with thousands dead and we desperately need a solution.