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Электронное приложение к журналу «
Международная жизнь
»
Author : A. Borisov
Professor, Moscow State Institute (University) Institute of International Relations, Doctor of Science (History)
NATIONAL INTERESTS as a subject that had gone out of fashion
in the age of triumphant globalization suddenly reappeared in the center
of public discourse stirred up by the prolonged crisis of the Western
liberal megaproject. In turned out that the "end of history" that Francis
Fukuyama naively presented as a triumph of the America-centrist world
was nothing more than another set of worldwide contradictions and a
painful transfer to a new, polycentric world order. Back in 2013, one of
the authors of The National Interest, an influential American journal,
put the meaning of the approaching epoch into a nutshell as "The Age
of Nationalism."
HISTORY has repeatedly demonstrated that national interests neglected
under pressure of external circumstances or by the selfish elites of any
country are fraught with national tragedies that echo far and wide across
the world. The Munich Agreement of 1938 (that went down in history as the criminal Munich Deal)
signed by the United Kingdom and France with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy to "peacefully" transfer
Czechoslovakia to Hitler was one of the links in the long chain of events that led the world into World
War II (1939-1945).
In fact, the Munich Agreement, from which the Soviet Union resolutely dissociated itself, marked the
highest point of the so-called appeasement policy of the Western powers and the point of no-return
on the road to war. The bilateral agreements signed by the UK, France and, much later, the Soviet
Union with Hitler Germany to avoid German aggression were its logical continuation.
ON MARCH 9, 1937, the newly appointed ambassador informed Press Secretary of the White House
Stephen Early: It is impossible to ignore that fact that the forces to be taken into account in future are
ripening here. In peacetime, they will score big economic successes. Today, however, peace is nothing
but a dream: Germany and Japan present constant threat.
I will not comment on the enthusiastic crowds that gathered in front of 10 Downing Street to greet
"good old Neville" who had acquired Hitler's signature on the Anglo-German declaration of "perpetual
peace" that barely survived the next twelve months. The same fully applies to the similar obligations to
the French given two months later. People across the ocean were completely satisfied: the president
who acted as a peacekeeper never marred himself with an open involvement in a doubtful deal.
The curtain dropped on the Munich tragedy. Barely half a year later, Hitler denounced the agreement
and occupied what had remained of Czechoslovakia. Its elite finally, yet too late, realized that it had
committed national suicide. Amid the steadily unfolding political crisis in Europe, Moscow had to find
its place in the new international context. Deeply wounded by the failure in Czechoslovakia and con-
vinced that he had been fooled, Stalin developed a deep mistrust of Western partners, one of his most
typical traits since then.
The Munich Tragedy: Pondering the Fate of Czechoslovakia