Europe's pro-appeasement approach is not exactly surprising. What is surprising is their inability to learn from the past. Thomas Sowell takes a look at what appeasement has led to in the past.

Throwing others to the wolves is a strategy that has been tried before. France threw Czechoslovakia to the wolves in 1938 to try to buy off Hitler. Less than two years later, Hitler's armies invaded France -- using, among other things, tanks made in Czechoslovakia.

Those who are impressed with French airs of sophistication and condescension toward the United States should check out the hard facts about French foreign policy over the past century -- which has been one short-sighted disaster after another. They have been consistently too clever by half -- at Versailles in 1919, at Munich in 1938, and in Algiers and Vietnam in the 1950s.

The only thing I would have added is that when England and France signed the Munich agreement giving large parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, Czech leaders weren't even invited to the meeting. You might even say that France was acting unilaterally.