Versailles, not Munich: Rethinking Ukraine’s Postwar Security
This article challenges the overuse of the Munich analogy in framing U.S. policy toward Ukraine, arguing instead for lessons drawn from Versailles. Without firm postwar security guarantees, Ukraine may face long-term instability similar to that suffered by interwar France. Robust defense commitments alongside reconstruction are essential, as economic engagement alone is insufficient.
Munich: A Flawed Historical Comparison
While France and Britain emerged from Munich determined to deter further aggression through formal guarantees and military buildup, Washington risks underestimating the continued threat posed by a revanchist Russia.
As Ukraine and the United States contemplate the terms of a postwar settlement, policymakers and commentators naturally turn to history. The most commonly invoked parallel is the Munich Conference of September 30, 1938, where British and French leaders, in a failed attempt to prevent war, pressured Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany. Today, some analysts argue that Ukraine is facing a similarly grim choice: surrender Crimea and parts of the Donbas in exchange for peace, while also accepting the burden of repaying U.S. military aid without the benefit of a formal security guarantee. Chairs of the foreign affairs committees of eight European parliaments urged President Trump on April 25 to end “the policy of appeasement” toward Russia and adopt a “resolute stance” against Moscow and historians like Timothy Synder draw on the Munich analogy to warn against appeasement. While the comparison offers superficial similarities, it misrepresents the British and French reaction to Munich and risks obscuring more useful historical lessons. A better framework for historical analysis lies in the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, which illustrates the dangers of failing to provide credible postwar guarantees to a shattered but sovereign state facing an inevitably revanchist adversary.
At Munich, Czech President Edvard Beneš, deserted by his French and British allies under the prevailing policy of appeasement—or as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain would have preferred to call it “Peace in Our Time”—made the difficult and unpopular decision to accede to German demands to surrender the Sudetenland. The danger of the agreement was prophesized by future wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill when he declared, “We have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat… All the countries of Mittel Europa and the Danube Valley, one after another, will be drawn into the vast system of Nazi politics…And do not suppose that this is the end. It is only the beginning…”
At face value, the analogy fits: the United States is pressuring Ukraine to consider surrendering sovereign territory in exchange for peace, just as the Czechs were called upon to do; today’s version of appeasement is driven by a growing political desire to retreat from global commitments and focus inward; and just as Chamberlain’s concessions emboldened Hitler, a negotiated diplomatic “win” for Russia risks encouraging further aggression.
There are dozens of pieces drawing parallels between Munich and Ukraine, and while the comparison offers some relevant lessons, it ultimately falls short. For one, Czechoslovakia and Germany were not yet at war in 1938. More importantly, Britain and France, though shaken by the Munich debacle, responded by hardening their stance against future German aggression, extending guarantees to Poland and the remnants of the Little Entente, and began exploring a potential alliance with the Soviet Union. Less than two months after Munich, on November 12th, 1938, French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier informed Commander-in-Chief Maurice Gamelin to expect 25 billion francs in armament credits on top of the existing defense budget of 15 billion francs. Finance Minister Paul Reynaud projected that 85% of the 1939 budget receipts would go toward defense. Britain, under Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, had already begun rearmament in 1938 and accelerated it following Munich, with British military spending reaching 4% of its GDP by the outbreak of war. On March 18, 1939, the British and French initiated serious talks with the Soviet Union about forming a “Triple Alliance” that would include France, Britain, Poland, the USSR, Romania, and Turkey in a joint front against Hitler, though mutual distrust ultimately doomed the effort. More successfully, on March 31, Chamberlain announced in the House of Commons that Britain had issued a formal security guarantee to Poland; France quickly confirmed it would also defend Poland with “all support in their power”
In contrast, the United States today is not retreating wholesale but appears to be channeling its postwar focus toward economic engagement—like the recently signed mineral rights deal—rather than laying the groundwork for a durable security architecture. While France and Britain emerged from Munich determined to deter further aggression through formal guarantees and military buildup, Washington risks underestimating the continued threat posed by a revanchist Russia. Reconstruction and investment are essential, but without parallel commitments to Ukraine’s long-term defense, they may amount to building on unstable ground.
Versailles, Not Munich
On January 18, 1919, the titanic minds who had led the Allied Entente through the most destructive war in human history up to that point—the First World War—gathered in Paris, a city that had stood perilously close to the German front lines throughout the conflict. French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, “The Tiger,” and Marshal Ferdinand Foch, who had delivered the final blows that forced Germany’s capitulation, now faced a sobering reality: the war had ended, but the peace was merely an interlude. Though temporarily in disarray, Germany still possessed immense structural advantages over a shattered France. The war had devastated France’s northeastern industrial heartland, causing damages totaling 132 billion francs—equivalent to $269 billion today. More than 1.3 million French soldiers had perished, and the nation’s fertility rate had collapsed, with 1,400,000 fewer births between 1915-1919. France had won the war but stood weaker than ever against an adversary already beginning to recover.
Faced with a resurgent and embittered Germany, France requested security in two forms: a fixed border on the Rhine and full reparations to compensate for its wartime losses. French President Raymond Poincaré captured the sentiment, declaring, “Justice is not inert… it pursues a double object: to render each his due and to discourage the renewal of crime by impunity”, but Clemenceau and Foch’s demands met resistance from their allies. British Prime Minister Lloyd George and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson believed that fixing the border at the Rhine and forcing Germany to pay the full cost of French damages would cripple the German economy—an economy increasingly intertwined with British and American commercial interests. The compromise: Germany would repay France incrementally, and France would forgo its territorial demands in exchange for Anglo-American security guarantees.
Those guarantees never materialized. While both houses of the British Parliament approved the security guarantee for France, they did so only on the condition that the United States would also ratify it. In the wake of Wilson’s political collapse and a wave of American isolationism, the U.S. Senate refused. France, particularly Clemenceau and Foch, viewed this as a profound betrayal. Armaments returned to prewar levels on both sides, Germany retained its structural advantages, and France had neither the reparations it needed nor the security it was promised.
Thus, France’s postwar security depended on financial support to rebuild and firm security guarantees from its allies, particularly the United States and Britain. Neither came. Though much is made of the reparations imposed on Germany—132 billion marks—only about 22 billion were ever paid. Germany never came close to compensating France for the scale of destruction it had inflicted.
Worse, the one international safeguard available—the League of Nations—was fatally undermined by American isolationism. In a postwar America focused on domestic recovery and debt repayment, the Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles or join the League. Britain, similarly, reluctant to be drawn into another continental war, declined to commit to France’s defense. In the early 1920s, France was alone, vulnerable to a stronger, embittered neighbor that had invaded five times—in 1814, 1815, 1870, 1914, and 1918—and would do so again.
This is the better analogy for Ukraine today: a nation that will survive, but is utterly shattered, facing a revanchist and relatively stronger neighbor, whose “defeat” due to its failure to completely secure Ukraine’s subjugation is partial, whose economy will likely recover faster, and whose punitive costs—from sanctions to potential war crimes trials—have thus far been limited and reversible. Without credible financial and security guarantees from the West, the postwar settlement could, like Versailles, become a pause between wars rather than a foundation for peace. The minerals deal, though useful for helping to rebuild Ukraine, is only a band aid in the face of a revanchist Russia which, like Germany in 1919, already possesses far greater capacity to recover and attack again. Following its isolation, France had the benefit of nearly two decades of peace to reforge alliances, rearm, and build fortifications. Ukraine will have no such luxury.
