In Unfalsifiable political theories, Steven Den Beste compares the Cold War and War on Terror and notes how the “party line” always recommends negotiation over military build-up, whether the opponent is strong or weak:
Before the fall of the Soviet Union, the “party line” in the west was that it was useless to try to compete with the USSR because the Soviet economy was strong and the Soviet military was formidable, and there was no way it was going to collapse, so we should negotiate and try to come to some sort of accommodation, instead of relying on competition and military build-up. After the USSR collapsed, the party line changed to this: The USSR had always been a basket case and its collapse was inevitable anyway. (We always said that, and it turned out we were right.) So there wasn’t any need to rely on competition and military build-up; we should have negotiated and tried to come to some sort of accommodation while we waited for the inevitable collapse.We have seen exactly the same thing happen in the “War on Terror”. Prior to the Madrid bombing, the “party line” was that the threat of terrorism had been massively overblown and the American response was preposterously excessive and totally unjustified. Rather than try to rely on military might and confrontation, we should instead negotiate and try to come to a peaceful accommodation. (In a spectacular example of bad timing, the International Herald Tribune notoriously published an opinion piece which said exactly that on the day that Madrid was bombed.)
After Madrid, the party line turned on a dime, and became: It’s apparent that the use of military power and confrontation to deal with the threat of terrorism is a failure. We should instead try to negotiate and come to some sort of accommodation.
You may have noticed a common theme in the party line.