Finnish President Sauli Niinisto today cited Mr. Realpolitik himself, Henry Kissinger, on the dangers of appeasement, quoting from Kissinger's 1957 book, 'A World Restored': “Whenever avoidance of war has been the primary objective of a group of powers, the international system has been at the mercy of its most ruthless member.”

While President Niinisto was referring to the possibility of Kremlin objections to Finland joining NATO, the quote is a perfect description of Western policy on Syria since 2011, during which period Barack Obama and his successors, along with the UN and ‘international community’ have bent over backward to appease Assad, Putin, Khamenei, Xi and their accomplices and allies, regardless of their monstrous crimes, all for the sake of supposedly "avoiding war", ensuring this via a 'global reset' and 'legacy deal' worth less than the used toilet paper they should have been printed on.

As a result of this unspeakable cynicism, not only Syria but the world is now dependent on the 'mercy' of these most ruthless and merciless genocidal tyrants and totalitarian regimes, headed by Putin, with Syrians, Iraqis, Iranians, Egyptians, Ukrainians, Uighurs and millions of others effectively thrown under the bus of Putin, Khamenei, Assad, Sisi and sundry other tyrants, for 'peace.

Even more ironically, this "avoidance of war" has been justified in the name of uniting to wage an apparently eternal 'War on Terror' in partnership with these tyrants and totalitarian regimes who ensure a constant supply of both the state and non-state terror on which their continuing rule relies in order to justify their tyranny; without the idea of a constant threat, the justification for tyranny and systemic injustice collapses, with terror providing an evergreen, easily supplied constant threat. Thus, nobody is a greater terror expert than the despots who maintain power by terrorizing the populace into subjugation and utilizing non-state terror as a political tool when expedient; terror is a cheap, handy justification for despotism and vice versa, with the symbiotic relationship between the two ensuring their survival.

Kissinger, a long-time personal friend of Vladimir Putin, seems to share the 'progressive' conviction that genocidal despotism and even overt fascist rule are acceptable or even somehow desirable and innately suited for non-Western nations, helping to “maintain peace”; the bone-deep racism of this worldview and the fact that the only ‘peace’ achieved is the Orwellian ‘peace’ of the graveyard or max security prison are viewed by Kissinger, Obama and other admirers of ‘foreign policy realism’ as minor details since the nations and peoples subjugated and slaughtered are non-Western and therefore expendable.

So long as the Western powers operate according to this monstrously cynical, morally bankrupt worldview based on 'realpolitik' or 'foreign policy realism', the international system will deservedly be at the mercy of the most ruthless; indeed, when millions of people are not only calculatingly abandoned to endure genocide, crimes against humanity and the worst humanitarian catastrophe since WW2, but are treated as ‘unreasonable’ and ‘foolishly naïve’ for demanding that the tyrants responsible be stopped and punished, it’s impossible to know who the most ruthless are.