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I stumbled across the appeasement concept (a diplomatic policy of making political or material concessions to an aggressive power in order to avoid conflict) and noticed that all examples are from a rather old past:
I am wondering if there are any recent events that can be tagged with this term.
Question: Are there any contemporary (1990+) examples of appeasement in diplomatic politics or is this a thing of the past?
I find this a rather odd question because if you read/watch the international news, it is obvious that appeasement is the rule and that actually confronting an aggressor by military means is the exception. Just out the top of my head:
Is the West doing anything about China locking millions of Uyghurs in camps?
Is the world doing anything about the genocide of Rohingya in Burma?
Have the United States and/or its allies helped Ukraine getting back control of Crimea?
Where was the world in 1994 when all hell broke loose in Rwanda?
Like I said, this is just a short list of examples where the policy essentially is/was appeasement, although it is easy to find more.
Appeasement is a pretty political term, not a diplomatic term. Nations continually decide whether to ignore or escalate doings by other countries.
The main difference in the historic context of 1938 was that back then France and the United Kingdom eroded their own reputation and power base to keep the peace. There is also some indication that Nazi Germany misinterpreted the diplomatic situation when escalating for war against Poland based on that policy and that the UK and France sounded the same there as they did with Austria and Czech Slovakia aka the Nazis might have believed the Western Powers would just protest and leave it be again, partly because they thought they would be on board germany facing the Soviet Union.
In reverse there is good indication that the appeasement policy was a necessity because neither the UK nor France were capable or willing for a full on offensive war in 1939 which directly explains the "Phony War" and the non existence of a plan on how to intervene to save Poland by them at all.
I dare say the term does not really help to evaluate the circumstances of a situation, particularly since many situation might seem similar, but still develop entirely differently.
Arguably, the response of the West to Russia's annexation of Crimea has considerable parallels with the situation in 1938 (without the bad ending, we must hope).
As in 1938, deterring the aggressor would only have been possible at considerable risk to world peace.
The term appeasement policy typically refers specifically to the politics in the prelude to WW2 to appease the at the time aggressive powers that later would form the Axis. Therefore it is clear that examples refer that era.
Quote from the Wikipedia article:
"Appeasement policy, the policy of appeasing Hitler and Mussolini, operating jointly at that time, during 1937 and 1938 by continuous concessions granted in the hope of reaching a point of saturation when the dictators would be willing to accede to international collaboration. ... It came to an end when Hitler seized Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939, in defiance of his promises given at Munich, and Prime Minister Chamberlain, who had championed appeasement before, decided on a policy of resistance to further German aggression."
Therefore there is no other instance that actually fits. There are at best instances of other policies that also aim to appease rather than to confront. In that sense, any time a diplomat is sent instead of a soldier to achieve a nation's goal, that could be seen as appeasement - the very least when the other side made any kind of demand and your nation is open to discuss rather than outright rebuff.
In that sense, the cold war was full of appeasement. While in the policy sense it sure wasn't.
Today the term is mostly used either as a true reference to that eras policy or as a way to denounce a stance of some country that is deemed too defensive. It's a way to paint policy makers as cowardly and push-overs in rhetoric arguments.
