I Learned a Hard Life Lesson at Age 6
Throwing a bone doesn’t work
Back in 1950, Israel was an impoverished, underdeveloped country. To avoid bankruptcy, the government imposed strict austerity measures. Dog food was unheard of. Dogs were only fed the remains of human meals. On the upside, there was virtually no street crime in Israel. Parents let very young children walk outside, go shopping, or board buses unaccompanied.
Against this background, my parents sent me, at age 6, to carry a bag of bones for a dog owned by friends living about a mile from our home in the northern city of Haifa.
In the middle of my walk, a large, scary-looking unleashed dog ran up to me, growled, and bared his teeth. I got the hint. I took out a bone, threw it as far back as I could, and kept walking quickly.
It took the dog only a few seconds to finish off the bone. He came running back and snarled again. So, I took out another bone and threw it behind me. Once again, and then again and again, the dog kept coming back in no time, always growling and baring his teeth. Needless to say, by the time I got to our friend’s home, the bag was empty.
As a six-year-old, I only learned the obvious literal lesson: If you carry a bag of bones, don’t think that by throwing a bone you’ll placate an aggressive dog. It won’t work. He’ll know that you have more bones and that you’re afraid of him, so he’ll keep coming back.
As I grew older, I learned that figuratively “throwing a bone” doesn’t work either — both in personal life and in international affairs. This “strategy” conveys weakness. If you deal with a bad actor who knows that you have many “bones,” throwing him a “bone” not only won’t placate him; it will make him act even more aggressively to get as many of your “bones” as he can.
In personal life, stories abound of businessmen offering “protection” money to gang members, only to discover that as soon as the money was paid, the gang would demand additional sums — sometimes until the business was squeezed dry and forced to close. The gang would then move on to the next vulnerable target.
Two historic cases from the last century illustrate that “throwing a bone” doesn’t work in international affairs either. The first is probably the most famous case of its kind in modern history.
At a September 1938 conference in Munich, the United Kingdom and France handed over to Nazi Germany a strategic region of Czechoslovakia called Sudetenland. The Anglo-French capitulation followed a threat by Hitler to embark on an all-out invasion of Czechoslovakia unless that region was ceded. Hitler promised peace and renunciation of any further territorial demands in return for the surrender of Sudetenland.
Upon his return to London, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain proclaimed to cheering crowds: “My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time… Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.” In less than a year, Adolf Hitler proved that the “bone” of Sudetenland only whetted his appetite. Less than a year later, Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Poland, unleashing World War II.
The second, related case involved the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Like the British and French prime ministers, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin sought to “throw a bone” at Hitler in order to protect Russia from Germany.
At Stalin’s instructions, Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov signed, in August 1939, a non-aggression treaty with his German counterpart, Joachim von Ribbentrop, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Beyond “guaranteeing” peace between the parties, the pact secretly stipulated the division of Poland between them. Stalin believed that by “throwing a bone” — allowing Nazi Germany to bite off a chunk of Poland — he would safeguard the Soviet Union itself from German aggression. Less than two years later, Germany — sensing Soviet weakness — tore up the pact and invaded the Soviet Union, causing millions of fatalities and untold damage before being pushed out by 1944.
Just as I learned literally at age 6, Chamberlain and Stalin learned figuratively that “throwing a bone” is a losing strategy. It conveys weakness and whets the aggressor’s appetite for more. But whereas I, as a helpless six-year-old, had no choice but to throw the first bone and then all the others to that aggressive dog, Chamberlain and Stalin had another option. Instead of throwing to Hitler the “bones” of Sudetenland and Poland, respectively, they could have stood up to him and rejected his demands. Had they done so, they might have spared the world the deadliest and most destructive war in history — World War II.
Today’s leaders of Western democracies would do well to heed this lesson when dealing with brutal dictators such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Thus far, the United States and its allies have shown surprising resolve in confronting Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and China’s provocations in the South China Sea. Here’s hoping that this positive posture will endure.
