ABSTRACT
The accounts in the following two chapters of British foreign policy decisions during the first half of the 1930s test the argument that structure counts more and that leaders don’t matter—at least not very much or very often—in the selection and enactment of a strategy of appeasement in the international system. The focus of the analysis is on the macrodriven process of structural adaptation as modeled by structural role theory. This model identifies the external focal points of the distributions of power and interests as the basis for a process of structural adaptation that prescribes a grand strategy of either conditional or unconditional appeasement for Britain, depending on the symmetry of the power distribution and whether a state’s vital national interests are the stakes.
