Behind the histrionics of the US presidential race lies a profound fault line in Western political life. It is the division between those who think that only by talking can war be avoided, and those who think that sometimes only the threat of war can safeguard the right to talk and to live in freedom.

John McCain would use coercive pressure and military force if necessary to prevent the nuclear holocaust threatened by Iran or to pre-empt further attacks by Islamists. Barack Obama, by contrast, thinks war can be averted by talking to enemies to solve their grievances, and has said he would talk to Iran.

The notion that talking avoids war - a position otherwise known as appeasement - is a dangerous fallacy that has recently gained enormous traction in the West.

Both the Commons Foreign Affairs and International Development Select Committees have called for Britain and the West to start talking to Hamas. And at the end of October, the taxpayer-funded Institute of Contemporary Arts was due to host a debate between Usama Hamdan, of Hamas's governing council, and Alistair Crooke, a former British spy and founder of Conflicts Forum, which describes Palestinian terror as legitimate "resistance" and which has argued for "engagement" with Hamas. Paul M. Kennedy, a British historian at Yale, has written that for 70 years until the Second World War, appeasement was an established feature of British foreign policy. He defines it as a way of settling quarrels "by admitting and satisfying grievances through rational negotiation and compromise".