The government of the Philippines has yielded to the blackmail of Islamist terrorists. In exchange for the life of one hostage, it has agreed to hasten the withdrawal of the small contingent of peacekeepers it had sent to Iraq.

No doubt Philippines President Gloria Arroyo believes that not only has she literally saved the head of her countryman, Angelo de la Cruz, but that she also saved her nation from a passel of further woes in the Middle Eastern briar patch. "With over 1million OFWs [overseas Filipino workers] in the Middle East," she explained, "my Government has a deep national interest in their wellbeing."

This calculation brings to mind Winston Churchill's comment on the appeasement of Hitler at Munich in 1938. British Prime minister Neville Chamberlain's government, he said, had faced a choice between war and shame: "They chose shame; they'll get war too." By his willingness to purchase peace at any price, Chamberlain had only made more certain the very war he wished to forestall and on terms more disadvantageous to his country.

The Philippines may in time learn that it has done much the same, especially if other nations follow the ignoble example that it and its former imperial master, Spain, have set in Iraq.

To be sure, the U.S. itself bears some of the blame for the shaky resolve of some of its coalition partners. The manifest eagerness of the Bush administration to diminish the U.S. "footprint" in Iraq as rapidly as possible (and the implicit promise of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry to do the same still faster) is scarcely likely to stiffen the spines of Washington's smaller partners.

But whatever America's failings of leadership, they do not justify the cowardly opportunism of Arroyo's decision, for it is sure to backfire. The million Filipinos employed in the Middle East are anything but safer now that their Government has shown the terrorists how easily it is cowed. Philippines soldiers may be gone from Iraq, but are there no other demands that Islamists or other extremists may want to exact from the Philippines?

Commercial or diplomatic concessions? Votes in the UN? The release of radical Islamists held in Philippines jails? Plain old cash extortion? Might terrorists not even seize Philippines nationals in the effort to pressure other governments, judging it likely that the Philippines Government will lobby for concessions on behalf its nationals?

The proof that, like Hitler, Islamist terrorists are emboldened by appeasement can be found in the very genesis of today's war with terrorism. Osama bin Laden and his gang believed that they had defeated the Soviet superpower in Afghanistan and that they could do much the same to the U.S. They took encouragement from Washington's long record of backing down from confrontation with terrorists. The U.S. had walked away from the murderous attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996 and of the USS Cole in Aden in 2000, and numerous other terrorist outrages. The payoff for America's softness was delivered to the World Trade Centre and Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Perhaps the leaders of some smaller countries might reason that it is the U.S. that is the real target of the terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere and that they themselves will be spared if they keep their distance from "the great Satan". But for the Philippines such logic is madness, for it has been hemorrhaging for decades from its own indigenous Islamist rebellion in Mindinao and other southern islands. These Muslim separatists have received funding from bin Laden and training from al Qaeda. Nothing is more certain to inspirit the Philippines Islamist fighters than Arroyo's proof that the Government in Manila yields easily to threats and violence. "Every life is important," she declared, justifying her Iraq decision. But just as surely as she has rescued de la Cruz, so has she sealed the deaths of untold other Filipinos whose names we do not yet know.

Even if there were no Islamic insurgency in the Philippines, Arroyo's craven action would still be unforgivably short-sighted.

Islamist terrorists have inflicted their grisly work on dozens of countries on six continents. The only hope for defeating this scourge lies in the determined and united efforts of the civilised world. This need not mean that the other nations must fall in obediently behind America's lead. Washington's judgment is not infallible, and its allies are entitled to their own voice. But for individual nations to try to save their own skins by deflecting the terrorists elsewhere is not only contemptible. It will prove self-defeating.

Joshua Muravchik is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.