British prime minister from 1937, he followed a policy of appeasement with Nazi Germany in the years before World War II, negotiating the Munich agreement with Adolph Hitler in 1938.
The elder von Kleist famously traveled to England in 1938, the year before World War II broke out, to try and determine whether other Western nations would support a coup attempt against Hitler, but failed to get the British government to change its policy of appeasement.
That creates a particularly appeasement-prone environment, as no newly elected leader wishes to spend political capital on a foreign policy crisis created by North Korea when many other pressing domestic issues beckon.