I think if he was spineless (rather than merely soulless) he might have backed down sooner and thereby lost bargaining power. I don't know a lot about it, so perhaps you're right, but it feels like a "We don't feel our whole body functioning healthily, just the part of our foot where the shoe pinches" sort of thing (not to trivialize your criticism, it's more than a shoe pinching, just paraphrasing Schopenhauer).