America unable to save the world
[This weekend, Moscow’s leading newspaper GAZETA, provides the Soviet viewpoint for how the Kremlin matches up Western Nation’s hostility to Soviet expansion – with America’s “global failure” in the context of a list of aggressions carried out by other nations in the 20th century.]
The near term economic outlook in Russia’s urban centers today is uncertain as the price of crude oil cuts off capital investment in industry and trade while federal expenditures on social welfare programs see looming cuts on the horizon – As well the political outcome of Soviet expansion into the Donbas and Crimea remains uncertain.
SOURCE – GAZETA.RU
In mid-January 1920 in Geneva, started the League of Nations – the first international organization to maintain peace. The meeting began without its chief ideologue – US President Woodrow Wilson not invited to participate as Germany and Soviet Russia. On why the League of Nations was unable to prevent World War II, said “Gazeta”.
The League of Nations was created immediately after the First World War. Hitherto unprecedented scale of the conflict was already quite obvious to contemporaries, but the political logic of the majority of European leaders are not particularly affected.
They viewed the war in the spirit of “realpolitik” of former times – as a traditional conflict for spheres of influence. The outcome of the war saw suitable: Colony defeated divide, metropolitan reduce or even eliminate, the impact on world politics to weaken.
But not everyone agreed with such a device of the postwar world.
Troublemaker gave President Woodrow Wilson, who, along with a number of British politicians believed that the main goal – not to divide the territory and to punish the losers, and prevent new violent conflicts.
And for this we needed a fundamentally new world order.
Almost a century before World War II the United States adhere to the Monroe Doctrine requires non-interference in the affairs of the Old World and the avoidance of interference of the European powers in the event in the Americas.
The “Big Four” – Left to right – David Lloyd George of Britain, Vittorio Orlando of Italy, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Woodrow Wilson of the United States, the principal architects of the Treaty of Versailles. National Archives, Washington, D.C.
But Wilson’s predecessors in the White House – William Taft and Theodore Roosevelt – talked about the need for an international peacekeeping organization. Last voiced the idea of the League of Nations in a speech on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize, which he, by the way, received for mediation in the conclusion of peace between Russia and Japan.
Wilson took office in 1913, just over a year later World War I broke out.
His own program excluded participation in the European conflict. But the British Foreign Office, knowing the idealistic former university professor of political science Wilson spoke about the possibility of the creation of the post-war United Nations – if the United States would support the Entente.
But it was obviously a diplomatic ploy, since for most British apologists such ideas included cranks. British diplomats did not even know how serious were the intentions of the American leader, which they speculated.
Officially, the United States entered World War I only in 1917, after Wilson’s re-election to a second term. In fact, he broke his own election promise to maintain neutrality. But it did not stop his active participation in mediation talks.
In an address to the nation, Wilson and foreign correspondents from time to time used the phrase League of Nations, although at the time he wrote it with a lowercase letter.
And in January 1918, when the fighting on the European front was in full swing, the president spoke to Congress outlining the 14 Points draft peace treaty after the First World War. It was based on the principles of the New World Order.
Which, according to Wilson, was to become the basis for cooperation between the two countries. Among these principles – freedom of trade and disarmament, the release states from colonial rule and, finally, the creation of an international association of nations.
The latter was for the American president of the most important points, the researchers note reign Wilson American historian Jay Winter. “For Wilson it was a fundamental principle that was supposed to be out of a peace treaty.”
Wilson proclaimed the principles that have long been truisms for proper American thinking, but for diplomats Old World meant a revolutionary break with the past.
These included the notion that the spread of democracy depends on peace in the land that the state should be judged by the same ethical standards the national interests of any country should be subject to a universal system of laws.
“Only peace between equals can be strong,” – said Wilson.
However, Henry Kissinger in his 1970s book Diplomacy ironically says Wilson’s attempts to present a fair sample of America’s foreign policy:
“Mexico must have been astonished to learn that the President of the country, tore a third of its territory in the XIX century and sends his troops to Mexico last year, is now the Monroe Doctrine as a guarantee of the territorial integrity of the brotherly nations and a classic example of international cooperation”
The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 stated that further efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere in the Americas would be viewed as acts of aggression requiring U.S. intervention.
“Do not be divided by anyone idealism”
To push their ideas at the end of the war, Wilson made a week-long trip on the boat and personally arrived at the Paris Peace Conference – it was generally the first ever official foreign visit of US President. And then he came across a quiet but persistent resistance of European statesmen.
Ignore America, they could not – too large already its influence on world politics, primarily due to a booming economy. But Wilson’s ideas were for Europe bold, not to say shocking.
According to the same Kissinger, a century after the Napoleonic Wars, the European powers were constantly seeking a balance between, on the assumption that “you can change the border in order to achieve a balance of power, which in all circumstances be given precedence over the will of the conflict affected population.”
Instead, Wilson offered to give peoples the right to self-determination, moreover, to give them an equal opportunity to participate in solving international problems within the future League of Nations.
In doubt, the British and French politicians on this issue was also the fear of losing global power, but there were quite reasonable arguments, which reflects Kissinger:
“They believed that the emergence of smaller states would undermine the world order – the inexperience of smaller nations will greatly increase the possibility of a breakthrough in the surface latent ethnic rivalries, and the relative weakness of their prompt great powers to invade these areas. “
In addition, neither France nor England did not understand or approve urgent desire to include Wilson defeated Germany into a new system of international relations.
The American president considers it necessary guarantee of lasting peace. But from their point of view, Germany had to admit the only culprit of World War II, which must bear the “punished.”
Especially categorically representatives were set up in Paris, which required all dismember Germany or at least tear away from her the right bank of the Rhine.
And about the fact that the defeated country necessarily full flower blossom revanchism, the French know from my own experience: they dreamed of for decades to avenge themselves for the defeat of the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War and did it, winning the First World War.
Several months were tense, grueling negotiations, during which Wilson several times threatened to return home. Kissinger believes that the American president drove himself into a trap, plunging into the details.
Which should have been doing professional diplomats, and as a result lost a key thread. The result was a compromise, which ultimately did not accept fully any of the major players, and most importantly, did not become the basis for a lasting peace.
Germany united left, but the League of Nations did not take. Forced to pay reparations, but not as large as demanded Paris.
Agreed to demilitarize the right bank of the Rhine, but was not reported in France of American security guarantees in the event of aggression by Germany.
This last point was the main failure of President Wilson, who at this time are not opposed to European diplomats, and opposition within the United States.
The statute of the League, he personally wrote that all signatory countries are obliged to guarantee the freedom and independence of the states entering into it from aggression and to prevent such aggression joint action.
Opponents of Wilson were confident that by signing this agreement, the US will be required to assist countries – members of the League of economic and military measures, although Wilson insisted that the United States will be able to veto.
During the debate in Congress is one of the opponents of President – Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. gave a fiery speech in which he stated that although the conclusion of the contract “is dictated by the desire to do good to all mankind,
But we should not forget that we are dealing with the states, each of which has its own interests, and that there is a serious risk of not divided by any idealism ”.
As a result, Congress has not approved the Treaty of Versailles and the United States did not become a member of the League of Nations, created with the active participation of their own president.
Traditionally, this has been one of the main reasons why the new world order has been extremely unstable: in the face of overseas power of the European countries have lost a powerful and disinterested arbitrator in their disputes, and as a result continued to operate the old fashioned way, by signing the local coalition and without recourse to the League as the arbitral tribunal.
Own powers – the founder of the League regularly violated its rules, giving an appropriate example to the rest of the world.
For example, to declare at the outset plans on Disarmament nowhere and have not been implemented.
“Immediately after the adoption of the draft of the League of Nations in England tried to calm the elites that this organization was created only to public opinion made itself felt.
This, they say, a platform for discussion and not a body that will make a decision “, – says Associate Professor of the History Faculty of Moscow State University Ekaterina Romanova.
But there were other reasons: from the new system of international relations excluded not only defeated Germany, but the Bolshevik Russia, and together they and the public, and military power is far ahead of the rest of Europe.
Since the mid-20s, these two countries have actively helped each other to overcome the military and economic isolation.
All this imposes a structural weakness of the League, many decisions which had to be unanimous, which is why they regularly get stuck in endless debates.
Conquest at Munich – Hitler takes the Sudetenland
Viciously mocking the League of Nations in his poem, Vladimir Mayakovsky called the “European fire” is not able to extinguish the fire of revolution.
- Japanese aggression against China and seizure of Manchuria,
- seizure of Ethiopia by Italy, Germany,
- violation of the Versailles and Locarno treatie
- deployment of troops in the demilitarized Rhineland
- active participation of a number of foreign states in Spanish the Civil War, the Anschluss of Austria in 1938
- seizure of Czechoslovakia in 1939.
By that time, Japan, Germany and Italy from the League of Nations just came out.
- And in December 1939, after the outbreak of the Second World War, was expelled from the organization of the USSR for military aggression against Finland – also a member of the League.
- A few months later justified the fears of French politicians: the invasion of the Third Reich in France.
The German invasion of Danzig began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Extinguish the centennial center of European conflict was only after the Second World War, when the two countries came to the conclusion that the opposition is a threat of mutual destruction, and made the first steps towards European integration.
UN as a second League
Formally survived WWII and the League of Nations, which was disbanded only in April 1946 with the formation of the United Nations.
The main lesson taught by her story, is that in a globalized world the exclusion of potentially powerful force in international relations almost inevitably lead to a new conflict, sometimes even more acute than all the previous ones.
And what would any fine principles to build an international structure, their success largely depends on the policy of the leading world powers and the existing balance of power.
This is confirmed by the example of the United Nations, the successor to the League of Nations.In recent years, experts are increasingly drawn parallels, saying both insolvency.
At the Potsdam Conference Germany the allied powers began the realignment of European borders.
It is not surprising, since the new organization inherited many of the principles and, accordingly, the vices of its predecessor.
It seemed to be coping well with the task of preventing global conflict in a bipolar world (although local opposition and then occur regularly), but, in fact, powerless in the face of global instability after its collapse.
However, unlike the League of Nations, to the authority of the United Nations regularly address all participants in any conflict, and that in itself makes it a much more consistent structure.