Diplomacy Ch.

10: The Dilemmas of the Victors

- At the end of the First World War the US returned to isolationist ideals
- Wilsons legacy was that Europe embarked on Wilsonian course of trying to preserve stability
rather than the old way of European alliances.
- Problem that led to WWI

- Traditional alliances were directed against specific threats & defined by precise obligations for
specific groups of countries linked by shared national interests or mutual security concerns.
Collective security defines no particular threat, guarantees no individual nation, and
discriminates against no-one.
- Casus belli shifted to peacekeeping.

- In the end, collective security fell prey to the weaknesses of its central premise. That all nations

have the same interest in resisting a particular act of aggression & are prepared to run identical
risks in opposing it.

- Sanctions are the most common counter: but are ineffectual as they only apply to the lowest
common denominator.

- Also, law of unintended consequences (Japanese sanctions > Pearl Harbor)

- League doomed from the start: excluded 3 of the most powerful nations on earth.
- Germany barred
- Soviet Union - treated as a pariah, disdained it.
- US refused to join it
- Collective security could not work
- Britain and the rest of Europe considered the obligations for collective security less binding than
those traditional alliances

- Hence, doomed from the start.

- Germany and Soviet Union were the real threats to equilibrium but old European rivalries
prevented them from joining the League.

- European leaders wished to refurbish existing system according to familiar methods.

- Americans believed that this flawed system caused the Great War
- Europeans wanted secret agreements made by experts where US wanted open agreements
- US: Self-determination, free trade = more US goods sold & more $$$
- Foreign policy of both US & GB formed by surroundings.
Colony to Superpower: The Great Transformation

- Rhetoric in US as threat of war increased was extremely against war.

- Wanted to focus on domestic issues and maintain freedom of action
- US still reeling from depression

- Americans generally believed that the impending crisis in Europe did not affect their immediate
security.

- Avoiding entanglements in Europe was engrained in American psyche since 1776.

- Depression still affecting US - foreign policy was not a priority.
- By mid-1930s, most Americans believed intervention in World War I was a mistake
- US later suffered from internal debates
- To what extend should US go to preserve neutrality?
- Some began to believe US was allowing fascist victory
- US to not continue embargo but sell everything but non-lethal weapons, asking for cash up front:
Cash & Carry
- Minimized risk of war & did not hinder prosperity.

- Germanys actions in Czechoslovakia led Europe to brink of war.

- Convinced Roosevelt that Hitler was a madman who could neither be trusted nor appeased.
- Germany had influences in South America
- No longer not an immediate threat.
- Now US had to bolster French & British
- US now the arsenal of democracy once again
- After the fall of France, even informed, isolationist Americans began to feel threatened
- Always looked and felt secure but US now felt vulnerable
- In 1940 Roosevelt announced US could no longer watch from the sidelines and secured $10.5bn
for rearmament

- Britain stubbornly held off German attack

- Helped Americans easily identify with British
- Increased favour of aiding British
- Lend-lease bill
Diplomacy: Stalins Bazaar

- Hitler thrived on the adulation of the masses where Stalin was too paranoid to trust masses.
- Stalin indeed a monster, but he was the Richelieu of the period, patient, shrewd and implacable.
- In Soviet Union minds, the difference between them and non-communists was akin to the
difference between scientists and laymen

- Stalin appeared to be inhuman and having cold-blooded calculation

- Stalin: collective security vs. revolution
- British believed Soviet Army to be weaker than Polands, with no offensive capabilities
- Put more emphasis on Polish relationship and were noncommittal to Soviets
- Huge mistake
- British assumed 4 false guarantees (British kid sheds many tears, then eats boogers)

1. Poland a significant military power

2. France + Britain strong enough to challenge/defeat Germany without help of allies

Soviet Union had interests in maintaining status quo in Eastern Europe
Ideological gulf between Germany and Soviets so unbridgeable that Soviet Union would join
Nazis.

Led to British mistrust of Soviet Union

- Soviets entertained the idea of forming a coalition with Germany

- British were not as eager to enter an agreement with Russia as Russia were.
Nazi-Soviet Pact

- Germany-Soviet Pact of 1939

- Maginot line
- Hitler faced 3 critical decisions upon the Fall of France
- 1. Try to defeat Great Britain
- 2. Make peace with Great Britain
- 3. Conquer Soviet Union and use that strength to conquer Great Britain
- Hitler ordered Soviet campaign in 1940 thinking that with a victory in Russia, Japan could focus on
US, forcing US to divert attention to the Pacific & forcing Great Britain to surrender with no
backup.

- In Hitlers mind, the only decision had always been whether to attack the Soviet Union before or
after defeating the British.
- In 1941 Hitler ordered attack on Soviet Union

- Stalin believed he had averted war with Nazis and Hitler, & fell into a state of depression upon
Hitler declaring war :(

- Hitler sealed his fate

- Stretched Germany too far
- Stalin had gambled on Hitlers rationality, and he had lost; Hitler had gambled that Stalin would
quickly collapse, and he too had lost. But whereas Stalins error was retrievable, Hitlers was
not.

America Re-enters the Arena

- No president, with the possible exception of Lincoln, has made a more decisive difference in
American history [than FDR]
Pearl
Harbor shifted American ideas away from isolationism
-

- Uniqueness of Americas mission as the exemplar of liberty

- Moral superiority of democratic foreign policy
- Seamless relationship between personal and international morality

Importance of open diplomacy

Replacement of the Balance of Power by international consensus as expressed in the league
of nations

- America struggled to grasp the idea that their security in the Western Hemisphere could be under
threat

- European countries (feeling threatened, esp. France & new E. European countries) did not accept

Americas legacy of collective security & international arbitration, or its juridical definitions of war

& peace
- Yet all understood Germany could not be defeated without US help

- US placed sanctions on Japan upon invasion of Manchuria in 1931.

- Law of unintended consequences.
- After little indication previously, Roosevelt announced in State of Union Address that the aggressor
nations were Italy, Germany and Japan.

the continued political, economic and social independence of every small nation in the world

does have an effect on our national security and prosperity

- Neutrality Acts

- Upon fall of France FDR stressed US security was under threat

- Nazi atrocities increasingly eroded the distinction between fighting to promote American values &
fighting to defend American security.
- FDR in effect committed US to war for four freedoms that could not be achieved any other way

- American public began to accept that Nazis could not be defeated without US intervention
Roosevelt, Stalin & Churchill

- German campaign in Soviet Union was biggest in history

- Declared war on US, turning European war into global war.
- Russians held on to Stalingrad
- FDR envisioned post-war world that had a board of directors enforcing the peace
- 4 policemen: US, Britain, Russia and China
- Wanted reduction of French status to second class & not first class
- US wanted no part in European reconstruction
- FDR Policy: mix of traditional American exceptionalism, Wilsonian idealism & FDRs insight into
American psyche
- Soviets would be the most powerful nation on the continent if US withdrew troops

- US began to oppose colonialism

- Favoured self-determination
- Did not want to create nations/races of enemies
- Russia eager for 1941 borders which moved Poland west

- 1943, Stalin disbanded Comintern.

- Spheres of influence divided by percentages.
- US & GB agreed to 1941 borders

- Yalta conference ended system of unilateral action, exclusive alliances, spheres of influence and
balance of power.