Posted on 03/31/2005 8:50:46 PM PST by Jim Powell
These days, anybody who questions U.S. entry into other people's wars is branded as an isolationist, but troubling questions don't go away.
The policy that the United States should enter other people's wars and try to build other people's nations goes back to Woodrow Wilson, and my new book reports the horrifying unintended consequences. The book is called WILSON’S WAR, HOW WOODROW WILSON’S GREAT BLUNDER LED TO HITLER, LENIN, STALIN AND WORLD WAR II (Crown Forum / Random House).
Many people believe that World War I led to World War II, the assumption being that would have happened no matter what the United States did. But World War I had been stalemated for three years, and if the United States had stayed out, there probably would have been some kind of negotiated settlement, neither side able to dictate terms to the other.
If the Germans had won, they probably would have retained the territory they occupied in northeastern France and Belgium, as well as the ruins of Austria-Hungary and territory they acquired from Russia in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In this case, Germany probably would have become engulfed in civil wars involving French guerrillas, rebellious nationalists in the Balkans (where World War I had started) and rebels in Russian territory including the Baltic states.
Even if the Germans had won the war, the German army was in bad shape, drafting old men and young boys to fill the ranks. The German people were starving, and the economy was struggling, in part, because of the continuing British naval blockade that bottled up the German fleet in its ports. Germany had no way to invade England and certainly no way to threaten the United States, despite the inflammatory Zimmerman Telegram.
Although German submarines disrupted Allied shipping for a while, they ceased to be effective after the introduction of the convoy system -- 99% of shipments got through to England.
As I explain in WILSON'S WAR, by bringing the United States into World War I, Wilson made it possible for the French and British to win a decisive victory, and they were in a position to seek vengeance for their suffering. Woodrow Wilson was an incompetent negotiator, but probably nobody could have prevented the French from humiliating the Germans, since most of the war had been fought on French soil, more than a million French soldiers had been killed, the battles devastated French farmland, they were determined to get even for their defeat by the Germans back in 1870, and the peace negotiations were held in France. How could the French have been denied, once they found themselves on the winning side?
The first step was to demand a vindictive armistice which, among othe things, provided that the British naval blockade would continue. The German king (Kaiser Wilhelm II) and his military commanders recognized that whoever signed the armistice would be hated, so they resigned. A Catholic Center Party politician signed the armistice, immediately discrediting the new and fragile German democracy.
The Treaty of Versailles imposed ruinous reparations on Germany, and they were a factor (not the only factor) in the runaway inflation that climaxed in 1923 and devastated the German people. The bitter nationalist response launched Hitler’s political career, and that year he recruited some 50,000 Nazis.
Meanwhile, Wilson along with the French and British pressured and bribed the Russian Provisional Government to stay in the war, so they would tie up German divisions on the Eastern Front, preventing these divisions from being transferred to the Western Front. But Russia, particularly the Russian army, was collapsing. Staying in the war accelerated the collapse of the Russian army until there were hardly any soldiers left to defend the Provisional Government. Hence, Lenin’s success on his fourth coup attempt.
George Kennan, the influential U.S. diplomat in Russia and a Pulitzer Prize winning historian, was the first scholar I'm aware of who made a case that Wilson's policy of pressuring and bribing the Russians to stay in the war accelerated the collapse of the Russian army, setting the stage for Lenin. He immediately established a secret police, concentration camps and a reign of terror, so he could secure Bolshevik power, and the result was 7 decades of Soviet communism.
Stalin wouldn't have become one of history's worst mass murderers if his comrade Lenin hadn't been able to exploit the Russian war crisis. The Hitler-Stalin pact led directly to World War II, since it assured Hitler that he could start war in the West without having to worry about a war with Russia (at least until he thought he was ready to take on Russia).
I might add that Iraq was established as a Sunni-dominated nation as a result of U.S. entry in the First World War and the resulting Allied victory -- Winston Churchill bolted together the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, and picked the first Sunni king, so Wilson's legacy is still very much with us.
The moral of WILSON'S WAR is that we should defend America, stay out of other people’s wars, don’t try to build other people’s nations and be open to the world in terms of immigration, trade and investment.
Who is Jim Powell, and why should we care?
All isolationism got us was a Second World War and millions of dead Jews.
Isolationism isn't the answer. The Bush Doctrine is.
Is there anything Wilson wasn't guilty of? Sheesh...I guess he hated small animals and children too.
Probably? You base your entire case on this bit of inane speculation? Yes, it may have been negotiated. And it may have led to a decades-long war that despoiled the entire continent. They did it once in the Thirty Years' War. H.G. Wells certainly thought that would happen.
The difficulty is that the glib phrase "other people's wars" has lost a good deal of its meaning in these days of intercontinental missiles, high-tech plagues, and fanatics flying airliners into buildings. The principle of non-interference falls when somebody decides to interfere with us. And there are a good number of people determined to do so, and their claims that it is in response to some supposed U.S. foreign policy outrage are excuses that the gullible swallow whole.
Uh, all well and good, Jimbo, but didn't you leave out the entire history of German involvement in Mexico in the early 1900's?
And I should stress, I'm not simply talking about the Zimmerman telegram...
President Wilson didn't face the absolute reality that our technology would enable stone-age barbarians to threaten us with nuclear weapons and other potential holocausts.
Every lesson in history must now pass a contextual 9-11 test or be dismissed as obsolete.
I think it's established that nobody cares who Jim Powell is. But he also has his history wrong. It's well known that WWI started with a public uprising when the masses discovered that the Tsar and Czar were the same person.
How is the war in Iraq someone else's war? It's an important battle in the war on terror. Thousands of dead Americans are testimony to that.
You cannot defend America without defending America's interests abroad. I hope this guy is not a policy wonk or university professor - he appears ignorant of the weaknesses of Static Defenses.
What a bunch of clap trap. "IF", "SHOULD HAVE", "DIDN'T". Get over it!
Which Tsar/Czar? The Russian? The Bulgarian? The Serbian?
Google "Jim Powell".
He has authored books winning praise from John Stossel, Paul Johnson, P.J. O'Rourke, and others.
Jim Powell has written several books. "Triumph of Liberty" won praise from the Wall Street Journal.
FYI
Is there anything Wilson wasn't guilty of?
Hmmm ...
It was an old Woody Allen joke, if anyone is still on this thread. Something about the Russion Revolution starting when the masses discovered that the Tsar and Czar were the same person.
It's very strange when an individual with some kind of peculiar obsession starts ranting about it on FR, even when it bears no realtion to anything happening now. If anyone is still fighting WWI, do it alone in your basement, instead of sharing your mental syndrome with others.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.