How Woodrow Wilson Broke Europe

[aiwac]

A thought-provoking article by Dr. John Schindler on why American intervention was a disaster for the world:

http://20committee.com/2015/04/24/woodrow-wilsons-great-folly/

[gordon92]

Quite interesting. Thanks for posting. Even if it is posited that the author's counter-factual is correct about a negotiated peace, the snuffing out of the Bolshevik revolution, that Hitler and Mussolini would have been contained, etc.; the conclusion that the world would be a far happier place today if the U.S. had not entered the war is quite a stretch. Who is to say what alternate evils would have emerged to fill the vacuum?

[aiwac]

Yup. Tis why I don't like counterfactuals too much. He is right that the break-up of the Habsburg Empire was a very serious mistake, IMHO.

[RodB]

Yup. Tis why I don't like counterfactuals too much. He is right that the break-up of the Habsburg Empire was a very serious mistake, IMHO.

Yes, those big rickety multi-ethnic empires seem a lot more pecaceful in hindsight (apart from the odd pogrom) than the nationalist, weak, paranoid unstable entities that followed (Poland excepted). I do think Wilson did not understand how European human affairs actually work, he was an idealist, not a realist. I think NATO and the EU is an attempt to re-create some sort of large secure peaceful tolerant Western European Empire. But it also requires the West to accept that Russia has the right to run its own Eastern European Empire too. Back to 1912 ? Conclusion : Big empires may work better than small independant fiefdoms.

[trajan]

In many ways, IMHO, the biggest failure of all was to not think through properly the situation in the Near and Middle East, coupled with Wilson's reluctance to deal with the Armenian and Kurdish situation. This is not to downplay by any means what happened in Europe post-1918, but over here we are still living with the repercussions almost a century later...

Trajan

[aiwac]

Main problem in the Middle East is there is no real, solid nationalism in much of it, just lots of tribalism, and the result is next to no stability without dictators. North Africa is much the same.

[Old Tom]

Having just read Margaret Macmillan's 'The Peacemakers' (Six months that changed the world)I feel that, while Dr Shindler's article is interesting, it is wrong to suggest that all the outcomes of the Great War were due to President Wilson. I would agree with Trajan that the current situation in the Middle East owes much to the findings of the Paris Conference, but these were greatly influenced by the imperialist aims of the British and French -Lloyd-George and Clemenceau. It may be that Wilson was insufficiently concerned with the rehash of the Ottoman empire, but Lloyd George and Clemenceau should have the major share of the blame.

Old Tom

[brummell]

Quite interesting. Thanks for posting. Even if it is posited that the author's counter-factual is correct about a negotiated peace, the snuffing out of the Bolshevik revolution, that Hitler and Mussolini would have been contained, etc.; the conclusion that the world would be a far happier place today if the U.S. had not entered the war is quite a stretch. Who is to say what alternate evils would have emerged to fill the vacuum?

I think that Schindler, who it seems to me is borrowing heavily here from Adam Tooze's The Deluge (an excellent, excellent examination of this whole issue which I heartily recommend), overlooks the fact that a negotiated peace - 'peace without victory' - was already impossible in Europe because such a peace would have made (or, depending on your view, shown) the war utterly futile.

A peace in which the Central Powers weren't defeated and were able to negotiate a reasonable settlement for themselves would, given the huge moral force that had been invested in the war effort, have hugely (perhaps fatally, given the recent Russian revolution) undermined the British and French ruling classes and, of course, the rabidly pro-war Church. A comprehensive defeat of the Central Powers was necessary to vindicate the pro-war lobby.

The Bolsheviks were very happy to come to a negotiated peace for exactly this reason - it was a revolutionary act which, by itself, undermined everything that had gone before it. What could be more perfect for revolutionaries?

- brummell

[David Filsell]

Counter factuals are simply counter sensible, simply works of fiction.