Would We and the World Be Better Off If the US Had Stayed Out Of WWI?

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Carl S RE:Would We and the World Be Better Off If the US Had Stayed Out Of WWI? 9/22/2005 10:39:07 PM

Without the US in WWI there would have been further global warfare anyway. The details would have been different but it still would have happened. My view is the economic problems of the 1920s & 30s made renewed warfare inevitable. Both in Europe & Asia. These decades were the bottom of global economic collapse that was underway before WWI. Combine the economic problems with resentment towards whomever finally won the Great War and the stage is set. While the US could try for political neutrality economicly it has been from the start tied to the global economy. The prosperity of US citizens has largely derived from exports of raw materials, agricultral products, and some manufactors. In both WWI & II the disruption of US exports threatned long term problems. Sitting off court did not insulate us from those or prevent them from getting worse.

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CJH RE:Would We and the World Be Better Off If the US Had Stayed Out Of WWI? 9/23/2005 7:43:05 AM

I am assuming that warfare around the world just following 1913 was to be a given. I am questioning the wisdom of the US joining in instead of letting the war in Europe take its course. Once the warring nations were defeated or depleted of all resources or toppled by revolutions, they would be easier to deal with for economic purposes. And then there is that "resentment" you refer to. The French were determined to get even with the Germans for 1870. The Germans later wanted to get even with the French for Versailles. The Turks hated the Armenians who probably hated the Turks. Serbs and Bosnians and Croatians couldn't get along. The Brits had the Black and Tans in Ireland. There was a anger in India against the British. I don't believe President Wilson had the whole problem of a grand strategy of the US completely in his grasp. I don't believe he had a clear idea of where this country needed to go. And I believe the Senate rejected the League of Nations at least partly because of this. It may be that lasting peace among nations is possible if those nations have foot of a dominating power of their necks. The Roman Empire maintained peace pretty well. The only other possibility is if a country which has many ethnic groups living together in prosperous circumstances can be a model for a war-weary world.

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Carl S RE:Would We and the World Be Better Off If the US Had Stayed Out Of WWI? 9/24/2005 12:00:40 AM

Sure I'll agree the US might have made a better example, although the ethnic problems here were not small in 1914 and threatened to become larger. The race riots of that era were not disimilar to the Jewish pogroms of those years. Wilsons actions were based on his idealistc academic background. I cant debate his strategy, but his execution was not the best. It is tough to compare his performance in forigen policy with that of Roosevelt. It is not hard to see Roosevelt as eventuallly sending a US Army into WWI, but coming out of it with better results. As for the US becoming a dominating power in 1918 or a decade later. Between the power of the isolationists, and the extrodinary political skill required to do such a thing. I'm not sure it would have been possible. Further the realative military power of the US was very poor in the 1920s. Even after the devastation of the Great War Most European armys easily outclaassed the US Army. At sea the Japanese Navy was trouble, even if smaller.

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CJH RE:Would We and the World Be Better Off If the US Had Stayed Out Of WWI? 9/24/2005 2:59:26 PM

I'll grant you your points except perhaps one. It is my impression, either correct or not, than the pogroms were preplanned official or camoflaged official persecutions of the Jews where the race riots were more or less spontaneous translations of peoples' baser passions into violence. In Konrad Heiden's "Der Fuhrer" where he writes about the origination of the tract "Protocols of the Wisemen of Zion", Heiden describes the motivation for it to be to convince the Czar to authorize a full blown official persecution of Russia's Jews. The Czar would not lend his imprimatur to the project so the head of the Okrana (Czarist secret police) who had composed the "Protocols" proceeded on other lines. The other lines took the form of the early 20th century Pogrom(or pogroms?). It is ironic that the tract later came into the hands of Alfred Rosenberg when he was a university student in Moscow and that from there it served as a strategic roadmap for the Nazis' rise to power in Germany. Rosenberg became the Nazi Party's theoretician.

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timon_phocas RE:Would We and the World Be Better Off If the US Had Stayed Out Of WWI? 9/24/2005 7:37:16 PM

I think that World War I and its aftermath were very instructive to the following generation of US leaders. The US under the leadership of FDR, Truman and Eisenhower had a much better grasp of actons and consequences than Wilson and Harding. The US was both more generous and more ruthless than in World War I. The "Great War" taught them that it wasn't enough to just win a war, you also had to win the peace, which (by and large) they did.

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Carl S RE: Learning from the Great War 9/24/2005 9:13:40 PM

I'll go along with that. Thos someone of TR Roosevelts caliber might have done far better than Wilson or Harding, or even Coolidge.

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timon_phocas RE: Learning from the Great War 9/27/2005 12:03:37 PM

>>Thos someone of TR Roosevelts caliber might have done far better than Wilson or Harding, or even Coolidge.<< you'll get no argument from me about the capabilities of TR

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verdunjp RE: Learning from the Great War 9/27/2005 1:31:19 PM

I think that people are too severe about Wilson. I realy think that after WW1, he settle something very good to avoid a new war. Versailles treaty was far to be a bad one to keep peace. Indeed, this treaty reduced the military capacity of Germany, the trouble maker of Europe, and put in place the "Soci�t� des nations", which was a very innovating system to avoid conflit. So, according to me, Wilson realy try to win peace and not only war. By the way, I think that it is not fair to compare Wilson's peace accomplishment to Roosevelt's peace accomplishment because one can count on an atomic bomb to be respected and not the other.

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timon_phocas RE: Learning from the Great War 9/27/2005 8:43:57 PM

>>I think that people are too severe about Wilson. I realy think that after WW1, he settle something very good to avoid a new war.<< I certainly agree that Wilson's intentions were good. However, in the US there is a saying that "politics is the art of the possible". He needed to be able to convince some very jaded, very prosaic leaders (on both sides of the Atlantic) on his goals and he just wasn't the man to do it.

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timon_phocas RE: Learning from the Great War 9/27/2005 10:08:04 PM

>>I think that people are too severe about Wilson. I really think that after WW1, he settle something very good to avoid a new war.<< No one is accusing Wilson of not trying, or of having ambitions that were anything less than noble. It?s just that Wilson needed to convince jaded and prosaic leaders (on both sides of the Atlantic) that his goals were preferable. This involved salesmanship, and a spirit of give and take, that the stiff, old university professor was just not capable of indulging in. There is an old saying in American politics, ?politics is the art of the possible.? Wilson kept insisting on the perfect, and so he missed being able to accomplish the possible. >>Versailles treaty was far to be a bad one to keep peace. Indeed, this treaty reduced the military capacity of Germany, the trouble maker of Europe,<< The Germans considered the Versailles treaty to be a terrible humiliation; which it was. It was not as harsh as the German terms at Brest-Litovsk, and it was not as harsh as the terms they would have given to the Western Allies had they won. It was, however, still harsh, and this harshness was in direct contradiction to Wilson?s rhetoric in 1917 and 1918. They felt betrayed by this. The Germans did not consider themselves to be militarily defeated. This was a lie, of course. But lies sometimes have a life of their own. >>I think that it is not fair to compare Wilson's peace accomplishment to Roosevelt's peace accomplishment because one can count on an atomic bomb to be respected and not the other.<< 1) America?s relative position in 1945 had a lot more to do with economic power than having sole possession of the atomic bomb. The rest of the world was devastated, bankrupt, or both. America was basically self sufficient in industrial raw materials, it had the largest agricultural sector in the world and the most advanced production base. 2) FDR, Truman and Eisenhower learned from Wilson and Harding?s mistakes, and a generation of political leaders who came of age in the Great War learned along with them. I think their initiatives were more broadminded, flexible and generous than Wilson?s. This might have been because they themselves were more broadminded, flexible and generous. It may have been because the rest of the political leaders had learned the lessons of the Great War too, and so the initiatives were easier to sell.

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verdunjp RE: To timon-phocas 9/28/2005 1:17:51 PM

You have good points timon_phocas. But do you realy believe that peace in Europe could have been achieve after WWII without the threat of nuclear wepons? Second question: You consider that the Versailles treaty was a bad one. what allies should have done?

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timon_phocas RE: To timon-phocas 9/29/2005 9:10:18 AM

>>You have good points timon_phocas. But do you really believe that peace in Europe could have been achieve after WWII without the threat of nuclear weapons?<< 1) Thanks for the compliment about having good arguments 2) I think the dominant factor for peace in immediate postwar Europe was everybody?s exhaustion and war weariness. People just wanted to rebuild their lives after 6 years of non-stop catastrophes. An example of this was the 1945 election of Bevin to be Prime Minister of Britain, ousting Churchill. 3) The US only had a handful of atomic weapons in the immediate postwar period. Production was quite low. 4) The US started a very traditional (for the US, anyway) radical reduction in forces almost immediately after the war ended. As a matter of fact, war production had peaked in 1944 and was already being reduced in 1945. 5) The US was swinging towards a traditional isolationist stance in 1945/46. This had to be altered by a concerted campaign to change public opinion. >>Second question: You consider that the Versailles treaty was a bad one. what allies should have done?<< 1) The most difficult decision a politician can make is to be generous to a defeated enemy. Especially an enemy that you have spent years, sometimes generations, whipping up fear about. From the vantage point of the 21st century, I think that the victorious allies should have been more generous to Germany. Nobody had learned that lesson, however. It would have taken an enormous leap of understanding, and it?s not easy to put into practice. Abraham Lincoln tried to do it with the former states of the Confederacy, but his plans were thwarted but revenge-minde

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verdunjp RE: To timon-phocas 10/13/2005 1:11:32 PM

People were exhausted after WWII but whitout The existence of nuclear weapons, I realy think that a war between the east ans the west would have been inevitable. Concerning the Versailles treaty, I think that with or whitout it, WWII would have taken place. The causes of WWII is far from the Versailles treaty. It is rather a question of radical ideology mixted with an bad economical context that explain origins of WWII. The proof is that Italy, winner of WWI and non subject to any treaty, became facist and expansionnist in the 30's. Regards, JP

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JIMF RE: To timon-phocas 10/13/2005 6:37:24 PM

Interesting dialogue. Margaret MacMillan's book on Versailles was very good. As timon observed for all Wilson's good points he made a politcal hash of selling the treaty to the senate. He didn't bring any Republicans with him to Versailles, and when he returned to the U.S. he managed to gratuitously insult Republican Senator Lodge. Clemenceau observed that sitting between Wilson and Lloyd George was like sitting between Jesus Christ and Napoleon.

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PowerPointRanger Versaille & the US 11/6/2005 12:59:54 PM

There's no question in my mind that the WWI would have ened in largely the same way had the US not entered. The war ended more for economic reasons than military ones. The Germans were simply broke. History has recorded that the US was a moderating influence on the post-war treaty, which suggests that without our participation WWII would probably have been worse. I don't believe the treaty was especially harsh, nor the primary cause of German resentment. It was the excuse, not the cause. The reparations themselves were minor in comparison to the costs of the war itself. Recall that the previous war had lasted only a matter of months. Wartime debts were manageable, even with reparations. In comparison, WWI lasted 4 years and left all party burdened with crushing debt. Reparations were simply the straw that broke the camel's back. What about the US itself? We ended the WWI as a world power not because of military arms, but because of wartime profits. Our economy made huge gains by selling supples to Europe. We became the world's largest creditor nation by the end of the war (replacing Britain as the world's dominant economic power). I have no doubts in my mind that the Pacific war would still have happened. The Japanese benefitted from WWI almost as much as the US and Japan devoted most of the gain to visions of conquest. None of that would have changed had the US not participated actively in WWI.

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