During the Cold War, the United States and its allies supported certain governments and organizations that could well be regarded as being ideologically contrary to them. Though the term “the free world” was used to describe non-Communist states collectively, several of them were in no way freer than the Soviet Union and its allies. Dictatorships like Pinochet’s Chile and Batista’s Cuba were hardly in ideological accord with the United States’s fight to preserve freedom and democracy, but the threat of Communism was perceived as being so great that the US would rather prop up anti-liberal governments rather than risk losing the countries to the influence of the Soviets. Whether reasonable or not, these alliances of convenience rather than ideology were a significant aspect of the Cold War period.
Such alliances of convenience were hardly new to the world of international politics, but one can see a certain degree of absurdity added by the rise of powerful democratic states in the 19th century. Not only was it rather hypocritical of democracies like the United States, France and Britain to maintain empires over people who in turn were denied democracy, but they also had a habit of forming alliances with rulers who were ideologically opposed to the concept of instituting democratic reforms. Perhaps the most glaring one of these was the Russian Empire.
The Russians, the French and the British were three of the least likely allies one could hope for at the outset of the First World War. All three of them had been at war with each other at some point during the preceding century (Britain and Russia against France during the Napoleonic Wars, and France and Britain against Russia in the Crimea), France and Britain were longstanding enemies (since the time of the Hundred Years’ War in the 14th and 15th centuries), and Russia was Britain’s chief competitor in Central Asia. Moreover, whereas Britain and France both maintained democratic systems of government, Russia was an autocracy. Indeed, the 1892 alliance between France and Russia would doubtless have been unthinkable if it had demanded any sort of political adaptations on the part of one or the other. When Britain set aside its differences with the two and established friendly relations with France (1904) and Russia (1907), it was in the context of a new, mutual threat in Europe.
This threat came in the form of the German Empire, established in 1871 after the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War. Animosity between France and Germany was longstanding and had been worsened in the 19th century first by Napoleon’s conquest of western Germany in 1806 and later by Germany’s annexation Alsace-Lorraine following its victory in the Franco-Prussian War—the issue of gaining “revenge” for Alsace-Lorraine was a hot item for the French all the way into the First World War. Germany and Russia were less logical enemies given that they were both controlled by conservative monarchies and had been united in an alliance in the 1870s; however, Germany’s close ties to Austria, who was Russia’s key rival in the Balkans, had destabilized their relations by the turn of the 20th century. The mutual threat of Germany drove the republican France and the monarchical Russia into an alliance of practicality. In turn, as Kaiser Wilhelm’s obsessive attempts to make Germany an imperial power with a great navy drove Britain into accord with its two traditional enemies.
G. D. Falksen is a writer and student of history who has given lectures on the steampunk genre and subculture. Though it may be difficult to believe, he is fascinated by the First World War. Further details can be found on his website, www.gdfalksen.com
The oldest basis for diplomacy in the world- the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
I have to say, I find the assumption that alliance ought to be based on shared political principles to be a very ahistorical one–the cases where states made or broke alliances based on such ideals are both uncommon and relatively recent. Expediency and short-term advantage are the rule of the game, with political motives serving as a convenient rationale far more often than as genuine motivation.
“the United States’s fight to preserve freedom and democracy”?
Where was that? It sure wasn’t in Guatemala or Iran, where the US kicked out popular leaders and put in brutal puppets. Or in Vietnam, where the US prevented an election that the UN called for and instead sent the nation to war.
Hell, look at the tepid support for Zelaya. The US has always been suspicious of freedom and democracy, because that doesn’t lead to cheap labor.
GD: Interesting perspective. You mention the “Russian Empire” and the “German Empire,” but you don’t mention the two French Empires or the British Empire. It seems like you’ve structured the story so that Germany is to blame.
I agree with #1 and with most of #2. I can’t find my copy of Thucydides’ “History of the Peloponnesian War” at the moment, but the U.S. has had an odd alliance with Saudi Arabia for more than a few years.
Okay, my “always” was a slight bit of an overstatement, but the US support for freedom and democracy gets mighty thin around the time its leaders decided to take a piece of Mexico. I should read more about the Monroe Doctrine to learn whether Monroe was sincere, or if he was simply warning the other mobs that the American continents were the USA’s turf.
Evidently I mis-read. It seemed to me while reading along that the fellow had addressed all the issues you all have brought up. Not at length or in detail, but as in a glance, since at length for such long, convoluted and complex history as Europe and the U.S. at the end of the 19th century is not possible in the space provided here.
@heresiarch: What I’m speaking of is the absurdity of the breakdown between rhetoric justifying national power and the actual methods for maintaining that power. Given that France prided itself on being the great European democracy, entering into alliance with Russia (a state that had more in common with the ancien regime than with modern French democracy) demonstrated very clearly that for France, democracy was an entitlement of its own people (and moreover, not an entitlement of various national communities within France, such as the Bretons or Alsatians), rather than a universal right.
@willshetterly: Exactly, and thank you for providing more examples to defend my argument. During the Cold War the United States used the rhetoric of freedom, democracy and “the free world” to justify its “police actions” and to coerce anti-Soviet support, while at the same time it hindered democracies that it did not regard as favorable and supported “friendly” anti-democratic regimes. You can see a similar double standard applied at the end of the First World War when democracy and the rights of nations are upheld by tearing down empires, but only in Europe and only in the territories held by the Central Powers; everywhere else empire is upheld and possessions are turned over to the French and the British. Also, the Munroe Doctrine very much goes both ways. It set up the United States as the dominant (almost imperial) power in the Americas, but at the same time it did legitimately represent an attempt to allow post-colonial American nations the ability to develop without European interference.
@BooksonMars: Not at all. Certainly I’m willing to admit that the Kaiser and his military circle did a great deal to increase the tensions leading to the First World War, but it’s far more complicated than that (in fact, the case can be made that Germany went into the war with uncertainty, because it knew the risks it faced if it did not win a decisive victory during its first attack). The French couldn’t wait to get the war started because it offered a chance to retake Alsace-Lorraine; the British got involved allegedly to defend Belgian neutrality, but also to prevent the Germans from taking ports in Northern France; Russia and the Hapsburgs got involved for control of the Balkans; and they all did so with easily as much eagerness as Germany.
@Foxessa: Thank you for noting that I have tried to address all of these points briefly in the body of the article. You’re quite correct: it’s difficult to give any of these issues much depth of examination without being diverted off into paragraphs more of background and explanation.
gdfalksen @@@@@ 7: “What I’m speaking of is the absurdity of the breakdown between rhetoric justifying national power and the actual methods for maintaining that power.”
Again, I read “breakdown” as implying that a relationship between rhetoric and reality existed at some point, and I do not believe that it did. I know this might seem like a bit of a “No, it’s a white dog with brown spots, not a brown dog with white spots!” distinction, but the assumption of a basic congruity between rhetoric and action has been used to excuse endless exceptions to that rhetoric. Saying “Well, I guess we’ll sacrifice our strong commitment to democracy just this once,” time after time, has kept the citizens of democratic states from ever having to confront the fact that their much acclaimed efforts at democracy-promotion are nothing more than thin facade over a profoundly selfish international agenda.
Now, maybe you’re only presuming agreement with the common conceptions in order to address their inaccuracy, but that didn’t come through clearly. At the end of the piece, I felt your position was that the deviations from rhetoric you discuss were a series of regrettable stumbles–not indicative of a basic foreign policy goal entirely different from “democracy promotion.”
This is all very fascinating. Kissinger, who was himself a great vicarious butcher of men, wrote a marvelous book called Diplomacy which demonstrates the various maneuverings of the “Great Powers” while clearly demonstrating his Realpolitik philosophy, and clearly attempting to justify it.
On the issue of US relations with the world, and also French relations, British, etc. India has maintained a democratic system of government practically since its independence in 1948 and yet did not enjoy cordial relations which the United States until recently (once our economic ties deepened), in part because it refused to join us against “Communism,” thus our ongoing obsession and interference with Pakistan. Ultimately it seems that matters of political ideology are quite irrelevant in International diplomacy, but instead factors of powerful and powerless are more important.
China, a wretched oppressive dictatorship, seems to be creating a new paradigm of dealing with anyone and everyone on an economic basis and not interfering with domestic policies. In some ways this is positive because many nations want to deal with China as a result because China doesn’t attach too many strings to its Yuan investments. On the other hand, China is funneling all kinds of money to genocidal regimes like Sudan, Equatorial Guinea and such. So basically, we have not really, nor may we ever find a humane and kind way to do Diplomacy.
However, I must say ‘Great Games’ as such do make for great computer games, and for compelling drama. I suspect that we could probably mine the existing history for all our drama and game needs so we don’t need our politicians to create more drama and war for us. Nonetheless, our politicians will no doubt continue to foist war and drama on us anyway since it is, to them at least, the way video games and such are to the rest of us, devoid of reality and human cost and largely observed and dictated from “undisclosed locations,”… or rather it will remain as such at least until there is a genuine extra-terrestrial invasion! :)
I’m slightly confused by this whole series. What makes European military history prior to 1914 a “Steampunk Cold War”? Are we positing some sort of absolute modernist break with WWI (which break seems, from the above discourse, to have had more to do with automatic weapons and mustard gas than combustion engines) which negated the possibility of the ‘alternative history’ trajectory all those Victorians-cum-steampunks are living in? In which case, aren’t ideological universalizations lumping together ‘then’ and ‘now’ problematic?