Anniversary: The Fuse

(update: big hello to the Crooks and Liars audience, welcome back)
History teaches us that the War was inevitable.

There was this... understanding across the nations of Europe at the turn of the 20th Century.  The empires of the 19th Century had made treaties and agreements to protect their global power by dividing themselves into two armed camps.  Revolving around the animosities between France and newly-forged Germany, the other nations and empires - Great Britain, Austria-Hungarian Empire, Russia, newly-forged Italy - chose sides to back in case France and Germany decided to start a thing.

It all came from the belief in a Balance of Power working between the nations/empires of Europe: that no one nation would become stronger or more powerful than the others, requiring nations to gang up against the growing "threat" to ensure war wouldn't happen...  Except that, by the 20th Century, various powers wanted war in order to satisfy their needs or avenge some slight.

Or, as Captain Blackadder so rightly put it: "It was bollocks."

The splits had formed over slights and injuries spanning decades: France being humiliated by Prussia/Germany in 1871; Russia being slighted over Austria-Hungary's control over the Balkans; Great Britain threatened by Germany's growing Imperial Navy and open desire for empire-building in places the UK already controlled; Germany's desire to make themselves an economic powerhouse equal to a British Empire the Kaiser Wilhelm II - cousin to the British Royals - so wanted to emulate.  Underneath all of this was a budding sense of Nationalism - a tribal impulse of patriotism - merged with various elements of anarchism and economic malaise.

By the early 1900s, all of Europe was a literal powder-keg: each nation building up arsenals and weapons of increasing technological lethality that few of the generals and men in power even comprehended how dangerous war was becoming.  While the peace held, it was merely over the fact nobody wanted to be the idiot to start the whole thing blowing up.  Nobody wanted the blame once the dust settled...

Except for the ones who didn't care.

For all the politicians and men of power who knew to tread lightly, Europe was also filled with ethnic factions subsumed by the aging Empires affected by the same Nationalist pride.  Except that Nationalist pride drove them - especially the Serbians in the Austrian-held Balkans - towards a desire for self-determination, the right to form their own nation outside of imperial dominance.  They'd seen nations like Greece gain their independence from the Ottoman Empire - a Middle Eastern empire on the edge of the European boiling pot - and they'd seen Italy and Germany form themselves into true nations out of divided squabbling states.  So these smaller states, these ethnic groups, sought their own nations.

This brings us to Serbia.

Serbians had been suffering for centuries, a once proud eastern European culture taken over by the Ottomans in the late 1300s.  By the mid-19th Century they were able to fight back to gain some independence from the Ottomans only to suffer new rule under the Austria-Hungarians as part of a Russo-Turkish treaty.  While Serbia retained some independence as a nation it still had to answer to the Habsburgs in Vienna, and was blocked from expanding further influence in the Balkan region.

The resentments led to various factions in Serbia plotting for action against the Austrians.  Violence and riots were common throughout the region leading up into 1914.  When the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria decided on a visit to the region as part of his military duties to the Navy (Austria-Hungary had access to the Mediterranean through their hold of Bosnia), he also planned on visiting Sarajevo for a museum dedication on the date of his wedding anniversary with his beloved wife Sophie.

That was June 28.

Welcome to the anniversary date of the starting point of World War I: the assassination of the Archduke and his wife.

Done as a protest against Austria-Hungarian hegemony, for Serbian nationalism pushing for a Greater Serbia dominating all of the Balkans, it was the excuse the powers back in Vienna needed to stomp down on a Serbian nation they viewed as a threat.

Problem was, Russia had become allies of Serbia by then.  Russia's interests in eastern Europe had always been there ever since the birth of their own empire.  When Austria-Hungary mobilized for a war on Serbia by July 28, it triggered clauses in treaties Russia had with Serbia and with their Entente with France and UK to mobilize, which triggered Germany's mobilization, which triggered France's...

One trigger unleashed another.  At no point did any national leader "man up" and say "wait, this is stupid, this is a fight between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, it doesn't involve us!"  Germany didn't need to mobilize against Russia... France didn't need to mobilize versus Germany... Germany didn't need to invade Belgium to preemptively fight France, which gave Great Britain the excuse to jump in... except that there were enough people in power in each of those nations who argued that war was war, that it would be quick and easy with everybody's allies lining up to fight it, and now was the time to pitch in.

Like Blackadder said, bollocks.

Whatever ideals or hope there had been in the 19th Century that humanity as a whole was stepping towards a more evolved, artistic, sensible future died in the muddy trenches of the war fronts.  Once started, neither side had little incentive to end it fearing the consequences of national collapse and panic.  For four years, the European powers pummeled each other until they had placed serious strains on their manpower and resources.

None of it ended well.

Germany, trying to destroy Russia from within, unleashed a communist uprising in the heart of a frayed Russia that led to the rise of the Soviet Union and to the horrors of Stalin.  Austria-Hungary fell apart through a prolonged war that drained their resources.  Italy, jumping in late on the side of the French-UK-Russian Entente, found their fortunes ruined in disastrous military campaigns that collapsed their government, leading to the rise of the Fascists under Mussolini.  The Ottoman Empire fell apart through British intervention in the tribal uprisings across the Middle East.  Great Britain and France lost hundreds of thousands of men against the German lines.  Germany used up much of its resources and men as well.  Germany's desperation against the UK led to their attacking American shipping and trade interests, dragging the United States into the war.

When the fighting finally stopped on November 11 1918, it was due more to fatigue on all sides than due to any actual victory.  But Germany's government fell apart as a result of the armistice, and France and Great Britain wielded enough influence on the following peace process that its lopsided punishments on Germany convinced a good number of politicians and historians to note that the peace wouldn't last (and it was because some of them like General Foch believed the treaty was too lenient and would allow Germany to rebuild).  And we all know what that bloody Treaty of Versailles led to...

It didn't help that some of the underlying issues causing the war - the fervent tribalism that masqueraded as nationalism, for example - weren't properly resolved.  France and Great Britain still had their empires to maintain after all, and they exerted their influences into the Middle East by carving up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire into nations that forced the wrong ethnic groups in the region into the wrong states.  While the bloody history of the Middle East has existed long before the European map-makers made their mark in the region, the drawing up of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Palestine (without an Israel at that time), Turkey and other regional nations with reckless disregard for ignored groups like the Kurds and ignorance of the divisions between Shia and Sunni faiths certainly exacerbated tensions to where we've got the bloody chaos the world endures to this day.

It was 100 years ago the modern world was born.  In fire and in blood and in death.  We've been dealing with the consequences ever since, more than any other historical event preceding it.

God help us all today.

Presidential Character: Week Twenty-Eight, Few People Are As Dangerous As an Idealist As President

Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America, my fellow citizens — I do not say it in disparagement of any other great people — America is the only idealistic Nation in the world.  - Woodrow Wilson

I've spoken before about -isms.  I'm not a huge fan of -isms: a political (sometimes philosophic, but often at odds with actual philosophy) worldview that tends towards absolutist, nothing-can-fail belief.  Libertarianism, Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, Monarchism, Nationalism, Anarchism, they've all got flaws and yet to even point that out brings out the True Believers railing against your Blaspheme.  Even Pragmatism has its issues (yeah, I went there.  Deal with it).


Idealism - in this definition a belief in a high-value ideal (something flawless or perfect) that is at odds with the real world - is one of the worst beliefs a national leader can hold.  It may seem nice to have an Idealist in charge, someone with a high moralistic bent eager to forge a better world, but given the day-to-day struggles and compromises that make governance work an Idealist in the White House can quickly lead to broken government and shattered lives.

When I first read James David Barber's Presidential Character book, I was amazed that he had placed Woodrow Wilson in with the Active-Negative crowd.  This was years ago, in college during one of my Poli Sci classes I needed to take for my Journalism degree.  I was operating with the knowledge gleaned from high school textbooks: textbooks that merely summarized history, not provided better detail or context or enlightenment.  Textbooks that pointed to Wilson as a Great Man, desirous of peace after a disastrous world war, felled by rivals who were slighted by his foreign policy vision.

Barber (pg. 48-57 mostly, 4th ed.) provided better detail and context: Wilson-As-Idealist made him straight-up Uncompromising, a key component of A-N behavior.  For someone as learned as Wilson was - the only President to be a PhD, and the first President to genuinely study politics and public administration as a career - he did little research nor show much respect for facts and knowledge outside of his argument.
Things that Wilson were: Wilson was a trained orator and debater, visiting lecturer and professor at various colleges before settling down at Princeton, an avid sports fan.  He was also uncompromising to the Nth degree:

Wilson was no blundering bully; part of his persuasive power was that he put his case so well. But he could not brook opposition at close quarters. He wanted agreement, support, allegiance - not controversy...  As Colonel House, writing before his break with Wilson, explained, the President "finds great difficulty in conferring with men against whom, for some reason, he has a prejudice and in whom he can find nothing good." (pg.50-51)

This was someone who wrote in his doctoral thesis turned book Congressional Government about how the U.S. Constitution's model of checks and balances were flawed: that power divided between the legislature (Congress) and executive (President) created a nation lacking accountable leadership.  Wilson abhorred compromise, the currency of governance in a working federal system: things were either Right or Wrong, and the Right Way the only way.  He felt the President could, should serve as a parliamentary leader with a compliant Congress running under the President's majority party.  This was someone unprepared to deal with a Congress that was by law and practice separate from the Presidency...

In terms of the era, Wilson was part of the Progressive period that saw more political reform over its 20 year run - from Roosevelt to Taft to Wilson - than our nation had seen in nearly 200 years.  During this era we had amendments reforming our taxation to a progressive income tax (16th), an amendment to directly elect senators (17th), an amendment allowing women the vote (19th).  There was also an amendment prohibiting alcohol (18th), the grandest attempt yet by idealists looking to cleanse the nation of the sin of drunkenness, but it was an overreach into social behavior that no law could uphold, leading to future politicians to repeal the 18th with the 21st.  Wilson had a hand in some of these amendments (he supported suffrage), stood against a few others (he vetoed the Volstead Act enforcing Prohibition but was overridden), but basically presided over the culmination of efforts that defined the age.

Wilson also finished a decade-long effort to resolve the economic woes our nation suffered over the struggles of national banks, gold standard vs. silver, and the deep cycles of Depressions and Panics.  The formation of the Federal Reserve System - in response to the Panic of 1907 - was finalized under Wilson's direction.  In these respects, Wilson had a long-standing impact on the nation's well-being.

Wilson's greatest failing wasn't the first World War.  As President he did his duty to answer the nation's needs first: and the nation didn't need to go to war when it started in 1914.  As President he did his duty when it became clear by 1917 that Germany wasn't going to let the United States perform "business as usual" trying to trade with nations (Great Britain) at war against Germany (to be fair to Germany, U.S. neutrality excused a lot of material - non-military but stuff like food and medical supplies - getting shipped to England that helped keep that nation fighting).

No, Wilson's greatest failing was managing the peace that followed the armistice (Ironic in that Wilson wanted to be a peacemaker: he had seen the aftermath of war in the Reconstruction Era and understood the costs). He decided on making a direct effort to press his Fourteen Points - his peace plans to ensure no more world wars - and did so with a naive belief he could debate his point of view to successful solution.

Wilson failed to realize the level of enmity France had against Germany - stemming from the disastrous war of 1870 that humiliates France to this day (much of the "surrender" mockery comes from how swiftly a newly forged German nation stomped on a larger, more historically significant French nation) - and also failed to realize how eager the UK and France were to keep their overseas empires afloat (and expand by taking over German/Austrian/Ottoman remnants).  An idealistic man not used to compromise was forced by the reality of dealing with global leaders on equal footing as his to give up on Point after Point he tried to establish as part of the peace process.  It didn't help that Wilson fell ill during the trip and wasn't physically capable of arguing his position with a vengeful French leadership.  He clung to his last Point - the formation of a League of Nations to use diplomacy to enforce peace between nations - as a long-term fix for the Points he had to give up.

But because Wilson's Fourteen Points were used as an argument for Germans to end the war, the Germans were angered by the betrayal when France's aims - to break German military might and impose War Guilt on them (when it really should have fallen to Serbia and Austria) - became the foundation of the Treaty of Versailles.  That would be the beginning of national anger that would come back to bite the whole world on its collective ass...

The bigger problem came from back here at home.  When Wilson went overseas, he did so on his own terms and with his own people.  At no time did he consult with the Senate - the body that has to ratify any treaties - and it was a Senate that happened to be held by the Republican Party.  When Wilson returned, it was to face Henry Cabot Lodge, his arch-nemesis and the one man determined to stick it to Wilson in the worst way.

Lodge was not an Isolationist - someone who believed the United States should just stay out of meddling in foreign affairs - but he benefited from a strain of that movement that railed against the League of Nations as threatening national sovereignty (the fear of the New/One World Order we see today).  Lodge also benefited from the fact that Wilson had no idea how to forge a consensus among his own political allies in the Senate and Congress: the Democrats were hopelessly divided among themselves on the Treaty, giving Lodge ample working room to keep Wilson from getting his Treaty and League of Nations passed.

Wilson, ever convinced of the Righteousness of his cause, and convinced he could use his oratory skill by speaking directly to the people, decided to go on national tour rather than deal with a Congress he couldn't control, speaking wherever he could to argue for his peace plan... and driving himself pretty much into frail health, leading up to a devastating stroke that would incapacitate him for the rest of his failed second term.

In hindsight, some of Wilson's beliefs spoke true.  He was right in the long run that the United States could not afford to be isolationist, that our failure to join a League that our own President designed would leave it weakened and incapable of stopping the wave of fascism, military adventurism, and empire-building that would consume the globe by the 1930s.  Wilson's problem was that he couldn't even comprehend how other people could oppose him on that, and couldn't figure out ways to deal on the issue.

Wilson believed in the Great Man theory of history: that a will to perfection embodied in one all-powerful leader would guide a grateful nation onto the proper track of history.  He never understood what the Founders understood: it takes a nation (made up of Men and States) to build a nation, and that meant getting 120 million or so Americans (at the time of Wilson's tenure) to agree on something for better or worse.

And yeah, don't get me started on Wilson's terrible civil rights record.  Partly from Wilson's own personal beliefs (born in Virginia and coming of age during Reconstruction) which read today looks a lot like patronizing ignorance: and partly from the fact that Wilson was the first Democrat in the White House since Cleveland and so filled his Cabinet with far too many Southern Democrat segregationists as a means of promoting future party leadership.  That's not even going into the first Red Scare this nation ever saw under the Palmer Raids.

Next up: A President Whose Worst Enemies Were His Closest Drinking Buddies

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