Hi LindyBill; Re the Matthew Fontaine article blaming Woodrow Wilson for the Communists.
(1) It seems a bit much to blame US presidents for every nut case regime that occurred anywhere in the world over past century.
(2) Again, as usual, the author failed to reveal the exact circumstances of the alternative universe where the Allies were more active at pursuing the Bolshevists. As usual, he ignores the very real complications and difficulties such a policy would face. I, having a direct connection to these alternative universes can present the consequences of the alternative actions. In our history, the Allies gave plenty of support to the White Russians, even including some military forces. But the Communists won anyway. In his alternative universe, the Allies increased their support substantially, but as with many other attempted interventions of the 20th century (i.e. US in Vietnam, Russia in Afghanistan), the result demonstrated the fact that military forces are almost useless at changing the governments preferred by civilians. Unlike the US freeing of Afghanistan from Taliban (i.e. Arab) control, or the US freeing of France from Nazi German control, the locals did not perceive the Communists as an outside force. Instead, they perceived the Capitalist West as the outside force and fought against us. Eventually, after 10 years of conflict and millions of dead, the Allies gave up on Soviet Russia.
Re: "Critics of the Wilson administration believe that the United States was indecisive and ineffective when it came to dealing with the Bolshevik government."
For Christ's sake! Russia is on the other side of the planet! Given the state of transportation and communication at the time it's hardly a surprise that the US had little to do with Russia.
Re: "Wilson believed in doing less rather than more when it came to Russia. He opposed the interventionists and instead sought a quarantine approach that closely resembled the containment theory of the 1950s."
Ah, now we see the purpose of the article. It's another convenient analysis of history on the basis of, as Pat Buchanan puts it, "war forever", which is what "intervention" really means.
The guy is a moron. Here's the numbers (for modern states, but US was also proportionally weaker and smaller at the time) can you predict the result of the intervention:
Popn Area (sq km) US KIA
Vietnam: 79,939,014 329,560 58,168
Russia: 145,470,197 16,995,800 ???
As Napoleon discovered, Russia is big. Very big. When Russia folded, Germany was able to transfer about a half million men to the Western front. This was what the Germans were using to hold the Russians back. To "intervene" (i.e. conquer and suppress) Russia would have required far more than just those 40 divisions. In other words, the US barely had enough soldiers to keep the Russians from crossing the border. Occupying Russia was not possible for the US. Russia is about the same size as the US, and it's simply not possible for the US to keep that size land mass under control. A million man army was insufficient to intervene in Vietnam, Russia would have been worse.
I know, I know, Russia was in tatters and anyone could have marched from Berlin to Novosibirsk with no more than a regiment. That's what Hitler said just before he got his butt kicked. Napoleon also made commentary that was similar, and Saddam Hussein said the same thing just prior to getting stopped by revolutionary Iran. The fact is that "intervening" (oh, I'm sorry, a grammar mistake crept in. Instead of the intransitive verb, I should use a verb transitive. And that would be "invading".) these countries makes the locals unite to kill you.
Re: "Nearly always, American diplomats found themselves reacting to events rather than anticipating them."
Oh, that's a low blow! Surely the Americans would be able to predict things like Russian Revolutions. It's so obvious to us now, after 75 years of 20-20 hind sight what would happen.
The fact is that no one can predict the future that far in advance. The reason no one knew Russian in 1913 was because Russia didn't matter. Russia only began to matter after the Communists took over and improved the economy (at least for a few decades).
Re: "The fall of the Romanoff regime came as a shock to the ill-prepared Americans. Wilson quickly recognized the liberal-leaning provisional government, but it, too, fell. The United States and its allies were furious that the Bolshevik government that took control in November 1917 would not continue the war against the Germans."
This is part of the nub. Here the US is saying to the Russian people: "We just want to help you, and by the way, grab your gun because we want to help you by having you die for us on the Eastern Front." As one would very well imagine, this sort of logic did not go over very well with the "masses". What a joke that we could have strong-armed the Russians into fighting the Germans. The laugh of this is that the author completely ignores the basic reason why the "liberal-leaning provisional government" fell so quickly. Here's a reference, for those who are unfamiliar with the Russian revolution, (and straight from the BBC):
Why were the Bolsheviks able to seize power in October 1917?
* the Provisional Government did not end the war with Germany, which many Russians wanted them to do.
...
bbc.co.uk
There is absolutely no historical doubt whatsoever that foreign intervention to keep Russia in the war would not have played very well to Ivan and Ivana. If the US had intervened against the Communists (more than to the extent that we did), the result would simply have been to make it more "obvious" to the Russian masses that the Communists were right when they said that the "Capitalists" were trying to enslave them. People have selective perception, and this applies to enemy populations even better than it does to historians.
-- Carl |
