This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The bad guy in WWI was Woodrow Wilson. Stupid and incompetent all the way. When you are dealing with a power that needs to be contained after a flare you have two options - first bloody them and then offer them generous peace and allow them to save face or beat them up really badly and punish them with harsh punitive peace.
Due to Woodrow Wilson's influence - he was so stupid that thought that league of nations is a good and viable idea the winning powers took the worst of the two approaches - punitive peace with no real enforcement mechanism, a german state that was not weakened enough to not subvert them, leaving sizable German minorities in their neighboring countries, a huge internal vacuum because of the revolution and a huge vacuum in the east due to the collapse of the russian empire. It was a recipe for disaster.
..
You're correct that 'peace without victory' was an utterly unworkable ambition, but compounding this sin the US then largely acted to undermine attempts to enforce German debts at the same time it called in the debts owed to the US by its allies. Part of this was buying too much into Keynes' doomsaying book, and part was early cold war posturing and power balancing, but at the end of the day Versailles was hardly excessive or vindictive and it was eminently reasonable that France should seek reparations having borne all the destruction while the war's loser got off comparatively lightly. It was modest compared to the treaty of Brest-Litovsk Germany had enforced on Russia the year prior (german gains in land and population here far outstripped what they lost in Versailles) , and should be seen partly in reaction to the 3B franc indemnity imposed by Germany on France in 1871. Per Stephen Shuker, it's likely Germany ended up paying no net reparations at all, having paid its immediate bills with American loans that were subsequently defaulted on in the Great Recession. Contra Keynes, who believed that Germany could not afford the ~2B marks per year for 30 years, Mantoux estimated German rearmament spending as exceeding that seven times over for each each year between 1933 and 1939.
Sally Marks' Myths of Reparations identifies two main failures in the allied prosecution of Versailles. The first was enforcement as you mention, but the second was the failure to make it clear to the German people (who again, had lost a colossal war escaping most of the destruction) the psychological reality of their defeat: “An Allied march down the Unter den Linden would have humiliated Germany briefly, but in retrospect that might have been a small price to pay”.
More options
Context Copy link
You are projecting post-1945 American hegemony back into the past.
We can argue about whether or not Woodrow Wilson was bad, but he definitely wasn't "the" bad guy because he wasn't a first-tier player. The European Great Powers went to war with each other without taking American policy into account, because they thought the most likely scenario was a short war of maneuver and there was nothing the US could do to affect the results of one. Even had they expected a long war, they would have (correctly) assumed US neutrality absent an exceptionally stupid provocation by the Central Powers.
The first meaningful opportunity for the US to meddle in WW1 (apart from selling materiel to the Allies on normal commercial terms) is when Bethmann Hollweg asks Woodrow Wilson to convene an international peace conference on the basis of status quo ante in December 1916. By this point the bloodiest battles of WW1 (Verdun and the Somme) had already been fought. And Wilson doesn't take the bait at this point - he correctly realises that neither side wanted a status quo ante peace in 1916. (Bethmann Hollweg was trying to maneuver out of situation where German domestic politics would force the adoption of unrestricted submarine warfare, which he opposed on the mostly-correct basis that if it worked it would bring the US in).
The first time the US actually meddles in WW1 is the publication of the Fourteen Points, which happens after the February Revolution in Russia, at which point the messy collapse of Tsarist Russia is already priced and can be added to the "harms of WW1 definitely not Wilson's fault" pile.
I always like Clemenceau's (possibly fake) quip about Wilson's laundry list - "four more than God."
I so want it to be true. ;-)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
OP wasn't addressing what Wilson did before he decided the US needs to enter the war, he was addressing what he did after the war ended.
And Monzer's point remains the same: Wilson wasn't a first-tier player who had the agency to overturn the preferences of the rest, and many of the factors that led to the nature of the end of WW1 (such as breakup of empires into smaller nation-states, but with ethnic mixing) were already baked in.
Wilson was The first tier player and he overrode his allies desires for more realpolitik based solution.
A good summary can be found in the The New Face of Diplomacy: Wilson and the Treaty of Versailles chapter in the Kissinger's Diplomacy
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link