‘A conference now': Lloyd George and peacemaking, 1939: Sidelights from the unpublished letters of A.J. Sylvester

Lloyd George's latest infatuation [with Hitler, after his visit to Germany in 1936] was something more than the momentary lapse of a failing dotard. To sup with the devil was completely in character for the man who, at the summit of affairs in 1919, had been drawn to power like a moth to a candle, who had come to worship success for its own sake and on its own terms and to make it the first and last determinant oi his actions; and who, for his final appearance on the world stage, a few years after the Berchtesgaden visit, aspired to a role that would reconcile power with practical politics ‐ that of a British counterpart to Marshal Petain; in which capacity, let it be said, he would doubtless have pulled off a better “deal” than most. (A. Lentin, Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson and the Guilt of Germany. An Essay in the Pre‐history of Appeasement, 1984, p. 154.)     

Sir Eric Phipps, the British Government, and the Appeasement of Germany, 1933-1937

This article argues that Sir Eric Phipps' reputation as an “anti-appeaser” of Germany during his Berlin embassy 1933-1937 is not accurate. While Phipps was not in favor of placating Hitler by making territorial concessions, he had much in common with those who had sought a rapprochement with Germany in the 1920s through a policy of inclusion and reconciliation. Particular importance is placed on Phipps' attitude towards the League of Nations, with detailed consideration also being accorded to his relationship with the British Foreign Secretaries and Foreign Office officials of the period, as well as his views on the Entente Cordiale.     

How Grand was Reagan's Strategy, 1976-1984?

This article disputes the assertions of the new Reagan literature. Drawing upon radio broadcasts, speeches, correspondences, and documents from his presidential library, as well as recently published diaries from his White House years, it argues that Ronald Reagan had no grand strategy in the years 1976-1984. Indeed, throughout this period, he possessed two less-than-grand strategies I label “peace through strength” and “a crusade for freedom.” Each of these contained its own respective set of goals and employed its own corresponding set of tactics. Yet there was no grand strategy for ending the Cold War.     

The Polish Blitz,More than a Mere Footnote to History: Poland and Preventive War with Germany, 1933

The January 1933 appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany marked the beginning of the end of the fragile post-war peace throughout Europe. The Polish leadership had good reason to fear his threats of revising the Treaty of Versailles. Realising that Hitler was too dangerous to remain in power, the Polish leadership led by Marshal Józef Pi?sudski prepared for a preventive war against Germany. Unfortunately, the appeasement policy among the Western Powers condemned this plan to failure and forced Poland into signing a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1934; thus dooming Poland's existence. To test his premonitions about Hitler, Pi?sudski created several international “incidents” concerning the Free City of Danzig, designed to test both Germany and whether the Western Powers would fight to uphold the Treaty of Versailles. Pi?sudski's efforts offer proof that Poland deserves more credit for its determination to deal with a rising tide of Nazi Germany.     

“Only the USSR Has… Clean Hands”: The Soviet Perspective on the Failure of Collective Security and the Collapse of Czechoslovakia, 1934–1938 (Part 2)

The second part of this two part essay focuses on the Czechoslovak crisis in 1938, based on papers from the Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii in Moscow and the recently published journals of Soviet ambassador in London, Ivan M. Maiskii. The essay is also grounded in British, French, and Romanian archives, and the standard document collections, including the American and German series. The Soviet Union did all that it could do, given Anglo-French abdication, to help the Czechoslovak goverment defend its independance against Nazi Germany. The British and French portrayed a manipulative Soviet Union, seeking to abandon treaty commitments to Czechoslovakia, while at the same time they fled from obligations to Prague and projected their own evasions onto Moscow. In spite of everything, the Czechoslovak president, Edvard Bene?, might have held the fate of his country in his own hands. Would he do “something crazy”, would Czechoslovakia fight alone at the outset, hoping that public opinion would force France and Great Britain into war? Tragically, Bene? would not bid va banque and indeed was complicit in the Anglo-French abandonment of his country. By its reckoning, the Soviet Union escaped the crisis with “clean hands”, though a clear conscience was no consolation in Moscow, where the government had to contemplate the ruin of collective security and its own isolation in Europe.     

Identity,Insecurity, and Great Power Politics:The Tragedy of German Naval Ambition Before the First World War

Why did Germany pursue naval expansion at the turn of the twentieth century? This question has long puzzled scholars of international security, who consider German naval ambition to be an instance of suboptimal arming—a decision that decreased Germany's overall security and risked the survival of the German state. This article argues that the social desire to be recognized as a world power guided Germany's decision to challenge British naval hegemony. From the beginning of its naval planning, Germany had one clear aim: a powerful fleet of battleships stationed in the North Sea would alter the political relationship with Britain in such a way that it could no longer ignore Germany's claim to world power status. Reconceptualizing Germany's naval ambition as a struggle for recognition elucidates the contradictions at the center of German naval strategy, explaining how the doomed policy could proceed despite its certain failure. The article concludes that the power-maximizing practices of great powers should be seen as an important component of identity construction and an understudied dimension of contemporary security practice.     

South Africa: The Order of Good Hope

Past South African governments already felt the need for honours as instruments of diplomacy in the 1930s, but only instituted the Order of Good Hope in 1973. Inherited British attitudes to honours, the cessation in 1925 of the award of honours bearing titles, and long periods in which civilian honours were not awarded contributed to its frugal use. Wishing to recognize foreign assistance to the liberation movements, from 1994 President Mandela frequently put the Order to use, freely awarding leaders of foreign governments. However, restraint returned after the initial surge. Since instituting new orders in 2003, President Mbeki has emphasised substantial merit as the key to admission.

“Yes, I should have given more praise.” The Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon, became Commander-in-Chief and later Prime Minister of Great Britain, when asked whether there was anything in his life that he could have done better.

     

Comte's Caveat: How We Misunderstand Terrorism

Since the end of the Cold War, and particularly since September 11, 2001, the U.S. Government has substantially misunderstood its circumstances and has launched policies based on a compound error that has made those circumstances worse. The error consists of three parts: thinking the United States had more usable power after the Cold War when it had less; misreading the sources of apocalyptical terrorism; and failing to correct its misreading because of a bias set deep in its own political culture. Seeing the situation and the problems as they really are would lead to vast changes in both foreign and homeland security policies.     

“A Projected New Trusteeship”? American Internationalism, British Imperialism, and the Reconstruction of Iran, 1938-1947

Diplomatic histories identify an early cold war “paradigm shift” as restoring the troubled Anglo-American “special relationship.” However, an integrated analysis of Second World War and post-war Iran suggests continuity in ideologically based Anglo-American differences on the reconstruction of the postwar world economic periphery, and that this was the defining context for crucially elusive relations during successive crises to come. The Americans had embraced Iran as an exemplar of “new deal internationalism,” being as much opposed to competing British neo-imperialist political and economic models there as to Soviet encroachments. They continued to identify autonomous British policies and interests antipathetically during the early cold war period and beyond, not merely out of economic self-interest, but at crucial moments disavowing geopolitical realpolitik. This perplex also determined during future crises of British power, in Iran and throughout the Middle East, that US interests would shift to new relationships, whenever having to decide, with indigenous peripheral actors rather than neo-imperialist European allies, precluding institutionalized, comprehensive Anglo-American partnership, which Britain had hoped would preserve and extend its role as a regional power.     

An Economic Bridgehead: Weimar Germany's Attempt to Mediate Between Soviet Russia and the United States

Between 1919 and 1926 Weimar Germany pursued a foreign policy that sought to place Germany in a position to mediate between Soviet Russia and the United States. In particular, Berlin was eager to act as a mediator in the economic and commercial relations between these two powers. Germany hoped that such a policy would align it with two Powers that, like itself, were hostile to the Versailles order. Berlin also hoped that such a relationship would contribute to German postwar economic recovery and thereby to Berlin's re-emergence as a Great Power in the aftermath of its defeat in 1918. This policy culminated in 1925–1926 with Berlin's efforts to arrange for American financing of a 300 million Mark credit to the Soviet Union. Ultimately this and other efforts failed as result of Germany's own financial weakness, Washington's refusal to cooperate with Berlin's initiatives, and the nature of the Soviet economic system.     

Brazil and the league council crisis of 1926

In 1926, the League of Nations faced a serious crisis over the proposed entry of Germany. On this decision appeared to depend the success of the Locarno treaties and the future peace of Europe. To everyone's surprise German entry was blocked, not by a vengeful European power, but by Brazil. Although it was assumed that Brazil was being manipulated, in fact it had been following its own agenda at Geneva for years, and its veto was more of an unfortunate coincidence than deliberate malice. This article unravels the crisis, and looks more deeply at the failure of statesmen to make the League a truly international organization.     

Wilsonian Pragmatism? Woodrow Wilson, Japanese Immigration, and the Paris Peace Conference

“He [Wilson] was more than just an idealist: he was the personification of the heritage of idealism of the American people. He brought spiritual concepts to the peace table. He was a born crusader.”

Herbert Hoover ¹

The issue of the Japanese plea for race equality at the Paris Peace Conference is generally seen as a secondary issue for American delegates. Most accounts see Wilson as being bullied into rejecting the proposal by the Dominion delegates — most notably Australia's Billy Hughes. Analyzing his views on race and its intricate connection with immigration and examining his own and his advisers response to political allies and opponents at home and in Paris over these issues, this piece will argue that Wilson responded as much to domestic pressures as external forces in his eventual compromise with the Japanese in Paris.     

Uncertainty, risk, and trust: The Swedish—German general staff negotiations of 1910

Despite a protracted and well-established policy of neutrality, in 1910, Sweden decided to enter into negotiations with Germany concerning military collaboration in case of a Russian attack against Germany and Sweden. This article argues that behind the Swedish decision to enter into the talks was Swedish trust towards Germany to the effect that Germany would not exploit the talks for its own interests. The article discusses the phenomenon of inter-state trust in terms of risk and uncertainty, and analyzes the Swedish decision process leading to the general staff negotiations.     

At the Edge of the Modern? Diplomacy,Public Relations,and Media Practices During Houphouët-Boigny's 1962 Visit to the United States

Centred on the first post-independence state visit of Ivorian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny to the United States in May 1962, this article critically engages the recent scholarly attention that has focused on modernisation theory and international media scholarship as they apply to African diplomacy. Contrary to the pervasive post-war modernisation paradigm, it is argued that postcolonial African governments had appropriated a form of managing foreign public affairs that satisfied the logic of media performance of modern nations. If anything, the interwar and post-war nationalist upheavals in Africa provided a training ground for the likes of Houphouët-Boigny who readily appropriated Euro–American forms of political performance to advance their agenda in the public (transnational) sphere. Whereas Houphouët-Boigny and his envoys clearly displayed dexterity all along their American visit, the article demonstrates that mass communication outlets played an equally critical role in the performance of this singular moment in transnational statecraft. Analyzing the coverage of the media with historical hindsight, it appears that the Ivorian press particularly stood out because of its celebration of the African head of state and his visit. Bringing nuance to this seeming confirmation of the radical difference of African media practices and their complicity with the state, the article claims that journalists in all three countries subscribed to a “modernist” metaphysics that nurtured and was informed by the culturally chauvinistic logic of the nation-state. Thus, it concludes that the normative comparativism that has usually sustained the historiography of international media studies is more than problematic.     

A 'Week that Changed the World': Britain and Nixon's China Visit of 21-28 February 1972

British diplomats considered President Nixon's China visit of February 1972 a major political success. But while they admired the Realpolitik of Henry Kissinger, the President's National Security Adviser, they were irritated by his reticence regarding the initiative, and by the way in which this impeded their own efforts to raise the status of Britain's diplomatic mission in Peking. Initial American objections to any change in Britain's stance on the admission of the People's Republic to the UN weakened their negotiating position, and led to a protracted tussle with Peking over the status of Taiwan. Marginalized by Kissinger's conduct, the British drew some satisfaction from the fact that the State Department seemed equally by-passed     

A 'visionary hope' frustrated: J.M. Keynes and the origins of the postwar international monetary order

During the 1930s and 1940s Keynes developed the vision of a world in which every country would be able to pursue its own New Deal. He believed in the Second World War that Anglo-American partnership would provide the foundations of this benevolent new order. But his enterprise was frustrated by Washington's insistence on economic orthodoxy. It was an outcome which left Keynes pessimistic about the prospects for international economic cooperation. However the prejudices of Keynes's first biographer, Roy Harrod, in combination with the political exigencies of the early cold war period, obscured the extent of his disillusionment.     

Quiet diplomacy in a television era: The media and U.S. policy toward the republic of Korea

This study examines the role of television coverage in U.S. policy toward South Korea, focusing on the May 1980 Kwangji incident and the subsequent visit of South Korean president Chun Doo Hwan to the White House in February of 1981. It explores these two episodes in the context of major dimensions of U.S. policy toward Korea and the themes developed through sporadic, low‐level coverage of Korea by mainstream American media over the years. The analysis underscores the political impact of television's dramatic visual focus, its use of consistent visual images, its expansion of the geopolitical scope of the policy process, and its personalization of policy. The dramatically different public interpretations of the Kwangju incident and Chun visit in Korea versus the United States suggests that President Reagan's first major state visit, during which he declared that his administration would pursue “quiet diplomacy” on human rights in Korea, while successful within the United States and in the short term, was damaging over the long term.     

Beyond the Blank Cheque: Arming Iran during the Ford Administration

When President Gerald Ford decided to maintain and deepen arms relations with Iran, he cemented a momentum that became near impossible for a successor to break by continuing the policy of his predecessor Richard Nixon. Nixon had given the Shah of Iran a “blank cheque” to purchase whatever American arms he desired—short of nuclear weapons. Although Ford’s authority would be challenged by members of his own Administration and a Congress seeking to claw back some of its authority, the need to support allies in the Middle East against the threat of the Soviet Union, even during a time of détente, remained paramount.     

Beyond the American Century: Walter Lippmann and American Grand Strategy, 1943–1950

As the United States became a world Power, journalist and intellectual Walter Lippmann feared that it would become its own worst enemy. During and after the Second World War, he tried to steer the country towards coherent statecraft, to define the national interest and the limits of power, and give geopolitical expression to the role of the United States as the core of an Atlantic strategic system. But in response to world war, the Truman Doctrine, and the Korean War, he became pessimistic about the country's ability to conduct strategy effectively. In the prophetic tradition, he believed that a fatal symbiosis between America's growing strength and domestic politics led it towards crisis. Though at times ahistorical, Lippmann's concept of strategy deserves attention for its dialogue between power and identity, for its questioning of “ends” as well as means, and for its focus on the danger of self-defeating behaviour.     

Yeager,M. P. and Carter,C. (Eds) (2012). Pacts and Alliances in History. Diplomatic Strategy and the Politics of Coalitions

This article disputes the assertions of the new Reagan literature. Drawing upon radio broadcasts, speeches, correspondences, and documents from his presidential library, as well as recently published diaries from his White House years, it argues that Ronald Reagan had no grand strategy in the years 1976–1984. Indeed, throughout this period, he possessed two less-than-grand strategies I label “peace through strength” and “a crusade for freedom.” Each of these contained its own respective set of goals and employed its own corresponding set of tactics. Yet there was no grand strategy for ending the Cold War.