First political step into modern international relations

Review of Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan

Paris, 1919 – the Post-World War I peace conference of the winning allies – is many things. It was a reckoning against the so-called aggressors (or losers); a carve-up of territories and ethnic groups as ethnolinguistic nationalism was hitting full stride; and an attempt to create a new kind of international law to govern relations between nations. Viewed in one way, its “solutions” set in motion many of the conflicts that still plague us, from World War II to the territorial disputes in today’s middle east. However, it also created a number of precedents that often came to fruition later, such as decolonization and the right of people to govern themselves. Both pragmatic and idealistic, it was the first stab at establishing the modern political order, as consequential as the Peace of Westphalia. In the opinion of the author, it did pretty well, all things taken into account.

MacMillan starts with the personalities, the “Big Three”. Most important was Woodrow Wilson, the American President; his Fourteen Points set the agenda for all that followed. Wilson was an idealist, convinced of his own rectitude as if he were a figure of Christ-like moral stature, a virulent racist, and child witness to the Civil War. Though he could listen, once he made up his mind, nothing could sway him. His underling advisors were rather weak, especially when compared to his narrow minded, arrogant, domineering wife. Georges Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France and host, was the eldest; cynical, disillusioned, and enraged at Germany, he was a difficult partner, bent on keeping Germany down. Finally, there was David Lloyd George, British PM, a young and energetic doer without as much baggage as the other two. (Interestingly, he is the great-grandfather of the author.)

The first order of business was the creation of a kind of world parliament, the League of Nations. This was an unprecedented arrangement, a permanent body that should serve as a place to solve disputes between nations; discuss and vote on issues, presumably with some force of international law; and employ its own bureaucrats for administrative issues, such as managing the mandated territories. Looking back on World War I, when there was no neutral forum in which belligerent parties could meet without preconditions, the idea was to create a space for everyone to operate as equals. Backed into its DNA was the idea that all countries should be able to determine their own fates (one of the Fourteen Points). While the League is easy to dismiss as ineffective and unrepresentative, I believe it was a great innovation and a vital sign of hope and progress at the time.

Of course, given the sprawling multi-ethnic empires of the Big Three with innumerable distant territories, the League would have 40-some members – a much more manageable number than the 200+ of today. The diversity of members was also strictly limited, with few Asians and South Americans and virtually no Africans. Mired in revolution, Russia was not initially included even though it had many vital interests in play in Central Europe. As a newcomer, Japan was an active member, in particular lobbying for equal status as a non-white representative. Their interactions were supposed to be conducted openly and without secret side agreements.

With the split-up of Austria-Hungary and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire – both major losers of the war – what to do with the Balkans became a major question. The Big Three and Italy sat down to carve it up into sovereign countries. While they tried for some ethnic balance, in my opinion the decisions they made ensured that conflicts would persist. To create Yugoslavia, Croatia was grafted onto Serbia; the former was urban, with a cultivated population that was educated by the Austrians, the latter was largely rural and militarized with a less educated population; other ill-suited nationalities, including many Hungarians, were included in the mix. Poland was also re-created from German and Russian territories, guaranteeing disputes with both powers. A number of other countries were established, such as Czechoslovakia (another merge of disparate peoples even though they spoke the same language). Ethnic Germans were sprinkled throughout these countries, relegated to a minority status that enraged German nationalists, such as the young Adolf Hitler. Sudetenland was one of the Third Reich’s first territorial conquests.

The German Reich, the principal “aggressor”, represented a difficult problem. Clemenceau was determined not just to ensure France’s security, but also wanted humiliation of and even retribution on Germany. Wilson and Lloyd George were more sympathetic to Germany but acquiesced to many of Clemenceau’s demands in return for other diplomatic measures (something Wilson had promised would never occur). Territories with German majorities were “returned” to France, a large demilitarized zone was established, and crushing debt reparations imposed, some of which would last into the 1960s (if all went according to plan). In an unusual arrangement, Danzig was designated an international city, to be administered by both Poland and Germany under League mandate. Taken together, it was a recipe for alienation, fomenting instability in the Weimar Republic, and encouraging fanatical rightwing groups to denounce the entire settlement as unjust. MacMillan is notably less critical of the Big Three in this respect, arguing that many of the final decisions appeared likely to succeed at the time; this is a controversial view.

If Europe was a mess that would re-make itself following World War II, the Middle East was carved into nations that remain in conflict and internal turmoil to this day. The ignorance and cynicism of the diplomats involved is the stuff of legend: they created barely viable countries with minimal sense of national purpose or consciousness, mixed ethnolinguistic groups with no understanding of their tangled histories or geographical settings, and violated nearly all the promises made during the war for purposes of quasi-colonial domination (the “mandates”). France and Great Britain almost went to war over the division of spoils. There is a phenomenally interesting book about this process, A Peace to End all Peace by David Fromkin; see the link below.

Finally, there were the mandated territories. These were the quasi-colonial regimes set up in the territories that were taken from the German Reich and the Ottoman Empire. For the most part, they were taken over by the British and French. In my opinion, though the treatment of the peoples varied radically in accordance with local circumstances and the national interests of the mandatory powers, this was a significant experiment in international relations. The mandated territories were supposed to become independent – to determine their own fates – at some unspecified time, when they achieved some vaguely defined readiness. Some fared well, most of the others did not. Perhaps it was only a nod to the rising forces of ethnolinguistic nationalism, but it did create a system flexible enough to evolve, particularly after World War II. For a longer treatment of the issue (The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire by Susan Pedersen), see the link below.

I was surprised at how sanguine MacMillan was about the entire process. The current view, or at least what I was taught, is that the Paris 1919 Peace Conference was a titanic failure, a process undertaken by arrogant, incompetent, ignorant men, guaranteeing a series of disastrous wars and human suffering on a scale not seen since the Thirty Years War. This is the Keynes argument. MacMillan makes a good case that they worked with what they had in more or less good faith and came up with perhaps the most viable peace that they could. I have my doubts. If anything, the unrealistic scale of reparations that was imposed on Germany – eventually resulting in a rickety international structure that directly contributed to the financial crash of 1927 – is proof of the Big Three’s myopic and unrealistic expectations.

The book sketches out virtually all of the international problems in embryonic form that the world would face in the 20^th century and how the most powerful statesmen attempted to address them. This is worth reading. However, I am wary to recommend it for the lay reader who wants a popular history. About half of the book is taken up by descriptions of the options proposed and discussed, the overwhelming majority of which were rejected or ignored. It makes for a lot of dull reading that are of interest only to academics. Finally, while the aftermath is mentioned, MacMillan does not go into the consequences in sufficient detail. That would take a book in itself.

Below is a related review on the mandates: