Since then, diplomacy has evolved greatly, coming to mean different things, to different people, at different times, ranging from the elegant (“the management of relations between independent states by the process of negotiations”) to the inelegant (“the art of saying nice ‘doggie’ until you can find a rock”).
High marks go to the diplomats of the American Revolution whose realism compelled them to think and act in terms of power, rightfully eschewing ideology and moral principles. There was, in fact, precious little room for manoeuvre, and the fear of failure was a constant companion.
Similarly, the best statecraft of Bismarck’s classic diplomacy in the run-up to the 20th century could do nothing to avoid the drift toward the abyss of war. Consequently, Western civilization was about to enter a “time of troubles,” comparable to the self-destructive rage that afflicted the city-states of ancient Greece.
Whether a particular diplomatic mission was given the rank of an embassy or legation — whether its chief was an ambassador or minister — formerly depended upon the importance that the two governments attached to their mutual relations. During the first century of its existence, the US maintained only legations abroad, and, reciprocally, foreign governments kept only legations in the American capital. Thereafter, embassies gradually replaced legations. The change was indicative of the growing importance that the US attached to its diplomacy.
Since the end of WW2, and for a number of reasons, especially the pressures of the Cold War and now the international war on terror, the practice of diplomacy has been broadened to include a distinctive government-to-people connection, broadly known as public diplomacy. It basically refers to the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policy. Equally important, it openly sponsors the interaction of private groups and interests in one country with those of another, facilitated by the transnational flow of information and ideas.
Always open to charges of propaganda and interference in the internal affairs of other nations, public diplomacy challenged both the spirit and the letter of the Havana Convention.
On the international level, the scope of the treaty-making power of a state is practically unlimited. It includes the acquisition of foreign territory, the cession of domestic territory, the delimitation and rectification of boundaries, the promise of mutual assistance, the guarantee of foreign investments, and the extradition of persons accused or convicted of crimes. Treaties may be of law-making character and of a multinational nature, such as the conventions on the law of the sea and on the privileges and immunities of diplomatic missions and their staff. Multilateral treaties are also the basis for the establishment of international organizations and the determination of their individual functions and powers.
British measures were designed not only to bring peace and stability to North America, but also to require the colonies to share the cost of imperial defense and administration. The colonies, however, had come to think of themselves as self-governing entities, as having “dominion status,” to use a term of later origin, and they refused to have their duties prescribed for them by parliament and king. Parliament and king were unwilling to accept such a novel theory of empire. Great Britain, consequently, found itself involved in a war, not only with its colonies, but eventually with most of Europe. The war, though not wholly disastrous to British arms, deprived Great Britain of the most valuable of its colonial possessions and cast it down from the pinnacle of power that the country had attained by the Peace of Paris of 1763.
Such a government could not make promises with assurance that they would be observed, or threats with any expectation that they would be carried out. Such a government was incapable of securing equality of commercial treatment abroad. It was incapable of enforcing its sovereignty in the area assigned to it by the Treaty of Peace of of putting an end, by either diplomacy or force, to foreign occupation of its soil. Not until after it was replaced by the more effective government provided for by the Constitution of 1787 were any of the pressing national problems solved. Even then, their solution owed much to the involvement of France, Spain, and Great Britain in the wars of the French Revolution. Then, “Europe’s distress became America’s advantage.”
Some who lived through those calm and peaceful years believed, in all seriousness, that the days of war — at least major war — were in the past. It seemed clear that given the costly and destructive potentialities of modern technology, even victors in such a struggle would lose far more than they could possibly gain. Humankind, it was assumed, was a rational being and could see the folly of squandering precious resources in a game of self-destruction. Complaining of the costly European arms race of the era, German Social Democrat Eduard Bertstein wrote in 1893 that “This continued arming, compelling the others to keep up with Germany, is a kind of warfare. I do not know whether this expression has been used previously, but one could say it is a cold war. There is no shooting, but there is bleeding,” in the sense of undermining the welfare of the peoples and the squandering of the resources needed in the work of social reform. Many thoughtful people had doubtless reached the same conclusion as British writer Norman Angel whose influential book, The Great Illusion, published in 1910, made a compelling case that no one really wins a modern war.
The first thing to keep in mind is that German leadership believed in the inevitability of war with France, and whoever its allies might be. That was the only scenario they could imagine. Then, von Schlieffen came along and realized that the war would definitely have to be fought on two fronts, against France and Russia simultaneously.
In his mind, the British could not fight a land war, a notion gleaned by their apparent dismal performance against the Boers in the South African War.
Looking back, one would have to say that von Schlieffen was at the very least basing his assessments on prejudice, because what actually frustrated his finely tuned timetable from working out was the intervention of the British Expeditionary Force. The British ability to shoot rapid fire, a hard lesson learned as a consequence of initial poor performance against the Boers, held up the German army.
Expressed alternatively, he went on: “We feel obliged to go through with this even though it will probably end in disaster.”
The anti-British thrust of German policy cannot be overstressed. In fact, the central German war aim in 1914-18 was the destruction of England and its empire, hence the frenetic energy and wealth expended on building a high sea fleet. Leading politicians and intellectuals saw Germany on the cusp of a great turning point in history that would lead to the establishment of Germany’s ambition to become a global, rather than a European, power. The world would at last be free of the deadening hand of British commerce and intellectual mediocrity, and in its place would be established the enriching and edifying German cultural heritage. Rivalry with Britain, then, no less than enmity with France, drove German war planning.
In a document only discovered in the Berlin archives after 1945 called the “September Program,” the long-established aims of the German government were set out in detail. They were, in fact, the distillation of many memoranda already tabled in various ministries, and they foresaw the complete destruction of Russia and its empire in the east; similarly, the crushing of France and the occupation of large tracts of French territory in the east, so France could never again rise as an industrial power; the permanent occupation of Belgium, in particular for the purpose of establishing large naval bases on the English Channel from where to menace Britain. Holland, being a Germanic state with overseas territories, was to be bound to Germany in a special relationship. Specially, the Dutch East Indies — present-day Indonesia — was to be made available to the German navy to allow the construction of powerful naval bases with which to hold down Britain’s Pacific Dominions as well as India. The colonies of France, Belgium, and Portugal in Africa were to be ceded to Berlin with the French colonies in the Asia Pacific region to follow suit.
While Germany, in agreeing to an armistice, accepted the Fourteen Points, the Allies did not. Britain rejected the principle of freedom of the seas, while France demanded reparations for damages. At the same time, Wilson suffered a blow in his support at home in November 1918 when Republicans scored victories in congressional elections across the nation.
Lloyd George also bent on presume from his own countrymen to punish Germany. Churchill would later recall Lloyd George’s situation:
The PM and his principal colleagues were astonished and to some extent overborne by the passion they encountered in the constituencies. The brave people whom nothing had daunted had suffered too much. Their unspent feelings were lashed by the popular press into fury. The crippled and mutilated soldiers darkened the streets. The returned prisoners told the hard tales of bonds and privation. Every cottage had its empty chair. Hatred of the beaten foe, thirst for his just punishment, rushed up from the heart of deeply injured millions.
George warned against creating new states containing large masses of German people, and opposed continuing payment of reparations beyond the war generation. “Our terms my be severe, they may be stern, even ruthless, but at the same time they can be so just that the country on which they are imposed will feel in its heart it has no right to complain. But injustice, arrogance, displayed in the hour of triumph will never be forgotten or forgiven.”
And this was not the first time France had been attacked by Germany. The French were still smarting from the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1), in which the French were crushed. In the peace that followed, Germany, it was well remembered, demanded that France pay an enormous war indemnity and relinquish its border territory, Alsace-Lorriane. Thus, following France’s victory in WW1, Clemenceau naturally sought to cripple Germany militarily, politically, and economically, for vengeance and to prevent Germany from ever being a threat to France again.
It stripped the defeated nation of all its colonies. Germany was to have no heavy weapons, no air force, and no army over 100K men. Finally, and most controversially at the time — and significantly for the future — France and Britain levied on Germany reparations to cover the entire cost of the war, including such secondary expenses as pensions.
The author reserved most of his scorn, however, for Clemenceau, the man who viewed the affairs of Europe as “a perpetual prize fight, of which this round is certainly not the last.” According to Keynes, the French leader sought more than revenge from a wartime enemy — he sought the virtual destruction of a political and economic rival: “He sees the issue in terms of France and Germany, not of humanity and of European civilization struggling forwards to a new order.” For Keynes, then, nothing less than the future of Europe was at stake.
Finally, Keynes called attention to the fact that Germany’s fate was intertwined with Europe’s; with Germany crippled, the entire European economy would suffer. His official outlook was grim: “An inefficient, unemployed, disorganized Europe faces us, torn by internal strife, and international hate, fighting, starving, pillaging, and lying.”
Action is paralyzed if everybody is to consult everybody else about everything before it is taken. The events will always outstrip the changing situation in these Balkan regions. Besides, somebody must have the power to plan and act; consultative machinery would be a mere obstruction, always overridden in any case of emergency by direct interchange between you and me, or either you and Stalin. The Soviet troops will probably do what they like anyhow.
Why is all this effective direction to be broken up into a committee of mediocre officials such as we are littering about the world? Why can you and I not keep this in our hands considering how we see eye to eye about so much of it?
While the Government of the US is fully aware of the existence of problems between Great Britain and the Soviet Union, this Government should not assume the attitude of supporting either country as against the other. Rather, this Government should assert the independent interest of the US (which is also believed to be in the general interest) in favor of equitable arrangements designed to attain general peace and security on a basis of good neighborship, and should not assume the American interest requires it at this time to identify its interests with those of either the Soviet Union or Great Britain.
“I am aware of the realities of this war, and of the fact that we were too weak to win it without Russia’s cooperation.
I recognize that Russia’s war effort has been masterful and effective and must, to a certain extent, find its reward at the expense of other peoples in eastern and central Europe. But with all of this, I fail to see why we must associate ourselves with this political program, so hostile to the interests of the Atlantic community as a whole, so dangerous to everything which we need to see preserved in Europe. Why could we not make a decent and definite compromise with it — divide Europe frankly into spheres of influence — keep ourselves out of the Russian sphere and keep the Russians out of ours.”
For Kennan, such a policy “would have been the best thing we could do for ourselves and for our friends in Europe, and the most honest approach we could have made to the Russians. Instead of this, what have we done?
Although it was evident that the realities of the after-war were being shaped while the war was in progress we have consistently refused to make clear what our interests and our wishes were, in eastern and central Europe. We have refused to name any limit for Russian expansion and Russian responsibilities, thereby confusing the Russians and causing them constantly to wonder whether they are asking too little or whether it was some kind of a trap. We have refused to face political issues and forced others to face them without us. We have advanced no positive, constructive program for the future of the continent: nothing that could have encourage our friends, nothing that could appeal to people on the enemy’s side of the line.”
Though sympathetic with some of Kennan’s arguments, Bohlen was quick to note that the foreign policy he spoke of could not be made in a democracy. Only totalitarian states can make and carry out such policies.
Stalin’s decision to sponsor unilaterally a minority government in Romania in March, not to mention continuing differences over the composition of the Polish government, suggested both to Roosevelt and the State Department that what the Kremlin really thought about was what Stalin once called “the algebra of declarations” as opposed to “practical arithmetic.” Stalin always preferred the latter. To Churchill, it must have appeared as nothing less than the first fruit of “the pedantic interference of the US” with his own preferred plans for the division of Europe.
However, it implies a tendency to subservience on the side of the junior partner that generally has been conspicuously lacking. The two Pacific nations customarily have been as one on major ideological and strategic issues. Their relationship in other areas justly could be called turbulent, particularly during the tense and frustrating years of developing East-West confrontation immediately after the defeat of the Axis.
Since the last decades of the 19th century, the US could normally count on at least 15 times the population and 19 times the economic resources of Australia. This huge disparity in power had one inevitable consequence: in any diplomatic partnership, the US was always going to be vastly more important to Australia than Australia to the US. In this sense, then, the ANZUS Treaty can be seen as a triumph of Australian diplomacy.
Australia, suspicious of what it regards as American economic imperialism, and determined not to be pushed around, while at the same time continuing to share with the Australian people the complacent assumption that when the next war comes, if it does, the US will bail them out just as it did last time. It appeared that Australia expected to enjoy all the advantages of being an ally without undertaking any of the responsibilities.