Digest 36: The State Department wrote “not one page”...
‘You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life – but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do it on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud.’ T.R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness (on the 1950–53 Korean War)
‘Show me a border that wasn’t drawn in blood.’
I’m working extremely hard right now on some memos for Listening to the Other Side (my new forthcoming diplomatic-journalistic publication). Stay tuned for updates…
‘The State Department didn’t write one page’
Listening to a number of interviews with Philip Zelikow on WWI, the following clips are fascinating:
https://www.youtube.com/live/vmtPU76ggRo?si=8cfEI5zvR7Uy3y5X&t=1680
It seems like such an obvious thing. All he [Woodrow Wilson] needed to do was arrange the peace conference… He could have taken 30 minutes to understand how Theodore Roosevelt had arbitrated the Russo-Japanese War. Really, like 30 minutes. Or someone at the State Department could have written one page about that for him. No one in the State Department in this whole story wrote literally so much as one page on how to do a negotiation to end the war – even though they knew this is what the President wanted to do. And they had months of notice that he was going to move on this the instance he was re-elected.
Wilson is trying to figure out what to do. But he has no idea how to choreograph a peace conference… House [Wilson’s closest advisor] was worried that the British would be infuriated at the talk of a compromise-peace, not knowing that in fact at that very moment the British were tormenting themselves over whether to end the war and seek a compromised peace… Wilson never calls for a peace conference. He just didn’t know how to do it. House, meanwhile, is lying to the Germans about Wilson’s attitudes. The story is so strange that I think readers will find it hard to believe.
I consider it likely the State Department has no such one-page document today on Ukraine. That’s where Listening to the Other Side will come in. We will produce a world-class equivalent of the document Wilson sought – for when the moment comes it’s wanted.
Further:
They saw what needed to be done, and Woodrow Wilson and his tiny inner circle did not know how to do it. Often people can recognise a problem quite shrewdly and perceptively, yet be incompetent to solve it. This was such a case…
Wilson genuinely sought to negotiate a compromised ‘peace without victory’, as he called it. Genuinely realised that if either side gained a decisive victory, it would leave such a legacy of resentment and bitterness that such a peace would not last. So he understood the ingredients. He understood that the Germans were prepared to compromise. He understood that he had enormous leverage to get the Allied side to the peace table. He knew what the goals were. He knew he had all the tools at hand. He did not know how to use the tools.
It wasn’t that he was too idealistic. He was practical. But simply incompetent in the peace-making.
This could be the catastrophe unfolding right now, that very few seem to realise.
You’re at a turning point in the First World War. The war is stalemated. Neither side thinks they have any good military options to bring it to a close. Very secretly they are looking for ways out. Very secretly Woodrow Wilson is planning to do it. And trying to figure out a way to mediate an end to the war.
The enormous, tragic turning point is how he not only fails to end the war – which then becomes a pivot point for world history. He ends up fumbling things so badly that the German high command throws up their hands; U-boat war; and now he brings America into the war which actually widens it, prolongs it, and all these cascading consequences.
If you reconstruct it from the point of view of the policymaker, you actually see all sorts of connections between things… You see that when Wilson is trying to set the conditions to bring the war to an end, simultaneously, in one week, he a) drafts a peace message calling for everyone to come to a peace conference on terms for a compromise, b) quite secretly arranges with the Federal Reserve board to cut off all further unsecured loans to the Allied side, c) secretly sends a message to the British government lashing them to tell them it’s time to make a compromised peace now. He writes only to the British because he already holds in his hand a secret plea from the Germans to mediate an end to the war, and putting compromise offers on the table for him to use.
You can see all these things going on in the same week. Which, of course, just compounds the fascination of ‘why didn’t this work out?’
Wilson felt that he couldn’t assist in bringing about an armistice because of an upcoming Presidential election. Does this feel relevant to anyone today?
https://www.youtube.com/live/vmtPU76ggRo?si=qvE7kjifbvEvmrNx&t=3273
The Germans made their peace move in August. Question: Why didn’t Wilson then start all this process going in August? Why did he wait until his first day in office after he was re-elected? It was the first thing he was going to turn to. Wilson felt he couldn’t launch the peace process during the campaign. He felt he needed to wait until after he was re-elected to start. And he literally started his first day back in the office. But, by then, you’re already in the middle of November. You’ve lost now three months. This turns out to be very important in the chronology of British politics. It also turns out to be important in German politics because the Germans are getting more and more impatient; militarists are banging at the door… it gets harder to hold them off with every passing month, because the Germans are so eager to find some way of ending the war. And if you can’t end it with peace talks, the military is saying they can end it. So the delay for Wilson in getting his efforts going – which he then mangles, for months – and is slowly at the end of January finally figuring out… he runs out of time.
Note the difference between what was said publicly (for domestic politics), and what’s said in private:
Lloyd George’s attitude is ‘I’m going to take this public stance as Mr Fight to the Finish’, while privately I’m saying our cause in the war is hopeless. Because the posture of being Mr Fight to the Finish is going to position me publicly against the weak and declining Asquith. My only road to supreme power now is as the War Prime Minister.
The decision-making parallels between what required America’s involvement in WWI and events today are uncanny.
‘Hidden history’
Foreign Affairs on Tuesday:
It’s funny that they’ve called this a ‘hidden history’, because I’m pretty sure I spent three months of my life full-time sending this to all manner of editor (including Foreign Affairs, twice) August–October last year – with notes of endorsement from the leading Turkish and Israeli diplomats – and every single editor rejected it.
I’ve seen this happen to others I look up to (something is said relentlessly; gets ignored or called a conspiracy theory at best; months later traditional media comes out and says the exact same thing (often in an inferior way) calling it a scoop; and no editor ever gets back in touch to say: you know what, you might actually have had a point). It’s galling actually to experience.
Tirade aside, there are some interesting points in this piece.
Accounts elide completely a fact that, in retrospect, seems extraordinary: in the midst of Moscow’s unprecedented [Feb 2022] aggression, the Russians and the Ukrainians almost finalized an agreement that would have ended the war and provided Ukraine with multilateral security guarantees, paving the way to its permanent neutrality and, down the road, its membership in the EU.
…the history of the spring 2022 talks might seem like a distraction with little insight directly applicable to present circumstances. But Putin and Zelensky surprised everyone with their mutual willingness to consider far-reaching concessions to end the war.
…the sides announced they had agreed to a joint communiqué. The terms were broadly described during the two sides’ press statements in Istanbul. But we have obtained a copy of the full text of the draft communiqué, titled “Key Provisions of the Treaty on Ukraine’s Security Guarantees.” According to participants we interviewed, the Ukrainians had largely drafted the communiqué and the Russians provisionally accepted the idea of using it as the framework for a treaty.
The treaty envisioned in the communiqué would proclaim Ukraine as a permanently neutral, nonnuclear state. Ukraine would renounce any intention to join military alliances or allow foreign military bases or troops on its soil. The communiqué listed as possible guarantors the permanent members of the UN Security Council (including Russia) along with Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, Poland, and Turkey.
Although Ukraine would be permanently neutral under the proposed framework, Kyiv’s path to EU membership would be left open, and the guarantor states (including Russia) would explicitly “confirm their intention to facilitate Ukraine’s membership in the European Union.” This was nothing short of extraordinary.
…the communiqué suggests that Putin was willing to accept.
The communiqué also includes another provision that is stunning, in retrospect: it calls for the two sides to seek to peacefully resolve their dispute over Crimea during the next ten to 15 years.
“We were very close in mid-April 2022 to finalizing the war with a peace settlement,” one of the Ukrainian negotiators, Oleksandr Chalyi, recounted at a public appearance in December 2023.
…instead of embracing the Istanbul communiqué and the subsequent diplomatic process, the West ramped up military aid to Kyiv and increased the pressure on Russia, including through an ever-tightening sanctions regime. The United Kingdom took the lead.
In the 2023 interview, Arakhamia ruffled some feathers by seeming to hold Johnson responsible for the outcome. “When we returned from Istanbul,” he said, “Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we won’t sign anything at all with [the Russians]—and let’s just keep fighting.”
In their public remarks, the Americans were never quite so dismissive of diplomacy as Johnson had been. But they did not appear to consider it central to their response to Russia’s invasion.
…Still, the behind-the-scenes work on the draft treaty continued and even intensified in the days and weeks after the discovery of Russia’s war crimes, suggesting that the atrocities at Bucha and Irpin were a secondary factor in Kyiv’s decision-making.
…it is a reminder that Putin and Zelensky were willing to consider extraordinary compromises to end the war.
There are two things I think the authors have missed. They say the talks broke off in ‘May 2022’. But if you listen to the then Turkish Foreign Minister, he says back-channel talks were still ongoing in August 2022. (And I think it’s reasonable to infer they were until early October 2022.)
There is no mention in the piece of Zelensky’s October 2022 Presidential decree (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/zelenskiy-decree-rules-out-ukraine-talks-with-putin-impossible-2022-10-04/) that made illegal any further talks from the Ukrainian side. This was in reaction to Russia’s annexation of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – and was perhaps justified. But it should be mentioned! Despite what we hear in the mainstream (and from Secretary Blinken) it was Ukraine, not Russia, that put a stop to dialogue.
I am not holding my breath for any editor I sent my chronology to (almost all at least twice) saying they might have effed up. Instead, I am going to build something new.
This Substack will always remain free, but if you would like to financially contribute to Listening to the Other Side (which is pending not-for-profit status), it would be most welcome.
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One other thing I’ll say: in my general research at the moment, I’m quite satisfied by how good Reuters is. It is very good. And it does faithfully report things. If you read Reuters directly, you get quite close to the truth. It does quote foreign leaders accurately, without spin. (e.g. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-warns-west-russia-nato-conflict-is-just-one-step-ww3-2024-03-17/ )
This is a yet poorer reflection of public-facing media organisations. How is their coverage so bad? Journalists are being briefed on what is happening in the world and often not writing about it.
Trump on NATO
A prime example – Trump being misquoted.
A few weeks ago Trump was interviewed by Nigel Farage at Mar-a-Lago. Clip here talking about NATO:
Trump: The question was asked by the head of a major NATO country, in front of 28 other countries [early in Trump’s first term]: ‘If we don’t pay our bills, are you going to protect us from Russia?’ I said: no, if you’re not paying your bills [2% for your own defence] I’m not going to defend you. Hundreds of billions of dollars came in.
Farage: If they start to pay their bills properly, will America be there?
Trump: Yes, 100%.
Is this not how membership for something is supposed to work? For any insurance provider, do you not pay to get the coverage?
Right now I understand there are US legislative propositions (in addition to the $60bn that’s just been passed) to ‘Trump-proof’ defense spending (intended to be so binding that Trump in a second term couldn’t undo them) based on a claim for something (ripping up NATO) I don’t think he’s ever actually said.
Why is India being a half-hearted ally to the US?
I thought this a really interesting comment:
I think India looks at the China-US problem and goes:
[This sentence did not end how I expected it to. I thought Russell was going to say: ‘Because in 20 years, China could be so far ahead’. But he actually said:]
Well that could be us [India] in 20 years. That’s why they have a very mixed reaction to it. They’re not fully supportive of what the US is trying to do.
In effect: In 20 years, India will/could be the new China.
That is a much smarter way of thinking than I had in mind.
Dalio on debt assets in war
As we go forward, we know that we’re going to have a lot more supply [of money]. What we know is that there is in fact going to have to be an increase in spending. If you look at what the defense budget is, that is a pressing issue that people on both sides recognise. If you then take into consideration the climate issue, that’s estimated to be about $8 trillion a year that’s required. That’s a lot of spending.
We have the needs – or demands – for higher amounts of spending. If you just take what is projected, and then you apply the debt service payments to that, that is creating a classic squeeze. I’ve seen this repeatedly happen throughout countries. This is not sound, strong finances. So the value of debt assets [bonds]…It has to be recognised that a debt asset [a bond/treasury] is a risky asset to hold.
If you study markets during wars, allies don’t accept each other’s money. Because that debt they’ll take on, they know that the country is going to get into more debt and probably have to monetise the debt [central banks printing more money, which is inflationary and devalues the currency]. So the risks of holding debt assets during wars are high.
As the saying goes, ‘gold is an asset that is not somebody else’s liability’.
Given all the sets of circumstances, why wouldn’t you move to a more balanced portfolio?
Funny, but true
Kevin McCarthy [former Speaker]: ‘I was just at an event the other night which President [George W.] Bush was at. And I think of Bush and Al Gore. They’ll both tell you: they’re too old to be President. And they’re both younger than our two nominees.’
This will never happen, but it’s plausibly accurate.
If Democrats actually wanted to stop Trump, they should probably just not run! (And let RFK Jr win.)
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Thank you for reading.