Ronald D. Traylor

History 6393

Review Three

February 16, 2000

Arno J. Mayer, Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917-1918 (New York: Yale University Press, 1959)

In Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, Arno J. Mayer traced the conflict between the ideology of the Right and the Left during World War One. Mayer presented the disagreements between the two factions with regard to their positions on two interrelated topics: their war aims and their favored diplomatic style. For the purposes of his examination, he began with a more traditional discussion of the belligerents in the war, the Allies and the Central Powers, but he soon went far beyond such a simplistic format. He demonstrated that political movements of the Left within the European nations of England, France, Germany and Russia shared common characteristics that transcended national boundaries, war alliances, and conventional diplomacy. Mayer studied the changes in the United States and Russia that prepared them for their positions of leadership and conflict during the remainder of the twentieth century.

With regard to the United States, historians often consider the Spanish-Cuban-Philippine-American War as the dividing line between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With regard to Europe, World War One seems to serve the same purpose. It provided such pivotal events in the history of the twentieth century as the emergence of the United States as a true world power (at the expense of England and France) and the new position of Russia as the ideological wellspring of the Left. Mankind’s first attempt at a world-wide forum of nations resulted from the war, as did a growing acceptance among non-authoritarian nations of the importance in policy creation of popular opinion.

Dissent by the Left against policies formulated by the entrenched establishment was common in England and France, as well as in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the years prior to the beginning of World War One. With the onset of the war, and in order to forge a temporary wartime national political solidarity, members of organizations of the Left (and there are far too many to enumerate) in the nations of both the Allied and Central Powers declared an embargo on dissent. That mutual agreement remained in force during the early years of the conflict, but when the war settled down into a war of attrition and meaningless bloodletting, the Left in fits and starts abandoned the truce and reclaimed its protest position. Much of the protest centered around the perception by the Left that such continued senseless slaughter was militarily pointless. Such persistent behavior could only be explained if the post-war advantages provided by suspected secret agreements outweighed the human and economic costs of the continued conflict. Accordingly, the Left insisted that their governments reveal to the people their true war aims.

The entrenched governments of the establishment (Mayer called them the forces of order) justified the war from its beginning in terms designed to appeal to national pride, and most continued to do so until 1917-1918. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that secret treaties and agreements were in place, just as the Left suspected, and those pacts divided many parts of Europe, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean basin into spheres of influence for the winners. Governments chose to enter into secret agreements because they feared a “hostile public reaction” to expansionist provisions that went far beyond the proclaimed reasons for the war. Additionally, the governments understood the potential disunity resulting from public participation in a war aims debate.

The position of the Left toward the forces of order went far beyond a protest of secret accords and a demand for public disclosure of war aims. Among the additional demands made by the Left (for obvious reasons Mayer called them the forces of movement) at various times and in various nations were bans on territorial expansion without the approval of the residents of the affected area, bans on treaties without parliamentary approval, disarmament, free trade, international arbitration, and a federation of nations. These are characteristics exhibited by what Mayer referred to as the New Diplomacy. The forces of order continued to successfully resist such demands, insisting on a continuation of the traditional, or Old Diplomacy. The Left, lacking any type of centralized leadership, squabbled among its constituent parts as well as with the forces of order. That changed in 1917.

The Russian Revolution in 1917, followed by the Bolshevik Revolution later in the same year, served to galvanize the forces of movement. A European nation for the first time officially adopted the New Diplomacy as accepted policy. Russia exposed the terms of the secret accords entered into during Tsarist rule, much to the dismay and embarrassment of the other Allied powers. Russian forthrightness encouraged the forces of movement in other European nations to press for increased openness and change. Woodrow Wilson, after much vacillation, adopted the New Diplomacy as his own. England and (to a lesser degree) France, aware of the importance of the United States to both the war effort and the post-war recovery of their nations, became participants in the New Diplomacy as well.

A recurring theme throughout the book addresses resistance to change. In almost every circumstance, those in power (Wilson was an exception…he changed like the wind between the New Diplomacy prior to America’s entry into the war, to stubborn Old Diplomacy as he insisted on peace with victory, and then to the New Diplomacy when faced with Lenin and the Russian dilemma) protected that power by raising the drawbridge and flooding the moat. This was true in both domestic and foreign policy…in fact, foreign policy was often a reflection, or an extension, of domestic policy.

Although not a new notion, I still find it ironic that the United States, the result of a revolution (how revolutionary was the American Revolution?) glorified its own beginnings but attempted to stamp out the revolutions of others wherever found. Mexico, Cuba (how many times?), Russia, Viet Nam, Central America…the list goes on and on ad nauseum. Another point of irony…after embracing the New Diplomacy and its injunctions against secret arrangements, Woodrow Wilson and Lloyd George decided against including Russia in high-level planning meetings because the Russians could not be trusted to keep secrets.

I still do not completely buy into the New Diplomacy, for surely there are circumstances under which political and diplomatic secrecy is important. If the purpose of foreign policy is to advance the well-being of a nation, then a certain lack of openness, not to mention candor, is a valuable tool. I do agree, however, that secrets that lead to physical expansion of the imperial or colonial type at the expense of the powerless is unacceptable and deserves to be exposed and eliminated.