University of the West Indies, Mona

Department of Government

GT12A Introduction to International Relations

Lecturer: Ms. Diana Thorburn

Lecture Three

Topics: International politics at the beginning of the 20^th century; World War I

Objectives

By the end of this lecture, students should:

Have a clear picture of the international political arena at the turn of the 20^th century
Understand the causes and outcomes of World War I
Know how WWI precipitated the development of the field and practice of international relations

A note on power

Six criteria for a country to have power in the international system:

Secure geographical boundaries
Large territory and population, relatively free of civil conflict
Self-sufficiency in food, energy and basic services (or at least the ability to be self-sufficient)
Industrial advancement
Strong and modern military capabilities
Access to and level of technological advancement

Can we add a seventh: An educated population?

What about political influence?

Political influence is a criteria for power in international relations, but it is best understood as an outcome of the above-mentioned criteria. I.e. a country has political influence because it is powerful, based on some combination the above factors.

Europe (and the world) at the turn of the (20^th) Century

Western Europe was going through an intensive phase of industrialisation
Great Britain was the leader in output of coal, iron, steel and manufactures
GB also the world’s major economic power
While European states did not fight any wars after the mid-1850s, they were rivals
Their rivalry played itself out in Africa and Asia, as European colonial powers sought new external markets for their manufactured goods, and new sources of raw materials
Led to exploitation of the colonial areas, particularly Asia and Africa
This period usually called IMPERIALISM, rather than colonialism (from the word EMPIRE)
The economic rivalry became more competitive and destabilizing by the turn of the century as European states merged into one of two rival groups of allies
The US also enters the league of imperial powers by its acquisition of the Philippines (and Puerto Rico) in 1898 via the Spanish-American War (Hawaii had been forcibly annexed by Colonel Dole in 1893)
Japan also seeks to enter the league of world powers by annexing Korea and Taiwan and attempting to gain control in China
Imperial powers acquired overseas territory at a fast pace up until WWI (World War I)
Largely driven by a return to mercantilist notions of wealth being finite after the European economic depression of 1873

o (mercantilism to be examined in greater detail when we discuss international political economy)

Prior to that notions of wealth creation via free trade had prevailed (Adam Smith's ideas from 1776)
Economic and political control by leading (namely European and the USA) powers reached almost the entire globe
By the turn of the 20th century, the map of Africa had been redrawn by the European powers over the negotiating table—with little consideration given to ethnic groups and pre-existing settlement patterns of peoples
The only exceptions were Liberia, generally regarded as being under the special protection of the United States; Morocco, conquered by France a few years later; Libya, later taken over by Italy; and Ethiopia.
In addition to colonial rule, other means of domination were exercised in the form of spheres of influence, special commercial treaties, and the subordination that lenders often impose on debtor nations
By 1910 the major nations of Europe had aligned themselves into two potentially hostile alliances, with Germany and Austria in one and France, Great Britain, and Russia in the other.
When a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, a chain of threats, ultimatums, and mobilizations was set in motion that resulted in a general war between these two alliances
That assassination was the trigger
The main reasons for the war were internal political instability in the then-major powers causing them to weaken, while at the same time the "lesser European powers" had their own designs for greatness and were willing to test the STATUS QUO in order to change it for their own benefit

The Causes and Outcomes of World War I

Overview of the war

Also called First World War, or Great War
The war was virtually unprecedented in the slaughter, carnage, and destruction it caused.
World War I was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century geopolitical history.
1914–18
Involved most of the nations of Europe along with Russia, the United States, the Middle East, and other regions
War was between the "Central Powers" (mainly Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey) and the "Allies" (mainly France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and, from 1917, the United States)
It ended with the defeat of the Central Powers.
Ten million people died—worst war (to that date) in world history

The Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles was signed by those who participated in the war at the Versailles Peace Conference 1918
Ended the war and contained provisions for the losers of the war (ostensibly Germany) to pay reparations to France and others
Provided for the constitution of the League of Nations
Reduced the empires of the defeated Central Powers, mainly Germany and Turkey
Ultimately seen as a disaster, and as having precipitated WWII
Main problem was the way it dealt with Germany—humiliating it while not changing its power base that later enabled it to launch WWII

Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points (given in their entirety at the end of these notes)

Wilson intended these as guidelines to guarantee international peace
They aimed to establish the bases of an interdependent world, where trade flowed freely across national borders
The aim was "peace without retribution"

The League of Nations

Main organization designated to oversee implementation of the Treaty of Versailles
Designed to prevent all future wars
The League distributed Germany's African colonies as mandates to Great Britain, France, Belgium, and South Africa, and its Pacific possessions to Japan, Australia, and New Zealand under various classifications according to their expectations of achieving independence
Among the League's original members, there were only five Asian countries (China, India, Japan, Thailand, and Iran) and two African countries (Liberia and South Africa), and it added only three Asian countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, and Turkey) and two African countries (Egypt and Ethiopia) before it was dissolved in 1946.
Ultimately the League did not have the political weight, nor the legal instruments, nor the legitimacy to carry out the task
The US refused to join the League which weakened it considerably
The principle of the League (as of the peace that Wilson envisioned) was cooperation as a means to prevent war

Postwar redistribution of colonies

After World War I the Allied powers partitioned among themselves both the German overseas colonial holdings and the vast Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire.
They carried out this operation through the League of Nations, which awarded mandates under varying conditions.
Great Britain received as mandates Iraq and Palestine (which it promptly split into Transjordan (now Jordan) and Palestine proper); the Palestine mandate obligated Britain to respect its contradictory wartime commitments to both Jews and Arabs.
France assumed a mandate over both Syria and Lebanon.
In Africa the two powers divided Togo and Cameroon between them, Britain acquired Tanganyika (later merged with Zanzibar to become Tanzania)
Belgium took Rwanda-Urundi, and South Africa received German South West Africa.
Italy, as compensation for not sharing in the award of mandates, obtained from Britain the Juba (Giuba) Valley on the Kenya-Somali frontier, and France eventually ceded to Italy a desert area that rounded out Libya's southern frontiers.
The interwar years (between WWI and WWII) saw the peak of colonial empires throughout the world
Most colonial systems began to show clear signs of strain and even revolt. Political movements opposed to colonialism emerged.

Other outcomes

The fall of four great imperial dynasties (in Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey)
Emergence of the US as the major world power
The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia
Russia’s poor performance in the war and its grievous losses inspired widespread domestic discontent that led to the overthrow of the Russian monarchy in early 1917 and to the Bolshevik Revolution in November of that year.
Vladimir Lenin was the leader of the Bolsheviks and is considered one of the most influential forces in Marxist thought
The Russian Revolution and its ideology would come to have profound influence on the world and on international relations in the second half of the 20^th century
The new nation-states of Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia and Romania emerged out of the ruins of the Habsburg and Romanov empires
These new states, however, were to be strained and ravaged by their own internal nationality conflicts and by nationalistic disputes over territory with their neighbours.
Destabilized European society, and laid the groundwork for World War II.
Europe as a whole begins its decline with WWI
Promise laid for a Jewish home in Palestine—root of the Israeli state (and the current Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East)

World War I and International Relations Theory and Practice

The origins of Idealism

WWI stimulates the need for persons trained in dealing with relations between nation-states under the notion of "collective security"—concept that aggression against a state should be defeated collectively because aggression against one state is aggression against all
The Treaty of Versailles, the Fourteen Points and the League of Nations were all ideals to which world leaders—in particular Woodrow Wilson—aspired as a means to world peace
They were founded on the notion that cooperation and interdependence, including open borders to trade, would result in a peaceful world
The objective was international politics without a struggle for power

Wilsonianism = Idealism – the notion that states can live in peace with one another if they agree to negotiate rather than go to war

The realization that Idealism didn’t work… and the emergence of Realism

The international relations that Wilson envisioned in his Fourteen Points turned out to be unfeasible
As E.H. Carr in The Twenty Years’ Crisis put it:

"Wishing prevailed over thinking, generalisation over observation, and little attempt was made at a critical analysis of existing facts or available means"

Partly because the peace settlement arrived at Versailles was faulty
Also because there was a strong nationalist movement led by a radical personality (Hitler)
As well there was a smaller nation with aspirations of its own to world power (Japan)
Power could not be removed from international relations, and certainly not by an organization (the League of Nations) that itself had no power over sovereign nation-states because it could not enforce any of the Treaty’s provisions

The role of the Depression

The Depression (1929) was in part a result of the unstable global political system
Most European economies were weakened by WWI, and the Treaty of Versailles did not adequately deal with the reparations issue
Most of the European economies were propped up by an over-valued US economy
When the "bubble" burst, everyone went crashing
As a general rule, regimes tend to change in periods of drastic economic circumstances—often to authoritarian-type regimes (as happened in Germany)
In addition was the instability brought about by newly sovereign European states with contested borders and unstable internal polities

Woodrow Wilson’s "Fourteen Points" (in their entirety)

Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.
The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.
Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.
The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest coöperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.
Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.
All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.
A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.
The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.
Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.
The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.
An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.
A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

Additional Notes for Lecture Three

The Great Depression (From Encyclopedia Britannica)

Economic slump in North America, Europe, and other industrialized areas of the world that began in 1929 and lasted until about 1939. It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world.

Though the U.S. economy had gone into depression six months earlier, the Great Depression may be said to have begun with a catastrophic collapse of stock-market prices on the New York Stock Exchange in October 1929. During the next three years stock prices in the United States continued to fall, until by late 1932 they had dropped to only about 20 percent of their value in 1929.

Besides ruining many thousands of individual investors, this precipitous decline in the value of assets greatly strained banks and other financial institutions, particularly those holding stocks in their portfolios. Many banks were consequently forced into insolvency; by 1933, 11,000 of the United States' 25,000 banks had failed. The failure of so many banks, combined with a general and nationwide loss of confidence in the economy, led to much-reduced levels of spending and demand and hence of production, thus aggravating the downward spiral. The result was drastically falling output and drastically rising unemployment; by 1932, U.S. manufacturing output had fallen to 54 percent of its 1929 level, and unemployment had risen to between 12 and 15 million workers, or 25–30 percent of the work force.

The Great Depression began in the United States but quickly turned into a worldwide economic slump owing to the special and intimate relationships that had been forged between the United States and European economies after World War I. The United States had emerged from the war as the major creditor and financier of postwar Europe, whose national economies had been greatly weakened by the war itself, by war debts, and, in the case of Germany and other defeated nations, by the need to pay war reparations. So once the American economy slumped and the flow of American investment credits to Europe dried up, prosperity tended to collapse there as well.

The Depression hit hardest those nations that were most deeply indebted to the United States, i.e., Germany and Great Britain. In Germany, unemployment rose sharply beginning in late 1929, and by early 1932 it had reached 6 million workers, or 25 percent of the work force. Britain was less severely affected, but its industrial and export sectors remained seriously depressed until World War II.

Many other countries had been affected by the slump by 1931. Almost all nations sought to protect their domestic production by imposing tariffs, raising existing ones, and setting quotas on foreign imports. The effect of these restrictive measures was to greatly reduce the volume of international trade: by 1932 the total value of world trade had fallen by more than half as country after country took measures against the importation of foreign goods.

The Great Depression had important consequences in the political sphere. In the United States, economic distress led to the election of the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in late 1932. Roosevelt introduced a number of major changes in the structure of the American economy, using increased government regulation and massive public-works projects to promote a recovery. But despite this active intervention, mass unemployment and economic stagnation continued, though on a somewhat reduced scale, with about 15 percent of the work force still unemployed in 1939 at the outbreak of World War II. After that, unemployment dropped rapidly as American factories were flooded with orders from overseas for armaments and munitions. The depression ended completely soon after the United States' entry into World War II in 1941. In Europe, the Great Depression strengthened extremist forces and lowered the prestige of liberal democracy. In Germany, economic distress directly contributed to Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933. The Nazis' public-works projects and their rapid expansion of munitions production ended the Depression there by 1936.

At least in part, the Great Depression was caused by underlying weaknesses and imbalances within the U.S. economy that had been obscured by the boom psychology and speculative euphoria of the 1920s. The Depression exposed those weaknesses, as it did the inability of the nation's political and financial institutions to cope with the vicious downward economic cycle that had set in by 1930. Prior to the Great Depression, governments traditionally took little or no action in times of business downturn, relying instead on impersonal market forces to achieve the necessary economic correction. But market forces alone proved unable to achieve the desired recovery in the early years of the Great Depression, and this painful discovery eventually inspired some fundamental changes in the United States' economic structure. After the Great Depression, government action, whether in the form of taxation, industrial regulation, public works, social insurance, social-welfare services, or deficit spending, came to assume a principal role in ensuring economic stability in most industrial nations with market economies.

Meiji Restoration

In Japanese history, the political revolution that brought about the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate and returned control of the country to direct Imperial rule under the emperor Meiji, beginning an era of major political, economic, and social change known as the Meiji period (1868–1912). This revolution brought about the modernization and Westernization of Japan.

The leaders of the restoration, mostly young samurai from feudal domains historically hostile to Tokugawa authority, were motivated by growing domestic problems and the threat of foreign encroachment. Adopting the slogan "wealthy country and strong arms" (fukoku-kyohei), they sought to create a nation-state capable of standing equal among Western powers. As expressed in the Charter Oath of 1868, the first goal of the new government, relocated to Tokyo (formerly Edo), was the dismantling of the old feudal regime. This was largely accomplished by 1871, when the domains were officially abolished and replaced by a prefecture system. All feudal class privileges were also abolished. In the same year a national army was formed, which was further strengthened in 1873 by a universal conscription law. The new government also carried out policies to unify the monetary and tax systems, with the agricultural tax reform of 1873 providing its primary source of income.

Economic and social changes paralleled the political transformation of the Meiji period. Although the economy remained dependent on agriculture, industrialization was the primary goal of the government, which directed the development of strategic industries, transportation, and communications. The first railroad was built in 1872, and by 1890 there were more than 1,400 miles (2,250 km) of rail. The telegraph linked all major cities by 1880. Private firms were also encouraged by government financial support and aided by the institution of a European-style banking system in 1882.

These efforts at modernization required Western science and technology, and under the banner of "Civilization and Enlightenment" (bunmei kaika) Western culture, from current intellectual trends to clothing and architecture, was widely promoted. Wholesale Westernization was somewhat checked in the 1880s, however, when a renewed appreciation of traditional Japanese values emerged. Such was the case in the development of a modern educational system which, though influenced by Western theory and practice, stressed the traditional values of samurai loyalty and social harmony. The same tendency prevailed in art and literature, where Western styles were first imitated, and then a more selective blending of Western and Japanese tastes was achieved.

By the early 20th century, the goals of the Meiji Restoration had been largely accomplished. Japan was well on its way to becoming a modern industrial nation. The unequal treaties that had granted foreign powers judicial and economic privileges through extraterritoriality were revised in 1894; and with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 and its victory in two wars (over China in 1895 and Russia in 1905), Japan gained respect in the eyes of the Western world, appearing for the first time on the international scene as a major world power. The death of the emperor Meiji in 1912 marked the end of the period.

Spanish-Cuban-American War (1898)

Conflict between the United States and Spain that ended Spanish colonial rule in the Americas and resulted in U.S. acquisition of territories in the western Pacific and Latin America.

The war originated in the Cuban struggle for independence from Spain, which began in February 1895. Spain's brutally repressive measures to halt the rebellion were graphically portrayed for the U.S. public by several sensational newspapers, and American sympathy for the rebels rose. The growing popular demand for U.S. intervention became an insistent chorus after the unexplained sinking in Havana harbour of the battleship USS Maine (Feb. 15, 1898), which had been sent to protect U.S. citizens and property after anti-Spanish rioting in Havana.

Spain announced an armistice on April 9 and speeded up its new programme to grant Cuba limited powers of self-government, but the U.S. Congress soon afterward issued resolutions that declared Cuba's right to independence, demanded the withdrawal of Spain's armed forces from the island, and authorized the President's use of force to secure that withdrawal while renouncing any U.S. design for annexing Cuba.

Spain declared war on the United States on April 24, followed by a U.S. declaration of war on the 25th, which was made retroactive to April 21. The ensuing war was pathetically one-sided, since Spain had readied neither its army nor its navy for a distant war with the formidable power of the United States. Commo. George Dewey led a U.S. naval squadron into Manila Bay in the Philippines on May 1, 1898, and destroyed the anchored Spanish fleet in a leisurely morning engagement that cost only seven American seamen wounded. Manila itself was occupied by U.S. troops by August.

By the Treaty of Paris (signed Dec. 10, 1898), Spain renounced all claim to Cuba, ceded Guam and Puerto Rico to the United States, and transferred sovereignty over the Philippines to the United States for $20,000,000.

The Spanish–American War was an important turning point in the history of both antagonists. Spain's defeat decisively turned the nation's attention away from its overseas colonial adventures and inward upon its domestic needs, a process that led to both a cultural and a literary renaissance and two decades of much-needed economic development in Spain.

The victorious United States, on the other hand, emerged from the war a world power with far-flung overseas possessions and a new stake in international politics that would soon lead it to play a determining role in the affairs of Europe.

Platt Amendment (1901)

Stipulated the conditions for withdrawal of U.S. troops remaining in Cuba since the Spanish–American War, and molded fundamental Cuban–U.S. relations until 1934.

By its terms, Cuba could not transfer Cuban land to any power other than the United States. Cuba's right to negotiate treaties was limited, rights to a naval base in Cuba (Guantánamo Bay) were ceded to the United States, U.S. intervention in Cuba "for the preservation of Cuban independence" was permitted, and a formal treaty detailing all the foregoing provisions was provided for.

To end the U.S. occupation, Cuba incorporated the articles in its constitution. Although the United States intervened militarily in Cuba only twice, in 1906 and 1912.

Cubans generally considered the amendment an infringement of their sovereignty. In 1934, as part of his Good Neighbor policy, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt supported abrogation of the amendment's provisions except for U.S. rights to the naval base.