The 50th anniversary this week of the fall of Saigon may trigger thoughts about contemporary war and Ukraine’s future. But Saigon is not the only precedent. The withdrawal of American support has often-enough been decisive in settling conflict. Afghanistan most recently. But also, more than a century ago, with America’s role in the First World War.
The US was not a participating belligerent in the first three years of the Great War but nevertheless exercised enormous economic power. While America was not providing either troops or munitions in these years, it was the essential supplier of raw material and food to the Entente allies (Britain, France and Russia). These supplies were financed by commercial loans from Wall Street, with JP Morgan organising not only the finance, but also the detailed procurement and shipping.
Adam Tooze, historian and ubiquitous commentator on past and current world affairs, describes President Woodrow Wilson’s ambitions in 1916 this way: “The American President, elected with a mandate to keep America out of the war, tried to do something far more ambitious. He attempted not just to preserve neutrality, but to end the war on terms that would place America in a position of pre-eminent global leadership.”
A self-assured and determined American president can impose an outcome seemingly at odds with the views of the public and many politicians.
Both Britain and France were exhausted after the battle of the Somme in 1916. Further massive financing from the US would be required if the vital raw materials and food were to continue to flow in 1917. JP Morgan and other financiers were becoming nervous about their credit exposure. To add to their worries, the US Federal Reserve, under instructions from Wilson, issued a statement in November 1916 warning banks and investors against further funding of the war.
In January 1917 (a year before his more-famous 14-points speech), Wilson took the unusual step of addressing the Senate. His key objective was “peace without victory”.
Tooze again: “The first dramatic assertion of American leadership in the 20th century was not directed towards ensuring that the ‘right’ side won, but that no side did.”
At this stage, Germany still occupied Alsace-Lorraine and Belgium on the western front and Serbia in the east. To end the war with these territorial conquests intact would have rewarded Germany’s aggression.
While many Americans (and influential Republicans such as Theodore Roosevelt) regarded the Entente powers as America’s natural allies and saw their victory over Imperial Germany as being in America’s interests, Wilson’s view was quite different. He had little sympathy for Europe’s territorial disputes, warmongering and imperialist colonial adventures. An enforced peace without victors would leave all the European powers weakened. Wilson had already set in train a naval building program that would in time outsize the war-impoverished British fleet. Europe was already deeply in debt to the United States, and without reparations from a defeated opponent, could not match the economic heft of America. The United States would be left as the dominant hegemon. American exceptionalism would triumph.
This put the Entente in a quandary: how to resist Wilson’s wishes while retaining his critical logistical support. They were extricated from this dilemma when, amazingly, Germany rebuffed this advantageous opportunity and declared open submarine warfare, including on American shipping. America declared war.
Where might we find some continuity in history, relevant to President Donald Trump’s uncompromising stance on Ukraine?
Both Wilson and Trump envisaged a larger agenda, centred on increasing America’s global hegemonic power.
First, a self-assured and determined American president can impose an outcome seemingly at odds with the views of the public and many politicians.
Second, realpolitik outweighs values. Wilson’s moral equivalence – equating Germany’s aggression and the Entente’s resistance – foreshadows Trump’s argument that Russia’s would be making a full contribution to peace if it just refrained from conquering the whole of Ukraine.
Third, both Wilson and Trump envisaged a larger agenda, centred on increasing America’s global hegemonic power.
Fourth, a mendicant country risks having its critical support withdrawn when its patron tires or its objectives change. In settling the outcome your protector can parlay and do deals with the other side without your participation, as Henry Kissinger did with Le Duc Tho in the leadup to the 1973 agreement on Vietnam, and as Trump is doing for Ukraine.
One more lesson from Vietnam. America may soften the blow of withdrawn support with a promise to return to the fray if the truce is broken. As part of the Kissinger negotiations, it was understood that America’s airpower would return if Hanoi sent its tanks southward in open invasion. But with Nixon mired by Watergate in 1975, these undertakings were worthless.
There are lessons here for dependant countries, not only for Ukraine, but for Australia.
