Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse of the Versailles Order, 1919-1939

by Keith Neilson

Overview

A major re-interpretation of international relations in the period from 1919 to 1939. Avoiding such simplistic explanations as appeasement and British decline, Keith Neilson demonstrates that the underlying cause of the Second World War was the intellectual failure to find an effective means of maintaining the new world order created in 1919. With secret diplomacy, alliances and the balance of power seen as having caused the First World War, the makers of British policy after 1919 were forced to rely on such instruments of liberal internationalism as arms control, the League of Nations and global public opinion to preserve peace. Using Britain's relations with Soviet Russia as a focus for a re-examination of Britain's dealings with Germany and Japan, this book shows that these tools were inadequate to deal with the physical and ideological threats posed by Bolshevism, fascism, Nazism and Japanese militarism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521857130
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/22/2005
Pages:	390
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.33(h) x 1.14(d)

About the Author

Keith Neilson is Professor of History at the Royal Military College of Canada, Ontario. His previous publications include Britain and the Last Tsar. The Russian Factor in British Policy, 1894–1917 (1995) and, with Zara Steiner, Britain and the Origins of the First World War (2003).

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Cambridge University Press
0521857139 - Britain, Soviet Russia and the Collapse of the Versailles Order, 1919–1939 - By Keith Neilson
Excerpt

Introduction

Contrary to Sellar and Yeatman's famous concluding quip in 1066 and All That, the end of the Great War did not mean that 'History came to a full.'¹ Given that Great Britain was a sated Power even before 1914, this was perhaps unfortunate, for any change to the status quo was likely to threaten Britain's global position. To deal with this, British policy makers in the inter-war period concerned themselves with maintaining the settlements reached in the years from 1919 to 1923 and ensuring that any changes to policy were achieved by negotiation rather than by force. However, British policy experienced a failure of great expectations, and war broke out again a generation later. This study is an attempt to explain why this failure happened.

The method employed here is to make a detailed examination of Britain's policy towards Soviet Russia in the period from 1919 to 1939. This approach needs clarification and amplification. This book is designed to do two things. First, it aims to fill a gap in the existing literature concerning Britain's relations with Soviet Russia.² However, it is intended to be more than that, for if it dealt with only purely Anglo-Soviet matters it would be a thin text. One of the significant points about relations between London and Moscow in the inter-war period is that they were so limited. An analysis dealing only with Anglo-Soviet relations narrowly defined would largely be a study in silence, punctuated by the raucous outbursts surrounding such incidents as the Zinoviev letter, the Arcos raid, the Metro-Vickers affair, Munich and the Anglo-Soviet negotiations of 1939.

Such an approach would fail to see the significance of Anglo-Soviet relations in their larger context. Thus, the second goal of this book is to show how Soviet Russia affected British strategic foreign-policy making generally. Thus, it provides a new perspective on and explanation of London's policy in the inter-war period. It also determines just what matters are dealt with in this study. Soviet Russia was important not just for what it did with respect to Britain, but also for what it did in international relations generally. As the major threats to British interests came from Germany and Japan, how Soviet Russia affected Anglo-Japanese and Anglo-German relations is of central importance.

There are a number of reasons for proceeding in this fashion. One derives from the general observation that to look comprehensively in detail at British strategic foreign policy in the inter-war period is daunting, if not impossible. The topic's sprawling nature makes any exhaustive attempt at analysis difficult.³ To get round this obstacle, this book drills an Anglo-Soviet 'bore-hole' into the sediment of British strategic foreign policy in order to obtain a 'core-sample' that will reveal much about the entire topic. Thus, Anglo-Soviet affairs provide the organizing theme for the larger topic. In this way, a clear focus can be provided for a look at the larger subject.

The choice of which 'core-sample' to look at is arbitrary, but not entirely whimsical. Soviet Russia affected British policy in unique and valuable ways. The first obtains from geography. Britain and Soviet Russia were the final barriers against any German attempt to establish hegemony on the continent. The degree of collaboration between them in the inter-war period played a major role in European stability just as it had in the nineteenth century.⁴ But Britain and Soviet Russia both also had growing extra-European concerns. In the Far East, both states faced imperial Japan. The fact that Britain and Soviet Russia were each threatened by German and Japanese aggrandizement means that an examination of Anglo-Soviet matters enables us to see British policy in its broader, global context and to avoid the narrower focus imposed by considering it only in either its European or its East Asian context. Such an approach necessarily makes a consideration of British imperial defence, and how Soviet Russia affected it, one of the central themes of this study.

The Anglo-Soviet 'core-sample' is also a useful means of assaying the impact of ideology on British policy. The inter-war period was a time of ideological tension.⁵ For many, the First World War had proved the bankruptcy of the existing international order, and even those regimes that were not overthrown as a result of the conflict itself found themselves challenged domestically by the dynamic revolutionary creeds that emerged after 1917.⁶ Communism (or Bolshevism as it was generally termed), fascism and Naziism all asserted that they were the future and that liberal democracy was shopworn.

Of the three revolutionary ideologies, Bolshevism had the greatest impact on Britain and British strategic foreign policy. Naziism was too racialist and too German to have much domestic appeal in Britain.⁷ Fascism had more, but it never attracted more than a tiny minority of Britons.⁸ Communism was a different matter. Its tenets, if not its practice, were universalist. This meant that it could act (or could be perceived as acting) as a revolutionary force domestically in Britain.⁹ At least as importantly, Lenin's concept of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism led the Bolsheviks, through the agency of the Communist International (the Comintern, set up in Moscow in 1919 as a co-ordinating body for ideologically pure socialists and as an arm of Soviet policy), to attempt to subvert European colonial empires.¹⁰ This made Bolshevism a threat to the British Empire and a prime consideration in questions of imperial defence.¹¹ Thus, an examination of Anglo-Soviet strategic matters forces us to look at how ideology affected the formulation of British policy.¹² This is of interest generally and of particular significance with respect to the crucial events preceding the outbreak of the Second World War.

This is not to argue that Anglo-Soviet affairs were the most important bilateral relationship in British strategic foreign policy. Much stronger arguments could be made for Britain's relations with France, Germany, Japan and the United States. Anglo-Soviet issues, except in a few cases, were matters of secondary importance. However, it is an argument for the importance of Soviet Russia in the formulation and understanding of British strategic foreign policy in general. Soviet Russia affected more issues of significance for Britain than did any other major Power. For this reason, the study of it - the taking of its 'core-sample' - provides a more comprehensive view of British policy than does an examination of Britain's dealings with any other Power.

And there is yet another way in which Britain's relations with Soviet Russia are particularly valuable and revealing. If we place the Great Powers into two categories: those status quo Powers who wished to defend (or at least to manage changes to) the settlements reached at Paris in 1919 and those who wished to change them by force of arms if necessary (the so-called revisionist Powers), then Britain and France were firmly in the former category, while Germany, Italy and Japan were in the latter. But Soviet Russia is difficult to categorize. Moscow had millennialist goals, making it a revolutionary, but not necessarily a revisionist Power. This fact had repercussions. Britain could scarcely align itself with any of the revisionist Powers, unless it could persuade them to pursue their aims peacefully.¹³ Thus, for London, all the 'revisionists' were potential enemies, although the British were loath to see this as inevitable. On the other hand, France was a near-inevitable British ally (though the British also were reluctant to accept the military ramifications of a tightly defined Anglo-French relationship).¹⁴ And France, faced with revisionist Italy and Germany, had little option but to throw its lot in with Britain.¹⁵ The United States was in a similar position, although Washington had an option - isolationism - denied Paris by geography. Soviet Russia's position was ambivalent. Regarding all other states with a suspicion derived from ideology, Soviet leaders could as easily align themselves with a status quo Power such as France (the Franco-Soviet Pact of 1935) as with a revisionist Power such as Nazi Germany (the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939). Soviet Russia itself could also be the target of the revisionist nations, something underlined by the Anti-Comintern Pact. In all circumstances, however, the security of Soviet Russia, not necessarily general peace (which, according to Marxist dogma, the inevitable crisis of capitalism made impossible), was Moscow's goal.

The ambiguity of Soviet Russia's position makes the Anglo-Soviet 'core-sample' particularly rich. Not only does it permit an examination of actual British policy, but it also allows a consideration of the different possible British policies. Could Soviet Russia be persuaded to help contain the revisionist Powers? If so, what was the price and was it worth the cost? Was Soviet Russia a potential enemy? If so, would one of the revisionist Powers have to be conceded its goals in order to prevent Britain's having to face not just three but perhaps four possible enemies? Would Moscow remain aloof from any possible conflict involving Britain in order to fish in troubled waters? These questions were entangled with British considerations of power, ideology and personality. It is not surprising that as early as 1933 the Foreign Office contended that Soviet Russia was 'the great enigma' in the determination of British strategic foreign policy.¹⁶

Soviet Russia's indeterminate position also causes some difficulties for any study of its influence on British policy. Because the British were never certain what Soviet Russia's security policy was (or even what they wanted it to be), much of what is discussed below never became policy. In fact, often it never became more than speculation among the members of the strategic foreign-policy making élite, particularly those civil servants within the Foreign Office whose job it was to provide analysis and options.¹⁷ However, if the goal is to understand why certain policy options were adopted, then the devil is in the detail, and it is vital to know what other options existed and why they were rejected. It is also essential to understand just how that winnowing process worked.

This need for comprehensive detail also explains the focus on the Foreign Office. Only in exceptional cases were policy alternatives discussed on a regular basis elsewhere. The Foreign Office's central occupation was to shape British strategic foreign policy, and all information from other departments flowed through it. Therefore, it is only logical that the Foreign Office files should provide the bulk of the material in this book.¹⁸ Nor should it be surprising that many lesser-known figures in the Foreign Office have been allowed to speak for themselves rather than have their ideas paraphrased. Only by working in this fashion can the complexity and the personal nature of the debates over policy alternatives become clear. However, the Foreign Office was not the only voice in the discussion of policy. Thus, as the use of the term 'strategic foreign policy' suggests, the influence of other departments, particularly of the Treasury and the fighting services, is a central part of what follows.¹⁹

The intended end result of this consideration of the Anglo-Soviet 'core-sample' is to revise the existing explanatory frameworks for British strategic foreign policy in the inter-war period. Analysis of this subject has centred around the concept of appeasement.²⁰ Soviet Russia is central in this argument. Those who have accepted the appeasement model have blamed the British for not recognizing that Germany was a rogue state that could be resisted only by means of force or by the threat of force.²¹ And, it is often contended, force, or the threat of force, could best have been provided by means of an Anglo-Soviet alliance. From this it is concluded that the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe was the fault of British decision makers - the 'guilty men' - who refused to countenance a Soviet alliance due to their inherent, broadly defined ideological prejudices.²²

Appeasement as an explanation for the coming of war has not remained unchallenged. In the late 1970s, a new, revisionist school of thinking emerged. These accounts argued that appeasement was a reasoned response to the 'realities behind diplomacy'.²³ Closely tied to this revisionist view of appeasement is 'declinism', the larger thesis of Britain's putative decline as a Great Power in the twentieth century.²⁴ In it, appeasement is subsumed in a grand vision of Britain's rise and fall, and becomes a subset of the failure by successive British leaders to recognize Britain's diminished capability to shape world events.

Appeasement and 'declinism' have their attractions. Appeasement, with its 'guilty men' and 'anti-appeasers', makes for a dramatic narrative, complete with villains and heroes.²⁵ In this chiaroscuro world, policy choices were stark and the moral choices Manichaean. 'Declinism' offers another intriguing story line. The Olympian perspective of the longue durée provides the reader with a sense of sombre grandeur, as the rise and fall of British power is played out by characters who are only dimly aware of their circumstances.

These approaches also have their limitations. 'Declinism' and revisionist views of appeasement are based largely on economic determinism, and fail to consider the wider aspects of power.²⁶ The arguments based upon appeasement and 'guilty men' illustrate the dangers inherent in the principle of the excluded middle. In both cases, their basic assumptions exclude many possibilities. For the 'declinists', discussions of alternative policies are feckless, as impersonal forces have already determined the outcome. For the 'guilty men/appeasement' school, there are only two choices to be made: one right, the other wrong. An examination of the Anglo-Soviet 'core-sample' makes it evident that both of these approaches are simplistic and inadequate.

Looking at Anglo-Soviet matters shows that Britain did not face predetermined outcomes but rather choice.²⁷ British power, while not irresistible, was sufficient to permit alternative policies. Discovering what these alternatives were and why they were not followed requires looking at a wider range of factors than the appeasement school or the declinist school consider. Only by looking at some of the fundamental matters that affected the formulation of British strategic foreign policy can a deeper understanding of it be obtained. To do so requires a consideration of the legacies of the First World War.²⁸

These legacies will be considered under two headings: structural (including systemic) and intellectual. With regard to structural and systemic changes, it is essential to remember that the First World War brought about a fundamental change in the political make-up of Europe and the world.²⁹ Four empires had collapsed. Further, extra-European Powers, primarily the United States and Japan, moved on to the world stage. These two occurrences had profound implications. European politics (and, given the overwhelming strength of Europe, world politics) had been dominated by a balance of power before 1914.³⁰ Britain's geographic location and the strength of the Royal Navy had allowed the country the luxury of participating in the balance largely as it suited. While isolation, 'splendid' or otherwise, had never been Britain's policy, it had been largely free to choose on to which side of the balance it would throw its weight.³¹ After 1918, the European balance was shattered. While France and Germany, the latter at least potentially, remained as Great Powers, Austria-Hungary had devolved into a series of weak successor states, and imperial Russia had been replaced by Soviet Russia, a country unwilling to participate in (and a threat to) the existing order. This meant that the pre-war balance of power no longer functioned and that British strategic foreign policy would have to be formulated on a different, as yet undetermined basis.

This problem was intensified by the growth of American and Japanese power. Even before the First World War, the United States' potential power was evident to many. The Venezuelan crisis and the Alaska boundary settlement made this evident; the British had decided that the Monroe Doctrine would not be challenged and Canada could not be defended.³² The case of Japan was more complex. The Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1902 had been concluded to utilize Tokyo to stem St Petersburg's expansion in the Far East.³³ This proved to be a double-edged sword. The Russo-Japanese War eliminated Russia as a threat to British interests in the Far East, but it also removed St Petersburg as a check to Tokyo's aspirations. This new reality was reinforced by the Bolshevik revolution.³⁴

The systemic significance of the growth of both American and Japanese power for British strategic foreign policy came from the fact that both countries lay outside the European balance of power. Great Power politics now had both a global and a European context, and Britain had either to defend its extra-European interests by itself or to persuade another Power to assist it.³⁵ The two possible assistants were the United States and Soviet Russia.³⁶ Of the two, the United States was the agent of choice. Washington and London were thought to be kindred spirits, at worst vying with one another in 'competitive cooperation' rather than being engaged, as were Moscow and London, in an early version of a 'clash of civilizations'.³⁷ In the British new world order, Soviet Russia thus could play a number of roles. As a revolutionary power, it could reject taking a role favourable to Britain in an extended, global balance of power and pursue policies designed to subvert Britain and the empire. Or it could decide to set aside its revolutionary aspirations temporarily and, for raisons d'état, combine with Japan to oust Britain from the Far East. As easily, in the face of an aggressive and ambitious Japan, Moscow could decide to become London's strategic bedfellow. Soviet Russia had a similar set of options in Europe. It could either assist in containing a resurgent Germany or join with it to redraw the map of Europe. Finally, it could retreat into isolation, and await the inevitable collapse of capitalism. In each case, what Soviet Russia decided would be an important factor for British planners.

If this was the systemic impact of the war itself, what was the legacy of the peace settlement? Outside the territorial settlements themselves, the primary innovation at Versailles was the creation of the League of Nations.³⁸

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© Cambridge University Press

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. The period of persuasion: British strategic foreign policy and Soviet Russia, 1919–33; 2. 1933–4: parallel interests?; 3. A clash of sensibilities: January to June 1935; 4. Complications and choices: July 1935–February 1936; 5. Soviet Russian assertiveness: February 1936–July 1937; 6. Chamberlain's interlude: May 1937–September 1938; 7. Chamberlain as Buridan's ass: October 1938–September 1939; Conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

"This elegantly written and tightly organized study combines particular and general concerns in an interesting way...Neilson has produced a thoughtful and perceptive study that will be read with profit by those interested in international relations as well as by diplomatic historians."
Martin Ceadel, American Historical Review

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