Redstate

Yalta really wasn't anything like Munich. Rather it was in the grand old tradition of the Congress of Vienna, another confab of great powers where the fate (and existence) of other nations  was decided: where Finland and Poland were shopped to the Tasr, Norway handed over to Sweden, most of Central Europe and northern Italy to Austria, Prussia given a free hand in Germnany, Belgium given to the Netherlands and the "learned nothing, forgotten nothing" Bourbons re-seated on the thrones of France, Spain and Naples.

it's nice to see the response Drezner's guest bloggers have gotten especially when you compare it to those he received on Drum's nearly-worthless rag.

Although Bush went to Russia, he made it a point to visit 3 of the former Soviet Block nations that are developing forms of democracy.

Those states particularly are imporatnt to Bush since it was many of them that supported the Bush policy to go to war in Iraq, he needed to thank them and let them think the U.S. is there to support them. Although the U.S. would never take on the Russians if it came to something like that and those states would be allowed to go right back into Russian control without a blink of actual military action from the U.S.

The trip was nearly used as a warning to Russia, although it means nothing, to stay on course with democratic reforms. the Russian President (Putin) is laughing at him and a bit irritated at the oh so obvious games being played. Kinda of a Cold-War throw back of an idea of showing another nation up so to speak.

In the end, even a casual observer could see how poorly this was handled with this political technique, he clearly needs some real experience when it comes to foreign policy. Maybe we can get back some of the 65 - 70 nations that use to think of us as friends just 5 years ago and now regard us as an entity not to be trusted or a least watched.

Of course it's no secret that Bush's foreign policy is one of the most disastrous in all of American's recorded history. There has never been a time in American history that we have lost so many friend and so much support world-wide.

So, the fact that he needs some polishing up and needs to begin to understand how the world works and how people work and start to study the basic principles of how foreign policy is works is not a surprise considering his track record.

Most of the world is still wondering where the Weapons of Mass Destruction are and still remember what they were told by this administration. Virtually any public opinion poll in these countries can demonstrate this as the latest poll out of the country of Georgia today demonstrates.

They like him, but most are uneasy that he lied to them about the weapons. And showing great wisedom, they did not forget what he said and do not buy the story that he was told something wrong, after all he is the President, it's his job to know, his job to question, his job to seek out the truth when something smells wrong.

But then again, you have to have actual experience to develop such a sense, something he lacks a great deal of.

Of course it's no secret that Bush's foreign policy is one of the most disastrous in all of American's recorded history.

Generally, when someone says "It's no secret" or "It goes without saying," they're trying to beg the question and establish their opinion as fact.

There has never been a time in American history that we have lost so many friend and so much support world-wide.

Hmmmm.

How about Vietnam? The takeaway from that mess for a lot of countries was that it was far less dangerous to be an enemy of America than to be a friend.

And, frankly, those who are now "not our friends" never really were our friends to begin with. I prefer honest animosity to back-stabbing smiles.

Let them hate us all they wish, so long as they fear us more.

Your comment shows exactly the attitude that has lost us our diplomatic friendships.  Not only does your comment show a lack of understanding of effective foreign policy, but I certainly don't want my country to be the one that is "feared" throughout the world, as you seem to.

what was the alternative? FDR, Truman and Churchill were presented with a fait accomplai and unless they were willing to drive the Red Army out of Eastern Europe by military force (a preposterous notion), the Iron Curtain was going to end up where it ended up.

So what should they have done differently? Complained more?

The "captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe" may or may not be "one of the greatest wrongs of history", but the crime was perpetrated by the Soviet Union, not the Western Powers. That, I think, is where Bush got his history wrong.

His point was that the Allies took the easy way out, and considered the fate of smaller nations to be expendable for the sake of peace between larger ones. And the Western powers do bear that responsibility, because it wasn't exactly an unknown fact what sort of man Stalin was, and what sort of government the Soviets ran.

In 2001, we were seen as wimps.  Al-Qaeda joked that all we could do was serve legal papers.  We were remembered for cutting and running from Somalia after we got a bloody nose (in a firefight we won for all intents and purposes).

The perception of weakness invites aggression against us.

What would have been the "hard" way out?

Are you suggesting that if FDR had been more persusive at Yalta, that Stalin could have been convinced to withdraw behind the 1939 borders?

Or are you seriously proposing that the proper course of action would have been a general war with the Soviet Union starting in 1945?

Are you suggesting that if FDR had been more persusive at Yalta, that Stalin could have been convinced to withdraw behind the 1939 borders?

Because he wasn't, and in complicity turned a blind eye to the fact that one of his chief advisers to the conference (Alger Hiss) had been repeatedly fingered as a Soviet Spy (and was later convicted of lying to Congress about not being a Soviet spy, and conclusively proven to have been a Soviet spy by the Venona cables.

We'll further never know whether FDR had it in his heart to be even stern with "Uncle Joe" as he affectionately called him, or was willing to recognize the evil that lay just beneath a very thin surface.

FDR was a man of great character, but his blind eye toward the evil of communism was a great character flaw.

the very dubious history of Harry Hopkins, possibly a Soviet agent, in influencing US wartime and post-war policy towards the USSR.

Your comment shows exactly the attitude that has lost us our diplomatic friendships.  Not only does your comment show a lack of understanding of effective foreign policy, but I certainly don't want my country to be the one that is "feared" throughout the world, as you seem to.

Had I been President on 9/11, the War on Terror would have ended triumphantly on 9/12...along with the cities of Damascus, Teheran, Baghdad, Pyongang, Tripoli, and any other "state sponsors of terrorism" that I may have overlooked.

I want those who have evil intent to fear us. The decision to love or hate is in the other's mind. We can only keep those who hate us from acting on their hatred; we cannot make them love us.

Can't we all just get along?

What a great underpinning for the foreign policy of the worlds' only superpower.

Gosh, you get my vote.

weapons (I assume that is what you were referring to), there is a reason that you won't become president.  

And I was talking about our allies, not our enemies.  I understand the benefit of projecting power and even fear.  I also understand the value of having strong allies, which is a recognition that I think is missing from this administration.

of your comment. Just another incipient whine about all the friends we've lost.

1. don't know who Harry Hopkins was and wish to appear clever
   
   
2. don't care who he was but wish to appear clever
   
   
3. don't have any background on US diplomatic history post World War II and wish to appear clever
   
   
4. don't care about said history and wish to appear clever.

Otherwise you wouldn't have made this post.

Because, quite frankly, you seem to be quite a wimp when it comes to responding to state-sponsored terrorism.

That is the kind of perception that got three thousand people killed on 9/11.

Being liked isn't the most important thing, it's the only thing.

Had I been President on 9/11, the War on Terror would have ended triumphantly on 9/12...along with the cities of Damascus, Teheran, Baghdad, Pyongang, Tripoli, and any other "state sponsors of terrorism" that I may have overlooked.

Wow.  

So you think Mr Bush was a wimp for actually going after the malefactors who committed the atrocity rather than just killing a bunch of random people whose only crime was speaking the same language and following the same religion (more or less) as them?

Are you suggesting that anyone who doesn't think dropping nuclear weapons on five capital cities is a valid foreign policy is a wimp?

And I was talking about our allies, not our enemies.

Like I said, many of our "allies" are allies in name only. When it comes to their deeds, they're sure as hell not friendly. (Who do you think is supplying nuclear weapons technologies to Iran, for instance? A lot of it is coming from Germany and France.) And they've always cut deals with terrorists. As long as America's the only target, they look the other way.

Re: His point was that the Allies took the easy way out, and considered the fate of smaller nations to be expendable for the sake of peace between larger ones.

Ho-hum. Nothing new under the sun there. See my point about the Congress of Vienna above, and we can also through in the Treaties of Utrecht and Westfalia as examples as well. Great powers always wheel and deal at the expense of the little guys. Moreover what alternative, realistically, was there? The US still had Japan to defeat and no A-bonb was yet on the rack for use. It looked as if we were going to need all our troops in Europe once Hitler was history to bring down Tojo & Co, and perhaps some help from old Uncle Joe as well. No, FDR and Churchill did what they thought they had to do, and blaming them now is a little like complaining that our Founding Fathers compromised over slavery.

all of the smaller countries we are discussing here had, at that point, ceased to exist.  

is what caused the 9/11 attacks?  If your opinion were true, then why does Bush ever leave the country or talk to any other world leaders?  Just press the button already...  

but if we are dealing with policies, I want to know which ones were misguided in your view.  I think you and many here perhaps don't appreciate how close Germany came to winning.  Things like lend-lease have to be viewed through the proper context.  

The idea Hopkins being a spy is only debatable if you take the counterpoint that he was merely an agent of influence. Unless you are of the Alger Hiss was framed and the Rosenbergs were innocent school in which case you're peddling revisionism.

The idea that Germany had a chance of winning the war, really after the failure to seize Dunkirk, is farfetched.

So what should they have done differently?

Not suck up to Stalin, for starters. We spent a good chunk of the 1945-1948 timeframe trying to get Stalin to be a good boy with cajoling and bribery. We wasted time and resources.

I doubt you would be able to find anyone at the time who thought the war was over in 1940.

he would bump his butt on the ground. There was just about as much of a chance of Stalin suing for peace as a frog growing wings.

There is a quantum leap between what people "believed" in 1940 and what the reality of 1940 was. By the Casablanca conference Roosevelt and Churchill clearly believed they had turned the strategic corner and it was a matter of time until the Allies prevailed but their prevailing was not in question.

Russia as an effective second front played a large part in the confidence of Roosevelt and Churchill?  

but how that makes your point that Germany was "close to winning" is beyond me.

probably would not have been a viable 2nd front, and Germany would have been that much closer to winning.  If this was not one of the policies you were referring to then I'm sorry I misunderstood, and we both wasted some time.

is historically supportable. But, no, I don't have an issue with Lend-Lease. It kept Britain in the war from 1940 onwards.

My objections is to the whole series of agreements made with the Soviet Union that resulted in us abandoning large swaths of what became East Germany, as well as Czechoslovakia, that we had liberated to the Red Army. To involuntarily repatriating refugees and prisoners of war from the Soviet Union.

what other options did the allies have after the war in regards to the USSR?  They were already in those areas in force, we would have had to push them out, while fighting the japanese, and managing the logistics of Western Europe.

by VE day we occupied much of Czechoslovakia and significant areas in what became the Soviet Zone of Occupation. So staying put in our positions on VE day would have been a huge improvement on the position in which we found ourselves during the Cold War.

Not sending Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Volga German, and Don Cossack refugees and soldiers back to the Soviet Union would have removed a huge moral stain from our actions the overall Yalta Agreement notwithstanding.

Ho-hum. Nothing new under the sun there. See my point about the Congress of Vienna above, and we can also through in the Treaties of Utrecht and Westfalia as examples as well. Great powers always wheel and deal at the expense of the little guys.

He didn't dispute that that's the way it's always been done. He lamented that it was the case, and declared that it should not be so in the future.

Excellent post Pejman.

Response to MachosNachos:

We'll further never know whether FDR had it in his heart to be even stern with "Uncle Joe" as he affectionately called him, or was willing to recognize the evil that lay just beneath a very thin surface.

That's terribly unfair to FDR; he (and Churchill) well knew exactly what kind of evil Stalin represented, but nonetheless struck their deal because they felt they had no other choice.*

(Note, from Greenburg's piece:  "As every schoolchild should know, Roosevelt and Churchill had formed an alliance of necessity with Josef Stalin during World War II. Hardly blind to Stalin's evil, they nonetheless knew that Soviet forces were indispensable in defeating the Axis powers. "It is permitted in time of grave danger to walk with the devil until you have crossed the bridge," FDR said, quoting an old Bulgarian proverb. He and Churchill understood that Stalin would be helping to set war aims and to plan for its aftermath. Victory, after all, carried a price.")  

von

*It's easy to look back with the comfort of hindsight and suggest that FDR should have risked all out war against the Soviet Union on the heels of WW2, and I have no objections to playing "what if" games or lamenting the loss of Eastern Europe for nearly a half-century to tyranny.  But condemning FDR or Churchill for making their deal with Stalin is sheer stupidity.  (This last remark is not directed to MachosNachos.)

That folks need to be a bit more careful about who they call allies.  Are France and Germany really friends/allies of the USA?  I think recent history suggests that at best they are unreliable friends.

What did you initially want when you heard the news that a bunch of terrorists had killed thousands of people in an unprovoked sneak attack on American soil?

I was in the mood to kick butt and ask questions later.

have done to fundamentally change the situation?  And in cases such as Czechoslovakia, is it really reasonable to assume that the U.S. could have kept our forces there, thousands of miles from home, at the doorstep of the USSR,after they had just fought WWII, while also rebuilding Europe and finishing the Pacific war?

would you have done in the 1945--48 timeframe?  Go to war with Russia?  We had three former enemies that were entirely dependent on us for their survival and two allies that were also dependent on us for feeding large portions of their populations.  Going to war with Russia would have meant mass starvation in Western Europe and Japan, and probably communist revolutions in many of the countries of Western Europe, certainly Italy and Greece, maybe even England and France.  Even if nuking Russian cities was feasible (putting aside the moral implications of deliberately targeting civilians in a war of aggression), take a look at the map--it's a long way from West Germany to the Russian cities, and the Russians certainly didn't lack the ability to shoot our bombers down.  

Even if we did manage drop a couple nuclear bombs on Moscow, do you think that that would stop Stalin?  He was willing to lose 27 million people to beat Hitler, a couple hundred thousand more would just be a propaganda victory for him.  His armies would be able to crush any army the U.S. would be able to field in Europe in the late forties.  10 or so million more dead wouldn't bother him in the least.

So you think Mr Bush was a wimp for actually going after the malefactors who committed the atrocity rather than just killing a bunch of random people whose only crime was speaking the same language and following the same religion (more or less) as them?

No, I'm saying that President (not Mister, President) Bush is a great deal more saintly than I am.

He's probably right, too. But I would have still gone for the nuclear option. I am not President Bush. I have a lot less patience, and am a lot more ready to make my displeasure with evildoers plain.

I would show as much concern for enemy noncombatants as the enemy does. If the enemy is so concerned about civilian casualties, they might consider not inflicting them on Americans.

And what exactly would you have done in the 1945--48 timeframe?  Go to war with Russia?

No. I would have held the lines reached by US troops in 1945, and not given entire countries to Stalin just to suck up to him. I would have not repatriated Russians, Ukrainians, and other "Soviet citizens" who did not want to return to the tender mercies of "Soviet justice." (No-kidding, genuine war criminals could have been tried at Nuremberg.) I would not have allowed German officers to have been convicted of and sentenced to death at Nuremberg for war crimes in connection with the Katyn Forest massacre (which we knew at the time had been done by the Soviets, and not the Germans). I would have told Stalin "talk to the hand" with his unreasonable preconditions for UN membership--instead, I would have demanded certain minimum standards of domestic behavior from any potential UN member nation.

The legitimacy we gave to Stalin in the wake of WW2 bit us in the backside for the rest of the Cold War, and still tags along today.

this had meant losing part, if not all of Austria (after all the Soviets did give up their part of Austria as scheduled and Austria has been democratic and neutral ever since), and more overt support of communist insurgencies in Western Europe?  Remember, Stalin laid off in Greece, allowing the communist insurgency there to fail.

As for Nuremberg.  We looked the other way on warcrimes when it suited us.  Nobody dug too far into Werner Von Braun's and his team's complicity in slave labor used in the missile program.  And de-nazification was a joke.  Klaus Barbi got away because the OSS hid him.

For better or worse, World War II ended the way it did.  The leaders who carved up the world at the end of the war and the people who fought and died in the war were human.  Sixty years later we can say they could have done this better or they should have done this but to imply they were cowardly, duped, stupid, or enchanted by Stalin into enslaving Eastern Europe is historical revisionism of the worst kind.  It demeans their memories, ignores historical facts, and assumes that they could have predicted the future.

I will concede the point on Churchhill - I have heard that he once said, in response to a question about allying with Stalin, that he would have allied with Satan to defeat Hitler.

Roosevelt was considerably more obtuse - even to the point of referring to him, as noted, as "Uncle Joe." Now, I could be wrong about this, but I'd wager to say that you'd have a very difficult time finding any remark by FDR that showed that he clearly understood the evil of Stalin.

And further, as streiff noted earlier in this thread, if the concern was a risk of all out war, why concede territory at Yalta that the Allies controlled?

Even if this had meant losing part, if not all of Austria (after all the Soviets did give up their part of Austria as scheduled and Austria has been democratic and neutral ever since), and more overt support of communist insurgencies in Western Europe?

Stalin thought he had Austria in the bag. Turns out he was wrong. So that's a non-issue in this context.

As for supporting communist insurgents in Western Europe, he could have done that anyway. His decision to not do so had nothing to do with whether we gave him what he demanded. That's another non-issue.

The rest of your argument is "well, sure, Stalin was a big baddie, but everyone did it." I'm sorry; "moral equivalence" arguments don't cut ice with me.

Fair points.