No doubt Liberty's Torch’s Gentle Readers are aware of the enormous gaggle of “leaders” gaggled in Washington on Sunday to “help” with the Russia-Ukraine “peace talks.” No doubt you’re also aware that this is being treated as something that “should” happen. And finally, you’re aware that a lot of the contention is over which parts of its former self Ukraine must concede to Russia as the purchase price of peace.
All I can think of the whole dreary matter is “It's 1919 in Versailles all over again.”
You know your history, don’t you? The famous Pan-European Peace Conference of 1919, that was supposed to draw a line under the recently concluded unpleasantness? The one that redrew nearly every national border in Europe, according to the preferences of British prime minister Lloyd George and French potentate Georges Clemenceau? The one where Woodrow Wilson harped endlessly on his “Fourteen Points, prompting Clemenceau to remark “The Lord God had only ten!”
Well, they missed the centennial, but I suppose this is as close as they could come.
The Russia-Ukraine War, which seems to have begun with an act of aggression by Russia, need not have involved any other nation. Yet it did. From nearly its inception it involved the United States, because the Grey Council that really exercised the powers of the presidency under Puppet-in-Chief Joe Biden saw opportunities for power and profit. It was a large part of the reason Donald Trump regained the presidency. No one wanted to imagine Biden negotiating with Vladimir Putin, much less confront the reality.
Putin’s vision of a reborn Russian Empire could not tolerate the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. Regardless of the demographic realities of the Donbas and Crimea, he would have attacked that reason alone. Even so, it was never a conflict that needed American involvement... any more than was World War I.
Woodrow Wilson so greatly desired to involve the United States in the Great War that he seized on the slenderest possible pretext – the soi-disant “Zimmerman telegram” – to do so. Perhaps he would have done so anyway, after the Lusitania affair. I have little doubt that he saw himself as a world-historical figure, destined by God to bring American standards of justice to the Old World. He saw himself as divinely destined to become the President of the United States:
After the election he told William F. McCombs, chairman of the Democratic National Committee: "Before we proceed I wish it clearly understood that I owe you nothing." Surprised, McCombs reminded him of his services during the campaign, but Wilson exclaimed: "God ordained that I should be the next President of the United States. Neither you nor any other mortal could have prevented that!"
Wilson never doubted that he was a foreordained agent, "guided by an intelligent power outside himself," with important work to do in the world. For him the League of Nations, his most famous enterprise, was not simply a human contrivance for ordering international relations; it represented God's will and, in rejecting it, the United States was trying futilely to resist its Providential destiny. As Wilson told some friends toward the end of his life: "I have seen fools resist Providence before, and I have seen their destruction.... That we shall prevail is as sure as God reigns." To Raymond Fosdick, a former League official, he exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, a few weeks before his death in 1924: "You can't fight God!"[Paul F. Boller, Presidential Anecdotes]
There’s a lot of danger in thinking yourself a divine agent. But there can be a great deal of power (for some) and profit (for some) in warfare. Lloyd George and Clemenceau wanted their slices. They thought they’d got them... for a while.
I hope President Trump doesn’t involve the United States any further in this. We don’t need another “security guarantee” that would imperil – possibly spill – the blood of our best yet profit us nothing.
Let’s conclude with a little music:
I'm here sitting in the wreck of Europe
With a map of Europe
Spread out in a hall of Versailles
And every single nationality and principality
have come for a piece of the pie
I'm sitting in the wreck of Europe
With a map of Europe
And the lines and the borders are gone
We've got to do this jigsaw puzzle
It's an awful muddle
But somehow we've got to go on
Lawrence of Arabia is waiting in the wings
He's got some Arab sheikhs and kings
And we're in debt to them somehow
Lawrence of Arabia has got this perfect vision
Gonna sell him down the river
There's no time for him now
I think I'm gonna take a piece of Russia
And a piece of Germany
And give them to Poland again
I'll put together Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia
And hope that is how they'll remain
Then I'll take a bit of Turkey
Then a lot of Turkey
This is all quite a heady affair
There's Persia and Iraq to pick up
And there's Churchill's hiccup
And we can't leave it up in the air
Woodrow Wilson waves his fourteen points around
And says "The time to act is now
Won't get this opportunity again"
Woodrow Wilson has his fourteen points
But Clemenceau turns to Lloyd George
And says "You know that God himself had only ten"
Today I'm carried by a league of notions
(It's a league of notions)
By a league of notions
I don't think I quite understand
(I don't think I understand)
I only know from this commotion
(From this commotion)
There's a chance that we could turn
The world in the palm of our hands
(We can turn the world in the palm of our hands)
Voices in the corridors of power
Candles burning hour by hour
Still you know that to the victors go the spoils
Such a great responsibility to make it fair
And there must be some reparations now
And don't forget the oil
Today I'm carried by a league of notions
(It's a league of notions)
By a league of notions
I don't think I quite understand
(I don't think I understand)
I only know from this commotion
(From this commotion)
There's a chance that we could turn
The world in the palm of our hands
(We can turn the world in the palm of our hands)
Pax vobiscum
Wo-Oh, Pax vobiscum
[Al Stewart]
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