A Peace to End all Peace

by David Fromkin

  From the time of the armistice onward, the divergence between Italy’s goals in the Middle East and those of her Allies widened. As a practical matter there was little incentive for her to support their program, especially after they sent the Greek army into the Smyrna enclave to pre-empt the Italian claim. To successive Italian governments, Allied policy seemed designed chiefly to profit Greece—a purpose that Rome had no interest in serving. Especially after Count Sforza became Foreign Minister in 1920, Italy treated Greece as a rival whose gains had to be matched rather than an ally whose claims had to be supported. In asserting her own claims, Italy received no help from the Allies. A clash with Kemalist forces at Konya in central Anatolia left the Italian authorities with the feeling that in their sector of occupied Turkey they would be left to face a Kemalist advance by themselves—and that they might be beaten. Deteriorating economic, financial, and social conditions at home finally led Italy to abandon her claims to Turkish territory and evacuate her forces from Anatolia: her hope was that Kemal’s Angora regime would reward her for doing so by agreeing to economic concessions. Sforza entered into a secret accord with the Kemalists whereby Italy would supply them with substantial shipments of military equipment if such concessions were forthcoming.

  As Foreign Minister, Count Sforza continued to press the British and French governments for revision of the Treaty of Sèvres and warned Lord Curzon that unless the Allies succeeded in coming to an understanding with Kemal, the Angora regime would be driven into alliance with Moscow—a possibility, he said, fraught with peril.3 For a number of reasons, then, the Italian government continued to dissent from the policy embodied in the Treaty of Sèvres, yet made no overt move to oppose it, not daring to risk an open confrontation with Britain.

  Within Italy there were demands for a more forceful approach to the realization of the country’s ambitions. The rapt enthusiasm that had greeted Gabriele D’Annunzio’s seizure of the Dalmatian port of Fiume in 1919—the famous author and nationalist had led his supporters to take over the town—showed the wellsprings of sentiment that were there to be tapped. Benito Mussolini used his newspaper, the Popolo d’Italia, to exploit the bitterness of those who felt cheated out of the rewards of victory. An agitator who, in turn, had advocated the extreme positions of almost all sections of the left and the right—in his own words, “an adventurer for all roads”—he charged that Italy was being cheated out of the “booty” in the Middle East.4 Proclaiming a “great imperial destiny” for his country, he asserted that it had a right to become the dominant power in the Mediterranean.5 The Great Power that stood in the way, according to him, was Britain; Mussolini proposed to help insurgent forces in Egypt, India, and Ireland.

  When Mussolini, supported by his political followers, known as fascisti, became Prime Minister of Italy in 1922, Italy’s local disagreements with Britain about territorial claims in Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean evolved into a more general and permanent estrangement. Mussolini’s political program called for Britain to be chased out of the Mediterranean altogether.6 Under his leadership, Italy, like Russia, moved from ally to enemy of the British Empire.

  III

  The United States withdrew from the Allied coalition in 1919–20, when the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and membership in the League of Nations and refused to accept a Mandate to govern Armenia. In reply to a note from the French ambassador, the Secretary of State, on behalf of President Wilson, set forth the new American position in a note of 24 March 1920: the United States would not send a representative to the Peace Conference and would not participate in or sign the peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire, but it expected the peace treaty to take account of American views. In addition to President Wilson’s views on specific Middle Eastern matters mentioned in the note, the United States insisted on an Open Door policy,* on nondiscrimination against nonsignatories of the treaty, and on the maintenance of existing American rights in the area.

  In 1919 the Department of State commenced a program of legally asserting American rights in the occupied Ottoman territories, including not only those deriving from the Capitulation agreements governing the rights and privileges of Americans in Turkey, but also freedom of navigation of the Dardanelles, protection of American missionary colleges and endeavors, and adequate opportunity to carry out archaeological activities and commercial activities. The most conspicuous interests asserted by the United States were those of American oil companies. It was these that brought the United States and Britain into collision.

  The oil issue was raised for the first time on behalf of the Standard Oil Company of New York (“Socony”), which had been engaged in oil exploration in the Middle East before the war and held (from the Ottoman regime) concessions—that is to say, exclusive licenses to explore for oil in designated areas—in Palestine and Syria. It held no concessions in Iraq, however, and wanted to establish concessions there because it was the principal supplier of petroleum products in the area; the company’s marketing strategy called for it to obtain supplies for its marketing organization at or near the point of sales.

  In September 1919 Socony sent two geologists to prospect for oil in Iraq. One of them incautiously sent a letter to his wife telling her “I am going to the biggest remaining oil possibilities in the world” and “the pie is so very big” that whatever had to be done should be done to “gain us the rights which properly belong to American Citizens.”7 The letter was intercepted in Allied-occupied Constantinople by British censors, who forwarded a copy of it to the British government in London. London immediately sent orders to Sir Arnold Wilson, High Commissioner in Iraq, to forbid the geologists to prospect. At Socony’s request the Department of State protested, but Lord Curzon, the Foreign Secretary, put the Americans off with a plausible but not entirely true tale: wartime restrictions applicable to all nationalities forbade such activities until peace was concluded.

  The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey was the next to enter the picture. In 1910 its head geologist had concluded that there was oil potential in Iraq; but until after the war, New Jersey Standard did nothing about it. In February 1919 the company’s president suggested to the board of directors that an effort be made to look for oil in Iraq; and a month later the company’s head of foreign production was sent to Paris to take up the question with the American delegation to the Peace Conference.

  Later the chairman of the board of New Jersey Standard, A. C. Bedford, went to Europe to deal with the matter personally. The various wartime arrangements negotiated between Britain and France to share the postwar oil wealth of the Middle East remained secret—the American government had been put off with false assurances that nothing had been decided upon that excluded the United States’ interests—and these were matters that he looked into. On 27 April 1920, at the Conference of San Remo, Britain and France finally concluded a secret oil bargain, agreeing in effect to monopolize the whole future output of Middle Eastern oil between them. Bedford obtained a copy of the agreement from a member of the French delegation, and turned it over to the American embassy.

  In view of the magnitude of the proposed Anglo-French monopoly, the American government looked upon the San Remo agreement as harmful, not merely to one or more American companies, but to the United States’ interests as a nation. The war had focused attention for the first time on the vital military and naval importance of petroleum, and in the aftermath of the war the United States had undergone an oil-scarcity scare. The price of crude oil rose, and fears were expressed widely that domestic oil reserves were being depleted. The economic adviser to the Department of State wrote that “It is economically essential…to obtain assured foreign supplies of petroleum” in order to assure supplies of bunker oil to the merchant marine and the navy, and in order to perpetuate the United States’ position as the world’s leading oil and oil products supplier.8

  In the summer of 1920, the San Remo agreement was made public and the United States—able finally to acknowledge that it knew of the agre
ement—protested. Foreign Secretary Curzon replied that Britain controlled only 4.5 percent of world oil production while the United States controlled 80 percent—and that the United States excluded non-American interests from areas under its control.9 Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby countered that the United States possessed only one-twelfth of the world’s known oil reserves, that demand for petroleum exceeded supply, and that only unhampered development of existing resources could meet the growing need for oil.10

  Conscious of having estranged the United States, British officials suspected that American oil interests were behind the anti-British insurrection in Iraq and the Kemalist movement in Turkey. Allegedly an insurrectionary leader arrested by British security officers in Iraq was found to have in his possession a letter from one of the Standard Oil companies showing that American funds were being dispensed by the American consul in Baghdad to the Shi’ite rebels centered in the holy city of Karbala.11

  The American consul in Baghdad was indeed opposed to British rule in Iraq, but Washington was not. Quite the reverse was true: both the Department of State and the oil companies were in favor of British hegemony in the area. The oil companies were prepared to engage in exploration, development, and production only in areas governed by what they regarded as stable and responsible regimes. The president of New Jersey Standard reported to the State Department that Iraq was a collection of warring tribes; according to him an Iraqi government dominated by Britain offered the only hope of law and order.12 Allen Dulles, chief of the Near Eastern Affairs Division of the Department of State, was one of the many officials who expressed dismay at the thought that Britain and France might relinquish control of their Middle Eastern conquests, and who expressed fear for the fate of American interests should they do so.13 Dulles reported that Guy Wellman, attorney for the American oil companies that were seeking a share in Iraqi development, was of the opinion that his clients would be much better off negotiating a partnership with British interests rather than attempting to operate on their own.14

  A solution to the conflict between Britain and America began to emerge in the summer of 1920 when geologists advised the British government that oil prospects in Iraq were more speculative than had been supposed.15 At the same time the Foreign Office was advised that the prospects—if they did materialize—were so vast that Britain lacked the capital resources to develop them by herself and would have to invite American participation.16 For these, and for political reasons, Sir John Cadman, an important figure in the British oil industry, was delegated to go to the United States to initiate discussions. On 22 June 1922 A. C. Bedford of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey called on the Department of State to report that on behalf of seven American oil companies he proposed to negotiate a participation in the British-owned concessionary corporation in Iraq. The Department of State responded that it had no objection to his doing so, provided no qualified American oil companies that wished to participate were excluded. Negotiations thereupon went forward.*

  Thus the dispute with the United States was resolved. But the burden of imposing European control over the Middle East was left by America to Britain, unaided.

  IV

  France, Britain’s closest major ally, was the last to desert the alliance. The long quarrel about whether the Sykes-Picot Agreement would be honored had taken its toll, as had Britain’s sponsorship of the Hashemite family’s political claims. With the retirement of Clemenceau, Aristide Briand, a veteran left-wing politician who had served several times as Premier, was regarded as the leader of those who were loyal to the British alliance; yet, when he became Premier again in January 1921, the rupture between the two countries finally occurred.

  It occurred because Briand saw no way to maintain his country’s position in Cilicia, the southern province of Turkey which then was still occupied by France. France’s 80,000 occupation troops were a drain on resources that could no longer be afforded; the French Parliament was unwilling to continue paying for them. Cilicia proved to be an awkward location for a French army to occupy, caught as it was between Kemalist Turks and troublesome Syria. In the spring of 1921, Premier Briand therefore sent the Turkophile Senator Henri Franklin-Bouillon on a mission to Angora to negotiate a way out. Franklin-Bouillon, a former president of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, was a leader of the colonialist group and strongly believed in the importance of Turkey as a Moslem ally.

  On his second mission to Angora, in the autumn of 1921, Franklin-Bouillon succeeded in arriving at an agreement. It brought the war between France and Turkey to an end, and effectively recognized the Nationalist Angora regime as the legitimate government of Turkey. For the Nationalists, the Angora Accord was the greatest of diplomatic triumphs. According to Mustapha Kemal, it “proved to the whole world” that the Treaty of Sèvres was now “merely a rag.”17 The British saw it as a betrayal: it was a separate peace, and it freed the Turks to attack Britain’s clients—Greece and Iraq. As the British suspected, the French also turned over to the Angora regime quantities of military supplies.18 Thus Turks supplied by France were at war with Greeks backed by Britain and the former Entente Powers found themselves ranged on opposite sides of the Ottoman war that they had entered together as allies in 1914.

  On 26 October 1921, in a memorandum to the Cabinet alerting them to news of the aid France would provide the Kemalists, Churchill commented that “It seems scarcely possible to credit this information, which, if true, would unquestionably convict the French government of what in the most diplomatic application of the phrase could only be deemed an ‘unfriendly act’.”19 It should be understood that, according to a standard reference book, in the diplomatic lexicon “When a State wishes to warn other States that certain actions on their part might lead to war, it is usual to state that such action ‘would be regarded as an unfriendly act’.”20 Thus Churchill was making a very strong statement indeed; his words implied that the Angora Accord might lead to a war between France and Britain.

  Churchill had feared for some time that Nationalist Turkey would turn east to attack Feisal’s fragile regime in Iraq, and believed that France—by allowing Turkey to use the Baghdad Railway section in Cilicia—was now about to facilitate such a move. According to Churchill’s memorandum, “clearly the French are negotiating, through M Franklin-Bouillon, a treaty designed not merely to safeguard French interests in Turkey, but to secure those interests wherever necessary at the expense of Great Britain. They apparently believe that we have a similar anti-French arrangement with the Greeks. They are, of course, very angry about King Feisal” having been placed by Britain on the throne of Iraq.21 According to Churchill, France would have liked nothing better than to have seen the collapse of Feisal and of British policy in the area, which also would have meant the destruction of his own handiwork.

  Premier Briand failed to appreciate how strongly the Angora Accord would affect British policy in Europe. In 1921 Briand turned to Britain to guarantee France against a revival of the German challenge, having become aware that the American government was fundamentally out of sympathy with the whole trend of postwar French policy regarding Germany.* Fearful that France might be isolated, he approached Lloyd George and Curzon with a proposal for a bilateral alliance between Britain and France to provide the latter with security against Germany. The British leaders refused to consider forming such an alliance unless France resolved the quarrel in the Middle East stemming from the Angora Accord. Following the British refusal, the Briand government fell.

  Former President Raymond Poincaré took office as the new Premier. He represented the opposite pole from Briand; he was not a great friend of Britain. His diplomacy proposed doing without Britain and instead going it alone as a Great Power by creating a network of alliances with less powerful countries in central and eastern Europe that included Poland, Rumania, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. It estranged Britain further, by suggesting to Britain’s leaders that France aimed at establishing hegemony on the continent of Euro
pe, as she had done under Louis XIV and Napoleon. The prospect of an alliance between Britain and France died in June 1922, when Britain suspended the negotiations; and the breach between the two countries widened thereafter.

  V

  To some extent the diplomatic isolation of Britain was the result of Mustapha Kemal’s adroit diplomacy. The Angora regime had deliberately played off one ally against another.

  Fundamentally, however, it was Britain’s decision to impose European rule on the former Ottoman Empire that led to the break-up of the alliance or—to the extent that there were other contributing factors—at any rate caused the break-up to lead in such dangerous directions. It is here that the contrast between Britain’s Middle Eastern policy before and after 1914 can be glimpsed most vividly.

  It was not merely that in the nineteenth century Britain had often kept conflict from flaring up between the European powers by securing mutual agreement that none of them would encroach on the Middle East. It was also the process by which she did so that contributed to the maintenance of international stability. The frequent reference of issues to the concert of the powers of Europe, and the habit of multilateral consultation and cooperation that it bred, helped to make world politics more civilized. In that sense the Middle Eastern question, despite its inherent divisiveness, contributed to international harmony.