by Adam Tooze
With Li having invited the chaos, the door was open for Tokyo to intervene directly in Beijing in the name of the integrity of the Chinese Republic. Nishihara released a generous dole of funds to the Zhili wing of the Northern militarist group whose troops promptly reoccupied the capital, routing General Zhang’s forces. The Anhui and the Zhili cliques divided power between them. Duan was restored as Prime Minister. Feng, the leading commander of the Zhili faction, replaced Li as President. However, refusing to accept the return of the twice-discredited militarists to Beijing, in the summer of 1917 the Guomindang members of the parliament decamped to the South where they constituted a rebel nationalist government headed by their long-time leader Sun Yat-sen. Meanwhile in Beijing on 14 August, the anniversary of the Boxer uprising, Duan rammed a declaration of war through what was left of the Beijing parliament. He had made his country a party to the war, thereby securing the place at the peace conference that many in China’s political class saw as a priceless entry ticket to the international arena. He had also put paid, once and for all, to monarchical restorationism in China. But, with two separate governments in the North and South, China’s thirty-year era of disintegration and civil war had begun.
In this conflict, all the sides looked to outside help. With Britain and France tied down in Europe, Russia consumed by revolutionary turmoil and Japan firmly committed to the Northern militarists, the Southern nationalist government turned to the United States. Serving as the Foreign Minister of the Southern government was Wu Tingfang, a distinguished servant of the Ch’ing dynasty and former ambassador to the United States, the first Chinese to be called to the Bar in London’s Lincoln’s Inn. In July 1917, Wu, who the American press sometimes referred to as the Benjamin Franklin of China, appealed directly to Washington.34 ‘In view of the present dangerous situation and the attitude of the rebellious tuchuns (military governors), I earnestly request that President Wilson, as the defender of the cause of democracy and constitutionalism all the world over, be moved to make a public statement on the subject of the American attitude toward China and earnestly support President Li Yuan-Hung.’35
But, despite the strong liberal credentials of men like Wu, the White House refused to take sides.36 In the summer of 1917, as the Chinese parliament stood face to face with the warlords over the question of the declaration of war, Secretary of State Lansing let it be known that ‘The entry of China into war with Germany – or the continuance of the status quo – are matters of secondary consideration.’ ‘The principle necessity for China is to resume and continue her political entity, to proceed along the road of national development on which she has made such marked progress. With the form of government in China, or the personnel which administers that government, the US has an interest only in so far as its friendship impels it to be of service to China. But in the maintenance by China of one central united and alone responsible government, the United States is deeply interested . . .’37 This was profoundly humiliating. At the beginning of the year, the Chinese political class had thrilled to the idea that by joining the coalition against Germany they might gain recognition in the advance guard of the family of nations. Now, Lansing was openly asserting China’s unreadiness for any such alliance and refusing to take sides in China’s internal struggles. By contrast, Imperial Japan had picked a side and was shepherding China into the war under an authoritarian regime. If Duan and the militarists were given their authoritarian head, government in China would certainly be ‘central, united and alone responsible’, but was this the kind of regime that would really be in the interest of the United States? Furthermore, whatever its superficial solidity, could such a government really produce a lasting settlement of China’s political future?
Amidst the chaos of Beijing’s factional politics, what Washington refused to acknowledge was that serious issues of principle were at stake. In an open letter published from Shanghai en route to joining Sun Yat-sen’s breakaway Southern government, Wu Tingfang addressed himself once more to America: ‘The war in Europe is being fought . . . to put an end to Prussian militarism,’ he insisted. ‘And I want the Americans here to understand that China’s present troubles are due to exactly the same causes.’ Drawing on his Gladstonian background, the new language of liberal internationalism came fluently to Wu: ‘We are engaged in a struggle between democracy and militarism . . . I ask Americans to be patient and give China a chance. Democracy will triumph . . . I hope to see the day when the stars and stripes and fire-coloured flag of China will be intertwined in an everlasting friendship.’38 The point was made even more forcefully by C. T. Wang, former vice president of the Senate and one of the authors of the 1917 constitution. Wang pilloried the stark difference in America’s attitude towards European and Asian affairs: ‘It is becoming rather ridiculous, at a time when America is engaged in a world-war . . . with the avowed principal object of saving democratic principle of government from being smothered by autocratic militarism, that the power and influence of the US should be applied in one place abroad, and should not be applied in another place abroad.’ ‘A primary requisite is that, as between reversion to an archaic monarchy, or the retention of a military oligarchy, or a graduated advance toward genuine republicanism, the influence of the United States ought to be thrown definitely to bring about the latter alternative. If this leads to quasi-interference in Chinese politics, then that responsibility must be faced.’39
In the wake of the summer crisis in Beijing, Washington did show some signs of formulating a more concerted policy towards China and Japan. But as far as the Chinese nationalists were concerned, the upshot of those deliberations was hardly reassuring. Rather than engaging China, Lansing chose to deal with Japan. In November 1917, without consulting Beijing, Lansing and the Japanese ambassador Viscount Ishii issued a public statement that affirmed the Open Door policy in China – the principle of equal access for all foreign trade and investment – but also recognized Japan’s ‘special interest’ in Northern China on account of its geographic proximity.40 China’s ambassador in Washington, Wellington Koo, a graduate of Columbia Law School, promptly protested that it was unacceptable for Japan and America to be conferring over the future of China without Chinese involvement. Had he been party to private conversations within the Wilson administration, Koo would have been even more indignant. In September, Colonel House had proposed to Wilson that the vast population of China be placed under the administration of an international mandate, made up of three trustees nominated, with ‘Chinese consent’, by the USA, Japan and the ‘other powers’. China, he felt, was ‘in a deplorable condition. The prevalence of disease, the lack of sanitation, a new system of slavery, infanticide, and other brutal and degenerate practices make the nation as a whole a menace to civilization. There is no administration of justice worthy of the name, and the intercommunication is wholly inadequate . . .’ The international ‘trusteeship’ would ‘last for an agreed upon number of years, but long enough to put China in order, develop a civilization and purchasing power, and take her out of the backward nations and make her a blessing rather than a menace to the world’.41
Compared to this kind of fantasy, Japan’s strategy was at least based on the elementary recognition that the Beijing government must be dealt with directly as a partner in power. But, by the same token, Japan now faced the consequences that America wished to avoid. Japan had taken sides in a civil war and its involvement was escalating the conflict. Japan’s Chinese allies were engaged in a high-stakes wager. They were gambling that the resources Japan would place at their disposal would be sufficient to overcome the opposition that that support aroused. As Duan told Nishihara in one of their early interviews in February 1917, his intention was to use Japanese aid to push through ‘administrative reforms’, which meant, Nishihara informed Tokyo, that Duan intended to crush his political enemies and to bring all of China under his sway. Shortly after the declaration of war on Germany in August 1917, Duan explained to ambassador Reinsch that his first
aim was to ‘make the military organization in China national and unified, so that the peace of the country shall not at all times be upset by local military commanders’.42 As one of the leading experts on warlordism has remarked, one of the great ironies of the period is that disorder in China was driven not by overt particularism, but by the excessive ambition to national unification.43 Flush with Japanese funds, in October 1917 Duan launched the first of the North-South campaigns for military unification that were to convulse the country for the next ten years. But in pursuing this military strategy Duan failed to secure the backing of the rival Zhili military faction, headed by President Feng. After the Zhili had sabotaged his campaign to reconquer Hunan province, the fulcrum of central China, Duan was forced to resign. Nor were the Japanese entirely unhappy to see him go. The unification of China under a military strongman was an ambiguous prospect to say the least, and Hara feared that it might finally push the Americans into action. Instead, Tokyo set itself in 1918 to brokering a reconciliation between North and South that would quieten liberal calls for intervention and perhaps do something to restore Japan’s battered international image.44
Given the delicately balanced political situation within Japan itself, a determined move by the United States at this moment might well have produced an accommodating reaction. Despite the dark ruminations on the part of some Japanese imperialists, there was no majority in Tokyo for a confrontation with Washington. The election of 1917 had given Hara and his Seiyukai the majority they needed to hold the radical anti-Westerners in line. If America had been able to deliver funds in China on the scale that Nishihara had mobilized, it might well have tilted the balance quite decisively. As Jeremiah Jenks, the globe-trotting financial economist, put it, in an urgent letter to Wilson: ‘One percent’ of the $3 billion earmarked for the Entente ‘would put China into position to straighten out her own internal affairs . . .’ ‘Five per cent’ would have emancipated China from Japan altogether, enabling China to establish itself as a ‘very important factor in actually fighting the war . . .’45 At the end of 1917, six years after the overthrow of the Ch’ing dynasty, there were signs that Washington was finally about to put some financial muscle behind its strategy in Asia. Lansing proposed that $50 million would be provided for military reconstruction and the development of the Southern railway network. A further $100 million would help to stabilize the Chinese currency. The funds were be raised by an international bankers’ consortium with Wall Street taking the lead.46 Wilson approved the scheme and the War Department was keen on the idea of moving an army of 100,000 Chinese soldiers to France. But no money ever flowed.
When Lansing and Wilson had first discussed the Chinese dilemma in February 1917 they had mentioned Congress and Wall Street as potential obstacles. When Lansing floated his loan plan in December 1917 it was immediately sunk by Secretary of the Treasury Macadoo. He did not want to ask Congress for authorization for a major government loan to China and he didn’t want a Chinese funding drive to compete with Liberty Bonds. When Macadoo finally did agree to a loan it was to be on an entirely private basis to the sum of only $55 million. But with no coherent American strategy in sight, J. P. Morgan promptly announced that it had no interest in China loans except in cooperation with Japan.47 Japan could deliver influence and even a modicum of security in its sphere of interest, likewise the British in central China and the French in the South. America’s resources were potentially far greater, but Washington’s refusal to commit to any coherent vision of Chinese political development stopped the flow of funds.
IV
In the spring of 1917 America’s entry into the war had seemed to many to herald a transnational crusade for liberal republicanism. But by the end of 1917 the hope that Washington had either the capacity or the will to orchestrate such a sweeping campaign had already been shaken. The failure to produce a constructive policy of engagement in China was no doubt in part explicable in terms of racial and cultural prejudice. It would not be until the end of the 1920s that the United States took Chinese nationalism seriously. But this refusal was not confined to China. As the experience of Russia suggests, there was a more general failure on the part of Washington over the summer of 1917 to take up the challenge of managing the kind of global democratic campaign that Wilson had seemed to promise. In China and Russia, where revolutionary republican projects were immediately at stake, there was a bewildering mismatch between political rhetoric and the effective deployment of resources. The statement issued by Lansing on the need to prioritize the coherence of the Chinese state over participation in the war might well have been extremely welcome if it had been directed to Petrograd in July 1917. But it was only far later in the summer that Colonel House among others realized the enormous strategic importance of protecting the democratic experiment in Petrograd. Conversely, if the kind of financial and logistical support poured into Russia through Vladivostok had been directed to China, it could not but have had a dramatic impact on the force-field of Sino-Japanese relations. As we shall see, the pattern would repeat itself in Europe. In 1918 Wilson would raise great hopes by promising democratic Germany a liberal peace, only for those expectations to be dashed.
There is a pattern here. In truth, despite the appearance Wilson created of speaking to them directly, China, Russia and Germany were objects of his strategy. They were not his real interlocutors. Transformation in such alien places was no doubt welcome, but it was at best a long-term process and one from which America should keep its distance. Wilson’s public rhetoric, his diplomacy and strategy were not directed to them, but to containing the dangerous association he had been forced to enter into with the British Empire, the rampaging Japanese, and the vindictive and unpredictable French, an association all the more dangerous because the Machiavellian imperialists of the old world had so many powerful and self-interested friends in America itself, in Congress and on Wall Street. It was Wilson’s determination to preserve the upper hand over this network of forces closer to home, not the uncertain prospects for progress in faraway places in Asia or Europe, that dominated every other consideration.
5
Brest-Litovsk
On 2 December 1917 in a gloomy barracks complex in western Russia, representatives of the Bolshevik regime and the Central Powers – the Germans, Austrians, Turks and Bulgarians – sat down to negotiate a peace. Four months later they concluded the notorious Brest-Litovsk Treaty that stripped Russia of territories inhabited by 55 million people, a third of the empire’s pre-war population, a third of its agricultural land, more than half its industrial undertakings and mines that had produced almost 90 per cent of its coal. Brest-Litovsk has gone down in history as a stark symbol both of the excesses of German imperialism and Lenin’s stop-at-nothing determination to deliver peace.1 But it was a twisted road on which the Bolsheviks and the Central Powers travelled to the final brutal peace on 3 March 1918.2 Surprisingly, for a treaty that is generally remembered as an act of imperial rapacity of Hitlerite proportions, the negotiations were prolonged and substantive, and the language they were couched in was the language of self-determination.3 From the Bolsheviks this was to be expected. Lenin and Trotsky, the commissar for foreign affairs, were after all famous exponents of the new principles of international relations. But in fact at Brest it was the Germans as much as the Soviets who sought to craft a modern peace in the East, based on the new standards of legitimacy, or at least it was the German Foreign Secretary Richard von Kühlmann and his backers in the Reichstag majority who did. Quite deliberately they sought to seize the initiative by establishing a liberal order in the East to replace the autocratic empire of the Tsar.
That such a peace would mean a large loss of territory for Russia was hardly surprising. As Lenin himself had forcefully argued, if the principle of self-determination was taken seriously it trumped any claim to preserve the territorial status quo.4 By what right could the Bolsheviks, who were violently consolidating their coup in Petrograd, claim the territories conq
uered by the Tsar? By Lenin’s own estimates more than half the populations of eastern Europe were oppressed nationalities.5 As draconian as the final treaty was from a Russian point of view, only a very small portion of the territory removed from Russia was directly annexed by Germany. Instead, Brest gave birth to the precursors to the Baltic states in their modern form, an independent Ukraine and a Transcaucasian Republic.6 Of course, in 1918 all of these polities fell willy-nilly under the ‘protection’ of Imperial Germany. Consequently it has been commonplace to dismiss them as mere ‘puppets’ of German imperialism. But in doing so, we fall in with the invective of the Bolsheviks. Since 1991, all of these creations of the ‘Brest-Litovsk moment’, and more, have come to be regarded as legitimate members of the family of nations. Now as then Poland and the Baltic states look to protectors in the West. Today they are keen members of an American-dominated NATO and the European Union, in which Germany is the dominant force. If they are not more anxious about their security, it has much to do with the early twenty-first-century map of Eurasia, on which Russian power is even more drastically circumscribed than it was at Brest. Compared to either the Tsarist past or the post-Soviet future, the vision of a Brest-style peace in the East was not inherently illegitimate. What discredited it was the failure of Berlin to sustain a consistently liberal policy. The suspicion of bad faith hanging over Berlin had the effect both of making the Bolsheviks appear as victims and of handing the initiative back to the Western Powers.