REVIEW. AMERICAN INTERVENTION IN SIBERIA

Robert J. Maddox. THE UNKNOWN WAR WITH RUSSIA: WILSON'S SIBERIAN INTERVENTION. pp. ix, 156. San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1977. $9.95.



This little book is ambitious in attempting to debunk Woodrow Wilson's gilded image in foreign affairs. Professor Maddox has brought new evidence to light, organized his material carefully, and laid out common-sense conclusions (one suspects in a Puritan spirit) in plain language. I think this essay will enjoy greater significance as a milestone in research into the American presidency than as a gravestone over Wilson's reputation. That may well be Maddox's goal and, if he has intervened in the dispute over the Wilson legacy with goals so limited, he may legitimately claim to have scored some points in a fight with no knock-downs.

Granted that Wilson's first reaction to Bol'shevik success was one of antipathy, one must next inquire what policy measures embodied this antipathy. The record, as Professor Maddox presents it, is tantallizingly suggestive. During those halycon days in the transition between two epochs, Wilson and his advisors "...kneew little more than what appeared in the press" before the first sketchy reports from the American embassy arrived. An entire Cabinet meeting on November 9 was devoted to Russia, following which, according to the semi-official New York Times, the Cabined adopted a wait-and-see attitude. No official record of that meeting has seen the light of day. Yet Secretary of State Lansing (1864-1928) speculated on the same day that some "strongman" might emerge who would unify the nation. On November 12, in a public address, the President characterized the new Russian leaders as "idle dreamers." This is at least a shockingly casual comment from a head of government if that government had genuinely adopted a temporizing policy a mere three days before. Recalling that the last period of Wilsonian "watchful waiting" led to the intervention in Mexico, it seems at least arguable that the Washington government (1) had better sources of information than Maddox credits them with; (2) put forward the "wait-and-see" story as a laissez-entendre through the New York Times; and (3) quite possibly resolved in Cabinet on November 9 to do whatever appeared feasible to facilitate the emergence of a government that could preserve democracy and continue the war.

As Maddox notes, "Decisions made behind the scenes strongly suggest that President Wilson opposed the Bol'sheviks from the outset...." The concatenation of events alone is indicative. On November 11, four days after the Bol'shevik coup, two days after a Cabinet meeting withoug surviving notes, and one day before the President's slighting reference to "idle dreamers," the Russian Ambassador announced that he would not recognize the Bol'shevik regime--but would continue to represent "Russia" until a legal successor regime appeared! It would of course be impossible for a diplomat without credentials to occupy and administer an embassy complex without the tacit support of the host country. Maddox characterized this situation as "an item of diplomatic curiosa," but it seems to signal clearly that the Administration was already parti pris in the Russian political struggle.

"Provocative" is the only word to describe the evidence Maddox has selected to illustrate the leverage the Administration exerted on this new fulcrum. The Russian embassy's assets, valued at more that fifty-six million dollars (deposited at Citibank) were expended to arm both Whites and Czechs with the active assistance of United States government representatives. Twice the State Department interceded to induce the bank to defer collecting obligations, previously floated on the money market, which would have severely reduced the embassy's ability to execute contracts. One of the ancillary conclusions Professor Maddox does not draw is that if the Soviet government consented to make a token payment on the imperial bonds repudiated by Lenin (1870-1924), it would be symbolically subsidizing intervention! This is heady stuff indeed.

When Wilson did decide to send troops to Siberia, in uneasy collabortion with the Japanese in July, 1918, N.D. Baker, the Secretary of War who had previously opposed the decision, in effect took himself out of the chain of command by handing General Graves the President's aide-memoire without any specific military instructions. Graves adhered scrupulously to the injunction to avoid siding in Russian internal politics. Thereby he gave offense to every other armed force in Siberia. Further, he acurately predicted Admiral Kolchak's downfall as Supreme Ruler in Omsk. In Maddox's view, the military were the most objective observers of the alien Russian scene, wheres American diplomats' views were colored by their close associations with various representatives of Russian social opinion. Is there a moral here?

To conclude, what is presented as a study in intervention takes on the appearance of a Puritan homily on the sins of the imperial and liberal presidency. This interpretation could be innocently misleading. It suggests a perception of Wilson as a liberal Prometheus whose hisstorical reputation is ravaged by the claws of Professor Maddox. But in ranging hinmself among the opponents of Bol'shevism Wilson would have been lost among a large majority of Russians; far from appearing heroic, he adopted the policy of the average man. The problems he faced in trying to "reconcile the American people to the need for intervention..." flowed from the weakness of his position rather than its strength. This is the opposite of the situation in a truly imperial state in which quod principi placet leges habet virorum. Yet to condemn intervention as a "total failure" appears overly narrow and hence overly harsh.

The prosaic truth is that geography, circumstances, political institutions, and military capacity dealt Wilson a weak hand. The titular head of a second-class power adopted a strategy of no trump--with the usual results. But he eschewed overcommitment and maintained acceptable relations with the first-class powers while Congressional opposition deterred him from an improvident squandering of resources of the kind that destroyed the myth of the later imperial presidency. It could have been worse. Miliary intervention in foreign politics, concealed by domestic subterfuge, is not a practice to be recommended to democratic governments.

(Columbia University) Published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences.