3 eras compared - critique of British policy toward Russia

raharris1973 said:

Comparing certain periods of alternate Russophobia and Russophilia in Britain's foreign policy, it seems to me that British policy zigged when it should have zagged and zagged when it should have zigged.

Let's look at three eras:

1) Post Congress of Vienna Europe through the Crimean War - Russophobic

2) Early 20th century before the Great War - Russophilic

3) Middle and late 1930s before the Second World War -Russophobic


1) I think Castlereagh and his successors were unnecessarilly oppositional and hostile to Russia, a phenomenon that peaked with Palmerston and the Crimean War.

All things being equal, Alexander I used his international power responsibly from the last war of Napoleon onward. Of course at home, Tsarist Russia was a backward, illiberal and arbitrary state, but for a country that marched armies all the way to Paris, it was pretty good about going home afterwards (even if Poland was made into an extension of that home).

The British treated the Holy Alliance with a sinister-ness that just wasn't there, I guess mainly because it wasn't their idea, and anything not their idea was automatically bad. It supported the territorial status quo in Europe, much like the later League of Nations and United Nations were to do.
The British were primed to see all Russian collaboration proposals as a trap.

And British policy went from being sullenly negative towards Russia towards being positively irresponsible towards Russia by the 1850s. Louis Napoleon deliberately stirred the pot in the Ottoman Empire, Russia responded with predictable counter-measures that fit within recent parameters of Russian behavior, and as a result, Britain ended up declaring war on Russia in alliance with the Ottoman Empire, which declared the war, and France, which stirred the pot in the first place.

It ended up with the Crimean War, which had no permanent positive results, ushered in an era of instability lasting until 1878. Notably, Russia was much more irresponsible and aggressive in the years 1856-1914 than in the years before the Crimean War.

2) Britain aligned with Russia from 1907 and deepened military and naval cooperation over the following years until 1914. This had the effect of encouraging irresponsible Russian behavior in the Balkans. Of course, domestically, Russia was becoming a freer society at this time, and less repressive internally than earlier (though they still had pogroms). But internationally, Russian foreign policy was increasingly adventuristic and aided/abetted pan-slavic revisionism in those years. In the years leading up to the alliance, Russia's adventurism had been a little more omni-directional, heading towards the Far East and Central Asia and even Africa a little bit as well as Europe.

The British alignment with Russia helped make France and Russia overconfident, and made Britain hostage to the desires of Serbian extremists linked to Russia. Britain (and others) ended up with the Great War after that.
The Great War Britain did have in France and Belgium with the Germans escalated into a far costlier affair than whatever Turkish or Persian or Afghan or Chinese frontier skirmishes against Tsarist Russia could have turned into in the absence of the Anglo-Russian Entente.

3) Britain was quite uncooperative with the 1930s Soviet attempts at coalitions to contain aggressors. Granted, internally the Soviet Union was nightmare regime, but the Soviets from joining the League of Nations in 1934 and the start of their promotion of Popular Fronts encompassing everyone from the non-Fascist conservatives to the far left had become a status quo power internationally and a necessary element of any restraint on Germany. As a result of this excessive Russophobia, the position of Hitler was strengthened and France was weakened. Britain ended up with a world war starting over a commitment to Poland, with the Soviets more cooperative with her German archenemy than with herself.

So, in summary, Britain was overly negative towards two Russias it could have done good business with, and ended up over-investing in appeasement of French, Ottomans and Nazi. In the third, contrasting, period when they chose to cooperate with Russia, they over-invested in appeasement of Russia and encouraged a collision in western Europe in the process.


...of course if I scrutinize any particular other great power's foreign policy over similar periods, I could probably identify similar patterns of maladroitness. International politics before the end of World War II was quite the moshpit of colliding bodies. But that is a tale for another time...

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raharris1973 said:

Comparing certain periods of alternate Russophobia and Russophilia in Britain's foreign policy, it seems to me that British policy zigged when it should have zagged and zagged when it should have zigged.

Let's look at three eras:

1) Post Congress of Vienna Europe through the Crimean War - Russophobic

2) Early 20th century before the Great War - Russophilic

3) Middle and late 1930s before the Second World War -Russophobic


snip.........

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As for 2 I don't see a relation between British help and encouraging Russia Pan-Slavism actions. That seems like it would greatly upset the balance of power in Europe which I don't think anyone really wanted.

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Again, by the time of 2) Germany was clearly becoming the primary threat to Britain, and it was in British national interests to restrain that country by encircling it with the Entente - the alternative was a Russian-France axis that (people thought) might not hold against Germany and leave Britain facing a continental monster. I agree that closeness to Russia probably made the Tsar a little less cautious than he should have been; but to rectify that Britain should have supported the Ottomans in 1877-1878 (however repulsive that might have sounded), rather than let the whole of the Balkans splinter into warring nationalisms.

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Britain wanted to keep Germany from dominating the continent by either overpowering France and Russia or luring them into her camp. This was entirely legitimate and necessary, but it alone is not enough to make Britain’s a real balance of power policy. For…the important point is that the British neither recognized nor did anything about the most critical threat to the European balance after 1900, but helped make it much worse….The greatest danger stemmed not from German or Russian power but from Austrian weakness. One of the few incontestable points in balance-of-power theory is that preserving the system means preserving all the essential actors in it. Equally obvious, nothing is more likely to occasion a major war than a threat to the existence or great-power status of an essential actor….Long before 1914 it was obvious that Austria’s existence was threatened. Everyone saw her as the next sick man of Europe after Turkey….From 1908 on almost everyone anticipated the long-awaited general war would probably arise over a Russo-Austrian quarrel involving Serbia. From 1912 on the Russians and Serbs repeatedly told their western friends that Austria’s collapse was imminent, and that they intended to have the lion’s share of the remains.

Yet Britain’s “balance-of-power” policy entirely ignored this immediate danger, and served actually to increase the threat from Germany as well. Germany…was virtually bound to accept war, even provoke it, rather than let Austria go under and thus lose her last reliable ally….A real balance-of-power policy would have required from the Entente…a policy of restraint for themselves and controlled support for Austria….The threat to Austria…was a product in great part of Entente policy. As a result of the preoccupation of diplomatic historians with motives and aims instead of effects, both German and Entente policies have always been discussed almost exclusively in terms of the German problem, when in fact their effects were far greater on the Austrian problem. The best answer to the German encirclement myth is not that Entente policy was really moderate and unprovocative; there has been too much white-washing of British, French and especially Russian policy in this whole debate. The answer is rather that the Entente really encircled Austria rather than Germany….Austria…was hopelessly encircled by 1914 and knew it. Russia, supported by France, was forming a new Balkan League around Russia’s protégé and Austria’s worst enemy, Serbia. Rumania was defecting, Bulgaria was wavering and exhausted under strong Russo-French pressure. Turkey was leaning toward Russia, Italy was cooperating with Russia in the Balkans; even Germany was wholly unreliable support politically, and Austria’s chief competitor economically in the Balkans.

The isolation and encirclement resulted, moreover, principally from Entente moves and policies, always discussed as if they had nothing to do with Austria….Austria was…the actual target of Entente diplomacy….In fact one can argue that Britain’s policy (like Russia’s and even, in certain respects, France’s) was more anti-Austrian than anti-German….[The British] never took Austria seriously and were regularly ready to let her pay, or make her pay….[Britain] urged Russia to concentrate her power and attention on Europe---the worst possible threat to Austria. The British…worked to break up the long-standing Austro-Russian cooperation in Macedonia, valuable though they knew it to be for European peace….When Austria annexed Bosnia, legalizing a situation long existing de facto and giving up her hold on the Sanjak of Novi-Bazar in the process, Britain helped promote an international crisis over the violation of a treaty thirty years old, whose relevant provision had never been intended by Britain herself to remain long in force….

On the eve of war, the Foreign Office was aware of the fear prevalent in both Berlin and Vienna that Austria might collapse….[but] No thought of any action to help maintain Austria’s independence and integrity was entertained….Of course there was no great anti-Austrian plot. The British did not think of Austria as their enemy; they tried not to think of her at all. They did not plan to isolate and destroy her; they simply did not concern themselves…with the question of whether the concessions and defeats imposed upon Austria before the war, and the territorial sacrifices to be imposed on her during and after it, would leave her viable….What makes Britain’s responsibility for the plight of Austria a heavy one, although less direct than Russia’s or France’s, is that Britain alone was in a position to manage the European Concert so as to control the Balkan situation….Only the presence of the Habsburg monarchy holding down the Danube basin kept Germany or Russia from achieving mastery over Europe….Let Austria go under, and a great war for the mastery of Europe became almost mathematically predictable….

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