TR’s Versailles Treaty

Assume the following:
- Teddy Rooselvet wins the 1912 election (in whatever fashion you wish).
- World War One still breaks out, more or less on schedule.
- America joins the war by 1916, TR wins re-election.

How does the Treaty of Versaille look in this world?
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
I imagine that Theodore Roosevelt would be more concerned with the balance of power then national self-determination. He would recognize that Germany would still be a powerful country after the war, and would thus be more supportive of French attempts to weaken Germany then British attempts to prevent France from becoming too powerful.
 
I imagine that Theodore Roosevelt would be more concerned with the balance of power then national self-determination. He would recognize that Germany would still be a powerful country after the war, and would thus be more supportive of French attempts to weaken Germany then British attempts to prevent France from becoming too powerful.

Wouldn’t those two statements be mutually exclusive?
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
Wouldn’t those two statements be mutually exclusive?
The British had some crazy idea that if they weakened Germany too much France would go full Napoleon and dominate Europe. They were of course, ignoring Germany's significant advantages in industry and manpower. Roosevelt would have had no such delusions and would have recognized that with Russia gone, maintaining the balance of power would require weakening Germany.
 
The British had some crazy idea that if they weakened Germany too much France would go full Napoleon and dominate Europe. They were of course, ignoring Germany's significant advantages in industry and manpower. Roosevelt would have had no such delusions and would have recognized that with Russia gone, maintaining the balance of power would require weakening Germany.

I gotta disagree, in no small part because we might have butterflied Russia’s revolution in this scenario.

That said, a harsher Versailles... damn. If the US is more proactive, I don’t think it will be necessary.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
I gotta disagree, in no small part because we might have butterflied Russia’s revolution in this scenario.

That said, a harsher Versailles... damn. If the US is more proactive, I don’t think it will be necessary.
Might have is the key phrase here. And if the revolution did occur, Roosevelt probably would have sent even less help to the Whites then Wilson did.

The New York Times said:
When Theodore Roosevelt was president, three decades before World War II, the world was focused on the bloody Russo-Japanese War, a contest for control of North Asia. President Roosevelt was no fan of the Russians: “No human beings, black, yellow or white, could be quite as untruthful, as insincere, as arrogant — in short, as untrustworthy in every way — as the Russians,” he wrote in August 1905, near the end of the Russo-Japanese War. The Japanese, on the other hand, were “a wonderful and civilized people,” Roosevelt wrote, “entitled to stand on an absolute equality with all the other peoples of the civilized world.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06bradley.html
 
Shortly after the Bolshevik revolution, TR had an idea of sending a "rough riders" force to Vladivostok and moving west, gathering support from the non-Bolshevik majority along the way. It's been years since I read what he wrote, in a column for the Kansas City Star, but I remember thinking it had a certain mad logic. His columns for the KCS are at http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/rooseveltkansascitystar.pdf I can't guarantee the one I remember is included here.
 

SsgtC

Banned
I'm far from convinced. I can't imagine TR being more amenable to a communist regime than WW.
He wouldn't be. TR spoke quite often about Socialism and Communism being "busted idealogies." He may not particularly want to prop up a dictatorship, but he would actively oppose the Communists
 
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