Outlining the evolving institutional architecture of the post-1945 era, Aftermath: The Makers of the Postwar World is a finely researched synthesis that will be useful for historians, diplomats, and international relations scholar, finds Jeff Roquen. Richard Crowder cuts through the highly contentious layers of historiographical debate on the origins of the Cold War and recaptures the context of the monumental policy decisions made on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
Aftermath: The Makers of the Postwar World. Richard Crowder. I.B. Tauris. 2015.
Upon taking the presidential oath of office in March 1933, Franklin Roosevelt inherited an unprecedented financial catastrophe and a destabilized world order. While Josef Stalin consolidated the Bolshevik Revolution over the legacy of Vladimir Lenin in Moscow, the new chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, had already begun to methodically seize control of the state from Berlin. To combat his own fear and uncertainty, Roosevelt, who served under Woodrow Wilson as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, turned to his former boss for inspiration.
On 28 December, FDR not only praised the League of Nations (of which the United States declined membership) but he also echoed Wilson in declaring “I believe that I express the views of my countrymen when I state that the old policies, the old alliances, the old combinations and balances of power have proved themselves inadequate for the preservation of world peace.” In Aftermath: The Makers of the Postwar World (2015), Richard Crowder delivers an exceptionally well-written account of how the United States and the United Kingdom attempted to realize Wilson’s dream of establishing an international system based upon international law and collective security.
According to the author, the struggle to create a sustainable new framework to meet the demands of an increasingly globalized economy and resolve transnational disputes required a delicate balance between internationalism and sovereignty. As such, Crowder generously outlines the evolving institutional architecture of the post-1945 era from its origins inside the worldwide effort to vanquish Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and the Empire of Japan over several engaging opening chapters.
Only seven months after Roosevelt famously rearticulated the American commitment to human rights within “Four Freedoms” – the freedom of speech and worship and the freedom from want and fear in his 6 January 1941 State of the Union address, the President and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill held talks in Placentia Bay off the coast of Newfoundland, drafted the Atlantic Charter, and reaffirmed the Wilsonian principles of freedom of the seas and national self-determination. Would Stalin willingly join the tide of internationalism? When Cordell Hull, a historically underappreciated U.S. Secretary of State, persuaded his Soviet counterparts to back and participate in a successor organization to the League of Nations two years later, the Moscow Declaration raised hopes in America and around the world for a future defined by cooperation.
Representatives of 26 United Nations at Flag day ceremonies in the White House to reaffirm their pact. Seated, left to right: Dr. Francisco Castillo Najera, Ambassador of Mexico; President Roosevelt; Manuel Quezon, President of the Philippine Islands; and Secretary of State Cordell Hull (July 1942). Public Domain.
By the time the United Nations opened on 25 April 1945, however, Soviet pledges to uphold international law and respect the sovereignty of other nations had become increasingly suspect. Aside from his virtual control over Eastern Europe through the standing Red Army, the Soviet dictator pressed for influence in North Africa, control of the Turkish Straits, and provocatively refused to withdraw troops from northern Iran until the spring of 1946 – instigating the first major row in the nascent U.N. Security Council. Indeed, the behavior of Soviet Ambassador Andrei Gromyko during the crisis was wholly indicative of the Kremlin’s intentions. Unable to stave off debate on the non-mandated occupation, he proceeded to exit the Council chamber.
Instead of extending his viable thesis to directly expose Stalin’s realpolitik and Machiavellian designs to harness the new international institutions to promote Soviet imperialism, Crowder refrains from following his evidence to its logical conclusion – a conclusion reached by President Wilson nearly thirty years earlier in a reference to Poland: “No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.” When Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov nonchalantly informed American Secretary of State Edward Stettinius of the arrest and forthcoming trials of more than a dozen Polish political figures in Moscow only a week after the launch of the United Nations, it demonstrated the nefarious nature of Stalinism and its incompatibility with the signal, guiding ideal of both the U.N. Charter and the international community – human rights.
Of the many narrative accomplishments within the fluid pages of Aftermath, perhaps none is more significant than Crowder’s scholarly dexterity in cutting through or deftly sidestepping the highly contentious layers of historiographical debate on the origins of the Cold War and recapturing the context of the monumental policy decisions made on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Rather than being drawn into an analysis of whether or not the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 were ethically justified or possessed a geopolitical calculus, the author wisely steers clear of rendering any anachronistic judgments by simply but effectively noting that each and every member of the Interim Committee, a collection of notables charged by President Truman “to analyse the implications of [the] new weapon” (p. 108), recommended its deployment to halt Japanese aggression and end the war in the Pacific. Conversely, Truman’s decision to back the United Nations in its support of the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine polarized his administration to the point of provoking his temperate, sober-thinking Secretary of State, George Marshall, to boldly tell the President in a meeting among his advisors: “If you follow [White House Counsel Clark] Clifford’s advice [to support Israel] and if I were to vote in the election, I would vote against you.” (p. 228)
While Crowder adroitly navigates through the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Soviet blockade of Berlin, and the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), his analysis of the precarious relationship between internationalism and sovereignty is somewhat inchoate in the overly brief summaries of the creation of Israel, Soviet opposition to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and in the final chapters of the book. As a whole, however, Aftermath is a finely researched synthesis that will be useful for historians, diplomats, and international relations scholars in their quest to more fully understand the contours of power and principle in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Jeff Roquen is an independent scholar based in the United States.
The book tells that its author Richard Crowder is an ardent admirer of the Churchillian school of thought, besides being a raconteur par excellence.
The book is about a moment of renewal, which began in August 1941 with the signing of the Atlantic Charter between US President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Nevertheless, Crowder opines that what invited the attention of Winston Churchill to sign the charter with Roosevelt was the date of 6 January 1941 when Roosevelt rearticulated the American commitment to human rights within Four Freedoms – the freedom of speech and worship, and the freedom from want and fear – in his State of the Union address. Crowder asserts that the charter was to reaffirm the Wilsonian principles of freedom of the seas and national self-determination.
If this were the case. Crowder’s argument could be convincing if there had been no world war ravaging Europe. The American commitment to human rights within Four Freedoms was already there but that had failed to convince Churchill to enter into any such declaration to reaffirm the Wilsonian principles. Indeed, World War II changed realities in Europe and compelled European countries including Great Britain to seek the US help for their rescue.
There was a history of the participation of the US in European affairs. In April 1917, the US repudiated the isolationist facet of the Monroe doctrine and entered World War I (1914-1919). In the aftermath of his famous 14 points, US President Woodrow Wilson facilitated the founding of the League of Nations in 1920. The organization, however, could not survive without the presence of the US as its member and collapsed with the start of World War II (1939-1945), exuding certain messages.
First, as an arbitrator, the US had introduced peace in Europe and made the European powers huddle at the League of Nations. Second, Europe, the hub of colonial powers, was incapable of resolving its differences on its own. Third, the League collapsed in the absence of the US as its member. Hence, for peace, Europe needed the US.
During World War II, the process would be the same: the US would enter the war, win the war for its European allies, establish peace in Europe, and found an international organization. This time, in 1945, however, the US was encumbered with three additional tasks: first, the US would make its presence felt permanently in Europe to forfend it against another war, World War III. Second, the US would be a member of the successor of the League, the United Nations. Third, the US had to renounce the Monroe doctrine lastingly.
Besides engaging the US in the European affairs, the Atlantic Charter of 1941 was to ensure the safety of Great Britain. By 1941, Great Britain had assessed that Soviet Union was of no use. Hence, to ensure its own survival, Great Britain needed to cling to a power external to the European continent. The intent to secure its own borders is evident from the charter’s terms wherein Great Britain agreed to do away with its colonial presence around the world.
Contrary to the belief of Crowder, the North Atlantic Treaty was an extension of the resolve of the US to keep Europe in peace, in the aftermath of March 1948 when Czechoslovakia turned Communist, and not April 1949 when the North Atlantic Treaty was signed.
April 1949 left two main impacts. First, Europe dipped into perpetual insecurity, both physical and financial, without the presence of the US forces around. Second, despite all differences between the European Union and Great Britain (actuating Brexit), both could not escape the aegis of the US. Hence, US also became a member of the treaty.
In short, both the moments (the Atlantic Charter of 1941 and the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949) convey that Great Britain willingly submitted to a role subaltern to the US. For example, the way British Prime Minister Tony Blair poodled the line of US President George W. Bush in the wake of September 2001.
[Dr Qaisar Rashid is a free lance writer based in Lahore, Pakistan.]