By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

A momentous new reality

In part one, we gave a general overview of the 1919 or "Wilsonian moment,” a notion that extends before and after that calendar year, in part two, we next covered issues like the Asian Monroe Doctrine, how relations between China and Japan from the 1890s onward transformed the region from the hierarchy of time to the hierarchy of space, Leninist and Wilsonian Internationalism, western and Eastern Sovereignty, and the crucial March First and May Fourth movements, in part three the important Chinese factions beyond 1919 and the need for China to create a new Nation-State and how Japan, in turn, sought to expand into Asia through liberal imperialism and then sought to consolidate its empire through liberal internationalism.

Thereby we have seen how Japan and the United States took very different paths in the First World War. Japan intervened in August 1914 on the side of the Entente, eyeing easy war spoils in Germany’s possessions in Asia. In the United States, President Woodrow Wilson endeavored to maintain American neutrality, with the eventual goal of mediating a “peace without victory” among the belligerents.1 In the spring of 1917, however, two months after Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare. Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war. Contrary to casual assumptions. Wilson did not base his decision for war solely to uphold neutral principles or eliminate German militarism. Hie president's guiding motives were more idealistic. Wilson had come to believe the United States needed to enter the war to hasten its end and guarantee permanent peace. Concluding his message to Congress. Wilson evoked Martin Luther's principled stand at Worms, declaring. “God helping her [America], she can do no other." The president's morally charged words planted the seeds of a more assertive American role in world affairs as a self-described “indispensable” nation.2

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Despite the obvious relief of the war’s end. A momentous new reality hovered like a vulture over the human wreckage: modem war had become a genuine threat to the increasingly interdependent global society built on mutual interests and social and economic processes, including finance, trade, shipping, technology transfer, communication. Migration, and global markets. Thus American cosmopolitans have come to view the stability and “good health” of global society as a vital interest since the end of the nineteenth century. This concern now intensified in the wake of the world war. It was not just Americans, however, who grew apprehensive about the perceived vulnerability of global society. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George warned. “If this is not the last war, there are men here today who will see the last of civilization.” In fact, such fears were present even in the early stages of the war. As the mayor of Tokyo. Sakatani Yoshiro. Opined in 1914. a major war in the heart of Europe would threaten Japan and beyond because the world was “intimately entwined.”3 All of which raised a fundamental question about the international system: how to achieve lasting peace in a rapidly changing world that offered both promise and peril? This near compulsion. Arising out the ashes of the Great War. is one of the reasons the conflict became a watershed event.

There is a little historical disagreement that President Wilson led the charge to "remake the world” following the First World War. In speeches and statements before, during, and immediately after America participated in the conflict, the president repeatedly asserted the world could no longer afford to conduct international relations the “old way." Said Wilson, the world must have a plan that “does not contain the genus of another war.” Wilson’s allusion to the “old way” meant the peace resulting from the Congress of Vienna. The basis of that peace had been a reliance on a “balance of power.” En route to the Paris Peace Conference, Wilson again excoriated the “balance of power" system, saying it produced only “aggression and selfishness and war.''4 Wilson seldom alluded to imperialism's stampede in the late nineteenth century, but that global rivalry was another element in the war's lethal combustion. The great powers had engaged in one of the most expansive orgies of territorial aggrandizement in world history, carving up most of Africa. South and Southeast Asia, and Oceania and obtaining leaseholds in China. Japan had taken Taiwan (Formosa) and Korea and acquired leased territories in Manchuria and Fujian provinces, while the United States seized the Philippines. Guam. Puerto Rico, and Hawai'i.

 

From old diplomacy to an attempted more liberal internationalist new diplomacy

Blaming the old diplomacy for the world's recent trauma, of course, only made the elephant in the room loom larger than ever: what was to be done? By the time he arrived at the peace conference, Wilson had been dwelling on the problem for well over a year. To be sure, the president was hardly alone in calling for a new international framework. The issue stimulated a robust debate at home and abroad, including a more radical model advanced by communist revolutionaries Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. This led to fierce ideological and political debates between Leninist and Wilsonian internationalism and the rise of nationalistic movements among peoples under colonial rule sway.

The first students from China had studied at the Lenin School and the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, and in 1925 candidates were recruited for a new Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow. among the first students was the fifteen-year-old son of Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang Ching-Kuo, who found himself in the same class as later Chinese communist leaders like Deng Xiaoping, the latter who had been sent to Moscow after his activism in Paris had finally exhausted the tolerance of the French authorities. On arrival in Moscow, the students were given new clothes and, as in the case of Comintern agents, new work names. They lived in relatively comfortable seclusion in a former palace of an aristocrat near the Kremlin. The first rector of the university was the charismatic Karl Radek (born in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary now Lviv in Ukraine, as Karol Sobelsohn), who taught a formative course on the history of the Chinese revolutionary movement, as seen through Comintern eyes.

Also, Chiang Kai-shek himself traveled to Moscow to meet Lenin. In Moscow, Leon Trotsky, the Red Army head, told Chiang that the Soviet Union would not send troops into China, but weapons, money, and military advisers. He urged him not to rely on military force alone: ‘a good newspaper is better than a bad division’. Chiang was impressed with Trotsky’s candor. He was impressed with aspects of the new society, especially the youth organizations, but recorded in his diary that many Soviet high officials were ‘cads and rascals.’ His meeting with Grigori Zinoviev and the Comintern Executive did not go well. He told them the Chinese revolution happened in stages, and he could not embrace Bolshevism and class struggle openly. Chiang was stung by the ‘superficial and unrealistic’ Comintern communiqué that was issued after the meeting, which urged an opposite course: ‘It considers itself the center of the world revolution, which is really too fabricated and arrogant.’ Nevertheless, Chiang’s visit raised Comintern's hopes for their alliance with the Kuomintang, and Chiang remained deeply impressed by the promise of material aid.

As a transition from the imperialistic old diplomacy to a more liberal internationalist new diplomacy, Wilson had issued his most detailed outline, the Fourteen Points, in January 1918. Though many of the proposals drew from nineteenth-century British liberalism,5 Wilson gave the ideas new relevancy and cogency. Moreover, bis commitment to a just peace as an “associated power”, Wilson refused to enter the war as an official ally of the Entente powers, added an aura of credibility to the Fourteen Points. Indeed, the Fourteen Points soon became regarded by peoples worldwide as the rightful blueprint for the new world order and the basis for discussions among the thousands of delegates who arrived in Paris just two months after the end of the bloodiest war in human history.

 

Paris Peace Conference, 1919

The Paris Peace Conference convened on January 18. 1919. Although the “Big Five” on the winning side of the war, Great Britain, twenty-nine countries were represented. France. Italy, the United States, and Japan, dominated the proceedings. After March, however, the heavy lifting took place among the sequestered Council of Four, made up of three prime ministers and a president: France’s Georges Clemenceau. Britain's Lloyd George. Ita­ly's Vittorio Orlando—and Wilson. The official explanation for Japan's exclusion was that ahead of state did not lead its delegation. The more likely reason was the impression that Japan's contribution to the war had been limited to Asia's minor conflict (a view that conveniently overlooked Ja­pan's naval assistance conveying troops and materials for the Allied cause). The conference’s agenda, meanwhile, ran along two main tracks: a settle­ment with Germany and a new framework for world peace. Although the treaty with Germany often converged at various switching points with the second objective, for this subject matter, the primary focus will be on the establishment of a new international peace structure.

By putting forth his Fourteen Points, Wilson asked his fellow peacemakers to buy into and internalize a broad range of liberal ideas, which later became known as the ideology of “liberal internationalism." Some of these concepts included diplomatic transparency, freedom of seas, disarmament, free trade, popular government, and “self-determination," or the right to peoples to shape their own national destiny. As the conference proceeded, however, many of these ideas became prescribed as ideals to which the work should aspire rather than new norms. The immediate result of self-determination, for example, was the creation of a few new states in Europe, while the vast collection of colonies around the world continued to exist. If morally convoluted, the approach was emblematic of Wilsonian internationalism: plant an idea, inculcate a sense of “shared beliefs." establish precedents, and then build on them through an evolutionary, orderly process. This offered marginalized groups unprece­dented opportunities to advance claims in the name of emerging national identities and thus bolster and expand their legitimacy both at home and abroad. Put simply, white domination over colored peoples could no longer be taken for granted.

If some ideas at Paris became diluted or redirected, the heart and soul of the liberal peace program- The League of Nations, found widespread support. The league’s guiding premise was that the use of force in the pursuit of national interests was no longer acceptable- With its reliance on collective security, what Wilson called a “community of power”, the league represented a radical experiment in keeping peace among nations, his Article X of the League Covenant, members pledged to guarantee the “territorial integ­rity” of all member nations. In other words, member states promised to safeguard each other’s territorial boundaries as if they were their own bor­ders; such reliance on universal selflessness was uncharted territory indeed.

In the case of aggression, league members possessed several “weapons” that could be used to uphold “territorial integrity.” First and foremost was moral condemnation through the “organized opinion of mankind.” In light of the expansion of the telecommunications revolution and anticipating the spread of mass participation politics. Wilson placed enormous faith in the power of world opinion to deter or alter the behavior of aggressors. As Wilson explained it,

The most dangerous tiling for a bad cause is to expose it to the opinion of the world. The most certain way that you can prove that a man is mistaken is by letting all his neighbors know what he thinks, by letting all his neighbors discuss what he thinks, and if he is in the wrong, you will notice that he will stay at home, he will not walk on the street. He will be afraid of the eyes of his neighbors. He will be afraid of their judgment of his character.7

The expectation, of course, was that an ironclad consensus of views, repre­senting the conscience of the world, could shame an aggressor into a peaceful retreat.

A second ‘”weapon’ in collective security’s reserve against an aggressor involved what Wilson called “the complete boycott ever conceived in a public document.” Including economic sanctions and a ban on mail, tele­phone. Telegraph, and travel privileges. “Their frontiers,” declared Wilson, “would be hermetically sealed.” A third and final measure involved the use of military force as a last resort. As Wilson affirmed. “Armed force is in the League Covenant until the great powers’ views on issues important to Japan became clearer.8 Above all. Japan’s delegation was intent on consolidating war spoils.

Japan’s most coveted prize was Germany’s leased territory in the prov­ince of Shandong, China, which Japanese troops captured early in the war. Germany had acquired the concession in 1898 during the imperialist carve-up of China. At the turn of the century, a crumbling Qing dynasty had agreed to lease its coastal territory vast swaths, typically for ninety-nine years,9 to Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan. The imperialist powers developed railways and mining interests and built naval bases in their leaseholds: they also held exclusive control over customhouses and the court system. In 1904 Japan went to war against Russia and seized the tsar’s leasehold in Manchuria’s Liaodong peninsula (which Russia previously had prevented Japan from taking). The Qing dynasty fell in 1912. But China remained in a highly distressed state, politically fragmented, subject to the whims of warlords, and subordinate to imperial powers. During the world war. Japan exploited this instability. In 1915, a year after seizing Shandong from Germany. Japan coerced the nominal Chinese government in Beijing to transfer the aiser’s concession rights to the empire. The transfer occurred as one part of a sweeping ultimatum known as the Twenty-One Demands. Japan’s delegation at Paris subsequently insisted that the conferees officially recognize the Shandong transfer.

Such recognition, however, would have violated one of the peace pro­gram’s most hallowed principles to respect “territorial integrity.” This point was made abundantly clear by China’s Western-educated plenipotentiaries, Koo Vi Kyuin (Chinese: 顧維鈞; pinyin: Wéijūn; 1888 – 1985) who studied at Columbia University and Wang Zhengting (Chinese: 王正廷; pinyin: Wáng Zhèngtí; 1882 –  1961 who studied at Yale University who represented the interim Canton government in China’s delegation, headed by Lu Zhengxiang, at the Paris Peace Conference. Despite their distinctive regional attachments, Koo to the government in Beijing: Wang to Nationalists in Guangdong province, the two delegates eloquently laid out the legal and moral justifications for the return of Shandong. Japan, they argued, had seized the territory under duress; what’s more, in 1917, China itself had entered the war against Germany. Shandong’s original occupier. In response. Japan’s delegates brandished China’s signatures on the Twenty-One Demands. They also laid bare promises that France and Great Britain made to Japan in 1917 in support of Tokyo’s wartime ambitions in China, as well as secret agreements the Beijing govern­ment made with Japan regarding Shandong in 1918.10

Wilson sympathized with China but felt caught between fidelity to his principles and a fear that Japan would spurn the League of Nations. In fact, Japanese delegates had intimated that very thing if the conference deprived Japan of Shandong: the historical record suggests they were not bluffing Tokyo also used as leverage an earlier Japanese proposal to insert into the final treaty a “racial equality” clause. The proposal, which stemmed from the repeated slights Japanese nationals suffered overseas, would have compelled league members to accord “equal and just treatment” to all peoples regardless of race or nationality. The anti-discrimination initiative had not been con­trived as leverage. As one scholar has argued, it was a sincere effort to overturn a “Western-centric definition of a great power.” Indeed, despite Japan’s own discriminatory treatment of Koreans, Korea’s concurrent March First Movement against Japanese colonialism was inspired by the promise of Wilsonianism, the amendment was a forward-thinking, liberal statement.11 It won wide support at the conference except for the Austra­lian. British and American delegations, who faced domestic political back­lash from a mixture of anti-immigration agitators, xenophobes, and racists. Wilson, therefore, suppressed the clause, an unjustifiable action the Japanese then used to pressure the president further on Shandong. Wilson surrendered, with the stipulation that Japan promises to retrocede the leased territory to China at a future date.

Suppose the Shandong transfer represented an unavoidable political trade-off. It also portended liberal internationalism’s limits as well as future ideological discord between Japan and the United States. When the decision was made public, students in Beijing exploded in protest, unleashing the May Fourth Movement. China refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles, the only nation in Paris to do so (it joined the league in 1920). Wilson later told the American people he loathed all of the Chinese leaseholds but that the League of Na­tions eventually would find a just solution; if and when that happened, how­ever. The United States would not play a role. As is well known, the Republi­can-led and politically fractured US Senate refused to consent to the League Covenant. The United States never joined the League of Nations, a strikingly unilateralist message to a world about to embark on a novel experiment in multilateral cooperation. The Senate’s rejection resulted principally from conflicting views over national sovereignty. Theoretically, collective security demanded that nations surrender a significant degree of foreign policy mak­ing to an international inscription. There was the impression, nor necessarily lire reality, that each member of the league was expected to send troops into zones of conflict, no matter how large or small or distant.12

It takes but a moment to grasp the tragic irony of the Senate’s decision for Wilson. The president had argued for intervention in the Great War in large part to help create a new world order. He had spent nearly five months in Paris making certain that would happen. American scholar-diplomat George Kennan later vilified Wilson’s “colossal conceit” in thinking he could re­make international life in his image.13 Kennan’s appraisal was neither fair nor accurate. Wilson, of course, had drawn extensively from nineteenth-century liberalism. Most important, the president and his fellow peacemakers faced unique circumstances in a world that had undergone unprecedented change since the Napoleonic Age. Including the rise of new nation-states like Germany and Italy.

The unconcealed fact was that the balance-of-power system had broken down and filled cemeteries with more than nine million human beings. That Wilson approached the shattered world with an innovative plan is understandable. That the peace program ultimately failed reminds more about the intractable problem of human conflict and world governance.

Underneath “The Gap In the Bridge,” which draws attention to the Irony and weight of America’s absence in the League of Nations. Note also the curious inclusion of Belgium and omission of Japan. (Leonard RavemHIII, Punch, 10 December 10,1919)

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Notwithstanding its early setbacks, the ideology of liberal internationalism that emerged from the peace conference already has planted tools. Delegates from all over the world had spent six months together discussing the problem of world order. They had answered the normative question about how an international system ought to be structured and managed in entirely novel ways. The new norms proceeded from the principle that naked aggression no longer was acceptable behavior in international relations. And when disputes arose, they were to be dealt with multilaterally through rules-based “orderly processes.” By the end of the 1920s, even without the United States (or the Soviet Union) in the league, these “new world trends.” Had evolved into something approximating a universal ideology, however tenuous. As Ishii Kikujiro, a Japanese representative at the League of Nations explained at the time. 

World currents of peace, stirred by the lessons of the Great War. Have drifted toward Geneva and given to that place the peculiar air know n as the Geneva atmosphere…Tins atmosphere is a specific remedy for lowering the fever of military aggression, … It is universally accepted that Hie best way to bring about the peaceful settlement of international disputes is to recognize as binding the duty of submitting such disputes to arbitration.’14

Toward this end in the mid-1920s, the league facilitated a series of security and territorial agreements are collectively known as the Locarno Treaties, after which Germany became a member.

In substantive ways, both Japan and the United States extended the roots of the liberal order during the 1920s. In Japan, despite a cynical undergrowth of nationalist critics who claimed that Wilsonianism was simply a fig leaf for Anglo-American domination, mainstream diplomacy followed in the spirit of an imperial rescript proclaimed in the name of Emperor Taisho. Declaring that world affairs had “completely changed,” the rescript instructed Japanese officials to help build an internationalist order. Japan’s Foreign Ministry, under the leadership of Sliideliara Kijurb. Gravitated toward an Anglo- American bias, convinced that cooperation with the world’s leading powers was the most effective way to advance Japan’s foreign policy goals. Japan’s rising global status (one of only four permanent members on the League of Nations Council) gave added incentive for the empire to conform to the new diplomacy. To be sure, this did not mean the unqualified subordination of regional interests to internationalist imperatives; still, Japan’s “cooperative diplomacy’’ during the 1920s was remarkable for its consistency.15

As for the United States, although it had spurned the league, it nonetheless remained mostly committed to an internationalist approach. On the one hand, the succession of Republican administrations in the 1920s tended to stress capital investment and trade to facilitate world peace. On the other hand (and more ironically, given die League of Nations fight). They also took the lead on a number of initiatives to augment the liberal order. The irony is less striking, however, if one appreciates how the ideology of Wilsonianism evoked aspects of conservativism. In that it sought to avoid upheaval by privileging “orderly processes.” As Frank Costigliola has noted. Republicans wanted to “strike a balance between order and change.”16 This was a dominant trait of Progressive-era reforms, which many moderate Republicans had supported; it was a characteristic that consequently guided Republican ad-ministrations in a series of multilateral conferences.

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"Vulnerable to violent disorder"

The American president and his secretary of state. Charles Evans Hushes agreed that the area of the Pacific and East Asia was particularly vulnerable to violent disorder. Not only did interests of the world’s three largest naval powers, Great Britain, the United States, and Japan, converge there, but the region contained the seeming tinderbox of China. Warren G. Harding and  Hughes were not alone in their geopolitical anxiety. The concern had been palpable at the Paris Peace Conference as well. President Wilson, for example, remarked that “the greatest dangers for the world can arise in the Pacific.” The Slate Department’s China specialist, Paul S. Reinsch, similarly stated there was “no single problem in Europe" that challenged the “future peace of the world" more than that of East Asia. The region’s tensions, Reinsch asserted, made “a huge armed conflict absolutely inevitable within one generation.” And Chinese diplomat Wellington Koo predicted a war in East Asia by 1930 if nothing were done to resolve issues regarding Chinese sovereignty.17

The lingering anxieties in Asian-Pacific affairs, as well as political pressures at home, eventually prompted Harding and Hughes to organize an international conference in Washington, DC, in the fall and winter of 1921-1922.18 The goal was twofold: to prevent a naval arms race and to promote stability in China, where 400 million people continued to live among a patchwork of autonomous political units and foreign-controlled leaseholds. Although the Washington Conference focused on particular issues among a particular group of actors, the summit nonetheless embodied the Wilsonian emphasis on "orderly processes” and the sanctity of treaties. Hughes further channeled Wilsonianistn by directly tackling disarmament and territorial integrity. Wilson had addressed both issues in his Fourteen Points.

Participants at the conference included the world's largest naval powers as well as nations with vested interests in China. The secretary, however, had set his sights primarily on Great Britain and Japan; in addition to their powerful navies, the two empires also shared a military alliance and boasted the biggest presence in China, in both leaseholds and investments.

A reporter for the London Daily Chronicle declared the opening of the conference to be “one of die great days in modem annals” and Secretary Hughes’s address “real, palpable, enormous.” Hughes received a boisterous standing ovation that went on for several minutes. Wild cheering from the gallery also went up for French Premier Aristide Briand and Japanese dele-gate Tokugawa Icsato. Much of the exuberant response came from the fact that Hughes’s speech, as the Associated Press (AP) asserted, was "farther- reaching than the most ardent advocate of disarmament dared to hope.” A major catalyst for naval limitation was pacifist groups who argued that munitions makers had helped ignite the Great War by fueling an arms race. Partially because of their activism, the League of Nations had rekindled disarmament talks in Geneva, and powerful maverick senator William E Borah (R-ID) had mounted an aggressive campaign in Congress.19 In catching the pacifist wave. Hughes was suggesting that the five largest naval powers (Britain. Japan, The United States. France, and Italy) were over armed, that they possessed more warships than what was sufficient for their security needs. The underlying assumption was that an oversized navy held within it the temptation for offensive war.

Then came the hard part. What constituted sufficient defense for each of the naval powers? Hughes's answer came in die form of a ratio system (5;5:3:1.75), with an eye on how much territory a nation’s navy had to defend. This included national coastlines and overseas possessions. Great Britain and the United States. Hughes argued, required 525.000 tons of battleships, Japan. 315.000 tons: France and Italy, second-tier naval powers, were accorded 175.000 tons. Hughes’s rationale was as follows: Great Britain had to defend a global empire (which, in itself, was becoming increasingly difficult to defend in principle under the lingua franca of liberal internationalism). The United States, meanwhile, had to defend two coastlines. Japan's coastlines were smaller and its possessions nearer. Italy's requirements were the Mediterranean; France’s were more expansive, but Hughes's pressure and veiled threats brought the French into the fold.20

Despite a positive first impression, alarm bells went off among the Japanese delegation. Back in Tokyo, the Naval General Staff was apoplectic. The naval hard-liners (or “fleet faction”) demanded absolute parity, explaining that a 5:5:3 ratio was meaningless in the event of a decisive battle, in which a belligerent would concentrate its entire battle fleet against an enemy. Japan's official delegation, meanwhile, argued for a 10:7 ratio. This proportion would give Britain or the United States a 43 percent advantage in Japanese waters, less than the 50 percent deemed necessary to defeat a defending nary. Japan’s chief delegate. Navy Minister Kato Tomosabuio. maintained that anything less than a 10:7 ratio left tire empire fearing "for her security and defense." Strategic concerns, however, were not the only thing that mattered to Japan. National pride was on the line as well.

Underneath: Delegates to the Washington Conference, 1921-1922. Pictured (L to R): Japan's chief delegate, Navy Minister Kato Tomosaburo, Shidehara Kijurd (ambassador to the United States), and Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes.

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Hay’s second note, like the first, was a request. Again, the great powers gave evasive replies, though they did pay lip service to the Open Door in subsequent bilateral treaties with China. In retrospect. Hay’s notes asked too much of imperialists at the height of tire ' age of empire.” Predatory nations were not about to act selflessly in leaseholds they had independently ac­quired and begun to develop, particularly if they sensed that Hay was con­cerned more about American economic access than “territorial entity.” In­deed. The United States was no innocent in China. In the ] 840s. In tandem with European powers. Washington had negotiated “unequal treaties” with China, resulting in extraordinary rights and privileges in designated “treaty ports."21 These rights included extraterritoriality, control over tariffs, and the creation of foreign-only zones called International Settlements. In 1882, meanwhile, the United States closed its door to Chinese immigration.

Despite the world’s rebuff, the Open Door became entrenched as the official US policy in East Asia. The results over the next two decades, how­ever. Were modest. The leasehold spree abated, but the unequal treaties en­dured. The United States and Japan, in particular, butted heads over the meaning of the Open Door. This was especially true during the Great War, when Japan’s sense of regional entitlement became more pronounced. In 1915, as noted. Japan presented China with the Twenty-One Demands. Some demands were specific to existing interests, such as extending the term of Japan’s leased territory on the Liaodong Peninsula from 1923 until 1997 and control over the South Manchurian Railway until 2002. However, a series of claims in a “Group V.” would have made China almost a protectorate of Japan. The Wilson administration refused to recognize the demands, which left the relationship between the Open Door and Japan's regionalism in a state of confusion. In 1917. Secretary of State Robert Lansing and Japanese envoy Ishii Kikujiro met to reconcile their nations’ conflicting worldviews.

The Lansing-Ishii negotiations assumed an air of meaningful compromise. But they merely perpetuated the confusion. Reading sources on their conferences becomes a mind-numbing exercise in verbal gymnastics, with each side parsing the meaning of qualifying adjectives. Were Japan's inter­ests in Asia “special” or “paramount”? Did Japan's geographical propinquity to China make its position “peculiar” and “unusual”? As it turned out, the final agreement’s ambiguity was intentional; Lansing hoped opacity would convey a semblance of harmony.22 Mostly, the agreement showed that the Open Door and Japanese regionalism could occupy tire same room, albeit unpleasantly, as long as the Open Door remained solely an American princi­ple in the old edifice of power politics. However, after the Great War, when the world began razing the old structure and building anew, double occupan­cy became untenable.

Secretary Hughes now sought to wind up the conflict between the Open Door and Japanese regionalism by turning American principles into a universal law. Privately, he said he was willing to recognize Japan's "natural and legitimate economic opportunities” in China, but not its "political control.” According to Hughes, the ensuing Nine-Power Treaty was intended to be "a substitute for all prior statements and agreements” (read: Lansing-Ishii). As Asada Sadao has made clear, such sweeping aspirations raised equally sweeping concerns among Japan's delegation. American delegate Elihu Root, a chief author of the treaty, proved to be a moderating influence. The Japanese respected Root for his fair-minded negotiations with Japan during Theodore Roosevelt's administration; for this reason. Japan's delegates came to him unofficially many times to voice their concerns. Root’s assu­rances and the inclusion of his "security” clause in Article I convinced the Japanese that the treaty recognized their “special position" in Manchuria.23

On its basic premises, the Nine-Power Treaty borrowed the language of both Hay's notes and Wilson’s Fourteen Points, obliging the eight foreign powers with interests in China to respect the country’s “territorial and admin­istrative integrity.” Similarly, the treaty sought to eliminate trade and invest­ment barriers in China so that all nations could enjoy "the principle of equal opportunity of commerce,” Though the most meaningful trade barriers in China were those of the still-existent foreign concessions, the Nine-Power Treaty targeted presumptions of perpetuity by requiring the contracting powers to respect China's independence and “provide the fullest and most unem­barrassed opportunity to China to develop and maintain for herself an effec­tive and stable government.” In case of disputes, meanwhile, the signatories agreed to hew to the liberal imperative of "full and frank discussion.”24

The Nine-Power Treaty (February 6. 1922) thus signified a solemn pledge to abide by expressed moral and legal principles regarding acceptable inter-national conduct in China. That alone was significantly different from 1900. when not a single invited guest showed up at Hay's diplomatic table, going forward, naked aggression in China was unacceptable, and exclusive treaty rights should be discharged in the near future when certain legal conditions were met. Here again, we see the Wilsonian emphasis on rules-based "orderly processes” and evolutionary change in the quest toward lasting peace. The status quo mostly remained, but the document's language and projection looked to a far different future.

To be sure, such assurances offered cold comfort to the Chinese, who demanded the immediate repudiation of all leased territories and foreign privileges. One is reminded here of African American civil rights activists in the 1950s being told by white moderates to be “patient,'' Moreover, the treaty was nonbinding: it was a promise made without any enforcement mechanism. If nations went back on their word, the violation would be transparent, but the dial was it. What happened next depended on the unknown power of world opinion. Looking back, it is clear such piecemeal promissory notes fell far short of the League of Nations' collective security and were good only as Long as relations among nations remained tranquil and friendly.

When the conference concluded, the mood was optimistic, and relations among nations were tranquil and friendly. Japan, as promised, retroceded its leasehold in Shandong: Britain vowed the same in Weihai. The good vibra­tions carried over to US-Japan relations. As historian Iriye Akira noted, the respective governments “were soon describing in glowing terms the coming of a new era of peace in the Pacific.” Back in Tokyo. Navy Minister Kato told his compatriots he could “categorically state" there was no Anglo- American coercion during the talks. In Tokyo's Ueno Park, a peace bell rang out daily at a Peace Exposition for four months following the conference. Among Americans, the former assistant secretary of the navy in the Wilson administration, Franklin D. Roosevelt, said it was notable that Japan had begun carrying out the treaties in good faith. “American sympathies.” he wrote in Asia magazine in 1923. “have been pro-Chinese rather than pro­-Japanese. Perhaps, however, we appreciate now a little more readily than formerly the Japanese point-of-view "25

Signs of America’s new sympathies and improved relations with Japan became manifest in the fall of 1923 after large parts of Tokyo and Yokohama were destroyed by a massive 7.9 earthquake and subsequent fires. The American people responded with disproportionate generosity, making cash contributions totaling over fifteen million yen (about $98 million in 2018 dollars), compared to the rest of the world’s combined total of six million yen (S40 million). Relations also remained on an even keel because of robust Trade between the two Pacific powers. The United States purchased nearly 40 percent of Japanese exports. And starting in 1924, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and Washington Conference delegate Shidehara Kijuro was appointed Japan’s foreign minister. For much of the 1920s. Shidehara became the face of Japan’s liberal internationalism and cooperative engagement, which earned the moniker “Shidehara diplomacy.” When he assumed office, Shidehara alluded to the Versailles and Washington treaties, saying, “Machiavellian stratagem and aggressive policy are now things of the past. Our policy must follow the path of justice and peace.”26

 

Japan's 'National Day of Humiliation'

Despite this budding optimism in US-Japan relations, there nonetheless were significant detours along the internationalist road in the 1920s. The most conspicuous one involved America’s discriminatory immigration act of1924. This nativist law arose out of widespread alarm at the influx of nearly 20 million immigrants between 1885 and 1920, mainly from southern and eastern Europe. The xenophobic backlash against some 200,000 Japanese residents was confined mainly to the West Coast. The legislation was de­signed to limit immigration from any nation to 2 percent of its representation in the 1890 US Census. Citizens from countries with nearly nonexistent populations in the United States in 1890, such as Japan, therefore, were effectively barred from immigrating once the law took effect.

In the case of Japan, however. Congress went even further. The proposed law categorically excluded Japanese immigrants by exploiting a recent Su­preme Court ruling that identified Japanese as racially ineligible for citizenship. A section of the immigration bill thus simply stated that “no alien ineligible to citizenship shall be admitted to the United States,” Almost immediately Japanese Ambassador Masanao Hanihara (1876 –1934) made clear to Secretary Hughes that the thing was anathema to his countrymen In an era touting liberal internationalism, one in which Japan played a prominent role at world conferences and the League of Nations, the legislation would grant Great Britain an annual quota of 65,721 immigrants to the United States, while Japan would be consigned to a status below that of Albania.27

Groping for some way to stir Congress from what he believed were dan­gerously myopic impulses. Hughes asked Hanihara to write him a public letter outlining the efficacy of previous voluntary restrictions, namely, the so-called Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907. Hanihara had worked closely with Hughes at the Washington Conference and duly responded with a mis­sive that included this infamous sentence: “I realize, as I believe you do. the grave consequences which the enactment of the measure...would inevitably bring upon the otherwise happy and mutually advantageous relations between our two countries.” An outraged Congress took the statement as a veiled threat and passed the law with Japan’s exclusion intact.28

Tokyo's official response to the National Origins Act was surprisingly muted, but public reaction was vociferous and indignant. Patriotic organiza­tions announced a "National Day of Humiliation.” and renowned internation­alist Nitobe Inazd declared he would never set foot in America again. What incensed the Japanese was not the assertion of a sovereign nation to place limits on immigration but rather legislation that discriminated against Japan solely on the basis of race. Elihu Root, who had negotiated the Gentlemen’s Agreement, very bitterly blamed fellow Republican Henry Cabot Lodge, de facto Senate majority leader, and a Washington Conference delegate. So. too. did Hughes, who wrote to Lodge shortly a Her the law’s passage, saying, ”I fear that our labors to create a better feeling in the East, which have thus far been notably successful, are now largely undone ”29

Thus, for cosmopolitans in the 1920s who dreamed of a permanent peace by eroding national differences and cultivating mutual understanding through international organizations and cross-cultural networks, such aspirations seemed to be maturing rapidly within their own lifetimes. And yet there remained a yearning to say directly and simply what all of the conferences had implied: an unequivocal statement that outlawed war.

 

The Kellogg–Briand Pact or Pact of Paris 1928

In the 1920s, academics working within the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, including Columbia professor James T. Shotwell, had kept a proposal for the universal repudiation of war in the public eye. In 1927, Shotwell and others, having impressed upon French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand that Americans were growing irritated by French posturing on the continent, suggested that Briand that bilateral relations be repaired with a “DO-war” pact. Briand was receptive. Consequently, with Shotwell's guidance. Briand floated die idea of a bilateral peace pact to US Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg. Kellogg was concerned about such a treaty drifting into a security alliance, but he was intrigued enough to encourage an expanded pact. As a result, in August 1928, nine years after the Treaty of Versailles, fifteen nations, including Japan, gathered again in Paris to endorse a multilat­eral treaty that outlawed war.

The preamble of the ensuing Kellogg-Briand Pact read like a prospectus for liberal internationalism. With the purpose of perpetuating “peaceful and friendly relations” among nations, the delegates pledged themselves to “a frank renunciation of war," and that “changes in . . . relations with one another should be sought only by pacific means and be the result of a peace­ful and orderly process." Thus the liberal mantra was stated verbatim. These principles were squeezed into a few succinct articles. In Article I., the signa­tories renounced war “as an instrument of national policy." When two na­tions went to war, therefore, either one or both must be at fault. This view also negated the idea that there ever again could be neutral bystanders to a conflict. The treaty’s wording, however, allowed for military action in the name of self-defense. Article II. meanwhile, it dealt with conflict resolution, obliging signatories to resolve “all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or whatever origin" through peaceful measures.30

Significantly, the memory of the Great War, as well as the peace efforts of the now-deceased President Wilson, enveloped the signing ceremony on August 27, 1928. Minister Briand proposed that the treaty be dedicated “to the dead" of the Great War; he then turned to German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann and intoned "to all the dead.” The moving gesture showed how far the new diplomacy had traveled in just nine years. In paying tribute to President Wilson. Briand called the new treaty "reinsurance” for the League of Nations. A key factor was reinsurance with American partici­pation. which was crucial to European leaders. Taking stock of the profound symbolism of the day’s events in the Hall of Clocks at the French Foreign Ministry (where the 1919 Peace Conference opened), a New York Times reporter wrote, “It would be a heartless man who did not feel that the spirit of Woodrow Wilson lived this afternoon.” One political cartoon imagined Wil­son’s ghost peering over Secretary Kellogg’s shoulder as he signed the pact, invoking the Wilsonian phrase, “And now they have all become too proud to fight.’31 By The end of the decade, the no-war vow included sixty nations.

On the critical question of its capacity to deter aggression, the treaty leaned on the liberal weapon of world opinion. Following Wilson’s lead. Briand warned, “The nation which went on a warpath ran the risk of bringing against it all other nations.” Back in the United States. President Calvin Coolidge asserted that a Kellogg Pact in 1914 would have prevented the Great War. In hindsight, such boundless faith in public opinion seems deeply naive. But a preponderance of voices at the time believed aggressors could not long function in an interdependent world in which they were ostracized. There simply was too much to lose, which is why the pact's preamble de­clared that aggressors were to “be denied the benefits furnished by this Trea­ty,” These unstated benefits implied the unimpeded participation in a global society, what one scholar has called “a transnational economic society of free commerce and industry linking people across borders.”32 In reality, they seemed to confer little more than a stamp of good state-keeping.

For this reason, not all contemporaries were impressed with the new treaty. Japanese diplomat Ishii Kikujiro said the most striking thing about the pact was the absence “of any restraint on states violating its provisions.” Here he blamed the Americans, who. he said, consistently opposed “the inclusion of a penalizing provision.” On this point, Ishii was correct. Similar­ly, journalist Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., grandson of the late senator, writing in Harper's, excoriated the treaty's promises of securing peace without sacri­fice: “thousands of persons are being made to believe that something really has been done. when, of course, nothing has or can be until a price is paid. ... Is it not apparent that the Kellogg treaty, with its many textual dangers, only thickens the haze, deepens the pitfalls, and once again post­pones the day when some evident thinking is done?” In light of such criticisms, one historian has labeled the Republican approach to liberal inter­nationalism in the 1920s as involvement without commitment ”33 It is im­portant to remember, however, that critics of the pact tended to champion other multilateral measures. The apparent success of the Washington Confer­ence. In particular, it had kept the pressure on governments to limit classes of ships omitted in the Five-Power Naval Treaty. Toward this cud. At the invitation of Great Britain, the largest naval powers convened in London.

 

The Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament, 1930

In January 1930. officials from Great Britain, the United States, and Japan, amid the scrutiny of four hundred newspaper reporters, began work on what they believed would add yet another layer of protective coating to the inter­locking treaty system.34 The focus this time was on long-range, high-speed “heavy cruisers." In the spirit of Wilsonianism, US Secretary of State Henry Stimson. Interviewed on newsreels before his departure, he said he wanted to remove any “feeling of insecurity" among the naval powers, especially Japa­nese fears of Anglo-American collusion. Accordingly, upon arriving in Lon­don. The secretary met at once with the Japanese, in order, as he put it. To erase “any suspicion" about playing favorites at the conference. Despite this Wilsonian air. Stimson pursued somewhat duplicitous diplomacy: two days before the start of the conference, he met privately with British Prime Minis­ter Ramsay MacDonald and urged a united front against Japan's strategic ambitions.35

The American delegation subsequently returned to the 10:6 ratio agreed on at the Washington Conference, treating it as an established formula. Ja­pan’s delegates demurred, countering once again with a 10:7 ratio, which they considered the minimum requirement for maintaining naval superiority in the western Pacific. After intense negotiations, the Japanese accepted the 10:6 ratio with conditions that guaranteed a de facto 70 percent ratio in heavy cruisers until 1936. In Tokyo, the Naval General Staff was again livid, fueling a public backlash against the empire's allegedly weak-kneed delegation. Viscount Ishii said lie was "astonished” by the virulent opposition to the treaty; why, the Japanese asked, did Washington insist on a naval ratio that theoretically gave it the capacity to bring the offensive war to Japan's home waters, unless it held some notion to do so?36 The London Conference thus exposed a fierce undercurrent of dissent in Japan over perceived inequities and the supposed benefits of the new liberal order.

Not unrelatedly, Japanese complaints also had surfaced in Paris dining the no-war talks. Japanese officials at that time had considered submitting reservations to the Kellogg Pact out of concern about the die treaty’s potential impact on Japan’s freedom of action in its Manchurian leasehold. Although the Japanese balked, not wishing to challenge world trends, a year later, at the 1929 IPR conference in Kyoto, Japanese delegates gave expansive de­fenses of the empire's rights in Manchuria, thus shedding light on a persistent strain of regional entitlement. And yet. prominent internationalist James Shotwell’s War as an Instrument of National Policy, published shortly after the Kyoto conference, makes clear that reading the prevailing ideological winds in Japan at the time was fraught with complexity: Shotwell devoted an entire chapter in praise of Japan’s commitment to die liberal order.37

For the present, the Loudon Conference concluded with participants out­wardly buoyed by good feelings arising from cooperative action and the belief they had further immunized die world against the scourge of global conflict. Japan’s chief delegate. Wakatsuki Reijiro. for example, said he hoped their work would "fulfill the earnest desire of humanity, scarred by bitter ordeal, to earn the appreciation of subsequent generations.” Stimson. meanwhile, said the conference “increased our hope that civilization will be able to form the habit of settling peaceably the questions and controversies which arise between nations." In oilier words, a hope that the emphasis on ‘'orderly processes" was becoming second nature. Such aspirations were re­peated in a dramatic coda to the treaty, one that symbolized the intercon­nected global society the new peace structure aimed to preserve. In October 1930, the leaders of the three naval powers, Premier Hamaguchi Osachi. Prime Minister MacDonald and President Herbert Hoover, participated in an international radio hookup from their home capitals to mark the treaty’s significance. Premier Hamaguchi lauded the striking overhaul in diplomacy over the previous decade, which he referred to as the "growing consciousness of mankind.” According to Hamaguchi, “a more generous spirit” was quickly replacing "the jealousies and suspicions of the past.” resulting in "a new chapter in the history of human civilization.’’38

Of course, no one knew that the London Conference would be the last great expression of cooperative diplomacy before the long and troubled road to World War IL. Certainly, disturbing signs were in the air. For one thing, the London Conference had begun two months after the onset of the global stock market crisis. Yet, most financial observers anticipated nothing more than a bad recession. Then, a month after his radio broadcast. Hamaguchi was shot in the abdomen by an ultranationalist (dying of complications nine months later). And yet. although Japan at the time was a fertile breeding ground for right-wing militants, its political system in the 1930s did not succumb to the cliche of ’’government by assassination."39

It, therefore, was not entirely surprising that, almost a year later, oil Sep­tember 17, 1931, Japanese Ambassador Debuchi and Secretary Stinson agreed that US-Japan relations appealed more tranquil than in many years past; Debuchi remarked with satisfaction that he had just completed a long trip throughout the United States and “had found everywhere more marked evidence of friendliness towards his own country than he had ever before noted during his long stay as Ambassador.”40 Within twenty-four hours of this conversation, however, Japan’s Kwantung Army began its move in Man­churia. The new liberal order was about to face its first real test.

 

Part 1: Overview of the discussions following the 1919 or "Wilsonian moment,” a notion that extends before and after that calendar year: Part One Can a potential future Pacific War be avoided?

Part 2: Issues like the Asian Monroe Doctrine, how relations between China and Japan from the 1890s onward transformed the region from the hierarchy of time to the hierarchy of space, Leninist and Wilsonian Internationalism, western and Eastern Sovereignty, and the crucial March First and May Fourth movements were covered in: Part Two Can a potential future Pacific War be avoided?

Part 3: The important Chinese factions beyond 1919 and the need for China to create a new Nation-State and how Japan, in turn, sought to expand into Asia through liberal imperialism and then sought to consolidate its empire through liberal internationalism were covered in: Part Three Can a potential future Pacific War be avoided?

Part 5: The Manchurian crisis and its connection to the winding road to World War II are covered in: Part Five Can a potential future Pacific War be avoided?

Part 6:The war itself quickly unfolded in favor of Japan’s regionalist ambitions, a subject we carried through to the post-world war situation. Whereby we also discussed when Japan saw itself in a special role as mediator between the West (“Euro-America”) and the East (“Asia”) to “harmonize” or “blend” the two civilizations and demanded that Japan lead Asia in this anti-Western enterprise there are parallels with what Asim Doğan in his extensive new book describes how the ambiguous and assertive Belt and Road Initiative is a matter of special concern in this aspect. The Tributary System, which provides concrete evidence of how Chinese dynasties handled with foreign relations, is a useful reference point in understanding its twenty-first-century developments. This is particularly true because, after the turbulence of the "Century of Humiliation" and the Maoist Era, China seems to be explicitly re-embracing its history and its pre-revolutionary identity in: Part Six Can a potential future Pacific War be avoided?

Part 7: Part Seven Can a potential future Pacific War be avoided?

Part 8: While initially both the nationalist Chiang Kai-shek (anti-Mao Guomindang/KMT), including Mao's Communist Party (CCP), had long supported independence for Taiwan rather than reincorporation into China, this started to change following the publication of the New Atlas of China's Construction created by cartographer Bai Meichu in 1936. A turning point for Bai and others who saw China's need to create a new Nation-State was the Versailles peace conference's outcome in 1919 mentioned in part one. Yet that from today's point of view, the fall of Taiwan to China would be seen around Asia as the end of American predominance and even as “America’s Suez,” hence demolishing the myth that Taiwan has no hope is critical. And that while the United States has managed to deter Beijing from taking destructive military action against Taiwan over the last four decades because the latter has been relatively weak, the risks of this approach inches dangerously close to outweighing its benefits. Conclusion and outlook.

 

1. Thomas J. Knock. To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). 60-61,71-75.80-81; Lloyd Ambrosius Wilsonian Statecraft: Theory and Practice of Liberal Internationalism during World War I (Wilmington. DE: SR Books, 1991), 65-92. See also Woodrow Wilson,  Peace without Victo­ry*. January 22, 1917, in Arthur S Link, ed , The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (hereafter PfVW) vdL 40 (Princeton. NJ Princeton University Press. 1986), 531-39.

2. See Wilson War Message " April 2, 1917. PWW vol 41,527; John Milton Cooper Jr , Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (New York Knopf, 2009), 162 89, and Knock To End AU Wars 119-22 Allusion to ' indispensable nation from a comment made in 3998 by Madieleme Albright. secretary' of state under President William J Clinton.

3. Frank Ninkovich, The Global Republic: America 's Inadverrenr Rise to World Power (Chicago University of Chicago Press, 2014), 4 See also liiye, Cultural Internationalism 11-50; Glenda Slug* Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press. 2013), 11-44. Lloyd George in Wilson, Life and Letters:.irmistice. 397; Tokyo mayor in Frederick Dickinson, Toward a Global Perspective of the Great War; Japan and the Foundations of a Twentieth-Century World." American Historical Review 119 no 4 (October 2014) 1162

4. Wilson. September 27, 1918, Wilson, Life and Letters: Armistice 428 Isiah Bowman "Memo on Remarks by the President ’ December 10,1918. PWW, vol 51, 354

5. On liberal precedent see Ninkovich. Global Republic; 99-106, Mark Mazowei Govern­ing the World: The History' of an Ideai, 1815-Present (London Penguin, 2012), 38-45, 81-90; and Alan Sykes, The Rise and Fall of British Liberalism (Loudon Longman 1997), 21-52, 58-68. 100—108, 133-42.

6. Erez Manela. The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Ann colonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 8, and Akira Inye. China and Japan in a Global Setting (Cambridge. MA Harvard University Press. 1992). 48-49

7. Wilson, An Address m the City Auditorium in Pueblo, CO," Sepiember 25, 1919, PWW. VOl 63,501-4.

8. Yoshino comments m Child kdron (Central Revte»r)t quoted in Sadao Asada, " Between the Old Diplomacy and the New. 1915-1922,” Diplomatic History 30. no 2 (April 2006) 212; Uchida instructions in Mizumo Hamliaia Chow and Kivofnku Chuma. The Turning Point in L'S-Japan Relations (London Palgrave, 2016), 10, 34.

9. The system of imperialist leaseholds adopted the ninety-nine--year- term from standard common law contracts, which mandated the longest possible term of a lease of real property to be ninety-nine years

10. John J O Brien. China Defies Japan Peace Delegates Denounce Nipponese Anns as Imperialistic ” Washington Post; March 6f 1919, 1. On the Beijing government s additional agreement1, with Japan, see Bruce A Elleman Wilson and China: A Revised History' of the Shandong Question (Armonk NY: M E. Sharpe 2002), 41-43. Wang’s name was written at the time as C. T Wang

11. On bluffing, see Burkinan. Japan and the League. 93-94 On the racial equality clause, see Naoko Shimazu Japan, Race and Equality: Hie Racial Equality Proposal of 1910 (New York: Routledge. 1998), 79-80. 91 On the Korean protest movement, see Manela, Wilsonian Moment, 119-36, 197-213

12. On the May Fourth Movement, see Manela Wilsonian Moment, 177-96 Wilson. “Pueblo Speech. September 25, 1919, PWW, vol 63, 507-8 On the Wilson-Senate straggle, see Joint M Cooper Jr., Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodroyy Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001)

13. George F. Kennan American Diplomacy, 1900-1950 (Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1951), 69

14. Ishii essay in The New World and Japan March 1928. included in Kikujiro Ishit Diplomatic Commenranes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1936), 137-38. Commentaries is a translation of Ishu s 1930 memoir.

15. Emperor Taisho, “1920 Imperial Rescript on the Establishment of Peace,’ in Dickinson “Toward a Global Perspective of the Great War,” 1167; Burkman Japan and the League. xi-xiv

16. On the business bent in the 1920s, see Akira Inye The Globalizing of America, 1913-1945 (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1993), 88-102 Frank Costighola, Awk­ward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919-1933 (Ithaca NY; Cornell University Press, 1984), 31

17. Wilson, April 15, 1919, PWW vol. 57, 358; Reuisch and Koo cited an Margaret Mac Millan. Pans 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (New York Random House, 2002), 331,335

18. On domestic political pressures,. see Roger Dingman, Power in the Pacific: The Origins of Naval Arms Limitation 1914-1922 (Chicago University of Chicago Press, 3976), 139-59.

19. Hamilton, “Says America Has Justified Her Call 4. Dingman s claim that the powers were motivated mainly by “an abiding concern for domestic political power is well supported but it understates the impact of war trauma Dmgman. Power in the Pacific. 139-214.

20. On the motivations of all the naval powers, see Erik Goldstein and John Maurer, eds., The Washington Conference, 1921-22: Naval Rivalry\ East Asian Stability and the Road to Pearl Harbor (London: Rout ledge, 2012).

21. On the treaty' port system and US China relations, see Michael H Hunt. The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914 (New York Columbia University Press, 1983).

22. See FRUS: The Lansing Papers, 1914-1920, vol. 25 432-53, and Burton F Beers, Vain Endeavor: Robert Lansing's Attempts to End the American-Japanese Rnalry (Durham. NC: Duke University Press, 1962), 114-16.

23. Hughes comments, November 11, 3921, FRUS, 1922, vol. 1, 3-2, and Akira Inye, After Imperialism: The Search for Older in the Far East, 1921-1931 (New York Atheneum. 1973), 18 In the “security clause, signatories promised “to refram from taking advantage of condi­tions in China m order to seek special rights or privileges which would abridge the nghts of subjects or citizens of friendly States, and from countenancing action inimical to the security of such States. See Asada, “Between the Old Diplomacy and the New , 216-26, and SD. September 2, 1932, 150-51.

24. Nine-Power Treaty, February 6. 1922, FRUS, 1922, vol. 1.276-83.

25. Iriye, After Imperialism, 25-6, Kato Cited in Asada. “Between the Old Diplomacy and the New,"' 228 See Dickinson, Toward a Global Perspective of the Great War,” 1177-78, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Shall We Trust Japan?.” Asia, July 1923, 478. Britain officially returned Weihai in 1930.

26. Cash figures from Payson J Treat, Japan and the United States, 1S53-192I (New York Houghton Mifflin. 1921; rev. ed.. 1928), 263. Shidehara quoted in Asada. Between llie Old Diplomacy and the New, 229.

27. In Ozawa v. Unified States (1922), the Supreme Court found Ozawa Takeo ineligible for citizenship under the Naturalization Act of 1906 because, contrary to his claim, he failed classification as a white person Immigration figures from Mae M. Ngai, “The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924,” Journal of American History 86, no 1 (June 1999): 74.

28. Hughes memo, March 27, 1924, FRUS, 1924, vol 2, 337-38 Hamhara to Hughes, April 10,  1924; "No Veiled Threat Intended in Note," New York Times, April 20, 1924, 1 On Japans view see Chow and drama, 7liming Point in US-Japan Relations 135-67 See also Asada Ryo Taisenkan and Nichi-Bei Kankei. 273-323.

29. Root comments m SD. Sept. 2, 1932.150-51; Hughes to Lodge, in lrye. After Imperial­ism, 35.

30. FRUS, 1928, vol I, 153-57. On neutrality, see Brooke L Blower, “From Isolationism to Neutrality: A New Framework for Understanding American Political Culture, 1919-1941,” Diplomatic History 38. no. 2 (2014): 345-76 See also Robert H. Ferrell Peace in Their Time: The Origins of the Kellogg-Briand Pact (New Haven CT: Yale University Press. 1952); and Gorman Emergence of International Society, 259-308

31. Edwin James "15 Nations Sign Pact to Renounce War m Pans Room Where League Was Bom; Briand Dedicates It to Nations' Dead," New York Times, August 28. 1928, 1; Briand Calls Pact Direct Blow to War.” New York Times, August 28, 1928. 5; Springfield Republican. August 28. 1928.

32. Briand Dedicates It to Nations Dead/ New York Times Coolidge quoted in Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.. 'The Meaning of the Kellogg Treaty/ Harper's, December 1928, 38 Stanley Hoffman ‘The Crisis of Liberal Internationalism. Foreign Policy, no 98 (Spring 1995): 161.

33. Ishii, Diplomatic Commentaries, 243^14; Lodge, "Meaning of the Kellogg Treaty." 41. "Involvement without commitment in George C. Herring. The American Century and Beyond: US Foreign Relations, I89X-2014 (Oxford Oxford University Press, 2017), 137. See also Warren I Cohen Empire without Tears America's Foreign Relations, 1921-1933 (New York Knopf, 1987)

34. France and Italy also participated but became disaffected early and declined to sign the ensuing treaty.

35. SD January 7, 1930, vol II, 45; January 20 1930, vol 12, 47-49, February 3, 1930, vol 12. 113 James B, Crowley', Japan's Quest for Autonomy: National Security and Foreign Policy, 1930-1938 (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press. 1966), 38-48.

36. Ishii, Diplomatic Commentaries, 320-24. Crowley, Japan's Quest for Autonomy, 48-66.

37. Michiko Ito The Japanese Institute of Pacific Relations and the Kellogg Pact.” in Hawai’i at the Crossroads of the U.S. and Japan before the Pacific War, ed Jon Thares Davidann (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), 78-82, 89. Another criticism was the pact being signed ‘in the name of the peoples” instead of the emperor. On the 1929 IPR conference see Akanu, Internationalizing the Pacific 139-65, and Burkman, Japan and the League 362-64.

38. Wakatsuki quoted in Dickinson, World War I, 180. Stimson address April 22, 1930, SD, vol 11, 63-65.

39. Iriye, Globalizing America, 103.

40. Henry L. Stimson, The Far Eastern Crisis (New York: Harper and Bros., 1936), 3.

 

Continued in Part Two: Could the Pacific war Dec 1941-2 September 1945 be avoided?

 

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