The US government’s decision on 4 March to stop military aid to Ukraine shouldn’t be quite the surprise it seems to be. The history of US-British relations in the aftermath of WWII is an informative comparison.
When it comes to history, do your reading
It is always useful to have key historical works to hand. This morning I opened a 1950 copy of Roosevelt and the Russians: the Yalta Conference. It was written by Edward Stettinus, the Secretary of State under Franklin D Roosevelt and Harry S Truman in the crucial 1944–1945 period, and subsequently United States ambassador to the United Nations and the US representative on the UN Security Council.
As a member of the US delegation to the Yalta Conference in February 1945, he was involved in the negotiations between the three (soon-to-be) victorious Allied powers – the US, Britian, and the Soviet Union – and was able to observe the leaders and their teams as they worked towards an agreement. His book is a concise and insightful record of the seven days of the conference and of his working relationships with Presidents Roosevelt and Truman.
Stettinus characterises Yalta as a courageous attempt by Roosevelt and Winston Churchill to set the world on the road to a lasting peace. So, what happened?
In a nutshell, the Soviet Union failed to honour the agreement, particularly with regard to its expansion in eastern Europe. This is a theme we have heard recently with regard to Ukraine: Russia (as it now is) cannot be trusted with agreements; evidence from history backs the present position of President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people. After all, they would know. They have experience of the Russian way of doing things that dates back to the 1940s and beyond – in families and villages across Ukraine.
Has America always been an ally you can rely on?
But what about America? Can they always be relied upon?
Some aspects of US-British relations suggest perhaps not. Consider what happened to Lend-Lease. This was a crucial lifeline in WWII in which the US provided the UK (as well as France, the Soviet Union, China, and others) with food, oil, and materiel, free of charge, for the good of the war effort. But Truman, now president of a country that was our ally at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam, ended Lend-Lease at the stroke of a pen on 21 August 1945.
This was done without warning only days after the end of the Potsdam Conference, leaving Prime Minister Clement Attlee and the British government in severe difficulties, faced as they were with the task of rebuilding the country while its financial resources were thoroughly depleted. From that moment, a penniless Britain would have to pay for everything. Lend-Lease ships still in port in the US were unloaded and goods and support never sent.
Ukraine and disarmament – another lesson from history?
There is a lesson from nuclear disarmament, too. In this country, the post-war Attlee government decided to develop a British nuclear deterrent, which has enabled Britain to remain relatively at peace, despite the enormous financial cost. Certainly, the UK’s nuclear arsenal gives our small country’s word more weight than it would otherwise have.
Ukraine had nuclear weapons, too – inherited from the Soviet Union. In fact, in 1991, they had the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world. They were convinced to give these weapons up in exchange for compensation and assurances from the UK, the US and Russia, as part of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) – assurances which history might have told them could be broken. We might ask, if Ukraine had taken account of historical US and Russian attitudes to international agreements, would it be in a different place today?
It’s hard to know what to think, in the current circumstances – let alone predict what will happen next. Yet certain themes recur: power and land are more important than people and peace; cruelty reigns over compassion; and the behaviours of government leaders is sometimes very hard to understand.
The stroke of a pen …
Truman left behind an interesting insight into how these decisions with a huge impact on people and economies get made. His memoirs record his thoughts on the action to end the Lend-Lease Act and what it had done to Britain, its ally. He subsequently realised he could extended economic support to Britain and Europe, if he had understood the need to do so. Truman shares (in Attlee, by Kenneth Harris, 1982) “Crowley [head of the US Foreign Economic Administration] … taught me this lesson early in my administration – that I must always know what is in the documents I sign”.
When it comes to Ukraine, do you think Donald Trump takes the same trouble over his reading?
