Was peace doomed from the beginning? Or did the ‘economic consequences’ of the peace undermine the achievements of the peacemakers? How valid are the criticisms of Keynes?
After reading the materials for this week, I remain convinced that the key failure of the Paris Peace Conference and Treaty of Versailles was economic, i.e., that the terms imposed upon Germany were onerous to the point of nearly guaranteeing its future economic instability and, thus, political instability. However, although far more has made said about the reparations payments Germany was required to make being the core reason why the treaty ultimately failed, it seems more important was the extraction of such a large proportion of Germany's resources, rendering it unable to make these payments. Had it retained more of its resources or had access to them on the market or had it lost its resources but not been subjected to reparations, Germany might have become sufficiently economically and politically stable.
In this regard, I really do find Keynes's arguments persuasive. For one thing, he does not suggest that any type of monetary punishment of Germany would be too onerous. Oh the matter of coal, for example, he writes, "This [annual delivery of coal to France for 10 years] is a reasonable provision if it stood by itself, and one which Germany should be able to fulfil if she were left her other resources to do it with."[1] Elsewhere, he is even more blunt: "There is no question but that Germany lost lose these ore-fields. The only question is how far she is to be allowed facilities for purchasing their produce."[2] He makes his case perhaps no more clear than when he writes, "Yet if these feelings [of victors' justice] and these rights are allowed to prevail, beyond what wisdom would recommend, the reactions on the social and economic life of Central Europe will be far too strong to be confined within their original limits."[3]
Among the cases made against Keynes, Zara Steiner's is perhaps the most vociferous, but I don't find it particularly compelling. First, she claims that Keynes found the reparations clauses "morally unjustified and financially unworkable,"[4] but she cites no source on this point, nor does she stipulate why he saw the terms as unworkable. In directly addressing Keynes's argument, which she considers "pernicious but brilliant,"[5] she does little more than argue that the terms of Versailles were not so bad because the terms Germany dictated to the Soviets at Brest-Litovsk were worse. Her most direct statement, i.e., "Even in the short term, the Versailles treaty did not leave Germany prostrate; on the contrary, Germany industry revived, and some historians believe that stabilization might have come earlier had the political structure been less fractured,"[6] i.e., is also unsourced.
Moreover, it seems to put the cart before the horse to some extent, in placing the fractured political structure of Germany because the cause of the treaty's failure, rather than considering that the cause and effect might have been reversed. In fact, with a broad social democratic government including liberal parties, it is hard to argue that Germany was badly political divided in 1919. The Kapp Putsch was a year off and based at least in part on the ultimate imposition of Versailles. Thus, I don't find Steiner's criticisms valid.
====
[1] John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Row, 1920), 86.
[2] Ibid, 98.
[3] Ibid, 94.
[4] Zara Steiner, The Lights that Failed: European International History, 1918-1933 (New York: Oxford UP, 2005), 64.
[5] Ibid, 67.
[6] Ibid, 67-68.
No comments:
Post a Comment