Imperator Pax
Talon Master
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I don't think it goes that far, I suspect that, and that is what it is my speculation, that people on wallstreet were playing both sides of the coin socialism/marxim/pacifism were all popular with the eastern elite as being in vogue (Henry Ford comes to mind trying to broker peace, he got utopian in his old age trying to play peacemaker and was willing to extend a lot of leeway to the communists,) Ideology and sympathies goes a lot further to me than speculation that it was the plan of action to undermine a nebulous broad threat of competition. [and trotsky comments on that its American capitalist philosophy to brazenly use the revolutionaries against the old empires in Europe, which either he knew something or he was reading the opposite angle of 'oh they're helping us because we'll undermine France and England and Germany']Baku - there were many private oil wells there,which was more efficient then what soviet did next.Some polish inventor even planned to made undersea well.
Only reasonable theory - kill Russia with communism before it could replace USA as 1th economy.
Similarly, a specific threat, i.e. Standard Oil undermining the Tsars government because they went with Franco-Belgian consortiums or with British oil magnates, I can absolutely see that, but as a nebulous, they might exceed us? I don't see it, not given the broad gulf of US automotive, and US steel manufacturing versus everyone else. Banking similar story your only realistic competition with New York is London, and by 1917 thats a pretty distant second compared to how things were just a few years earlier, Oil, though oil yes, I can see the big oil companies not being happy dealing with Russian competition from before the war, even if it was unrealistic, even if it was pure petty malice I can see them making that decision.
With the 'Other' major industries? Farmers want to keep prices high state side (you see this in the early twenties, farmers want the government to keep prices of wheat where they were, so you get horse trading there, you have deals that are designed and brokered to keep international wheat prices in the early twenties elevated versus supply). There are a lot of people especially immediately post war that have an interest in, 'prices are high, we want them to stay high, and if people are worried about the soviets, if the soviets aren't exporting grain (see the farmer example, and also that the French concessions in Tsarist russia would have been in the Ukraine would have been the breadbasket areas) prices will stay high. If the Russian oil isn't on market, oil prices will remain high. Russia steel production doens't become meaningfully competitive with US steel until much later, because Philadelphia makes a lot of steel by itself, never mind all the other mills.
So rather than a single motive for action, I suspect that you had individual factional markets doing stupid short sighted shit. Like ford is pretty up front he did it for ideological reasons (now absolutely he got paid for it) but he was getting eccentric before ww1 even started, so his whole peace and the industrial world motive I can kind of believe. Morgan Junior I'm less sure about.
And, part of the reason I take this position is that historically in the interwar period, in the pre war period institutionally US industry/wallstreet/millionaire row/etc was a significantly more conciliatory than they were later on in relation to the interaction with other industrial powers (and this is to an extent, pro business interests' default solution was to lobby for tariffs on european goods, but its later that this starts to be expanded post war.)
Vickers arleady made 40mm automatic gun/fot tdestroing torpedo boats/ which could be turned into AA.
Manchuria - they have oil there,which commies found after WW2.Your China could found it now.
Yeah, I had conversations on both of these last year, and yeah 40 AAA / SPAAG will show up during the interwar years, it'll be a while before airburst becomes a thing because yes, Vickers was doing it the Germans had a similar program (which evolves into various interwar designs including the smaller 2cm), Bofors was playing with the idea, the US had the 1 inch gun like the idea was there and part of the problem was metal construction (sea water hates you, thats why there was so much brass in the early gun designs like the 1 Inch QF Pom Pom) rusting, but like if it it'll mess up a light boat it'll mess up a plane especially with HE.
As for Manchuria, yeah Geographic conditions for oil fields is a known thing, people were guessing where there could be oil fields in the caucus and in Siberia, and Manchuria in the early 1900s its just a matter of actually staking a well into the oil, confirming and thats why here is a matter of finding the fields in western china including in places like the Tarim basin deposits early
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