• Hi Guest!

    The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress

The United States declared war on the Ottoman Empire in 1917

R

Ricardolindo

Well-known member
Location
Portugal
Probably not. The idea is interesting, and all of the neat speculation about American mandates in Armenia, Constantinople, or the Levant is fun, but the manpower and preparation simply is not there. I would also add that Britain and France have obvious reasons for wanting to keep the U.S. out given Sykes-Picot.
 
The US decision to not declare war on the Ottoman Empire was a tricky one. Americans were very very incensed about the late-Ottoman genocides, but the concern was that if the US stepped into the conflict there it would expose American missionaries and humanitarian workers to great risk.

Meanwhile, the US declaring war on Turkey is not the same as Americans sending troops to the Ottoman Empire. Perhaps the Americans would feel a stronger urge to have a mandate over Armenia after, however.
 
The simplest divergence is Wilson coming around to the viewpoint that it is the right thing to do, for similar reasons that some other politicians, who were out of power, said it was the right thing to do. Guys like Theodore Roosevelt.

If that is all it is, the consequences would be limited, as previously described:
NotDavidSoslan said:
The declaration of war would be mostly symbolic, like the one against Romania during WWII.
Click to expand...

The DoW would be done over and against the advice of missionary and humanitarian organizations involved in the region, and would not, by itself, motivate any significant deployments of US forces on the anti-Ottoman fronts.

Now if the cause of the US DoW against the Ottomans is specific atrocities against WASP American missionaries or humanitarian workers in the empire, or even American passport holders of local birth or local roots who are caught up in massacres in the area, the US may be more motivated to show the flag along with combat forces and do something like a postwar Armenian mandate.

However, even there, the appetite to sustain it would not/could not last long. The US would shed any mandate commit almost certainly by no later than 1923, when it shed its Rhineland occupation commitment in OTL.
 
raharris1973 said:
The simplest divergence is Wilson coming around to the viewpoint that it is the right thing to do, for similar reasons that some other politicians, who were out of power, said it was the right thing to do. Guys like Theodore Roosevelt.

If that is all it is, the consequences would be limited, as previously described:


The DoW would be done over and against the advice of missionary and humanitarian organizations involved in the region, and would not, by itself, motivate any significant deployments of US forces on the anti-Ottoman fronts.

Now if the cause of the US DoW against the Ottomans is specific atrocities against WASP American missionaries or humanitarian workers in the empire, or even American passport holders of local birth or local roots who are caught up in massacres in the area, the US may be more motivated to show the flag along with combat forces and do something like a postwar Armenian mandate.

However, even there, the appetite to sustain it would not/could not last long. The US would shed any mandate commit almost certainly by no later than 1923, when it shed its Rhineland occupation commitment in OTL.
Click to expand...
The one difference with Armenia being the probable border with the USSR.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top