Stupid Wars : A Citizen's Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous Revolutions

by Ed Strosser

  Meanwhile, Pierola continued his resistance from the hills and was joined in April 1881 by the recently wounded Gen­eral Andrés Cáceres, one of his ablest generals. The duo planned to maintain a low-level guerrilla war, hoping the Chileans would tire and offer a face-saving peace. To fight his new war Cáceres gathered sixteen of his finest comrades.

  Beyond desperation, the Chileans sent a division into the mountains to chase the rebels. As they plodded high in the Andes, the wily Cáceres, whose forces now numbered about one hundred, easily sidestepped his would-be captors. They never got within smelling distance. The occupation-hating Peruvians flocked to Cáceres and swelled his mountain army by the thousands.

  Frustrated by Calderón’s refusal to sign the peace treaty, the conquerors tossed him into jail. Easy come, easy go. The imprisonment transformed Calderón into a Peruvian martyr. On his way to the big house he named Admiral Montero the new president. Peru now boasted two illegitimate leaders. Cáceres, a wily backstabber, abandoned Pierola and threw his support to Montero. The now-dangling Pierola headed out on the well-worn path of exile to Europe.

  Despite the march of Chilean victories, the war still re­fused to end. Cáceres took on the Chileans and even bested them on a few occasions. The occupation was beginning to tear Chile apart. Politicians in Chile raged at each other to handle the occupation. Some favored staying the course until a single, stable dictatorship was established in Peru. Others wanted to pull out and just hold on to the guanolands.

  Into this swirling stew of chaos emerged another Peruvian wannabe, General Miguel Iglesias, a former army com­mander who then called for peace under any terms. Chile had found their man. That December he was elected “Regen­erating President” by representatives of northern Peru. Peru now had its third title contender. The Chileans gratefully gave him money and arms so he would survive long enough to sign the articles of surrender.

  To bolster Iglesias’s rule over Peru, the Chileans needed to take out Cáceres. They set out in April 1883 and crushed his army three months later. But the wily, backstabbing, appar­ently indefatigable leader fled, atop his wounded mount.

  Now down to two rulers, the Chileans moved to pare the list. They sent several columns against Montero, holed up in his freshly declared capital of Arequipa. As the two sides faced off in October, the town’s citizens suddenly came to their senses and forced Montero to surrender without firing a shot. Montero, the fifth Peruvian leader they vanquished in the war, fled to, where else, Europe, which now boasted a bulging population of former South American rulers.

  After numerous false endings, finally, the war was over. Almost. True to his word, Iglesias signed a peace treaty with the Chileans ending the war, but he forgot to tell the Bolivians, who were now shocked that their secret alliance had been violated. Of course, the Bolivians had been secretly negotiat­ing with Chile for years, but that didn’t prevent them from getting all lathered up by this Peruvian stab in the back. Under the treaty Chile got all the guanolands it conquered and agreed to evacuate Lima, ending their nasty three-year occupation. The two countries agreed to defer ownership of some other territories for at least ten years.

  Now Bolivia wanted to sign something. Having rejected out of hand a standing offer of peace in exchange for a slice of Peruvian coast, the Bolivians now decided to take the deal. The Chileans looked at the Bolivians as if they were delu­sional. Didn’t they get it? This sweet deal was offered solely to break up the Peru/Bolivia marriage from hell. Once Peru had capitulated, the deal was dead. The Chileans wanted to legalize their conquests, not dicker with the broken Bolivi­ans. The Bolivians had proved equally inept as diplomats as fighters. Finally, the two sides collapsed into a truce; the Chileans administered the conquered territories, and a final peace treaty was worked out.

  First, the war wouldn’t end. Then peace negotiations wouldn’t end. After years of talks, in 1904 Bolivia and Chile signed a deal ending the war and legalizing Bolivia’s status as a landlocked nanopower.

  Peru and Chile haggled for years over the disputed territo­ries. Finally, they wrapped up the paperwork in 1929 with Peru salvaging an infinitesimal grain of honor by retrieving one of the lost territories.

  After losing its coastline, Bolivia decided to create a navy. With admirals.

  WHAT HAPPENED AFTER

  Bolivia has been landlocked ever since losing the war. Every year, on March 23, people gather in downtown La Paz to hurl invective at the Chileans. The country’s leaders speech­ify about how they plan to regain the lost territories. When the rally breaks up, the people make plans to renew their passports so they can visit the beach.

  Peru has continued its slide from keystone of the vast Spanish Empire to also-ran. General Cáceres resisted the lure of European exile and instead hunkered down and continued to lead his small band of mountain rebels. In 1884 he de­clared himself president of Peru aiming to oust the traitorous Iglesias. The next year Cáceres marched his army over freez­ing mountain passes to bypass Iglesias’s army and stormed Lima. Iglesias surrendered and Cáceres took over. Widely viewed as the true hero of the resistance to Chile, he was elected president the following year in a wave of patriotic fervor. Cáceres, perpetuating the dictator revolving door, welcomed Iglesias back into the army as a general.

  Daza returned to Bolivia from his exile in Europe in 1894. When he stepped off the train, he was immediately assassi­nated.

  As for the birdshit, during World War I its value plunged as newer explosives didn’t require nitrogen and a method of synthesizing ammonia was developed, making the towering cliffs of guano no longer worth fighting over. Chile’s econ­omy, totally dependent on poop exports, shuddered. The cliffs of dung have returned to their rightful place among the planet’s least valuable and mostly smelly places.

  As a bold gesture of reconciliation, in 2007 Chile returned 3,800 books borrowed from Peru’s national library more than 125 years before. Peru graciously waived the late fees.

  SIX.

  THE U.S. INVASION OF RUSSIA: 1918

  The United States invaded Russia.

  Yes, that is correct. The United States put boots on the ground in Siberian Russia in 1918 in an attempt to overthrow Lenin and his Communist pioneers at the dawn of the Soviet Union. It was a bold, visionary stroke in identifying a future enemy and striking at it in its cradle, the kind of preemptive strategic action rarely attempted by lumbering democracies such as America, for reasons that will become obvious.

  This allied adventure, doomed from its inception, had to overcome its lack of an actual plan (not to mention that World War I was still happening). The only actual planning made for the invasion of Russia, the largest country on earth, was a short memo from President Wilson to Major General William S. Graves, who Wilson picked to lead the U.S. troops assigned to this ill-fated caper. Wilson, a former college pro­fessor, titled his invasion report the “Aide-Memoire”; unduly influenced by the numerous vague freshman philosophy papers he had graded, Wilson copied their style. Politicians talk theory, generals talk logistics, and Wilson’s invasion memo lacked both. Its main features were its brevity and total paucity of detail. Wilson did not seem to have thought through the practical implications of such goals as “Over­throw the Communists,” in a country five thousand miles wide, armed with a few brigades of doughboys and a hand­ful of uncontrollable allies.

  The invasion of Siberia wounded the Communists to the extent that they managed to rule for only another eighty years.

  THE PLAYERS

  Woodrow Wilson — bespectacled and idealistic president of the United States. The former college professor led the United States into World War I a few months after getting reelected by promising to stay out of the war. But once you get an academic fighting mad, watch out. Even a war that cost the United States more than 100,000 killed didn’t diminish Woody’s fighting mojo: when he saw the chance to take on the Commies, he dashed off a memo and put the gloves on.

  Skinny — He was so arrogant even the French ha
ted him.

  Props — He took on the Commies when Senator Joseph McCarthy was still in grade school.

  Pros — Had a fourteen-point plan for how to run the world.

  Cons — It was four more points than God’s plan.

  Vladimir Lenin — with the invaluable assistance of Kaiser Wilhelm II, he led his Bolsheviks in seizing power in Russia after killing the tsar and his family of threatening young children.

  Skinny — Believed in a worldwide workers’ revolution in which no one owned anything but were expected to work like hell so that ev­eryone owned everything, or something like that.

  Props — Convinced the Kaiser to send him back to Russia to start a revolution even though he hated the Germans and the Germans hated him.

  Pros — Kick-started a worldwide revolution featuring a catchy theme song, the “Internationale.”

  Cons — Formed the Soviet Union.

  Admiral Alexander Kolchak — caught up in the excitement of being headquartered in the city of Omsk, in Western Siberia, 1,500 miles from Moscow, the former admiral promoted himself Supreme Ruler of Russia.

  Skinny — He looked good in his admiral’s uniform and had the support of the Western countries.

  Props — Stole the tsar’s entire gold reserve.

  Pros — Was devoted to destroying the Bolsheviks.

  Cons — Naval tactics don’t work well on land.

  Major General William Graves — General Graves, having not exactly distinguished himself by defending the San Francisco front during World War I, received the unenviable task of overthrowing the Russian government with a pint-sized infantry division.

  Skinny — His final orders from the secretary of war at a train station in Kansas City were “God bless you and good-bye.”

  Props — In Russia he quickly realized his troops were better off fighting hangovers than Bolsheviks.

  Pros — Was not fooled into believing the Siberian adventure was going to turn out well.

  Cons — Read Wilson’s ridiculous memo, figured the turgid affair would end badly but dutifully went anyway.

  THE GENERAL SITUATION

  Wars make strange bedfellows, and World War I was no dif­ferent. The United States, Britain, and France, along with a bunch of small countries that always fight alongside the major allies but no one really pays attention to, joined to­gether against the Kaiser’s Germany and Austria. The tsar wasn’t really a democratic kind of guy, but because of a series of interlocking treaties that no one really understood, the Russians somehow ended up on the French/British team against the Germans/Austrians/Turks for the first big show of the very bloody twentieth century.

  After millions of casualties suffered by the inept Russian armies, the huddled masses back home in Russia revolted and in early 1917 overthrew the tsar, replacing him with the provisional government. This was welcome news for the Allies as the new government featured a much more demo­cratic sounding name than the Kingdom of Russia.

  But Russia was weakening. Russian democrats, landless serfs mostly, had finally grown weary of the centuries-long role of cannon fodder for the grandiosely inept Russian of­ficers. The Russian peasant cannon fodder, however, were highly valued by the French, British, and Americans be­cause the vast Russian army tied down equally large num­bers of German troops on the eastern front. The Allies feared that if the massive number of German serf-fighting troops became free to hit the western front, they would probably roll right up to the English Channel in about six weeks. The French believed, of course, that this could never, ever happen.

  The situation in Russia took a horrifyingly dramatic turn for the Allies in late 1917 when the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin and Trotsky, took over the country in a neatly executed coup (disguised cleverly as a revolution), pushing aside the provi­sional government, proving that if your goal is to establish a new government, and you call it the provisional government, it probably will be.

  For the Allies, having a bunch of Bolsheviks as their new allies in charge of Russia was bad enough. But in February 1918, when they declared they would stop fighting the impe­rialistic, capitalistic war against Germany and that their sol­diers would go home, the Allies suffered the blow of peace heavily. The removal of Russia meant the potential transfer of about seventy German divisions from the eastern to west­ern theater of war.

  The Bolsheviks eagerly signed the treaty of Brest Litovsk on March 3, 1918, handing themselves a complete and utter defeat. This happy event for the Kaiser cleared the way for a vast German spring offensive designed to push the belea­guered Allies beyond the breaking point. The Allies were desperate to get the Russians back in the game. If this meant changing its government one more time, so be it. And if changing the government of Russia meant ending the experi­ment in communism, whose stated goal was to eradicate capitalism and destroy all the Allied governments, well, that’s why bonuses are handed out.

  The Allies agreed that with a world war already in prog­ress, an invasion made perfect sense. Unfortunately, President Wilson had already whipped out his Fourteen Point Plan for everlasting world peace; it stated emphatically that countries should be allowed to rule themselves, which was what the Russians were doing in spades. Despite his plan for world perfection, he threw his ideals overboard, under pressure from the British and French.

  Fortunately, a cover story dropped into Wilson’s lap in the form of the lost Czech legion. The legion, nearly 30,000 men strong, had been fighting the Germans and Austrians along­side the tsar’s serfs, who kept dying in order to keep them­selves in bondage to their dim-witted ruler. Once the Russians pulled out of the war, the Czechs, their ranks filled out by deserters from the Austrian army, became soldiers without a war. The Czechs received permission from the Bol­sheviks to ride the Trans-Siberian Railroad to the port of Vladivostok on the Pacific coast, from where the effortlessly feckless French had kindly agreed to transport them safely back to the charnel house of the western front.

  The Allies now had their cover story: the Czech troops needed help. Plus, there was a lot of equipment the Allies had sent the ungrateful Russians, which sat rusting on the docks of Vladivostok as well as the northern Russian ports of Archangel and Murmansk. The Allies owned the equip­ment, and if the Russians were going to quit playing war, they wanted it back.

  When the secretary of war handed Wilson’s memo to Graves in the train station in Kansas City on August 3, 1918, he apologized for sending him to Siberia and promised, someday, to tell him the real reason why he had to go. He told Graves, “Watch your step. You will be walking on eggs loaded with dynamite.” And then he left.

  The Aide-Memoire, as the scholarly Woody Wilson named it, is clearly the contortions of a self-loving politician and not the concrete thinking of a military leader. Nevertheless, it represented the only guidance provided to the U.S. invading force. Wilson’s vacuous freshman paper was actually a unique diplomatic soufflé, a noninvasive invasion, and not the gigantic playbook one would expect for conquering the world’s largest country. Graves was left to ponder the con­fusing seven-page invasion memo that contained one unspo­ken message that rang out like a bell: Invade Russia, but don’t cause trouble.

  WHAT HAPPENED: OPERATION “SIBERIAN STORM”

  Graves, despite being caught in a fantastical situation, re­mained stubbornly rational and interpreted the confusing memo as an order to maintain total neutrality after invad­ing. Upon landing in Vladivostok (approximately 5,000 miles away from the seat of power in Moscow) on Septem­ber 1, 1918, General Graves discovered his micro-invasion force surrounded by enemies: hostile Russians, both Bolshe­vik and anti-Bolshevik (the Whites), as well as the French and British who were openly working to oust the Bolsheviks and trying to trick the Americans into helping them by shooting someone. Vladivostok itself was controlled by a portion of Czech troops apparently trying to figure out how to get their brethren, who were stuck in the middle of Sibe­ria, out to Vladivostok.

  In addition, a large force of Japanese troops were hun­
kered down trying to take advantage of the chaos in Russia to gobble up chunks of Russian territory. Graves quickly de­duced that virtually any activity by U.S. troops could cause a confrontation with one of these armed groups. He approved a plan designed to thwart all the threats against the valiant American doughboys: guarding empty buildings for which the U.S. government was also paying the Russian landlords rent, exploring the city, drinking vodka, and chasing women. They bunked in the old tsarist barracks, which had been built without bathing facilities — in the Russian style.

  The U.S. troops, highly trained for their mission in the cities and towns of pre-Prohibition America, failed to exe­cute the plan perfectly. As is often the case with large num­bers of armed men sharing the same area who don’t speak the same language, actual fighting soon broke out, although it was more fisticuffs than large-scale troop maneuvers. The first U.S. casualties took place on September 16, 1918, after an encounter with the Bolsheviks, who had somehow caught wind of the fact that they were being invaded and teamed up with German and Austrian prisoners to take on the Allies.

  Any attempts by Graves to help the Czech legion was soon abandoned when he saw that they were in fact in control of Vladivostok, and controlled many points west along the Trans-Siberian Railroad. A large group still remained west of Omsk, where the Bolsheviks were negotiating with them to try to get the Czechs to leave. They were dragging their feet because they were in fact helping the Whites oust the Bolshe­viks in many of the towns along the railroad. Instead of needing to be rescued, the flexible Czechs kept themselves busy fighting the Bolsheviks up and down the railroad line wherever possible. And Graves had noticed that the Allies, despite professing that one of the aims of their mission in Si­beria was to evacuate the Czechs, had neglected to send any ships to take them home.