The Armenian Genocide Holds a Bitter Lesson for Those Who Weep for Ukraine

This was his key mistake. As historian David Fromkin writes in his celebrated book A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East: “Djemal appears to have acted on the mistaken assumption that saving the Armenians — as distinct from merely exploiting their plight for propaganda purposes — was an important Allied objective.”

While Russia was initially interested, France said no and reiterated its claims to Syria. The British foreign minister also turned down the offer.

In other words, as the British and French governments rent their garments and beat their breasts in public about the massacre of Armenians, in secret they happily allowed the genocide to continue. And yet somehow they outdid even that grotesque cynicism. As Fromkin points out, the offer from Djemal Pasha arrived right at the moment of the famed Allied evacuation from the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey and the abandonment of their campaign there. Yet British and French lust for imperial boodle after the war was so great that they ignored an opportunity to take the Ottoman Empire out of the conflict, thereby prolonging the war — and condemning an unknowable number of their own soldiers to death.

The US role in these incredibly sordid proceedings was less significant but still ugly. The American press and politicians had also cried out in lamentation about the Armenian genocide during the war, which the US joined in 1917. “The whole heart of America has been engaged for Armenia,” said President Woodrow Wilson. Americans, he believed, “know more about Armenia and it sufferings than they know about any other European area.”

But the US then jumped into the post-war maneuvering for a slice of the region and its oil. The Three Pashas had fallen from power, but their replacement, Kemal Atatürk, vehemently opposed any accountability for the perpetrators of the genocide. Suddenly everything looked different. Meanwhile, pogroms against Armenians resumed.

Allen Dulles, who would eventually head the CIA, was then a young State Department official. He wrote at the time that “the Secretary of State wants to avoid giving the impression that while the United States is willing to intervene actively to protect its commercial interests, it is not willing to move on behalf of the Christian minorities.” But in fact, as Dulles continued, that was exactly the case: “I’ve been kept busy trying to ward off congressional resolutions of sympathy.”

It soon became time to look forward, not backward. And after all, had what happened to the Armenians been so bad after all? One retired US admiral wrote a prominent article claiming that the missing Armenians had been deported not into the desert, but to “the most delightful and fertile part of Syria … at great expense of money and effort.” He did not mention that the Turkish government had given him a lucrative oil concession in Iraq.

The lesson here regarding Ukraine is grim, but it should be faced honestly. All of the heartfelt declarations from politicians should be ignored, here as in every case. It is possible that the US will act in ways that benefit Ukrainians. But if so, that will be mere happenstance. Certainly no Ukrainians should be counting on it, and no Americans should believe that’s the goal that’s motivating our government. Powerful countries have far-reaching strategies that they are determined to carry through, and human suffering is not part of the equation.

(This commentary originally appeared in The Intercept on April 18.)