One Hundred Years after the Paris Peace Conference: A Welcomed

Japan Review Vol.3 No.1 Summer 2019

One Hundred Years after the Paris Peace Conference: A Welcomed Change in Mutual Perceptions

estern historiography has long neglected the importance of the Versailles Treaty

for Asia. When there was an expression of interest, it was often exclusively focused

on the consequences for China, including the issue of the 21 Demands made by

Tokyo to the Chinese authorities of the time and the emergence of an anti-Japanese

nationalism with the May 4th Movement in 1919.

In Asia itself, the focus was at the time also very much on the disillusions, both in China

and in Korea, but also in Japan, that followed the settlement of the Versailles Treaty and the

establishment of the League of Nations.

However, the Versailles Treaty signed on June 28, 1919 also played a signicant role in the

constitution of a new international order, based on liberal values, and the establishment of an

international organization to solve international relations issues, in which Japan had initially

fully participated. It was also the rst time that, in a departure from the traditionally exclusively

Eurocentric posture of the Great powers, Asian powers became full actors of the global

international system.

Different perceptions of the Versailles Treaty in Europe and in Japan

One hundred years after that event, the interest expressed in Japan for the Versailles Treaty,

however, has been growing and is particularly significant in a contemporary context where

the international liberal order is under threat. For Japanese analysts today, the participation of

Japan in the Paris Peace Conference constitutes the rst manifestation of Tokyo s engagement

alongside the powers that defend multilateralism and a liberal international order threatened by

the temptation of some states to use coercion to change the status quo as well as by the rise of

populism and temptations of isolationism in Western democracies.

Abstract

The First world war and its sequels had long term consequences at the global level,

including in Asia and its perception in the world. The Versailles Treaty established the

premices of a value-based liberal international system. For the rst time, a non-European

nation, Japan, fully participated and played a major diplomatic role in the debates and

negotiations of the peace conference. However, the Western centric dimension of the Paris

Peace Conference and the Versailles Treaty as well as the opposition of the United States

to racial equality clause also resulted in frustrations and future strategic instability related

to the refusal of Western nations to fully integrate Japan, one of the allies, as an equal and

legitimate power in the new concert of nations.

One Hundred Years after the Paris Peace Conference:

A Welcomed Change in Mutual Perceptions*

Valérie Niquet**

* The Basis of this Policy Brief is a Conference organized in Paris by JIIA-JIC and FRS, on January 28,

2019 on Asia and Europe from the Versailles Treaty to the Present.

** Valérie Niquet is Senior Visiting Fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs and Head of the

Asia program at Foundation for Strategic Research.

Valérie Niquet

Japan Review Vol.3 No.1 Summer 2019

However, one cannot but note the differences in the assessments of the consequences of the

Treaty in Europe and Asia. In Europe, among politicians as well as historians, the analysis of the

consequences of the Versailles Treaty is more negative.

For most of these analysts, the Versailles

Treaty bore the germ of the Second World War. The will to punish Germany as the only

responsible actor for the war, the nancial demands, followed by French occupation of the Ruhr

in 1923 contributed to the emergence of Nazism and the rise of Hitler. The League of Nations

is often criticized by some for its intrinsic weaknesses, while, for others, it is the idealism that

presided over the Paris Peace Conference, and particularly the issue of punishing the defeated

nations as culprits of the war that led to lingering enmities and tensions.

In Japan, the only non-Western power among the signatories, however, the rediscovery of the

Versailles Treaty and the signicant role played by Japanese diplomats at the time, is an essential

element of contemporary historiography. It shows that, as early as the 1920s, Japan could assert

itself as a legitimate actor of the post-First World War concert of nations.

However, the deficit of understanding of the international role of Japan under the Taisho

Democracy (1912–1926), including its role as one of the signatories of the Versailles Treaty and

its participation contrary to the United States who never ratied the Treaty in the League of

Nations, still dominates European historiography. This lack of knowledge weighs not only on past

appreciations but also on the understanding of contemporary issues and possible cooperation

between Europe and Japan. It results from an analysis of the building process of the international

system after the First World War that remained almost exclusively Western-centric.

The importance of the Versailles Treaty for Japan and the ambiguity of Western

powers

Japan was a critical player at the Paris Peace Conference, after taking control, as a legitimate

actor alongside the Allies, of Germany s concessions in the Shandong Peninsula in China and the

Pacic Islands that were part of the German Empire in the Pacic.

Concerning Asia, the Versailles Treaty is often considered through its most damaging

consequences that led to growing tensions with China. However, that approach is an anachronism

and Japan s position at the time, differed little from that of the other great powers, whose primary

objective was also in preserving their own interests in Asia, and especially in China.

The United States, in particular, initially fully supported Japanese claims on the Shandong

Peninsula, as well as the mandate given to Tokyo on the Pacific Islands under the control of

the League of Nations. Nonetheless, when Japanese demands on Shandong were subsequently

rejected, it was mainly because they contravened the interests of other Western powers present

in China, worried by the emergence of a new competitor in the region.

Despite these limitations, the Versailles Treaty marked for the first time the entry of an

Asian actor in the diplomatic concert hitherto monopolized by the European powers. Japan s

participation in the Paris Peace Conference constituted a paradigm shift with the rst steps of a

globalization process that still expands to our days.

However, from the very beginning, this globalization, which was based on the concept of

universal values, was tainted with limits that became the source of future frustrations.

The first and most important of these limits was the refusal by some Western powers, and

more specically by the United States in spite of the principles defended by President Wilson,

to accept the amendment of article 21 of the constitution of the League of Nations imposing

the principle of racial equality proposed by Japan and supported by China. The rejection of the

amendment, defended by France, was particularly damaging as it had received a majority of

Georges-Henri Soutou, La grande illusion, quand la France perdait la paix, 1914-1920, Paris, Tallandier,

2015.

Japan Review Vol.3 No.1 Summer 2019

One Hundred Years after the Paris Peace Conference: A Welcomed Change in Mutual Perceptions

votes.

Similarly, while in Europe, the Washington Conference of 1923 is still perceived as the rst

step towards arms control mechanisms, for Japan it translated into the will of the United States

and Britain to deny the legitimacy of Japanese positions and to contain the development of Tokyo

naval capacities.

In both cases, it was the very principle of common values and equal rights that had been

encouraged and at the same time ignored by Western powers. However, despite these initial

failures, the question of common values remains critical for the international community despite

the evolutions of great power relationships and political systems since the Second World War and

the end of the Cold War.

The contemporary relevance of the issues raised at the Paris Peace Conference

In Asia today, the challenge of ideological bi-polarization, amplified by the increased overall

power of the People s Republic of China, remains an essential part of the strategic calculus of

democracies. On one side there is a qualied system of liberal democracies, attached to a set of

principles based on the attachment to the universality of specic values, the rules of international

law and the rejection of the use of force to change the status quo; on the other side authoritarian

systems reject these principles of universality and common values. In that context, it is worth

remembering that, contrary to the expectations raised by the theories of the end of history 30

years ago, these fundamental issues and these constraints are still relevant and cannot be

ignored in Europe, despite the geographical distance that separates the two continents.

Moreover, the lessons of the Versailles Treaty are also pertinent when addressing the issues

of appeasement and pacism. The First World War, its destructions and its industrial-size number

of victims opened the way to pacism and the temptation of appeasement at any cost. This also

led to the Munich Conference, the annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia by the

Third Reich and the emergence of an uncontrollable German power, animated by a desire for

revenge and ready to destroy the post-First World War status quo. In Asia today, the situation is

less dramatic than in 1938. However, the fear of being involved in any conict and the temptation

of disengagement or appeasement could also lead to more severe tensions resulting from

miscalculations on the part of certain powers, also driven by a revanchist posture and a desire for

reparation.

To answer these threats, taking into account the ideological dimension of the shared values

that underlie the liberal world order, we witness the emergence of new concepts. These concepts

must be inclusive and open to all States and entities that support these universal values.

The need for a value-based order and new concepts

This is the case with the concept of free and open Indo-Pacific, which establishes a bridge

between Asia and Europe, the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, and is also an answer to

the more grandiose projects of the Belt and Road Initiative whose objective beyond economic

interests is to be used as an instrument of China s great power policy in its region and beyond.

There again, history, with references to the Chinese traditional tributary system, as well as

contemporary international strategy, is at the almost exclusive service of a policy whose rst and

most important goal is to preserve a regime in needs of legitimacy.

However, this free and open Indo-Pacic concept also poses several challenges, that are also

opportunities for cooperation. The rst of these challenges is that of inclusiveness.

The inclusion of Europe despite its limitations is necessary, not only because this it is

in Europe that the universal values that establish the liberal order emerged, but also because

Pierre Grosser, L’histoire du monde se fait en Asie, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2017.

Valérie Niquet

Japan Review Vol.3 No.1 Summer 2019

Europe possesses, by itself and through some of its States, capabilities that go far beyond soft

power.

The inclusion of all States bordering the Indian Ocean, from South East Asia to South Asia

and the shores of Africa, is also a necessity. These territories, particularly in Africa, open new

prospects for external powers looking for economic opportunities, easy access to resources but

also a source of support for the ideological battles fought in international institutions for the

control of globalization and the imposition of a set of new norms challenging the liberal order.

However, for a country like Japan in cooperation with other partners these challenges are

also an opportunity. It is the opportunity to play a more signicant and more active role, on the

basis of common values, in favor of a more balanced model of development. This is what would

constitute the rst element of long-term stability, especially in Africa.

This opportunity also supposes a capacity for opening up, including opening up to new

partnerships, as is already the case with countries like France. Japan has a strategic partnership

with France, based on the sharing of common values and fueled by a yearly 2 + 2 dialogue

between foreign and defense ministers of both countries. Beyond France and the United

Kingdom, in 2018, the European Union and Japan have also signed a strategic partnership,

alongside a free trade agreement, which also expands Tokyo s margin of manoeuver.

This, of course, does not question the preeminence and the essential role played by the

United States, Japan s most important security partner since the 1950s. However, as at the time of

the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations, the United States seems to be again tempted by

isolationism and an America First posture. This posture can be particularly uncomfortable for

its allies, even if we can be condent that this would not withstand a direct and immediate threat

to the United States interests or those of their allies, particularly in Asia.

The principle of openness also applies to Japan, with all the risks of uneasiness it can

involve. It is precisely the strength of democracies, on the domestic as well as on the international

scene, to be able to accept and feed on the debates they may involve. It is at this price that real

partnerships, based on mutual understanding, can be put in place. In the case of Japan, these

partnerships can also be based on the fact that Tokyo remains the only power in Asia to have

followed, from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day, a path very similar to that of

its European partners.