ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 takes readers to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, letting them look over the shoulders and various intentions in the minds of its participants, representatives of the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, all of them (except for the USA) eventually signatories of the Peace Treaty of Versailles. Nowak highlights the differences separating the victorious Allies from each other, especially the European colonial Powers, Britain and France, with regard to their policy on Russia and Eastern Europe. In addition, the fact that civil war was still going on in the eastern part of the Continent and its ultimate outcome was still in the balance while in Paris the Peace Conference was endeavoring to reach a “permanent settlement,” made Western policy(-ies) on Russia intrinsically labile and shaky. In this chapter, Nowak brings Halford Mackinder, “the architect of twentieth-century geopolitics,” onto the stage of the drama he depicts in this book, and will make him reappear in its later scenes.
