“Why did Wilson, who knew that his Senate would never accept the mandate,say yes, I shall try?”
Richard Hovannisian.Yerevan State University. 18 November, 2011
Yes, that the Senate of the United States of America would reject the mandate for Armenia was obvious to everyone, perhaps most of all to the US President Woodrow Wilson. It was clear to Wilson, an experienced and adept lawyer, that even if the political will were present, the legal basis that would allow the United States to take on the mandate for Armenia would be lacking, as the system of mandates arose from Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. That is, only the states that had acceded to the Covenant, or were in the process of so doing, could adopt mandates. Accordingly, as the US Senate had not given its consent in the meantime to the Covenant of the League of Nations (which is to say the same thing as the Treaty of Versailles, the inseparable first part of which [articles 1-30] was this very covenant in question), even if one desired, due to the absence of a legal basis, a mandate for Armenia could not be accepted.
Consequently, then, why did Wilson raise the issue of the mandate for Armenia in May, 1920? Why was he putting his own credibility at risk? To explain such a step with the notion of “leaving behind a good name in the annals of history” is not convincing to say the least. Wilson was not relying on the Armenians to make his mark on world history in any case, since he had already received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919 for his pioneering advocacy for the League of Nations.
Before turning to the immediate answer, it is necessary to make one more clarification. The rejection of the mandate would have a negative effect on Wilson’s reputation, but not on the security of the Armenians, as some would claim. The United States had not been at war with the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Therefore, in order to protect the Armenians, the Senate would have to declare war on the Ottoman Empire first, as per Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the US Constitution, something which was in principle ruled out. Everyone knew that – both the Armenians, and the Turks – and so, the rejection of the mandate would not have changed anything. This conclusion is also supported by the fact that the Kemalists commenced their assault on the Republic of Armenia not as soon as they heard about the rejection of the mandate (which took place on the 1st of June, 1920),but only upon signing a secret treaty of co-operation with the Bolsheviks on the 24th of August, 1920.
Now let us turn to the question at hand: why, finally, did Woodrow Wilson, who was continually losing his political clout due to poor health, put his credibility at an unjust risk? Or was such a step perhaps justified, the point being not the adoption of a mandate, but the very discussion of the issue?
Let us recall the state of affairs in the southern Caucasus during May, 1920. The Eleventh Army of the Bolsheviks had already occupied Azerbaijan by the end of April, 1920. The first attempt at a regime change took place in Armenia in May. The days of independent Armenia were numbered. The American diplomatic correspondence of the time reveal without a doubt that the Americans were fully aware of the situation. There was no power that could withstand the attacks on the Republic of Armenia by the Bolshevik-Kemalist alliance. It was only unexpected developments on the Polish front that delayed the invasion of Armenia; the Polish counter-attack in April-May, 1920, forced the Bolsheviks to move their main forces to the western front. And the Kemalists did not dare to attack Armenia alone, as there had not yet been a critical mass of defecting soldiers from the Armenian army under the influence of corrupting Bolshevik propaganda during April-May.
Woodrow Wilson was a realistic politician and, given the circumstances, his actions were pursuing one goal: to set up and consolidate as much as possible unshakeable legal bases for the rights of the Republic of Armenia, in the hopes that, one day, the Republic of Armenia would re-establish itself as an independent state and would be able to restore its rights supported by those legal bases. One must view as well in this very light the Arbitral Award deciding the border between the Republic of Armenia and Turkey, even as it was during the very last days of Armenian statehood (the 22nd of November, 1920), and the mark of the Great Seal of the United States on that ruling.
Before being president, Woodrow Wilson was – literally and figuratively – a man of jurisprudence. He is the only US President with an academic degree, that too, a doctorate in law. As a man of legal affairs, Wilson understood well that the Senate taking up the issue of a mandate for Armenia and discussing it would make as a matter of record at the senatorial level and by the Senate itself the points upon which the system of mandates was based and based upon which the question of a mandate could be subject to discussion. As mentioned, Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations served as the basis for mandates generally. The article codifies in particular that the mandates would be established for “those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them” (emphasis added).
That is to say, mandates would be established only on those “colonies and territories”, from which the former ruling powers had been removed. That is, by taking on the issue of a mandate for Armenia in May, 1920, the US Senate – by that very act, regardless of the outcome of a vote – was affirming the legal fact that the territory under question was no longer under Turkish sovereignty. If that were not the case, the Senate would have no jurisdiction to even discuss the status of any territory under the sovereignty of any state. The fourth paragraph of Article 22 cited above elaborates that the system of mandates pertains to “[c]ertain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire”. That is, two details have been made clear. First, that the systems of mandates applies to “the Turkish Empire” as well, and second, that as soon as the Covenant of the League of Nations entered into force (the 10th of January, 1920) and as a consequence of it, the title and sovereignty of “the Turkish Empire” ceased to exist on those territories in question, as they were “formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire”.
In sum, the proposal of the mandate for Armenia by US President Woodrow Wilson, and the subsequent discussion and voting on it in the US Senate, regardless of the outcome of the voting, served to record by the US Senate the fact of the absence of Turkish sovereignty over the territory in question.
Ara Papian, Head of the Modus Vivendi Centre, 18 November, 2011