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 hated 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.