Under the Wire: How the Telegraph Changed Diplomacy (review)

This short and fascinating book examines the impact of the development of a revolutionary new communications medium, the telegraph, on conservative, hidebound diplomats. Without being unduly kind to the diplomats who were confronted with the telegraph, and with the recognition that, in its infancy, the promise of this exciting new technology was far exceeded by its failings, David Nickles guides us through the development of telegraphic diplomacy.

A historian at the U.S. Department of State, Nickles deals only with American issues. In the first part of his book he examines the role of diplomats in the events leading up to the War of 1812. In the second part, he uses the Trent affair to question whether events might have turned out differently had a transatlantic cable been in existence in 1861, and whether diplomatic crises became easier to resolve when speeded up by the telegraph. Nickles's third part, the most impressive portion of the book, reexamines the crisis brought on by German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann's cabled offer to Mexico to restore its historic possessions in the American Southwest in return for allying with Germany against the United States. By that time, of course, telegraphy was central to diplomacy, and Nickles makes the useful and informative observation that it also provides an excellent written record for diplomatic history from the 1880s to the 1960s, a record mostly lost in the telephonic era when calls were rarely recorded, but which is now being restored by e-mail logs.

From the point of view of the diplomat, the telegraph seemed to reduce their stature. Before, they had served as the effective local substitute for a distant government and thus had substantial power in their reaction to events. Nickles argues, with considerable justification in the case of the War of 1812, that this was not always a good thing. The British ambassador, like most early diplomats an underemployed aristocrat, had few connections to Americans other than the Federalists, which made him easy to dupe into believing that America was not willing to enter a war against Britain, and President Madison wanted to dupe him in order to avoid the preemptive strike by Britain he believed possible. Nickles's judgment of this is interesting: "Madison's experience reveals the costs that can result when governments pursue a policy of secrecy and pique" (p. 29). The slowness of transatlantic communications generated what might be described as a "fog of diplomacy" within which Madison could realize his goals and war was rendered inescapable, but it was not slow communications per se that were to blame.

In the Trent affair the slowness of pretelegraphic transatlantic communications allowed both sides to cool down so that possible entry by Britain into the American Civil War was avoided. As Nickles notes, speed is not always a good thing in diplomacy, in particular the presumption of speed created by the telegraph. Decoding secret cables was a slow process and critical cables could arrive late, the most famous instance being the Japanese breaking-off of negotiations with the United States on 7 December 1941. The message was delayed in decoding and arrived after the attack on Pearl Harbor had begun, which had clearly not been the Japanese intent.

By the time of the Zimmermann telegram the second main use of the telegraph, for intelligence gathering, had matured. Using German and American documents, Nickles gives a rounded view of the events leading up to Zimmermann's offer, with an appropriate focus on his support for unrestricted submarine warfare as a way to break the stalemate on the western front. Nickles's evocation of the maneuvering of the militaristic right to supplant the aristocratic von Jagow with the brash Zimmerman and undercut the liberal ambassador to the United States, Count von Bernstorff, though brief, is nothing short of masterful. I believe war that between Germany and the United States was inevitable by 1917, but Nickles's arguments here have made me reconsider...