What are the biggest wars (in terms of death toll) that the United States has not supported one side or the other with soldiers, advisors, supplies, or other support in the past 100 years? Money, weapons, and other supplies that were given or sold before the war started against that particular enemy do not count (For example, US sells warplanes and gives big loans to country A in 1964, 3 years before they started a war with country B. Once the war started, the US stopped giving direct support to country A that could be used against country B).
Do we officially chose sides in every war that goes on around the globe? Or are there some where Washington says “Uh, it really doesn’t matter to us, we are staying out of this one.”
Uh, thanks for the link, but which one of these wars did we not provide support for one side or the other? That was my question, not necessarily which wars had the most solider deaths.
Yes, but does your Google-derived link answer the OP’s question of which wars the US stayed out of? I don’t think so. And as UncleBeer pointed out, Napoleon doesn’t fall within the 100 year time period specified.
Well, then, let’s go through the page furt linked to, excluding the obvious ones…
[ul]
[li]The Chinese Civil War (1945-9): No. Americans supported the Nationalists pretty extensively after World War I.[/li][li]The Iran-Iraq War: No. Americans supported the Iraqis here.[/li][li]The Russian Civil War: Wikipedia says that the United States (among other countries) intervened on the behalf of the Whites. I don’t know what this support amounted to, though, so it might fall under the rules of the OP. Anyone have more complete knowledge of this?[/li][li]The Chinese Civil War (1927-37): This might be it. I don’t believe that the United States intervened in this one, or indeed in any foreign wars, in this period.[/li][/ul]
My best guess is that the answer to the OP is one of these last two, probably the earlier of the Chinese Civil Wars. (Unless, of course, one wants to debate whether the two “Chinese Civil Wars” should be separate… but that’s another story.)
I was always taught that the Napoleonic Wars were distinct from the War of 1812 (a.k.a. the British-American War), although the two wars were being fought at the same time and both involved the British. Certainly, the Americans weren’t allied with any of the European powers involved in the Napoleonic Wars.
Even before the US entered the war there was considerable economic and military support to Britain via the Lend-Lease act. (I think the UK is still repaying some of these loans. The act also transfered several hundred million dollars worth of military equipment to Britain.) In 1940, a seperate act of Congress gave Britain and Canada some fifty warships in exchange for some token concessions in the Carribbean.
Well, the British-American War (can’t really call it the War of 1812 since that is also the name of the war between the Russian Empire and France at the same time, IIRC) was part of the larger Napoleanic Wars because it happened largely as a result of them. We didn’t support the French in this war (indeed, we fought against whichever revolutionary government was in power in France alongside the Brits during the Quasi-War around the turn of the century) but we most certainly fought against the British, tying down troops and ships that they might have tried using elsewhere, which certainly didn’t do anything to hurt Napoleon’s war effort.
Though, if I’m not mistaken, most of the British ships involved were 4th rate Frigates and smaller, and I want to say the bulk of the troops were Canadians. Anyone feel free to call bullhockey on me if I’m wrong here though.
This is an oversimplification for GQ. In fact, in 1985 and 1986 the U.S. was secretly providing arms and intelligence information to Iran. Israel transferred many, many weapons and weapons systems to Iran, Including weapons that had originated in the U.S.; admittedly to what extent U.S. permission for these shipments was obtained is not known publically, but there is no doubt that the U.S. had enough leverage to prevent the transfers if it had wanted to and almost certainly the intelligence to know about it in near real time.
In fact, lets remember that in these years no less an administration figure than Oliver North told Iranian officials that Reagan wanted the war ended on terms favorable to Iran, and that Saddam Hussein had to go.
There is no doubt that later (once Iran had some success on the battlefield and the U.S.-Iraqi ties began growing, and the Iran Contra scandal broke (the Iran part being the U.S. selling critically important arms to Iran), and maybe most importantly Kuwait panicking at Iranian advances and inviting Soviet influence into the Gulf) that late in the 80’s Washington tilted much more toward Iraq and began sharing Intel with Iraq and tried to dry up Iran’s sources of arms by pressuring U.S. allies to stop supplying Tehran.
But a blanket statement that the U.S. "supported Iraq in the war” is not right.
The US sent troops to fight the Bolsheviks in that war and temporarily ‘liberated’ Vladivostok amongst other things. It was a half-assed effort but there was indisputable direct US involvement.
Just about everyone intervened in the Russian Civil war, the USA included.
You may be right about the Chinese Civil War (1927-37)- we did send over American mercs (the Flying Tigers) but that was more to slow down the Japanese invasion of China. But- they did fight under the Nationalist Flag.
Do note that the Americans went into their big Isolationist Phase right after WWI, which continued until around 1941. Really, in some ways- WWII is more than one 'war". The Italian invasion of Ethiopia can be considered to be a separate war, and AFAIK, we stayed out of it.
There hasn’t been many ‘wars’ in the last 100 years that any major power stayed out of entirely.
However, the Spanish Civil War was a rather big one that many other Great Powers intervened in extensively, and the USA officially stayed out. There was the "Abraham Lincoln Brigade’, but AFAIK, that was really volunteers. I’d say that was the biggest war that the USA (for all intents & purposes) “stayed out of” in the last 100 years. We also stayed out of (for all intents & purposes) the Franco-Prussian War, and the Russo-Japanese war- but they are a little more than 100 years ago- the last one just barely.
