Stupid Wars : A Citizen's Guide to Botched Putsches, Failed Coups, Inane Invasions, and Ridiculous R

“Regen­erating President” by representatives of northern Peru. Peru now had its third title contender. The Chileans gratefully gave him money and arms so he would survive long enough to sign the articles of surrender.

To bolster Iglesias’s rule over Peru, the Chileans needed to take out Cáceres. They set out in April 1883 and crushed his army three months later. But the wily, backstabbing, appar­ently indefatigable leader fled, atop his wounded mount.

Now down to two rulers, the Chileans moved to pare the list. They sent several columns against Montero, holed up in his freshly declared capital of Arequipa. As the two sides faced off in October, the town’s citizens suddenly came to their senses and forced Montero to surrender without firing a shot. Montero, the fifth Peruvian leader they vanquished in the war, fled to, where else, Europe, which now boasted a bulging population of former South American rulers.

After numerous false endings, finally, the war was over. Almost. True to his word, Iglesias signed a peace treaty with the Chileans ending the war, but he forgot to tell the Bolivians, who were now shocked that their secret alliance had been violated. Of course, the Bolivians had been secretly negotiat­ing with Chile for years, but that didn’t prevent them from getting all lathered up by this Peruvian stab in the back. Under the treaty Chile got all the guanolands it conquered and agreed to evacuate Lima, ending their nasty three-year occupation. The two countries agreed to defer ownership of some other territories for at least ten years.

Now Bolivia wanted to sign something. Having rejected out of hand a standing offer of peace in exchange for a slice of Peruvian coast, the Bolivians now decided to take the deal. The Chileans looked at the Bolivians as if they were delu­sional. Didn’t they get it? This sweet deal was offered solely to break up the Peru/Bolivia marriage from hell. Once Peru had capitulated, the deal was dead. The Chileans wanted to legalize their conquests, not dicker with the broken Bolivi­ans. The Bolivians had proved equally inept as diplomats as fighters. Finally, the two sides collapsed into a truce; the Chileans administered the conquered territories, and a final peace treaty was worked out.

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