How do you get foreign governments to do whatever you want?
Glad you asked.
Step one: always remember to mention how cool and strong your military is. This will ease negotiations on your end. Step two: Bring up old grudges between neighbors. This will make them mad at each other, not at you. Step Three: Conduct all persuasion tactics in absolute secrecy. If anyone finds out what you're doing, it will likely backfire and have the opposite affect that you intended.
These tips have been brought to you courtesy of the Zimmermann Telegram, a seven-sentence guide for manipulation in foreign relations.
Questions About Manipulation
- Do you think that Germany should have offered Mexico something else in exchange for an alliance? What do you think might have been more motivating?
- If the Zimmermann Telegram hadn't been intercepted, how would you rate Zimmermann's proposal to Mexico on a scale of one to ten? (One being he must have lost his marbles and ten being he's a crafty genius.)
- If you were Heinrich von Eckardt (the German ambassador to Mexico) and you received the Zimmermann Telegram, what would you have done with it? Would you follow orders? Conveniently forget how to break the code?
Chew on This
The Zimmermann Telegram is an excellent example of German diplomacy at its finest. Had it not been discovered, it might have manipulated the U.S. in a similar manner to how Germany had tricked many other unsuspecting nations.
The fact that the Zimmermann Telegram was intercepted is beside the point, because even if it had remained a secret, pigs would fly before Mexico would have acted on it and actually attempted an invasion into the U.S.