Coalition Diplomacy

From a Milwaukee boy…

It thus became apparent, within less than a month after the November Revolution, that the Allied governments were hopelessly divided on everything that had to do with a positive policy toward Russia.  The British and Americans vetoed any liberalization of war aims.  There was simply no intimacy of outlook or purpose among them, particularly as between the Continental allies, on the one hand, and English and the United States, on the other.  The only proposition on which they were able to agree was the negative one of no recognition of the Soviet regime.  This, I may say, is characteristic of a coalition diplomacy.  Coalitions find it possible to agree, as a rule, only on what not to do.  This is the reason why their tendency is so often to do nothing at all. 

- George F. Kennan in Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin, p. 48.