AHC/WI: Foreign recognition of the CSA, but no intervention?

[Kung Fucious]

What it says on the tin.

What would the consequences of either France or Britain (or both) recognizing the CSA and opening relations, but refraining from intervening militarily? So, ministers in Richmond and the ability to trade on the London and Paris exchanges, but no action by the RN, no troops, no war with the Union?

If recognition is somehow inherently tied to intervention, would either (or both) powers be able to create the legal argument that the CSA is an independent power that is currently at war with the United States, a war they have no interest in joining (but would certainly love to end peacefully)?

 

[Saphroneth]

For the British this would be a substantial deviation from policy - they didn't recognize somewhere until it had won independence itself.

For the French it would probably presage intervention, simply because recognition without intervention is almost all downside in terms of US-French relations, and offers no commensurate advantage to the French. (They might still do it, though.)

 

[The Gunslinger]

The CSA has greater access to the bond market in Europe and can more easily raise capital and avoid the worst of the inflation that plagues them; this will have some effect on the ground war, but how much is almost impossible to tell. The Lincoln administration gets a black eye and will have a harder time in the 1864 election.

Britain is thoroughly confused at its own policy choices.

 

[Saphroneth]

The Lincoln administration gets a black eye and will have a harder time in the 1864 election.

That's a point - recognition at the wrong time could lose the midterms for the Republicans. Even OTL they only hung on due to pro-war Democrats, and that's a very tenuous thing - if enough of the War Dems decide things are hopeless your majority can evaporate.