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Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and Revolution
Winner of the Bancroft Prize, this incisive book presents an integrated analysis of the theory and practice of Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy from 1917 to 1919.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
352 pages, Paperback
First published February 15, 1970
About the author
Norman Gordon Levin
5 books1 followerNorman Gordon Levin Jr. is Emeritus Dwight Morrow Professor of History and American Studies at Amherst College.
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October 26, 2014
This book is a must-read for anyone desirous of landmarking their knowledge of 20th-century American foreign policy. It centres on the presidency of Woodrow Wilson during the years 1917-1919 and analyzes his agency in moulding his country's foreign policy in the crucible of worldwide geopolitical instability ushered in by the ravages of the First World War. It is intellectual history through and through, accepting as a given the presupposition that ideas matter, that they are the locomotive of historical change and structural developments are the ballast. The unique aggregates of President Wilson's personal worldview came together at just the point when the United States stood on the threshold of global preeminence, and faced a crossroads as to what to do with its hitherto unexperienced global hegemony. Wilson envisioned a new world order of liberal-democratic global consensus, steering a middle course between the extremes of right-wing imperialism and left-wing socialism - a foreshadowing of Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" thesis 70 years before its time. America had a special "calling", in Wilson's Presbyterian mind, to engineer this outcome. But the events of 1919 would demonstrate that Wilsonianism was not immune to the dictates of historical circumstances, as both Europe and the U.S. government chose to abandon Wilson's vision in the short term - but not before Wilson could articulate and impart the basic principles of his brainchild. And this is the decisive point: the torch of Wilsonianism burned hotly enough that its flame was never completely snuffed out by the long night that enveloped Western Civilization in the aftermath of the First World War, as it was relayed by successive American politicians and intellectuals to the break of dawn at the end of the nightmarish Second World War. This time, America and Europe were not so obtuse as to squander the day of second chances.
This very buoyant appraisal of Wilson's legacy reflects the date of this monograph, and one must appreciate that fact before reading it. First, it is hagiographical, an example of "Great Man" historiography. It bears the marks of the period before the meteoric rise of social history in the academy, and will no doubt be anathema to that particular school of thought. Deal with it. Levin's admiration for Wilson is palpable throughout the text, but this does not prevent him from presenting a relatively balanced portrait of the 28th President of the United States and his legacy, with due attention to the strictures that limited his agency. Second, this book is Levin's attempt in 1968 - at the very height of the Cold War and America's commitment to Vietnam - to understand how American foreign policy led it to where it was at that particular juncture in its history. FInally, this text is a vindication of Wilson, which succeeds in this purpose by contextualizing his legacy in the broader scheme of history, extricating it from the narrow confines of the history of the Paris Peace Conference, and propounding its post-1945 influence. Doubtless, that influence has taken some knocks since 1968.
One other observation I must make is that the history of Woodrow Wilson's presidency, as presented in Levin's text, is an inadvertently depressing reminiscer of a halcyon period when U.S. presidents were real intellectuals, and expected to be. Obviously, there is some hagiography at work here, but one cannot read Levin's book and not walk away feeling that Wilson was a mental giant and a man wholly ahead of his time. He was so uncannily prescient in his predictions of what would befall Europe if the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 failed to establish a lasting peace - his prognostications so hauntingly accurate in retrospect - that he exudes the aura of some kind of latter-day prophet. In truth, Wilson was probably too profound for the world to really keep up with. (None of this contradicts the additional truth that Wilson, like Thomas Jefferson before him - and indeed, all men - had the capacity to be both profound in thought on some matters and yet possess very facile or balmy thoughts on other matters. Such is human nature).
One of the Goodreads reviewers - a former graduate student, no less - incredibly slams this book as "densely-written". It most certainly is not. Levin is actually a very perspicuous writer, and his arguments are not hard to follow. If anything, he has a habit of repeating his thesis over and over again - just in case you didn't get it the first time. This repetitiousness is not wholly unwelcome, in my opinion. For graduate students especially, who have to familiarize themselves with reams of monographs, this kind of redundancy is useful. Here is my summary of Levin's arguments:
Wilson’s foreign policy, shaped in 1917-1919 by the entry of America into the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution, established “liberal-internationalism” as the defining feature of American foreign policy for the next half century, up until the time Levin is writing (1). Liberal-internationalism allowed America to steer a course between the right-wing imperialism of Germany and the left-wing socialist revolution of Lenin’s Russia (1-2). For Wilson, liberal-internationalism and American national interests were one, and Wilson was convinced the liberal values that America espoused were the “wave of the future” as Levin puts it (3). Wilson believed that the European Old Order was fundamentally Hobbesian – where strength is the only factor of national stability – a worldview that America had, he believed, escaped by declaring independence and cutting itself off from Europe (2). He wished to “Lockeanize” the rest of the world by replacing the atavistic militarism of Europe with a rational world system of law and commerce (4). Wilson and the European liberal-intellectual (social democratic) class were basically on the same page; however, Wilson came from a land (Levin argues) that had no pre-liberal institutions, unlike European societies. Thus, American national interests and liberal values were completely consistent for Wilson, but not necessarily for the liberal-intellectual classes of European nations, who were just one fraction of the population in their respective countries, countries that still had Old Order institutions and classes (like the aristocracy) (5). Waxing biblical, Levin explains that America was simultaneously in the world but not of the world in Wilson's thinking. It participated in the Hobbesian world international system while at the same time transcending it with noble values that it sought to impart to the rest of a darkened world (5). Wilsonian liberalism was anathema to Lenin and the revolutionary socialists because the former attempted to coopt imperialism for liberalism’s ends (gradual liberalism and the liberal war against German autocracy). Levin notes that this great balancing act worked more in theory than in practice, especially as the US got drawn into the national politics of those states with which it had allied itself in order to defeat right-wing imperialism (Germany) (8-9).
Wilson essentially espoused the Open Door policy, the desire for America to acquire foreign markets for its surplus goods. He opposed traditional imperial institutions such as of navalism, irredentism and annexation, or the idea of a "civilizing mission" at the point of a sword, believing instead that trade in places like China was enough to positively influence those societies. No other ‘civilizing mission’ was needed than that of economic influence. Levin suggests that this was part and parcel of Wilson’s “Puritan” belief in a “calling” – the idea that man performs virtuous functions like industriousness and innovation, both for the benefit of his fellow man and to the glory of God (16-17). Such was the case with Wilsonian anti-imperialism. However, it should be noted that Wilson was still comfortable with intervention in the Western Hemisphere (Monroe Doctrine) militarily if the need arose for it. Wilson's worldview and attitude prompted the US to pursue a mediating role during most of the First World War, a role that saw hope for a non-military resolution to the conflict if militarism was abandoned and shipping lanes made secure and open to all; commerce would be the invisible hand of stability, perhaps guided to a certain extent by a league of extraordinary nations - or one in particular, the United States.
Two things drove the United States to enter the First World War and abandon its role as mediator. First, the rise of communism after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the civil war that erupted in that country, complicated matters. Kautsky, the great German anti-imperialist social democratic thinker believed that imperialism was not a necessary stage or phase of capitalism, and that principled politicians could steer international capitalism away from imperial and militarist rivalry. This was consonant with Wilsonianism, but it was anathema to the pseudo-intellectual Lenin and the Bolsheviks, particularly because Wilsonianism did not eschew the assumption that North America and Western Europe were to occupy a place of preeminence even in the liberal-international world world. Whereas Wilsonian liberal anti-imperialism saw the domination of the non-West by the West as natural and good, Lenin’s revolutionary anti-imperialism strove for the destruction of all imperial structures and systems of domination – even in the non-white, non-Western world (32). The United States had to enter into the fray in Russia to support Russian nationalist liberals still fighting for control of the country - seen as natural allies in Wilson's vision of a liberal world order - and in order to prevent Bolshevism from poisoning the minds of the Left with radical beliefs that would steer them away from the more moderate reforms Wilson was proposing. Second, Germany’s pursuit of unrestricted submarine warfare – and the impressions of Wilson’s advisors of German militarism and illiberalism – eventually pushed Wilson from champion of mediatorial liberal neutrality in the Great War to full-blown support for a liberal war against perceived German autocracy, which was deemed a threat to Wilson’s vision of a liberal internationalist order.
At first, the United States welcomed the March Revolution in Russia as a victory for democratic liberalism in that country. Wilson believed that a ‘purified’ Entente alliance was now possible with Tsarist despotism out of the picture, making way for a refined Allied war agenda – sublimating its imperialist connotations – which would help to temper the radicalism of the Left in Europe. Under the influence of his advisor, Edward M. House,Wilson was initially led to believe that the Bolsheviks were only part of the Russian equation in 1917 - a sect, among sects, as it were - and that they may in fact be merely a radical flash in the pan that would eventually be sublimated by a more moderate Russian democratic liberalism (ie. Wilsonianism); Wilson’s much-vaunted liberal agenda – which the European moderate Left was aware of and esteemed – was seen as being able to take the wind out of Lenin’s sails. Wilson’s administration did not initially want to actively oppose the Bolsheviks for fear of aiding the reactionary Russian right (still fighting to regain power in Russia). However, Wilson was also afraid that Bolshevik radicalism might dampen Russian moderate support for liberalism and push people into the arms of the autocratic reaction. Thus, the Americans were in a difficult position. Crush the Bolsheviks, and you risk enabling reaction in Russia. Supporting the Bolsheviks would end Russian participation in the war, thus crippling Wilson’s liberal war against German autocracy. Indeed, it was feared that if the Bolsheviks became too powerful, Russian democrats and liberals would turn to the Germans for help (oddly enough, against the very Bolshevik disturbance they had helped to foster). This whole confusing picture meant that Wilson was forced into the balancing act of aiding those Russians who were both anti-Bolshevik, anti-Tsar, and anti-German.
What Levin accomplishes here, is he demonstrates that the U.S. antagonism toward Soviet Russia - which continued to fuel the Cold War during the time at which Levin was writing - began at this juncture. America entered into the fray in Russia to aid anti-Bolshevik rebels (in Siberia, in a little-known, little-studied sideshow of the First World War) in an attempt to save liberalism there and snuff out the radical Bolshevik agenda which - American fears proving correct - would eventually take the proverbial third of the worldwide Left's angels with it into oblivion.
As mentioned, America also entered the First World War to crush perceived German militarism and autocracy, however it was not militarily consequential to the eventual defeat of the Kaiser. America's approach to the Paris Peace Conference was motivated, Levin writes, by two contradictory impulses that clashed “dialectically” to produce a unique but ultimately contradictory US policy at that conference (123). On the one hand, the US had beneficent and gentle motives, wanting to see Germany reintegrated into a liberal world order and to temper the Entente’s (especially France’s) territorial ambitions at Germany’s expense. This was necessary for future generations, as Wilson stated in a private conversation: “[The Germans] had shaken off the imperialistic rule and the military aristocracy, and that being an industrious people, and naturally orderly, they might, if properly treated, ultimately be a bulwark for peace in Europe” (129) However, at the same time, the US also had a punitive attitude toward Germany (123). This inconsistency is quintessentially human.
Regarding the former thesis, Wilson was clearly a “missionary liberal,” believing that a lasting peace would only be possible if Germany was integrated into an Open Door world of liberal values and mutually beneficial trade. Moreover, it was feared by Wilson that a Germany crushed by Entente vindictiveness would open the door to Bolshevism sweeping the country, and the rest of Europe with it (136). In fact, Wilson’s diplomats repeatedly cabled Washington with information about the rise of the radical Left in Germany in the wake of the Armistice and the real possibility of Bolshevik power with all of its excesses following the abdication of the Kaiser (134-135). For these reasons it became all the more imperative that Germany regain its economic solvency. Wilson, along with his British allies, wanted to immediately end the blockade of Germany then still in effect, and to give the German people immediate food aid. This was blocked by the French. Wilson had always been fair to Germany, at one point in 1917 publically stating:
“Responsible statesmen must now everywhere see, if they never saw before, that no peace can rest securely upon political or economic restrictions meant to benefit some nations and cripple or embarrass others, upon vidicative action of any sort, or any kind of revenge or deliberate injury. The American people have suffered intolerable wrongs at the hands of the Imperial German Government [reference to the sinking of American shipping by unrestricted submarine warfare], but they desire no reprisal upon the German people, who have themselves suffered all things in the war, which they did not choose. The belief that peace should rest upon the rights of peoples, not the rights of Governments – the rights of peoples, great or small, weak or powerful – their equal right to freedom and security and self-government and to a participation upon fair terms in the economic opportunities of the world, the German people, of course, included if they will accept equality and not seek domination” (53-54).
But there was a punitive side to Wilson, as well. An Anglophile, he inherited a deep distrust of German militarism - Prussianism - which he saw as being responsible for the country's aggressiveness. Wilson remained paranoid that right-wing German reaction would eventually rise to defeat his dreams for a liberal world order. Thus, the League of Nations initially excluded Germany on Wilson’s insistence. However, it should be pointed out that Wilson saw Germany’s exclusion from the League as probationary only, not permanent.The French saw the League as basically a military alliance to permanently contain Germany. This was not true of Wilson. He saw the League as basically the apparatus of guaranteeing an Open Door world with the United States occupying something of a most-favoured-nation status therein. And this was the problem with Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations. The major powers interpreted their meaning as they willed. Wilson was hailed by the peoples of Europe for his visionary qualities. However, it must be emphasized that he was a liberal - a moderate - and did not believe in revolutionary changes to the fundamental institutions of diplomacy and power. Thus, Wilson's influence at Paris remained more discursive than substantial - although much to the annoyance of his European allies, his ideas had resonance with broad swathes of their people.
Wilson championed the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations as the new means by which European ‘balance of power’ diplomacy – which he considered the true root of the Great War – would be replaced by the liberal democratic order. For Wilson, it represented American liberalism’s displacement of Old World politics, not the absorption of the former by the latter. Levin emphasizes the point that for Wilson, the goals of liberalism and the national interest of the United States were one and the same.
However, this was not enough for Wilson’s domestic compatriots. Those on the Right in the United States – gravitated around Henry Cabot Lodge - generally agreed with the punitive aspects of the Treaty of Versailles. However, they saw the creation of the League of Nations as European cooptation of American power for Old World military alliance purposes - the dreaded foreign "entanglements" President Washington had warned Americans against. For their part, those on the Left believed that Wilson had ‘betrayed’ the principles of progressivism (even though, Levin repeatedly emphasizes throughout the text, Wilson was always against revolutionary violence) by eschewing the more radical clamour for class conflict. Eventually, ratification of the League of Nations Charter was defeated on the floor of the U.S. Senate. However, Levin ends on the buoyant note that:
“...looking back, what seems clear is that Wilsonianism, even while losing the battle over the League of Nations, eventually triumphed in the more long-term struggle over the ultimate definition of the nature of twentieth-century American foreign policy. Wilson established the main drift toward an American liberal globalism, hostile both to traditional imperialism and to revolutionary-socialism. Many who had been associated with Wilson, or who accepted the essentials of his world view, such as Herbert Hoover, Cordell Hull, Franklin Roosevelt, And John Foster Dulles, would continue in later periods to identify America’s expansive national interests with the maintenance of a rational and peaceful international liberal order. Ultimately, in the post-World War II period, Wilsonian values would have their complete triumph in the bi-partisan Cold War consensus” (260).
This very buoyant appraisal of Wilson's legacy reflects the date of this monograph, and one must appreciate that fact before reading it. First, it is hagiographical, an example of "Great Man" historiography. It bears the marks of the period before the meteoric rise of social history in the academy, and will no doubt be anathema to that particular school of thought. Deal with it. Levin's admiration for Wilson is palpable throughout the text, but this does not prevent him from presenting a relatively balanced portrait of the 28th President of the United States and his legacy, with due attention to the strictures that limited his agency. Second, this book is Levin's attempt in 1968 - at the very height of the Cold War and America's commitment to Vietnam - to understand how American foreign policy led it to where it was at that particular juncture in its history. FInally, this text is a vindication of Wilson, which succeeds in this purpose by contextualizing his legacy in the broader scheme of history, extricating it from the narrow confines of the history of the Paris Peace Conference, and propounding its post-1945 influence. Doubtless, that influence has taken some knocks since 1968.
One other observation I must make is that the history of Woodrow Wilson's presidency, as presented in Levin's text, is an inadvertently depressing reminiscer of a halcyon period when U.S. presidents were real intellectuals, and expected to be. Obviously, there is some hagiography at work here, but one cannot read Levin's book and not walk away feeling that Wilson was a mental giant and a man wholly ahead of his time. He was so uncannily prescient in his predictions of what would befall Europe if the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 failed to establish a lasting peace - his prognostications so hauntingly accurate in retrospect - that he exudes the aura of some kind of latter-day prophet. In truth, Wilson was probably too profound for the world to really keep up with. (None of this contradicts the additional truth that Wilson, like Thomas Jefferson before him - and indeed, all men - had the capacity to be both profound in thought on some matters and yet possess very facile or balmy thoughts on other matters. Such is human nature).
One of the Goodreads reviewers - a former graduate student, no less - incredibly slams this book as "densely-written". It most certainly is not. Levin is actually a very perspicuous writer, and his arguments are not hard to follow. If anything, he has a habit of repeating his thesis over and over again - just in case you didn't get it the first time. This repetitiousness is not wholly unwelcome, in my opinion. For graduate students especially, who have to familiarize themselves with reams of monographs, this kind of redundancy is useful. Here is my summary of Levin's arguments:
Wilson’s foreign policy, shaped in 1917-1919 by the entry of America into the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution, established “liberal-internationalism” as the defining feature of American foreign policy for the next half century, up until the time Levin is writing (1). Liberal-internationalism allowed America to steer a course between the right-wing imperialism of Germany and the left-wing socialist revolution of Lenin’s Russia (1-2). For Wilson, liberal-internationalism and American national interests were one, and Wilson was convinced the liberal values that America espoused were the “wave of the future” as Levin puts it (3). Wilson believed that the European Old Order was fundamentally Hobbesian – where strength is the only factor of national stability – a worldview that America had, he believed, escaped by declaring independence and cutting itself off from Europe (2). He wished to “Lockeanize” the rest of the world by replacing the atavistic militarism of Europe with a rational world system of law and commerce (4). Wilson and the European liberal-intellectual (social democratic) class were basically on the same page; however, Wilson came from a land (Levin argues) that had no pre-liberal institutions, unlike European societies. Thus, American national interests and liberal values were completely consistent for Wilson, but not necessarily for the liberal-intellectual classes of European nations, who were just one fraction of the population in their respective countries, countries that still had Old Order institutions and classes (like the aristocracy) (5). Waxing biblical, Levin explains that America was simultaneously in the world but not of the world in Wilson's thinking. It participated in the Hobbesian world international system while at the same time transcending it with noble values that it sought to impart to the rest of a darkened world (5). Wilsonian liberalism was anathema to Lenin and the revolutionary socialists because the former attempted to coopt imperialism for liberalism’s ends (gradual liberalism and the liberal war against German autocracy). Levin notes that this great balancing act worked more in theory than in practice, especially as the US got drawn into the national politics of those states with which it had allied itself in order to defeat right-wing imperialism (Germany) (8-9).
Wilson essentially espoused the Open Door policy, the desire for America to acquire foreign markets for its surplus goods. He opposed traditional imperial institutions such as of navalism, irredentism and annexation, or the idea of a "civilizing mission" at the point of a sword, believing instead that trade in places like China was enough to positively influence those societies. No other ‘civilizing mission’ was needed than that of economic influence. Levin suggests that this was part and parcel of Wilson’s “Puritan” belief in a “calling” – the idea that man performs virtuous functions like industriousness and innovation, both for the benefit of his fellow man and to the glory of God (16-17). Such was the case with Wilsonian anti-imperialism. However, it should be noted that Wilson was still comfortable with intervention in the Western Hemisphere (Monroe Doctrine) militarily if the need arose for it. Wilson's worldview and attitude prompted the US to pursue a mediating role during most of the First World War, a role that saw hope for a non-military resolution to the conflict if militarism was abandoned and shipping lanes made secure and open to all; commerce would be the invisible hand of stability, perhaps guided to a certain extent by a league of extraordinary nations - or one in particular, the United States.
Two things drove the United States to enter the First World War and abandon its role as mediator. First, the rise of communism after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the civil war that erupted in that country, complicated matters. Kautsky, the great German anti-imperialist social democratic thinker believed that imperialism was not a necessary stage or phase of capitalism, and that principled politicians could steer international capitalism away from imperial and militarist rivalry. This was consonant with Wilsonianism, but it was anathema to the pseudo-intellectual Lenin and the Bolsheviks, particularly because Wilsonianism did not eschew the assumption that North America and Western Europe were to occupy a place of preeminence even in the liberal-international world world. Whereas Wilsonian liberal anti-imperialism saw the domination of the non-West by the West as natural and good, Lenin’s revolutionary anti-imperialism strove for the destruction of all imperial structures and systems of domination – even in the non-white, non-Western world (32). The United States had to enter into the fray in Russia to support Russian nationalist liberals still fighting for control of the country - seen as natural allies in Wilson's vision of a liberal world order - and in order to prevent Bolshevism from poisoning the minds of the Left with radical beliefs that would steer them away from the more moderate reforms Wilson was proposing. Second, Germany’s pursuit of unrestricted submarine warfare – and the impressions of Wilson’s advisors of German militarism and illiberalism – eventually pushed Wilson from champion of mediatorial liberal neutrality in the Great War to full-blown support for a liberal war against perceived German autocracy, which was deemed a threat to Wilson’s vision of a liberal internationalist order.
At first, the United States welcomed the March Revolution in Russia as a victory for democratic liberalism in that country. Wilson believed that a ‘purified’ Entente alliance was now possible with Tsarist despotism out of the picture, making way for a refined Allied war agenda – sublimating its imperialist connotations – which would help to temper the radicalism of the Left in Europe. Under the influence of his advisor, Edward M. House,Wilson was initially led to believe that the Bolsheviks were only part of the Russian equation in 1917 - a sect, among sects, as it were - and that they may in fact be merely a radical flash in the pan that would eventually be sublimated by a more moderate Russian democratic liberalism (ie. Wilsonianism); Wilson’s much-vaunted liberal agenda – which the European moderate Left was aware of and esteemed – was seen as being able to take the wind out of Lenin’s sails. Wilson’s administration did not initially want to actively oppose the Bolsheviks for fear of aiding the reactionary Russian right (still fighting to regain power in Russia). However, Wilson was also afraid that Bolshevik radicalism might dampen Russian moderate support for liberalism and push people into the arms of the autocratic reaction. Thus, the Americans were in a difficult position. Crush the Bolsheviks, and you risk enabling reaction in Russia. Supporting the Bolsheviks would end Russian participation in the war, thus crippling Wilson’s liberal war against German autocracy. Indeed, it was feared that if the Bolsheviks became too powerful, Russian democrats and liberals would turn to the Germans for help (oddly enough, against the very Bolshevik disturbance they had helped to foster). This whole confusing picture meant that Wilson was forced into the balancing act of aiding those Russians who were both anti-Bolshevik, anti-Tsar, and anti-German.
What Levin accomplishes here, is he demonstrates that the U.S. antagonism toward Soviet Russia - which continued to fuel the Cold War during the time at which Levin was writing - began at this juncture. America entered into the fray in Russia to aid anti-Bolshevik rebels (in Siberia, in a little-known, little-studied sideshow of the First World War) in an attempt to save liberalism there and snuff out the radical Bolshevik agenda which - American fears proving correct - would eventually take the proverbial third of the worldwide Left's angels with it into oblivion.
As mentioned, America also entered the First World War to crush perceived German militarism and autocracy, however it was not militarily consequential to the eventual defeat of the Kaiser. America's approach to the Paris Peace Conference was motivated, Levin writes, by two contradictory impulses that clashed “dialectically” to produce a unique but ultimately contradictory US policy at that conference (123). On the one hand, the US had beneficent and gentle motives, wanting to see Germany reintegrated into a liberal world order and to temper the Entente’s (especially France’s) territorial ambitions at Germany’s expense. This was necessary for future generations, as Wilson stated in a private conversation: “[The Germans] had shaken off the imperialistic rule and the military aristocracy, and that being an industrious people, and naturally orderly, they might, if properly treated, ultimately be a bulwark for peace in Europe” (129) However, at the same time, the US also had a punitive attitude toward Germany (123). This inconsistency is quintessentially human.
Regarding the former thesis, Wilson was clearly a “missionary liberal,” believing that a lasting peace would only be possible if Germany was integrated into an Open Door world of liberal values and mutually beneficial trade. Moreover, it was feared by Wilson that a Germany crushed by Entente vindictiveness would open the door to Bolshevism sweeping the country, and the rest of Europe with it (136). In fact, Wilson’s diplomats repeatedly cabled Washington with information about the rise of the radical Left in Germany in the wake of the Armistice and the real possibility of Bolshevik power with all of its excesses following the abdication of the Kaiser (134-135). For these reasons it became all the more imperative that Germany regain its economic solvency. Wilson, along with his British allies, wanted to immediately end the blockade of Germany then still in effect, and to give the German people immediate food aid. This was blocked by the French. Wilson had always been fair to Germany, at one point in 1917 publically stating:
“Responsible statesmen must now everywhere see, if they never saw before, that no peace can rest securely upon political or economic restrictions meant to benefit some nations and cripple or embarrass others, upon vidicative action of any sort, or any kind of revenge or deliberate injury. The American people have suffered intolerable wrongs at the hands of the Imperial German Government [reference to the sinking of American shipping by unrestricted submarine warfare], but they desire no reprisal upon the German people, who have themselves suffered all things in the war, which they did not choose. The belief that peace should rest upon the rights of peoples, not the rights of Governments – the rights of peoples, great or small, weak or powerful – their equal right to freedom and security and self-government and to a participation upon fair terms in the economic opportunities of the world, the German people, of course, included if they will accept equality and not seek domination” (53-54).
But there was a punitive side to Wilson, as well. An Anglophile, he inherited a deep distrust of German militarism - Prussianism - which he saw as being responsible for the country's aggressiveness. Wilson remained paranoid that right-wing German reaction would eventually rise to defeat his dreams for a liberal world order. Thus, the League of Nations initially excluded Germany on Wilson’s insistence. However, it should be pointed out that Wilson saw Germany’s exclusion from the League as probationary only, not permanent.The French saw the League as basically a military alliance to permanently contain Germany. This was not true of Wilson. He saw the League as basically the apparatus of guaranteeing an Open Door world with the United States occupying something of a most-favoured-nation status therein. And this was the problem with Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations. The major powers interpreted their meaning as they willed. Wilson was hailed by the peoples of Europe for his visionary qualities. However, it must be emphasized that he was a liberal - a moderate - and did not believe in revolutionary changes to the fundamental institutions of diplomacy and power. Thus, Wilson's influence at Paris remained more discursive than substantial - although much to the annoyance of his European allies, his ideas had resonance with broad swathes of their people.
Wilson championed the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations as the new means by which European ‘balance of power’ diplomacy – which he considered the true root of the Great War – would be replaced by the liberal democratic order. For Wilson, it represented American liberalism’s displacement of Old World politics, not the absorption of the former by the latter. Levin emphasizes the point that for Wilson, the goals of liberalism and the national interest of the United States were one and the same.
However, this was not enough for Wilson’s domestic compatriots. Those on the Right in the United States – gravitated around Henry Cabot Lodge - generally agreed with the punitive aspects of the Treaty of Versailles. However, they saw the creation of the League of Nations as European cooptation of American power for Old World military alliance purposes - the dreaded foreign "entanglements" President Washington had warned Americans against. For their part, those on the Left believed that Wilson had ‘betrayed’ the principles of progressivism (even though, Levin repeatedly emphasizes throughout the text, Wilson was always against revolutionary violence) by eschewing the more radical clamour for class conflict. Eventually, ratification of the League of Nations Charter was defeated on the floor of the U.S. Senate. However, Levin ends on the buoyant note that:
“...looking back, what seems clear is that Wilsonianism, even while losing the battle over the League of Nations, eventually triumphed in the more long-term struggle over the ultimate definition of the nature of twentieth-century American foreign policy. Wilson established the main drift toward an American liberal globalism, hostile both to traditional imperialism and to revolutionary-socialism. Many who had been associated with Wilson, or who accepted the essentials of his world view, such as Herbert Hoover, Cordell Hull, Franklin Roosevelt, And John Foster Dulles, would continue in later periods to identify America’s expansive national interests with the maintenance of a rational and peaceful international liberal order. Ultimately, in the post-World War II period, Wilsonian values would have their complete triumph in the bi-partisan Cold War consensus” (260).
July 23, 2017
Picked this up to read from a Pol/Sci class I had years ago and realized why we skimmed it back then. Reads like a doctoral dissertation submitted to impress the department. Good insight and subject matter but a brutal read.
January 16, 2017
A pretty simple premise that could have been executed with greater efficiency.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews