The Folly of Empire: What George W. Bush Could Learn from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson

by John B. Judis

An analysis of President Woodrow Wilson's post-World War I support of a "community of power" agenda considers how subsequent leaders from Roosevelt to Clinton furthered Wilson's vision by helping to establish the United Nations, NATO, and the WTO.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics

245 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

John B. Judis is an American journalist. Born in Chicago he attended Amherst College and received B.A. and M.A. degrees in Philosophy from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a senior editor at The New Republic and a contributing editor to The American Prospect.

A founding editor of Socialist Revolution (now Socialist Review) in 1969 and of the East Bay Voice in the 1970s, Judis started reporting from Washington in 1982, when he became a founding editor and Washington correspondent for In These Times, a democratic-socialist weekly magazine.

He has also written for GQ, Foreign Affairs, Mother Jones, The New York Times Magazine, and The Washington Post.

In 2002, he published a book (co-written with political scientist Ruy Teixeira) arguing that Democrats would retake control of American politics, thanks in part to growing support from minorities and well-educated professionals. The title, The Emerging Democratic Majority, was a deliberate echo of Kevin Phillips' 1969 classic, The Emerging Republican Majority. The book was named one of the year's best by The Economist magazine.

Reviews

[Carl]

A basic history of the anti-imperialist movement and the development of Wilsonian foreign policy in the United States. Useful because it's a crucial debate that never seems to happen on a broad scale. Ultimately one-sided--I keep looking for the book that really sets the anti-globalization movement and the liberal Wilsonians against each other in a substantive way. But it really shows how hard it seems to be for Presidents to take any progressive foreign policy positions at all--Theodore Roosevelt came into office as an imperialist, left office having soured on imperialism, and spent the rest of his life criticizing Woodrow Wilson for not being imperialist enough. And Woodrow was pretty much just a jerk.

[Katrina Mann]

For those interested in learning how American foreign policy has gone so disastrously wrong in the 20th century, look no further than Folly of Empire. A short and readable study of two proponents of empire--Wilson and Roosevelt--who later expressed serious misgivings and regret about the legitimacy of intervention and nation-building. Too bad Bush was a C student--maybe if he'd actually studied history, he wouldn't have made their same mistakes, and the mistakes of Eisenhower, Johnson, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, and Reagan too!

[Richel]

Both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson realized the negative effects of Imperialism in the Philippines and Mexico: that instead of promoting peace and democracy, colonialism resulted to war and tyranny.

[Steven]

Standard Bush-bashing, which to me is entertaining and maddening at the same time.

[Jerry Walz]

Very good but disturbing too.