During World War I, Woodrow Wilson avoided American involvement until the repeated sinking of American vessels by German U-boats and the imminent collapse of the European continent made neutrality untenable. When the war was over, America had emerged as the world’s dominant power—but a power whose prosperity Wilson now understood to be linked to peace and prosperity in faraway lands. It was in an effort to address this new reality that Wilson sought to reinterpret the idea of America’s manifest destiny. Making “the world safe for democracy” didn’t just involve winning a war, he argued; it was
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