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Woodrow Wilson: Incidents During his first term in office, Wilson strove to utilize his philosophy of the collective security in his diplomatic exchanges, especially in Central America. Unfortunately, intervening in other nations’ affairs through strictly moral and ethical means was nearly impossible. Wilson’s Latin America policy involved curious contradictions and shifts. Attempting to reverse Taft, he managed to carry out dollar diplomacy in the Carribean on a much larger scale than his large predecessor. A foe of armed imperialism, he practiced a kind of moral imperialism. An avowed lover of peace, he landed Marines in Haiti and Santo Domingo, and twice invaded Mexico. Determined to help the Mexican people, he helped keep Mexico in turmoil by departing from America’s traditional nonintervention policy. He took strong positions, and then was forced to back down—shaking "first his fist and then his finger." (Bailey 561) The majority of Wilson’s foreign policy moves came from America’s policy toward the European war. “Wilson’s doctrines of self-determination and collective security put European diplomats on thoroughly unfamiliar terrain.” (Kissinger 222). Wilson first accepted a policy of neutrality, and tried to mediate the conflict. His ideas on collective security were not well accepted but were instead overlooked as European diplomats tried to pull the United States into the conflict to overcome the stalemate on the battlefield. “Before America’s entry into the war, the European democracies never dared express openly their doubts about Wilson’s ideas and indeed made every attempt to enlist Wilson by humoring him.” (Kissinger 222). The French and British were successful in finally dragging America into the abyss. Finally Woodrow Wilson asked the Congress for a declaration of war: “to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts, for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.” (Kissinger 48).
After America’s entry into the war, the Central Powers were beaten back. Knowing that victory was near, Wilson authored his famous Fourteen Points, which he presented before a joint session before Congress on January 8, 1918:
Wilson’s Fourteen Points did have one major flaw. “Never before had such revolutionary goals but put forth with so few guidelines as how to implement them.” (225). Idealistic in his vision of the future and naïve concerning the national interests and diplomacy of European nations, Wilson traveled to Versailles in hopes of establishing a new international order. “In his view and that of all his disciples, the security of the world called for, not the defense of the national interest, but of the peace as a legal concept. The determination of whether a breach of peace had indeed been committed required an international institution, which Wilson defined as the League of Nations.” (Kissinger 222). The concept of basing foreign policy on morality alone baffled the victorious and vengeful European nations. However, what Wilson had in mind was an international order “in which resistance to aggression would be based on moral rather than geopolitical judgments. Nations would ask themselves whether an act was unjust rather than whether it was threatening.” (Kissinger 227). Wilson had to sacrifice many of his bargaining chips to create a League of Nations. In the end, he went along with several punitive provisions contradicting the equal treatment promised in the Fourteen Points. The attempt to reconcile American idealism with France’s nightmares turned out to be beyond human ingenuity. Wilson traded modifications of the Fourteen Points for the establishment of the League of Nations, to which he looked to remedy any legitimate grievances left over from the peace treaty. (Kissinger 229) Unfortunately for the president, the Senate never ratified the treaty, due in part to Wilson’s arrogance and refusal to compromise. The struggle for ratification broke the president’s health, causing a stroke which paralyzed him during his last days in the White House and left him a shattered man until his death in 1923. |
Incidents
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