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Foreign policy of the Woodrow Wilson administration

February 15, 2024

The foreign policy under the presidency of Woodrow Wilson deals with American diplomacy, and political, economic, military, and cultural relationships with the rest of the world from 1913 to 1921. Although Wilson had no experience in foreign policy, he made all the major decisions, usually with the top advisor Edward M. House. His foreign policy was based on his messianic philosophical belief that America had the utmost obligation to spread its principles while reflecting the 'truisms' of American thought.[1]

Wilson executed the Democratic Party foreign policy which since 1900 had, according to Arthur S. Link:

consistently condemned militarism, imperialism, and interventionism in foreign policy. They instead advocated world involvement along liberal-internationalist lines. Wilson's appointment of William Jennings Bryan as Secretary of State indicated a new departure, for Bryan had long been the leading opponent of imperialism and militarism and a pioneer in the world peace movement.[2]

The main foreign policy issues Wilson faced were civil war in neighboring Mexico; keeping out of World War I and protecting American neutral rights; deciding to enter and fight in 1917; and reorganizing world affairs with peace treaties and a League of Nations in 1919. Wilson had a physical collapse in late 1919 that left him too handicapped to closely supervise foreign or domestic policy.

Leadership edit

For advice and trouble shooting in foreign policy Wilson relied heavily on his trusted friend "Colonel" Edward M. House. Wilson came to distrust House's independence in 1919, and ended all contact.[3] After winning the presidency in the 1912 election, Wilson had no alternative choice for the premier cabinet position of Secretary of State. William Jennings Bryan had long been the dominant leader of the Democratic Party and had been essential to Wilson's presidential nomination. Nevertheless, the president-elect was worried about Bryan's radical reputation, and especially about his independent base.[4][5] Bryan had travelled the world giving speeches, promoting peace, and meeting with world leaders. Wilson had no such experience; he had studied English constitutional history in depth, but not its diplomatic history. He had not travelled widely outside the U.S. and Britain. Bryan proved very useful in helping pass major progressive domestic reforms through Congress, especially the Federal Reserve law. In foreign policy they worked together well at first. Bryan handled routine work and Wilson made the major decisions. Since Bryan had such a strong base in the Democratic Party, Wilson kept him informed, and allowed Bryan to pursue his own peace-priority of drafting 30 treaties with other countries that required both signatories to submit all disputes to an investigative tribunal. However he and Wilson clashed over U.S. neutrality in wartime. Bryan resigned in June 1915 after Wilson sent to Berlin a note of protest in response to the Sinking of the RMS Lusitania, a British passenger liner, by a German U-boat, with the death of 128 Americans. Bryan thought they travelled at their own risk into a war zone, while Wilson considered it was a violation of the laws of war to sink a passenger ship without giving the passengers a chance to reach the lifeboats.[6]

Wilson selected Robert Lansing to replace Bryan because he was proficient in routine work and passive in ideas and initiative. Unlike Bryan he lacked a political base. The result was that Wilson could be—and indeed actually was—freer to personally make all major foreign policy decisions. John Milton Cooper concludes that it was one of Wilson's worst mistakes as president.[7] Wilson told Colonel House that as president he would practically be his own Secretary of State, and "Lansing would not be troublesome by uprooting or injecting his own views."[8]

Lansing advocated "benevolent neutrality" at the start of the war, but shifted away from the ideal after increasing interference and violation of the rights of neutrals by Great Britain.[9] According to Lester H. Woolsey, a top aide in the State Department and later Lansing's law partner, Lansing by mid-1915 had very strong views against Germany. He kept these to himself because Wilson disagreed. Lansing expressed his views by manipulating the work of the State Department to minimize conflict with Britain and maximize public awareness of Germany's faults. Woolsey states:

Although the President cherished the hope that the United States would not be drawn into the war, and while this was the belief of many officials, Mr. Lansing early in July, 1915, came to the conclusion that the German ambition for world domination was the real menace of the war, particularly to democratic institutions. In order to block this German ambition, he believed that the progress of the war would eventually disclose to the American people the purposes of the German Government; that German activities in the United States and in Latin America should be carefully investigated and frustrated; that the American republics to the south should be weaned from the German influences; that friendly relations with Mexico should be maintained even to the extent of recognizing the Carranza faction; that the Danish West Indies should be acquired in order to remove the possibility of Germany's obtaining a foothold in the Caribbean by conquest of Denmark or otherwise; that the United States should enter the war if it should appear that Germany would become the victor; and that American public opinion must be awakened in preparation for this contingency. This outline of Mr. Lansing's views explains why the Lusitania dispute was not brought to the point of a break. It also explains why, though Americans were incensed at the British interference with commerce, the controversy was kept within the arena of debate.[10]

The two key Allied ambassadors were Cecil Spring Rice for Britain and Jean Jules Jusserand for France. The latter was highly successful, achieving popularity with Americans from many backgrounds and perspectives.[11] However Spring-Rice was a close friend of Wilson's enemies Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, and never was comfortable in the Wilsonian milieu. Wilson distrusted Spring-Rice as incompetent and a mischief-maker. House solved the problem by a close friendship with Sir William Wiseman, a British banker who took charge of financial negotiations as well as intelligence operations.[12] Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff was the German ambassador—suave and sophisticated. He tried and failed to get Berlin to accept Wilson's proposals for peace plans. Meanwhile, he was organizing propaganda activities. However, after the war he denied any involvement with sabotage activities to disrupt the shipment of American supplies to the Allies, such as the monster Black Tom explosion in 1916.[13][14][15]

Latin America edit

The Panama Canal opened in 1914, just after the start of World War 1. It fulfilled the long-term dream of building a canal across Central America and making possible quick movement between the Atlantic and the Pacific.. For the US Navy the canal allowed quick movement of fleets between the Pacific and the Atlantic. Economically it opened new opportunities to the shippers to reach the Far East. Britain insisted that treaty agreements meant its ships would pay the same toll as American ships, and Congress agreed to the same tolls for every nation.[16]

To further protect the Canal, in 1917, the US purchased the strategically located Danish West Indies for $25 million, in gold, from Denmark. The territory was renamed the United States Virgin Islands. Its population of 27,000 was over 90 per cent Black; its economy was based on sugar.[17]

Mexico edit

Main articles: United States involvement in the Mexican Revolution and Mexican Revolution

Washington had long recognized the dictatorial government of Porfirio Díaz. As Díaz approached eighty years old, he announced he was not going to run in the scheduled 1910 elections. This set off a flurry of political activity about presidential succession. Washington wanted any new president to continue Díaz's policies that had been favorable to American mining and oil interests and produced stability domestically and internationally. However Díaz suddenly reneged on his promise not to run, exiled General Bernardo Reyes, the most viable candidate. He had the most popular opposition candidate, Francisco I. Madero jailed. After the rigged 1910 reelection of Diaz, political unrest became open rebellion.[18]

 
Uncle Sam saying "I've had about enough of this" as a small and barefoot Pancho Villa, smoking gun in hand, runs away. In 1916 Wilson sent a punitive expedition to capture Villa after he murdered Americans in New Mexico. It never caught Villa but did anger Mexicans.

After his Federal Army failed to suppress the insurgents, Díaz resigned and went into exile. An interim government was installed, and new elections were held in October 1911. These were won by Madero. Initially, Washington was optimistic about Madero. He had disbanded the rebel forces that had forced Díaz to resign; retain the Federal Army; and appeared to be open to friendly policies. However the U.S. began to sour on the relationship with Madero and began actively working with opponents to the regime. The new president Victoriano Huerta won recognition from all major countries except the U.S. Wilson, who took office shortly after Madero's assassination, rejected the legitimacy of Huerta's "government of butchers" and demanded that Mexico hold democratic elections to replace him.[19] In the Tampico Affair of April 9, 1914 nine American sailors were seized for about an hour by Huerta's soldiers. The local commander apologized and released the sailors but refused the demand of the American admiral to salute the U.S. flag and punish the arrested officer. The conflict escalated with Washington's approval and the U.S. Navy seized Veracruz. Some 170 Mexican soldiers and an unknown number of Mexican civilians were killed in the takeover, as well as 22 Americans.[20]

Pancho Villa (1878–1923), a local bandit who built up a regional base, became a major national figure when he led anti-Huerta forces in the Constitutionalist Army 1913–14. At the height of his power and popularity in late 1914 and early 1915, Washington considered recognizing him as Mexico's legitimate authority. However Villa was decisively defeated by Constitutionalist General Alvaro Obregón in summer 1915, and the U.S. aided Constitutionalist leader Venustiano Carranza directly against Villa. Villa, much weakened, conducted a raid on the small border village of Columbus, New Mexico killing 18 Americans. His goal was to goad Wilson into a war with Carranza.[21] Instead Wilson sent the Army on a limited punitive expedition led by General John J. Pershing deep into Mexico. It failed to capture Villa.[22] Mexican public and elite opinion turned strongly against the U.S. and war was growing more and more likely. Wilson realized that escalating tensions with Germany were much more important and recalled the invasion force in early 1917 as war with Germany approached.[23]

 
Germany offers 3 southwestern states to Mexico if it joins a war against USA. Editorial cartoon from Dallas Morning News 2 March 1917

Meanwhile, Germany was trying to divert American attention from Europe by sparking a war. It sent Mexico the Zimmermann Telegram in January 1917, offering a military alliance to reclaim lands the United States had forcibly taken via conquest in the Mexican–American War. British intelligence intercepted the message, and revealed it to the American government when tensions were high. Wilson released it to the press, escalating demands for American war against Germany. The Mexican government rejected the proposal after its military warned of massive defeat if they attempted to follow through with the plan. Mexico stayed neutral; selling large amounts of oil to Britain for the Royal Navy.[24]

Nicaragua edit

Further information: Nicaragua–United States relations

According to Benjamin Harrison, Wilson was committed in Latin America to the fostering of democracy and stable governments, as well as fair economic policies.[25] Wilson was largely frustrated by the chaotic situation in Nicaragua. Adolfo Díaz won the presidency in 1911 and replaced European financing with loans from New York banks. Facing a Liberal rebellion, he called on the United States for protection and Wilson obliged. Nicaragua assumed a quasi-protectorate status under the 1916 Bryan–Chamorro Treaty. Under the treaty Nicaragua promised it would not declare war on anyone, would not grant territorial concessions, and would not contract outside debts without Washington's approval. It permitted the US to build a naval base at Fonseca Bay, and gave the US the sole option to construct and control an inter-oceanic canal. The US had no intention of building a canal, but one of the guarantee that no other nation could do so. The US paid Nicaragua $3 million for this option. The original draft also asserted the duty of the United States to intervene militarily in case of domestic turmoil – but that provision was rejected by Democrats in the Senate.[26][27] The treaty was extremely unpopular in the Caribbean region, but it was observed by both sides until 1933. Díaz was now able to serve out his entire term; he retired in 1917, and moved to the United States, though he briefly returned to power in 1926–1929. According to George Baker, the main effect of the treaty was a higher degree of both political and financial stability in Nicaragua.[28] President Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) opposed the relationship. Finally in 1933, President Franklin D Roosevelt invoked his new Good Neighbor policy to end American intervention.[29]

Asia edit

 
China unprepared to answer 21 demands by Japan in 1915; Bradley in Chicago Daily News March 13, 1915

China edit

Main article: History of China–United States relations to 1948

After the Xinhai Revolution overthrew the emperor in 1911, The Taft administration recognized the new Government of the Chinese Republic as the legitimate government of China. In practice a number of powerful regional warlords were in control and the central government handled foreign policy and little else.

The Twenty-One Demands were a set of secret demands made in 1915 by Japan to Yuan Shikai the general who served as president of the Republic of China The demands would greatly extend Japanese control. Japan would keep the former German concessions it had conquered at the start of World War I in 1914. Japan would be stronger in Manchuria and South Mongolia. It would have an expanded role in railways. The most extreme demands—the fifth set—would gave Japan a decisive voice in China's finance, policing, and government affairs. Indeed, they would make China in effect a protectorate of Japan, and thereby reduce Western influence. Japan was in a strong position, as the Western powers were in a stalemated war with Germany. Britain and Japan had a military alliance since 1902, and in 1914 London had asked Tokyo to enter the war. Beijing published the secret demands and appealed to Washington and London. They were sympathetic and pressured Tokyo. In the final 1916 settlement, Japan gave up its fifth set of demands. It gained a little in China, but lost a great deal of prestige in Washington and London.[30] E. T. Williams, the senior expert on the Far East in the State Department, argued in January 1915:

Our present commercial interests in Japan are greater than those in China, but the look ahead shows our interest to be a strong and independent China rather than one held in subjection by Japan. China has certain claims upon our sympathy. If we do not recognize them...we are in danger of losing our influence in the Far East and of adding to the dangers of the situation.[31]

Wilson has been criticized for accepting at the Paris Peace Conference the transfer of the German concession in Shandong to Japan, instead of allowing China to reclaim it.[32] However Bruce Elleman has argued that Wilson did not betray China because his action was in accord with widely recognized treaties which China had signed with Japan during the war. Wilson tried to get Japan to promise to return the concessions in 1922, but the Chinese delegation rejected that compromise. The result in China was the growth of intense nationalism characterized by the May Fourth Movement, and the tendency of intellectuals and activists in the 1920s to look to Moscow for leadership.[33][30]

Wilson was in touch with several former Princeton students who were missionaries in China, and he strongly endorsed their work. In 1916 he told a delegation of ministers:

This is the most amazing and inspiring vision - this vision of that great sleeping nation suddenly awakened by the voice of Christ. Could there be any greater contribution to the future momentum of the moral forces of the world than could be made by quickening the force, which is being set of foot in China? China is at present inchoate; as a nation it is a congeries of parts, in each of which there is energy, but which are unbound in any essential and active unit, and just as soon as unity comes, its power will come in the world.[34]

Japan edit

In 1913, California enacted the California Alien Land Law of 1913 to exclude resident Japanese non-citizens from owning any land in the state. Tokyo protested strongly, and Wilson sent Bryan to California to mediate. Bryan was unable to get California to relax the restrictions, and Wilson accepted the law even though it violated a 1911 treaty with Japan. The law bred resentment in Japan which lingered into the 1920s and 1930s.[35][36]

 
Viscount Ishii Kikujirō, Japanese special envoy, with Secretary of State Robert Lansing in Washington in 1917 for the signing of the Lansing–Ishii Agreement

During World War I, both nations fought on the Allied side. With the cooperation of its ally Great Britain, Japan's military took control of German bases in China and the Pacific, and in 1919 after the war, with U.S. approval, was given a League of Nations mandate over the German islands north of the equator, with Australia getting the rest. The U.S. did not want any mandates.[37]

Japan's aggressive approach in its dealings with China, however, was a continual source of tension—indeed eventually leading to World War II between the two nations. Trouble arose between Japan on the one hand and China, Britain and the U.S. on the other over Japan's Twenty-One Demands made on China in 1915. These demands forced China to acknowledge Japanese possession of the former German holdings and its economic dominance of Manchuria, and had the potential of turning China into a puppet state. Washington expressed strongly negative reactions to Japan's rejection of the Open Door Policy. In the Bryan Note issued by Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan on March 13, 1915, the U.S., while affirming Japan's "special interests" in Manchuria, Mongolia and Shandong, expressed concern over further encroachments to Chinese sovereignty.[38]

In 1917 the Lansing–Ishii Agreement was negotiated. Secretary of State Robert Lansing specified American acceptance that Manchuria was under Japanese control, while still nominally under Chinese sovereignty. Japanese Foreign Minister Ishii Kikujiro noted Japanese agreement not to limit American commercial opportunities elsewhere in China. The agreement also stated that neither would take advantage of the war in Europe to seek additional rights and privileges in Asia.[39]

At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Japan insisted that Germany's concessions in China, especially in the Shandong Peninsula, be transferred to Japan. President Woodrow Wilson fought vigorously against Japan's demands regarding China, but backed down upon realizing the Japanese delegation had widespread support.[40] In China there was outrage and anti-Japanese sentiment escalated. The May Fourth Movement emerged as a student demand for China's honor.[41] In 1922 the U.S. brokered a solution of the Shandong Problem. China was awarded nominal sovereignty over all of Shandong, including the former German holdings, while in practice Japan's economic dominance continued.[42]

Philippines edit

Main article: Insular Government of the Philippine Islands

The Democratic party in the United States had strongly opposed acquisitions of the Philippines in the first place, and increasingly became committed to independence. Wilson himself was a conservative in the 1890s and supported McKinley's foreign policy and favored annexation of the Philippines.[43] The election of a Democratic president and Congress in 1912 opened up opportunities and Wilson had changed. He now wanted the islands to be governed by Filipinos until it became independent.[44] He appointed Francis Burton Harrison as governor, and Harrison replaced nearly all the mainlanders with Filipinos in the bureaucracy. By 1921, of the 13,757 bureaucrats, 13,143 were Filipinos; they held 56 of the top 69 positions.[45]

Philippine nationalists led by Manuel L. Quezon and Sergio Osmeña enthusiastically endorsed the draft Jones Bill of 1912, which provided for Philippine independence after eight years, but later changed their views, opting for a bill which focused less on time than on the conditions of independence. The nationalists demanded complete and absolute independence to be guaranteed by the United States, since they feared that too-rapid independence from American rule without such guarantees might cause the Philippines to fall into Japanese hands. The Jones Bill was rewritten and passed a Congress controlled by Democrats in 1916 with a later date of independence.[46]

 
This poster advertises the passage of the Jones Law. Wilson is third from the left.

The Jones Law, or Philippine Autonomy Act, replaced the Organic Act as the constitution for the territory. Its preamble stated that the eventual independence of the Philippines would be American policy, subject to the establishment of a stable government. The law maintained an appointed governor-general, but established a bicameral Philippine Legislature and replaced the appointive Philippine Commission with an elected senate.[47]

Filipino activists suspended the independence campaign during the World War and supported the United States and the Allies of World War I against the German Empire. After the war they resumed their independence drive with great vigour.[48] In 1919, the Philippine Legislature passed a "Declaration of Purposes", which stated the inflexible desire of the Filipino people to be free and sovereign. A Commission of Independence was created to study ways and means of attaining liberation ideal. This commission recommended the sending of an independence mission to the United States. The "Declaration of Purposes" referred to the Jones Law as a veritable pact, or covenant, between the American and Filipino peoples whereby the United States promised to recognize the independence of the Philippines as soon as a stable government should be established. American Governor-General Harrison had concurred in the report of the Philippine Legislature as to a stable government.[49][50]

Russia and its Revolution edit

Further information: Soviet Union–United States relations, Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, and Russian Revolution

President Wilson believed that with the end of Tsarist rule the new country would eventually transition to a modern democracy after the end of the chaos of the Russian Civil War, and that intervention against Soviet Russia would only turn the country against the United States. He likewise publicly advocated a policy of noninterference in the war in the Fourteen Points, although he argued that the Russia's prewar Polish territory should be ceded to the newly independent Second Polish Republic. Additionally many of Wilson's political opponents in the United States, including the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Henry Cabot Lodge, believed that an independent Ukraine should be established. Despite this the United States, as a result of the fear of Japanese expansion into Russian-held territory and their support for the Allied-aligned Czech Legion, sent a small number of troops to Northern Russia and Siberia. The United States also provided indirect aid such as food and supplies to the White Army.[51][52]

At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 Wilson and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, despite the objections of French President Georges Clemenceau and Italian Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino, pushed forward an idea to convene a summit at Prinkipo between the Bolsheviks and the White movement to form a common Russian delegation to the Conference. The Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, under the leadership of Leon Trotsky and Georgy Chicherin, received British and American envoys respectfully but had no intentions of agreeing to the deal due to their belief that the Conference was composed of an old capitalist order that would be swept away in a world revolution. By 1921, after the Bolsheviks gained the upper hand in the Russian Civil War, executed the Romanov imperial family, repudiated the tsarist debt, and called for a world revolution by the working class, it was regarded as a pariah nation by most of the world.[52] Beyond the Russian Civil War, relations were also dogged by claims of American companies for compensation for the nationalized industries they had invested in.[53]

Famine and starvation raged in Russia and parts of Eastern Europe after the war. A very large food relief operation, centered mostly in Russia, was primarily funded by the U.S. government, as well as philanthropies, and Britain and France. The American Relief Administration, 1919–1923, at first was under the direction of Herbert Hoover.[54][55]

Wilson had been reluctant to join but he sent two forces into Russia. The American Expeditionary Force, Siberia was a formation of the United States Army involved in the Russian Civil War in Vladivostok, Russia, from 1918 to 1920. The other force was the American Expeditionary Force, North Russia a part of the larger Allied French and British North Russia Intervention, under the command of British General Edmund Ironside. The Siberian force was ostensibly designed to help the 40,000 men of the Czechoslovak Legion, who were being held up by Bolshevik forces as they attempted to make their way along the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok, and it was hoped, eventually to the Western Front. They had escaped from Russian POW camps and were headed to join the Allies on the Western Front. The North Russia force had a mission of preventing the German army from seizing Allied munitions sent there before Russia dropped out of the war. Neither force had an officially acknowledged combat mission. Historians have speculated that Wilson shared the anti-Bolshevik ambitions of the larger Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War.[56][57]

Entry into World War edit

Main article: American entry into World War I
 
President Wilson before Congress, announcing the break in official relations with Germany on 3 February 1917

Brokering peace edit

From the outbreak of the war in 1914 until January 1917, Wilson's primary goal was using American neutrality to broker a peace conference that would end the war. In the first two years neither side was interested in negotiations.[58] However, that changed in late 1916 when, Philip D. Zelikow argues, both sides were ready for peace negotiations, if Wilson would be the broker. However, Wilson waited too long, failed to realize the importance of his financial power over Britain, and put mistaken reliance on Colonel House and Secretary of State Robert Lansing, who undermined his proposals by encouraging Britain to stall. Zelikow emphasizes that German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg was seriously interested in peace, but he had to fend off the demands of Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff who were taking dictatorial control of Germany. Zelikow argues that when Wilson finally did make his peace proposal in January 1917, it was too little and too late, and instead of peace the war escalated. Hindenburg and Ludendorff had convinced the Kaiser that victory was at hand by using unrestricted submarine warfare, and moving troops in from the Russian front to smash the French and British front lines.[59]

Wilson's decision to enter the war came in April 1917, more than two and a half years after the war began. The main reasons were the German submarine campaign to sink American ships carrying supplies to Britain, and his determination to make the world safe for democracy. Joseph Siracusa argues that Wilson's own position evolved from, 1914 to 1917. He finally decided that war was necessary because Germany threatened American global ideals of democracy and peace through militarism and Prussian autocracy. Furthermore, it was a threat to American commerce on the high seas, and to American rights as a neutral.[60] Public opinion, elite opinion, and Members of Congress gave Wilson strong support by April 1917. The U.S. took an independent role and did not have a formal alliance with Britain or France.

German submarine warfare against Britain edit

With the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the United States declared neutrality and worked to broker a peace. It insisted on its neutral rights, which included allowing private corporations and banks to sell supplies or loan money to either side. With the tight British blockade, there were almost no sales or loans to Germany, only to the Allies. Americans were shocked by the Rape of Belgium—German Army atrocities against civilians in Belgium . Britain was favored by elite WASP element. Pro-war forces were led by ex-president Theodore Roosevelt, who repeatedly denounced Wilson for timidity and cowardice. Wilson insisted on neutrality, denouncing both British and German violations. The British seized American property; the Germans seized American lives. In 1915 a German U-boat (a kind of submarine) torpedoed the unarmed British passenger liner RMS Lusitania. It sank in 20 minutes, killing 128 American civilians and over 1,000 Britons. It was against the laws of war to sink any passenger ship without allowing the passengers to reach the life boats. American opinion turned strongly against Germany as a bloodthirsty threat to civilization.[61] Germany apologized and promised to stop attacks by its U-boats. Both sides rejected Wilson's repeated effors to negotiate an end to the war. Berlin reversed course in early 1917 when it saw the opportunity to strangle Britain's food supply by unrestricted submarine warfare. The Kaiser and Germany's real rulers, the Army commanders, realized it meant war with the United States, but expected they could defeat the Allies before the Americans could play a major military role. Germany started sinking American merchant ships in early 1917. Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war in April 1917. He neutralized the antiwar element by arguing this was a war with the main long-term postwar goal of ending aggressive militarism and making the world "safe for democracy."[62]

Public opinion edit

Apart from White Anglo-Saxon Protestant and Anglophile high society demanding a Special Relationship with the British Empire, American public opinion in 1914-1916 reflected a strong desire to stay out of the war. Support for American neutrality was particularly strong among those whom Wilson later demonised as Hyphenated Americans; Irish Americans, German Americans, and Scandinavian Americans, as well as among church leaders, women, and the rural white South.[63] Due in large part to the anti-German atrocity propaganda composed by British Intelligence at Wellington House and introduced into the American news media by Australian-born Providence Journal editor John R. Rathom, pro-Neutrality groups completely lost their broader influence. By early 1917 most Americans had come to believe that Imperial Germany was the aggressor in Europe and the enemy of world peace.[64]

Economic factors edit

While the country was at peace, American banks made huge loans to the Entente powers, which were used mainly to buy munitions, raw materials, and food from across the Atlantic. Although Wilson made minimal preparations for the army before 1917, he did authorize a massive shipbuilding program for the United States Navy. The president was narrowly re-elected in 1916 on an anti-war platform.

By 1917, with Belgium and Northern France occupied, with Russia ending Tsarist rule, and with the remaining Entente nations low on credit, Germany appeared to have the upper hand in Europe.[65] However, the British economic embargo and naval blockade was causing shortages of fuel and food in Germany, which then decided to resume unrestricted submarine warfare. The aim was to break the transatlantic supply chain to Britain from other nations, although the German high command realized that sinking American-flagged ships would almost certainly bring the United States into the war.

Germany's Zimmermann Telegram outraged Americans just as German submarines started sinking American merchant ships in the North Atlantic. Wilson asked Congress for "a war to end all wars" that would "make the world safe for democracy", and Congress voted to declare war on Germany on April 6, 1917.[66] The US immediately provided money and more supplies, and a small military force. American troops began major combat operations on the Western Front under General John J. Pershing in the summer of 1918, arriving at the rate of 10,000 soldiers a day.

Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Empire edit

Main article: United States declaration of war on Austria-Hungary

The Senate, in a 74 to 0 vote, declared war on Austria-Hungary on December 7, 1917, citing Austria-Hungary's severing of diplomatic relations with the United States, its use of unrestricted submarine warfare and its alliance with Germany.[67] The declaration passed in the House by a vote of 365 to 1. The US never declared war on Germany's other allies the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria.[68]

The Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles edit

Main articles: Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920) and Big Four (World War I)

The Paris Peace Conference convened in January 1919 in Paris, hosted by France. The conference was called to establish the terms of the peace after World War I. Though nearly thirty nations participated, the representatives of Great Britain, France, the United States, and Italy became known as the “Big Four.” Italy quit after losing itsa claim to Fiume, leaving the Big Three: Wilson, Prime Minister David Lloyd George and French premier Georges Clemenceau. They dominated the proceedings and drafted the Treaty of Versailles to end the war with Germany. The Treaty of Versailles articulated the compromises reached at the Paris conference. It included the planned formation of the League of Nations, which would serve both as an international forum and an international collective security arrangement. Wilson focused on the League, but fatally refused to work with the Republicans who controlled Congress. Clemenceau focused on permanently weakening Germany.[69] Lloyd George, sitting he said between Jesus Christ and Napoleon, tried to fashion compromises.[70]

According to Michael Neiberg:

Wilson received an ecstatic welcome from the people of Europe. At least for a little while, Europeans tired of war and conflict saw him as a potential savior from the old system and a possible architect of a newer, more just world. But that feeling did not last long. European leaders quickly came to dislike Wilson’s constant moralizing, his lack of understanding of the problems of Europe, and his stubborn unwillingness to see the destruction of France with his own eyes for fear, he said, of the devastation hardening his heart toward Germany. By the time the conference ended, almost everyone in Europe, and many members of the American delegation itself, had grown weary of Wilson and frustrated with his ineffectiveness at the conference.[71]

Treaty of Versailles edit

Negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference were complicated. Great Britain, France, and Italy fought together as the Allied Powers. The United States, entered the war in 1917 as an "Associated Power." While the U.S. fought alongside the Allies, it was not bound by treaty with any of them. Nor was it bound to honor pre-existing agreements among the Allied Powers. These secret agreements focused on postwar redistribution of territories. President Wilson strongly opposed many of these arrangements, including Italian demands on the Adriatic. This often led to significant disagreements among the "Big Four."[72] Wilson strongly opposed the Italian demand for control of Fiume, and had the support of Britain and France, whereupon the Italian delegation went home. However Colonel House had been supporting a compromise with the Italians, which alienated Wilson. Their close relationship slowly came to an end.[73][74]

Treaty negotiations were complicated by the absence of other important nations. The Allies excluded the defeated Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria). Russia had fought as one of the Allies until December 1917, when its new Bolshevik Government withdrew from the war. The Bolshevik decision to repudiate Russia's outstanding financial debts to the Allies and to publish the texts of secret agreements between the Allies angered the Allies. The Big Four refused to recognize the new government in Moscow and did not invite its representatives to the Peace Conference.[75][76]

According to French and British wishes, the Treaty of Versailles subjected Germany to strict punitive measures. The Treaty required the new German Government to surrender approximately 10 percent of its prewar territory in Europe and all of its colonies. It placed the harbor city of Danzig (now Gdansk) and the coal-rich Saarland under the administration of the League of Nations, and allowed France to exploit the economic resources of the Saarland until 1935. It limited the German Army and Navy in size, and allowed for the trial of Kaiser Wilhelm II and a number of other high-ranking German officials as war criminals. Under the terms of Article 231 of the Treaty, the Germans accepted responsibility for the war and the liability to pay financial reparations to the Allies. The Inter-Allied Commission determined the amount and presented its findings in 1921. The amount they determined was 132 billion gold Reichsmark, or 32 billion U.S. dollars, on top of the initial $5 billion payment demanded by the Treaty. Germans grew to resent the harsh conditions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles.[77]

 
Childish USA resists Wilson's attempt to join League of Nations 1919, from Punch (magazine) (London)

Senate rejection edit

While the Treaty of Versailles did not satisfy all parties concerned, by the time President Woodrow Wilson returned to the United States in July 1919, U.S. public opinion probably favored ratification of the Treaty, including the Covenant of the League of Nations. With a two-thirds majority required for ratification, Senate voted on several versions but never ratified any.[78]

The opposition focused on Article 10 of the Treaty, which dealt with collective security and the League of Nations. This article, opponents argued, ceded the war powers of the U.S. Government to the League's Council. The opposition came from two groups: the “Irreconcilables,” who refused to join the League of Nations under any circumstances, and “Reservationists,” led by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, Henry Cabot Lodge, who wanted amendments made before they would ratify the Treaty. While Chairman Lodge's attempt to pass amendments to the Treaty was unsuccessful in September, he did manage to attach 14 “reservations” to it in November. In a final vote on March 19, 1920, the Treaty of Versailles fell short of ratification by seven votes. Consequently, the U.S. Government signed the Treaty of Berlin on August 25, 1921. This separate peace treaty with Germany stipulated that the United States would enjoy all “rights, privileges, indemnities, reparations or advantages” conferred to it by the Treaty of Versailles, but left out any mention of the League of Nations, which the United States never joined.[79]

 
President Wilson tells George Washington he destroys autocracy with his 14 points

Idealism, moralism and Wilsonianism edit

Main article: Wilsonianism

A Presbyterian of deep religious faith, Wilson appealed to a gospel of service and promoted a profound sense of moralism. Wilson's idealistic internationalism, now referred to as "Wilsonianism," calls for the United States to enter the world arena to fight for democracy, and has been a contentious position in American foreign policy, serving as a model for "idealists" to emulate and "realists" to reject ever since.[80][81]

Missionary diplomacy edit

Missionary diplomacy was Wilson's idea that Washington had a moral responsibility to deny diplomatic recognition to any Latin American government that was not democratic. It was an expansion of President James Monroe's 1823 Monroe Doctrine.[82][83]

Fourteen Points edit

The Fourteen Points was Wilson's statement of principles that was to be used for peace negotiations to end the war. The principles were outlined in a January 8, 1918 speech on war aims and peace terms to Congress by President Wilson. By October 1918, the new German government was negotiating with Wilson for peace based on the Fourteen Points.[84] However, his main Allied colleagues (Georges Clemenceau of France, and David Lloyd George of Great Britain) were skeptical of the applicability of Wilsonian idealism.[85] Wilson called for the abolition of secret treaties, a reduction in armaments, an adjustment in colonial claims in the interests of both native peoples and colonists, and freedom of the seas. Wilson also made proposals intended to ensure world peace in the future. For example, he proposed the removal of economic barriers between nations, and the promise of self-determination for national minorities. Most important of all, the Fourteenth Point, was a world organization that would guarantee the "political independence and territorial integrity [of] great and small states alike"—a League of Nations.[86] In his intense negotiations with Clemenceau and Lloyd George he was reluctantly willing to compromise on this point and that, but always insisted on keeping the League.[87]

Principles of Wilsonianism edit

The principles associated with "Wilsonianism" across the 20th century and into the 21st include:[88][89][90]

Impact of Wilsonianism edit

American foreign relations since 1914 have rested on Wilsonian idealism, argues historian David Kennedy. "Wilson's ideas continue to dominate American foreign policy in the twenty-first century. In the aftermath of 9/11 they have, if anything, taken on even greater vitality."[99][100]

Wilson was a remarkably effective writer and thinker and his diplomatic policies had a profound influence on the world. Diplomatic historian Walter Russell Mead has explained:

Wilson's principles survived the eclipse of the Versailles system and that they still guide European politics today: self-determination, democratic government, collective security, international law, and a league of nations. Wilson may not have gotten everything he wanted at Versailles, and his treaty was never ratified by the Senate, but his vision and his diplomacy, for better or worse, set the tone for the twentieth century. France, Germany, Italy, and Britain may have sneered at Wilson, but every one of these powers today conducts its European policy along Wilsonian lines. What was once dismissed as visionary is now accepted as fundamental. This was no mean achievement, and no European statesman of the twentieth century has had as lasting, as benign, or as widespread an influence.[101]

Alternative interpretations edit

Historians and political analysts have been largely Wilsonian in their approach to American diplomatic history, according to Lloyd Ambrosius. However, there are two alternative schools of thought as well. Ambrosius argues that Wilsonianism is based on national self-determination and democracy; open door globalization based on open markets for trade and finance; collective security as typified by Wilson's idea of the League of Nations as well as NATO; and a hope bordering on a promise of future peace and progress.[102] Realism is the first alternative school, based on the outlook and policies of Theodore Roosevelt, and represented most famously by George Kennan, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. They blame Wilson for giving too much emphasis on Democracy—that for realists was a low priority—they would eagerly work with dictators who supported American positions. A third approach emerged from the New Left in the 1960s, led by William Appleman Williams and the "Wisconsin School". It is called "Revisionism" and argues that selfish economic motivations, not idealism or realism, motivated Wilsonianism. Ambrosius argues that historians generally agree that Wilsonianism was the main intellectual force in battling the Nazis in 1945 and the Soviet communists in 1989. It seemed to be the dominant factor in world affairs by 1989.[103] Wilsonians were shocked when the Chinese Communists rejected democracy in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, and when Putin rejected it for Russia.[104]

Wilsonians were dismayed when George W. Bush's initiative to bring democracy to the Middle East after 9/11 failed.[105] It produced not an Arab Spring, but instead antidemocratic results most famously in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.[106][107]

See also edit

Notes edit

  1. ^ Kissinger, Henry (1994). Diplomacy. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. p. 30.
  2. ^ William A. Link and Arthur S. Link, American Epoch: A History of the United States Since 1900. Vol. 1. War, Reform, and Society, 1900-1945 (7th ed, 1993) p 127.
  3. ^ Wilson's wife froze out House after the president became disabled. Charles E. Neu, Colonel House: A Biography of Woodrow Wilson's Silent Partner (2015) pp. 427, 432, 434.
  4. ^ Arthur S. Link, Wilson, Volume II: The New Freedom (1956) 2:7–9.
  5. ^ August Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson (1991) pp 269-270.
  6. ^ Ernest R. May, The World War and American Isolation, 1914-1917 (1959) pp 137–155.
  7. ^ John Milton Cooper, Woodrow Wilson: a biography (2009) p. 295
  8. ^ Arthur S. Link, Wilson: the struggle for neutrality 1914-1915 (1960) 3:427-428
  9. ^ See Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, The Lansing Papers, 1914–1920, Volume I, Document 277. In the enclosure it is stated that "If the British Government is expecting an attitude of “benevolent neutrality” on our part—a position which is not neutral and which is not governed by the principles of neutrality—they should know that nothing is further from our intention."
  10. ^ Lester H. Woolsey, "Robert Lansing's Record as Secretary of State." Current History 29.3 (1928): 386-387
  11. ^ Robert Young, An American by Degrees: The Extraordinary Lives of French Ambassador Jules Jusserand (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009)
  12. ^ Neu, (2015) pp 148, 219, 309.
  13. ^ Link, Wilson 5:278–280.
  14. ^ Reinhard R. Doerries, Imperial Challenge: Ambassador Count Bernstorff and German-American Relations, 1908-1917 (1989)
  15. ^ Stephen Irving Max Schwab, "Sabotage at Black Tom Island: A wake-up call for America." International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 25.2 (2012): 367-391.
  16. ^ William S. Coker, "The Panama Canal Tolls Controversy: A Different Perspective." Journal of American History 55.3 (1968): 555-564 online.
  17. ^ Leila Amos Pendleton, "Our New Possessions-The Danish West Indies." Journal of Negro History 2.3 (1917): 267-288. online
  18. ^ Karl M. Schmitt, Mexico and the United States, 1821-1973 (1974) pp 108–126.
  19. ^ Peter V. N. Henderson, "Woodrow Wilson, Victoriano Huerta, and the Recognition Issue in Mexico," The Americas (1984) 41#2 pp. 151–176 JSTOR 1007454
  20. ^ Jack Sweetman, The Landing at Veracruz: 1914 (Naval Institute Press, 1968).
  21. ^ Michael E. Neagle, "A Bandit Worth Hunting: Pancho Villa and America’s War on Terror in Mexico, 1916-1917." Terrorism and Political Violence 33.7 (2021): 1492-1510.
  22. ^ James W. Hurst, Pancho Villa and BlackJack Pershing: The Punitive Expedition in Mexico (2008).
  23. ^ James A. Sandos, "Pancho Villa and American Security: Woodrow Wilson's Mexican Diplomacy Reconsidered." Journal of Latin American Studies 13.2 (1981): 293-311.
  24. ^ Thomas Boghardt, The Zimmermann Telegram: Intelligence, Diplomacy, and America's Entry into World War I (Naval Institute Press, 2012).
  25. ^ Benjamin T Harrison, "Woodrow Wilson in Nicaragua," Caribbean Quarterly (2005) 51#1 pp 25-36.
  26. ^ Arthur S. Link, Wilson: The New Freedom (1956) pp. 331–342.
  27. ^ Arthur S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson volume 27: 1913 (1978) pp 470, 526–530, 552
  28. ^ George W. Baker, Jr., "The Wilson Administration and Nicaragua,1913-1921," Americas (1966) 22#4 pp 339-376.
  29. ^ Alan McPherson, "Herbert Hoover, Occupation Withdrawal, and the Good Neighbor Policy." Presidential Studies Quarterly 44.4 (2014): 623-639. online[dead link]
  30. ^ a b Bruce Elleman, Wilson and China: A Revised History of the Shandong Question (Routledge, 2015).
  31. ^ Arthur S. Link, Wilson, Volume III: The Struggle for Neutrality, 1914-1915 (1960) pp 276, quoting E.T. Williams, head of the Far Eastern Division; italics in his memo to Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan.
  32. ^ Madeleine Chi, "China and Unequal Treaties at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919." Asian Profile 1.1 (1973): 49-61.
  33. ^ Bruce A. Elleman, "Did Woodrow Wilson really betray the Republic of China at Versailles?" American Asian Review (1995) 13#1 pp 1-28.
  34. ^ Eugene P. Trani, "Woodrow Wilson, China, and the Missionaries, 1913—1921." Journal of Presbyterian History 49.4 (1971): 328-351, quoting pp 332-333.
  35. ^ Herbert P. Le Pore, "Hiram Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, and the California Alien Land Law Controversy of 1913." Southern California Quarterly 61.1 (1979): 99–110. in JSTOR
  36. ^ Arthur Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era (1954) pp. 84–87
  37. ^ Cathal J. Nolan, et al. Turbulence in the Pacific: Japanese-U.S. Relations during World War I (2000)
  38. ^ Walter LaFeber, The Clash: A History of U.S.-Japan Relations pp.106-116
  39. ^ J. Chal Vinson, "The Annulment of the Lansing-Ishii Agreement." Pacific Historical Review (1958): 57-69. Online
  40. ^ A. Whitney Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United States (1938) pp 239-68
  41. ^ Zhitian Luo, "National humiliation and national assertion-The Chinese response to the twenty-one demands," Modern Asian Studies (1993) 27#2 pp 297-319.
  42. ^ Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United States (1938) pp 326-28.
  43. ^ Clement (2009) p 75.
  44. ^ Roy Watson Curry, "Woodrow Wilson and Philippine Policy." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 41.3 (1954): 435-452. online
  45. ^ Tony Smith, America's mission: The United States and the worldwide struggle for democracy in the twentieth century (1994) pp 37-59.
  46. ^ Wong Kwok Chu, "The Jones Bills 1912–16: A Reappraisal of Filipino Views on Independence", Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 1982 13(2): 252–269
  47. ^ See Philippine Autonomy Act of 1916 (Jones Law)
  48. ^ Sonia M. Zaide, The Philippines: A Unique Nation (1994) p. 312.
  49. ^ Zaide, pp. 312–313.
  50. ^ H. W. Brands, Bound to empire: the United States and the Philippines (Oxford UP, 1992) pp 104-118.
  51. ^ "Fourteen Points | Text & Significance". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2020-02-07.
  52. ^ a b Margaret MacMillan (2003). Paris 1919 : six months that changed the world. Random House. pp. 63–82. ISBN 9780375508264.
  53. ^ Donald E. Davis and Eugene P. Trani (2009). Distorted Mirrors: Americans and Their Relations with Russia and China in the Twentieth Century. University of Missouri Press. p. 48. ISBN 9780826271891.
  54. ^ Bertrand M. Patenaude, "A Race against Anarchy: Even after the Great War ended, famine and chaos threatened Europe. Herbert Hoover rescued the continent, reviving trade, rebuilding infrastructure, and restoring economic order, holding a budding Bolshevism in check." Hoover Digest 2 (2020): 183-200 online
  55. ^ Douglas Smith, The Russian job: the forgotten story of how America saved the Soviet Union from ruin (2019) online
  56. ^ Betty Miller Unterberger, "President Wilson and the Decision to Send American Troops to Siberia." Pacific Historical Review 24.1 (1955): 63-74.
  57. ^ Eugene P. Trani, "Woodrow Wilson and the decision to intervene in Russia: a reconsideration." Journal of Modern History 48.3 (1976): 440-461.
  58. ^ Justus D. Doenecke, "Neutrality Policy and the Decision for War." in A Companion to Woodrow Wilson (2013): 241–269.
  59. ^ Philip Zelikow, The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-1917 (PublicAffairs, 2021).
  60. ^ Joseph M. Siracusa, "American Policy-Makers, World War I, and the Menace of Prussianism, 1914-1920," Australasian Journal of American Studies (1998) 17#2 pp 1-30.
  61. ^ Jerald A Combs (2015). The History of American Foreign Policy: v.1: To 1920. pp. 325–. ISBN 9781317456377.
  62. ^ For a wartime American analysis see Charles A. Ellwood, "Making the world safe for democracy." The Scientific Monthly 7.6 (1918): 511-524 online.
  63. ^ Jeanette Keith (2004). Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight: Race, Class, and Power in the Rural South during the First World War. U. of North Carolina Press. pp. 1–5. ISBN 978-0-8078-7589-6.
  64. ^ Cooper, The Vanity of Power (1969) pp. 19–27, 202, 223–224.
  65. ^ "World War One". BBC History.
  66. ^ Link, Arthur S. (1972). Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910–1917. New York: Harper & Row. pp. 252–282.
  67. ^ H.J.Res.169: Declaration of War with Austria-Hungary, WWI, United States Senate
  68. ^ Andrew Patrick, "Woodrow Wilson, the Ottomans, and World War I." Diplomatic History 42.5 (2018): 886-910.
  69. ^ See US State Department, Office of the Historian, "Home Milestones 1914-1920 The Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles" (2017). a US government document.
  70. ^ Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six months that changed the world (2007) p. 33.
  71. ^ Michael S. Neiberg, The Treaty of Versailles: A Concise History (Oxford UP, 2017) p. xvii.
  72. ^ H. Clarence Nixon, "Big Four" The Virginia Quarterly Review 19.4 (1943): 513-521. online
  73. ^ Neu (2015) p 416.
  74. ^ On Italy and Wilson see Arthur Walworth, Wilson and his Peacemakers: American Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (WW Norton, 1986) pp 335–358.
  75. ^ George Kennan, . "Russia and the Versailles Conference." The American Scholar (1960): 13-42 online
  76. ^ Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six months that changed the world (Random House, 2001) pp 63–82.
  77. ^ MacMillan, Paris 1919 (2001) pp 194–203.
  78. ^ Ralph A. Stone, ed. Wilson and the League of Nations: why America's rejection? (1967) pp 1-11.
  79. ^ Theodore P. Greene, ed. Wilson At Versailles (1957) "Introduction" pp v to x. online
  80. ^ Patricia O'Toole, The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made (2019) pp. xv to xvii.
  81. ^ Richard M. Gamble, "Savior Nation: Woodrow Wilson and the Gospel of Service," Humanitas 14#1 1(2001) pp 4+.
  82. ^ F. M. Carroll, "Wilsonian Diplomacy: Friends and Enemies." Canadian Review of American Studies 19.2 (1988): 211-226.
  83. ^ Tony Smith, America's Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2012) pp 60-83.
  84. ^ John L. Snell, "Wilson on Germany and the fourteen points." Journal of Modern History 26.4 (1954): 364-369 online.
  85. ^ Irwin Unger, These United States (2007) 561.
  86. ^ "Wilson's Fourteen Points, 1918 - 1914–1920 - Milestones - Office of the Historian". history.state.gov. Retrieved 2022-01-06.
  87. ^ Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (2007) pp 83–97.
  88. ^ John A. Thompson, "Wilsonianism: the dynamics of a conflicted concept." International Affairs 86.1 (2010): 27-47.
  89. ^ David Fromkin, "What Is Wilsonianism?" World Policy Journal 11.1 (1994): 100-111 online.
  90. ^ Amos Perlmutter, Making the world safe for democracy: A century of Wilsonianism and its totalitarian challengers (U of North Carolina Press, 1997).
  91. ^ Trygve Throntveit, "Wilsonianism." in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History (2019).
  92. ^ "Woodrow Wilson and foreign policy". EDSITEment. National Endowment for the Humanities.
  93. ^ a b c Anne-Marie Slaughter, "Wilsonianism in the Twenty-first Century" in The Crisis of American Foreign Policy: Wilsonianism in the Twenty-first Century (edited by G. John Ikenberry, Thomas J. Knock, Anne Marie-Slaughter & Tony Smith: Princeton UP, 2009), pp. 94-96.
  94. ^ Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (2007), pp. 41-42.
  95. ^ "Woodrow Wilson, Impact and Legacy". Miller Center. 4 October 2016. Retrieved 2018-01-07.
  96. ^ a b c Lloyd E. Ambrosius (2002). Wilsonianism: Woodrow Wilson and His Legacy in American Foreign Relations. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 42–51.
  97. ^ Nicholas J. Cull, "Public Diplomacy Before Gullion: The Evolution of a Phrase" in Nancy Snow & Philip M. Taylor, eds. Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy (Routledge: 2009).
  98. ^ Joel Ira Holwitt, "Execute Against Japan": The U.S. Decision to Conduct Unrestricted Submarine Warfare (Texas A&M Press, 2008), pp. 16-17.
  99. ^ David M. Kennedy, "What 'W' Owes to 'WW': President Bush May Not Even Know It, but He Can Trace His View of the World to Woodrow Wilson, Who Defined a Diplomatic Destiny for America That We Can't Escape." The Atlantic Monthly Vol: 295. Issue: 2. (March 2005) pp 36+.
  100. ^ For the presidential implementation of Wilsonianism see Tony Smith, America's Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy (2nd ed. Princeton University Press, 2012).
  101. ^ Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence, (2001)
  102. ^ Lloyd E. Ambrosius, "Woodrow Wilson and World War I." in A Companion to American Foreign Relations (2006): 149-167.
  103. ^ Ambrosius, p. 149-150.
  104. ^ David G. Haglund, and Deanna Soloninka. "Woodrow Wilson Still Fuels Debate on 'Who Lost Russia?'." Orbis 60.3 (2016): 433-452.
  105. ^ Lloyd E. Ambrosius, "Woodrow Wilson and George W. Bush: Historical comparisons of ends and means in their foreign policies." Diplomatic History 30.3 (2006): 509-543.
  106. ^ Bruce S. Thornton, "The Arab Spring implodes: we failed to understand the wave of change--or to shape it--because we failed to understand Islamism." Hoover Digest 2 (2014): 130-138.
  107. ^ Tony Smith, “Wilsonianism after Iraq." in The Crisis of American Foreign Policy (Princeton University Press, 2008) pp. 53-88.

Sources edit

The source for 1919 is US State Department, Office of the Historian, "Home Milestones 1914-1920 The Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles" (2017), a U.S. government document that is not copyright.

Further reading edit

 

General edit

  • Calhoun, Frederick S. Power and Principle: Armed Intervention in wilsonion Foreign Policy (Kent State UP, 1986).
  • Clements, Kendrick A. (1992). The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson. University Press of Kansas.; covers all major foreign policy issues
  • Combs, Jerald A. The History of American Foreign Policy: From 1895 (Routledge, 2017), textbook
  • Gardner, Lloyd C. Safe for democracy: the Anglo-American response to revolution, 1913-1923 (Oxford UP, 1984).
  • Hannigan, Robert E. The New World Power (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. excerpt
  • Herring, George C. From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776 (Oxford UP, 2008) online, textbook
  • Link, Arthur S. Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910–1917 (1954), major scholarly survey online; brief summary of Link biography vol 2-3-4-5
  • Link, Arthur S. Wilson the Diplomatist: A Look at His Major Foreign Policies (1957) online
  • Link, Arthur S. ed. Woodrow Wilson and a Revolutionary World, 1913–1921 (1982). essays by 7 scholars online
  • Perkins, Bradford. The Great Rapprochement: England and the United States, 1895–1914 (1968). online
  • Reed, James. The Missionary Mind and American East Asian Policy, 1911–1915 (Harvard UP, 1983).
  • Robinson, Edgar Eugene, and Victor J. West. The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson, 1913-1917 online useful survey with many copies of primary sources.
  • Smith, Tony. America's mission call in the United States and the worldwide struggle for democracy in the twentieth century (1994).
  • Wells, Samuel F. (1972). "New Perspectives on Wilsonian Diplomacy: The Secular Evangelism of American Political Economy". Perspectives in American History. 6: 389–419.

World War I edit

  • Ambrosius, Lloyd E. "Woodrow Wilson and World War I" in A Companion to American Foreign Relations, edited by Robert D. Schulzinger. (2003).
  • Bruce, Robert B. A Fraternity of Arms: America and France in the Great War (UP of Kansas. 2003).
  • Clarke, Michael. "Primacy Unrequited: American Grand Strategy Under Wilson." in American Grand Strategy and National Security (Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2021) pp. 117–150.
  • Clements, Kendrick A. (2004). "Woodrow Wilson and World War I". Presidential Studies Quarterly. 34: 62–82. doi:10.1111/j.1741-5705.2004.00035.x.
  • Cooper, Jr., John Milton. The Vanity of Power: American Isolationism and the First World War 1914-1917 (Greenwood, 1969). online
  • Dayer, Roberta A. (1976). "Strange Bedfellows: J. P. Morgan & Co., Whitehall and the Wilson Administration During World War I". Business History. 18 (2): 127–151. doi:10.1080/00076797600000014.
  • Doenecke, Justus D. (2013). "Neutrality Policy and the Decision for War". A Companion to Woodrow Wilson. pp. 241–269. doi:10.1002/9781118445693.ch13. ISBN 9781118445693.
  • Doenecke, Justus D. Nothing less than war: a new history of America's entry into World War I (UP of Kentucky, 2011).
  • Doerries, Reinhard R. Imperial Challenge: Ambassador Count Bernstorff and German-American Relations, 1908-1917 (1989).
  • Epstein, Katherine C. “The Conundrum of American Power in the Age of World War I,” Modern American History (2019): 1-21.
  • Esposito, David M. The Legacy of Woodrow Wilson: American War Aims in World War I. (1996).
  • Ferns, Nicholas (2013). "Loyal Advisor? Colonel Edward House's Confidential Trips to Europe, 1913–1917". Diplomacy & Statecraft. 24 (3): 365–382. doi:10.1080/09592296.2013.817926. S2CID 159469024.
  • Flanagan, Jason C. "Woodrow Wilson's" Rhetorical Restructuring": The Transformation of the American Self and the Construction of the German Enemy." Rhetoric & Public Affairs 7.2 (2004): 115-148. online[dead link]
  • Floyd, Ryan. Abandoning American Neutrality: Woodrow Wilson and the Beginning of the Great War, August 1914–December 1915 (Springer, 2013).
  • Gilbert, Charles. American financing of World War I (1970) online
  • Hannigan, Robert E. (2017). The Great War and American Foreign Policy, 1914-24. doi:10.9783/9780812293289. ISBN 9780812293289.
  • Horn, Martin. Britain, France, and the Financing of the First World War (2002), with details on US role
  • Kawamura, Noriko. Turbulence in the Pacific: Japanese-US Relations During World War I (Greenwood, 2000).
  • Kazin, Michael. War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918 (2017).
  • Kennedy, Ross A. "Wilson's Wartime Diplomacy: The United States and the First World War, 1914–1918." in A Companion to US Foreign Relations: Colonial Era to the Present (2020): 304–324.
  • Kennedy, Ross A. (2001). "Woodrow Wilson, World War I, and American National Security". Diplomatic History. 25: 1–32. doi:10.1111/0145-2096.00247.
  • Kernek, Sterling J. (1975). "Distractions of Peace during War: The Lloyd George Government's Reactions to Woodrow Wilson, December, 1916-November, 1918". Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. 65 (2): 1–117. doi:10.2307/1006183. JSTOR 1006183.
  • Levin Jr., N. Gordon. Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and Revolution (Oxford UP, 1968), New Left approach.
  • McAvoy, Shawn (2021). "'We should not expect great benefit from America': Japanese Expansion and the Breakdown of Communication within the Wilson Administration in 1914". Journal of Asia Pacific Studies. 6 (2): 163–174. EBSCOhost 152071887.
  • May, Ernest R. The World War and American isolation : 1914-1917 (1959) online, a major scholarly study
  • Mayer, Arno J. Wilson vs. Lenin: Political Origins of the New Diplomacy 1917-1918 (1969)
  • Safford, Jeffrey J. Wilsonian Maritime Diplomacy, 1913–1921. 1978.
  • Smith, Daniel M. The Great Departure: The United States in World War I, 1914-1920 (1965).
  • Startt, James D. Woodrow Wilson, the Great War, and the Fourth Estate (Texas A&M UP, 2017) 420 pp.
  • Stevenson, David. The First World War and International Politics (1991), Covers the diplomacy of all the major powers.
  • Throntveit, Trygve (2017). Power without Victory. doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226460079.001.0001. ISBN 9780226459905.
  • Trask, David F. The United States in the Supreme War Council: American War Aims and Inter-Allied Strategy, 1917-1918 (1961)
  • Tooze, Adam. The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931 (2014) audio; emphasis on economics
  • Tucker, Robert W. Woodrow Wilson and the Great War: Reconsidering America’s Neutrality (U of Virginia Press, 2007).
  • Venzon, Anne ed. The United States in the First World War: An Encyclopedia (1995), Very thorough coverage.
  • Walworth, Arthur. America's moment, 1918: American diplomacy at the end of World War I (1977) online
  • Woodward, David R. Trial by Friendship: Anglo-American Relations, 1917–1918 (1993).
  • Wright, Esmond (March 1960). "The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson: A Re-Assessment. Part 1: Woodrow Wilson and the First World War". History Today. 10 (3): 149–157.
  • Young, Ernest William. The Wilson Administration and the Great War (1922) online edition
  • Zahniser, Marvin R. Uncertain Friendship: American-French diplomatic relations through the Cold War (1975). pp 195–229.
  • Ferguson, Niall (9 April 2021). "All the difference: The peacemaking initiative that failed, at vast cost". Times Literary Supplement. No. 6158. pp. 23–26. Gale A658753511.; also C-SPAN interview;

Latin America edit

Further information: Mexican Revolution § International dimensions
  • Baker, George W. "The Wilson Administration and Nicaragua, 1913–1921." The Americas 22.4 1966): 339–376.
  • Bemis, Samuel Flagg. The Latin American Policy of the United States. (1943) pp 168–201 online
  • Boghardt, Thomas. The Zimmermann telegram: intelligence, diplomacy, and America's entry into World War I (Naval Institute Press, 2012).
  • De Quesada, Alejandro. The Hunt for Pancho Villa: The Columbus Raid and Pershing’s Punitive Expedition 1916–17 (Bloomsbury, 2012).
  • Gardner, Lloyd C. Safe for democracy: the Anglo-American response to revolution, 1913-1923 (Oxford UP, 1984).
  • Gilderhus, Mark T. Diplomacy and Revolution: US-Mexican Relations under Wilson and Carranza (1977). online
  • Haley, P. Edward. Revolution and Intervention: The Diplomacy of Taft and Wilson with Mexico, 1910-1917 (MIT Press, 1970).
  • Hannigan, Robert E. The New World Power (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. excerpt
  • Katz, Friedrich. The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution (1981). online
  • McPherson, Alan. A Short History of US Interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean(John Wiley & Sons, 2016).
  • Neagle, Michael E. "A Bandit Worth Hunting: Pancho Villa and America’s War on Terror in Mexico, 1916-1917." Terrorism and Political Violence 33.7 (2021): 1492–1510.
  • Quirk, Robert E. An affair of honor: Woodrow Wilson and the occupation of Veracruz (1962). on Mexico online
  • Sandos, James A. "Pancho Villa and American Security: Woodrow Wilson's Mexican Diplomacy Reconsidered" Journal of Latin American Studies 13#2 (1981): 293–311. online
  • Tuchman, Barbara W. (1985). The Zimmermann Telegram. ISBN 0-345-32425-0.
    • Sherman, David. "Barbara Tuchman’s The Zimmermann Telegram: secrecy, memory, and history." Journal of Intelligence History 19.2 (2020): 125–148.

Biographical edit

  • Ambrosius, Lloyd E. (2006). "Woodrow Wilson and George W. Bush: Historical Comparisons of Ends and Means in Their Foreign Policies". Diplomatic History. 30 (3): 509–543. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7709.2006.00563.x.
  • Clements, Kendrick A. Woodrow Wilson: World Statesman (1987) 288pp; major scholarly biography excerpt
  • Clements, Kendrick A. William Jennings Bryan, missionary isolationist (U of Tennessee Press, 1982) online; focus on foreign policy.
  • Cooper, John Milton. Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (2009) online; major scholarly biography
  • Doerries, Reinhard R. Imperial Challenge: Ambassador Count Bernstorff and German-American Relations, 1908-1917 (1989)
  • Ferns, Nicholas (September 2013). "Loyal Advisor? Colonel Edward House's Confidential Trips to Europe, 1913–1917". Diplomacy & Statecraft. 24 (3): 365–382. doi:10.1080/09592296.2013.817926. S2CID 159469024.
  • Fowler, Wilton Bonham (1966). Sir William Wiseman and the Anglo-American war partnership, 1917-1918 (Thesis). OCLC 51693434. ProQuest 302236948.
  • Graebner. Norman A. ed An Uncertain Tradition: American Secretaries of State in the Twentieth Century (1961) covers Bryan (pp 79–100) and Lansing (pp 101–127) online.
  • Heckscher, August (1991). Woodrow Wilson. Easton Press. online
  • Hodgson, Godfrey. Woodrow Wilson's Right Hand: The Life of Colonel Edward M. House. (2006); short popular biography online
  • Lazo, Dimitri D. "A question of Loyalty: Robert Lansing and the Treaty of Versailles." Diplomatic History 9.1 (1985): 35–53.
  • Link, Arthur Stanley. Wilson. online
    • Wilson: The New Freedom vol 2 (1956)
    • Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality: 1914–1915 vol 3 (1960)
    • Wilson: Confusions and Crises: 1915–1916 vol 4 (1964)
    • Wilson: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace: 1916–1917 vol 5 (1965)
  • Neu, Charles E. Colonel House: A Biography of Woodrow Wilson's Silent Partner (Oxford UP, 2015), 699 pp
  • Neu, Charles E. The Wilson Circle: President Woodrow Wilson and His Advisers (2022)
  • O'Toole, Patricia. The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made (2018)
  • Walworth, Arthur (1958). Woodrow Wilson, Volume I, Volume II. Longmans, Green.; 904pp; full scale scholarly biography; winner of Pulitzer Prize; online free 2nd ed. 1965
  • Walworth, Arthur. Wilson and His Peacemakers: American Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (1986). online
  • Williams, Joyce Grigsby. Colonel House and Sir Edward Grey: A Study in Anglo-American Diplomacy (1984) online review
  • Woolsey, Lester H. "Robert Lansing's Record as Secretary of State." Current History 29.3 (1928): 384–396. online
 
Treaty was signed June 28, 1919

Peace treaties and Wilsonianism edit

  • Ambrosius, Lloyd E. Woodrow Wilson and the American diplomatic tradition: The treaty fight in perspective (Cambridge UP, 1990) online.
  • Ambrosius, Lloyd E. "Wilson, the Republicans, and French Security after World War I." Journal of American History (1972): 341–352. Online
  • Ambrosius, Lloyd E. "World War I and the Paradox of Wilsonianism." Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 17.1 (2018): 5-22.
  • Ambrosius, Lloyd E. Wilsonian Statecraft: Theory and Practice of Liberal Internationalism During World War I (1991).
  • Ambrosius, Lloyd E. (2002). Wilsonianism. doi:10.1057/9781403970046. ISBN 978-1-4039-6009-2.
  • Bacino, Leo C. Reconstructing Russia: US policy in revolutionary Russia, 1917-1922 (Kent State UP, 1999) online.
  • Bailey, Thomas A. Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace (1963) on Paris, 1919 online
  • Bailey, Thomas A. Woodrow Wilson and the great betrayal (1945) on Senate defeat. conclusion-ch 22; online
  • Birdsall, Paul Versailles Twenty Years After (1941).
  • Canfield, Leon H. The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson; prelude to a world in crisis (1966) online
  • Cooper, John Milton, Jr. Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations (2001). online
  • Curry, George. "Woodrow Wilson, Jan Smuts, and the Versailles Settlement." American Historical Review 66.4 (1961): 968–986. Online
  • Duff, John B. "The Versailles Treaty and the Irish-Americans." Journal of American History 55.3 (1968): 582–598. Online
  • Fifield, R H. Woodrow Wilson and the Far East: the diplomacy of the Shantung question (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1952).
  • Graebner, Norman A. and Edward M. Bennett, eds. The Versailles Treaty and Its Legacy: The Failure of the Wilsonian Vision (Cambridge UP, 2011).
  • Floto, Inga. Colonel House in Paris: A Study of American Policy at the Paris Peace Conference 1919 (Princeton UP, 1980).
  • Foglesong, David S. "Policies toward Russia and intervention in the Russian revolution." in A Companion to Woodrow Wilson (2013): 386–405.
  • Greene, Theodore, ed. Wilson At Versailles (1949) short excerpts from scholarly studies. online free
  • Ikenberry, G. John, Thomas J. Knock, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Tony Smith. The Crisis of American Foreign Policy: Wilsonianism in the Twenty-first Century (Princeton UP, 2009) online
  • Jianbiao, Ma. "“At Gethsemane”: The Shandong Decision at the Paris Peace Conference and Wilson's identity crisis." Chinese Studies in History 54.1 (2021): 45-62.
  • Kendall, Eric M. "Diverging Wilsonianisms: Liberal Internationalism, the Peace Movement, and the Ambiguous Legacy of Woodrow Wilson" (PhD. Dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 2012). online 354pp; with bibliography of primary and secondary sources pp 346–54.
  • Kennedy, Ross A. The will to believe: Woodrow Wilson, World War I, and America's strategy for peace and security (Kent State UP, 2008).
  • Knock, Thomas J. To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (Princeton UP, 1992). online
  • Macmillan, Margaret. Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (2001). online
  • Menchik, Jeremy. "Woodrow Wilson and the Spirit of Liberal Internationalism." Politics, Religion & Ideology (2021): 1-23.
  • Perlmutter, Amos. Making the world safe for democracy : a century of Wilsonianism and its totalitarian challengers (1997) online
  • Pierce, Anne R. Woodrow Wilson & Harry Truman: Mission and Power in American Foreign Policy (Routledge, 2017).
  • Powaski, Ronald E. (2017). "Woodrow Wilson Versus Henry Cabot Lodge: The Battle over the League of Nations, 1918–1920". American Presidential Statecraft. pp. 67–111. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-50457-5_3. ISBN 978-3-319-50456-8.
  • Roberts, Priscilla. "Wilson, Europe's Colonial Empires," in A Companion to Woodrow Wilson (2013): 492+ online.
  • Smith, Tony. Why Wilson Matters: The Origin of American Liberal Internationalism and Its Crisis Today (Princeton University Press, 2017)
  • Smith, Tony. America's Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy (2nd ed. Princeton UP, 2012).
  • Stone, Ralph A. ed. Wilson and the League of Nations: why America's rejection? (1967) short excerpts from 15 historians.
  • Stone, Ralph A. The irreconcilables; the fight against the League of Nations (1970) online
  • Tillman, Seth P. Anglo-American relations at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (https://archive.org/details/angloamericanrel0000till) [1961 online]
  • Walworth, Arthur. Wilson and his Peacemakers: American Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (WW Norton, 1986) online
  • Wolff, Larry. Woodrow Wilson and the Reimagining of Eastern Europe (Stanford University Press, 2020) online review.
  • Wright, Esmond. "The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson: A Re-Assessment. Part 2: Wilson and the Dream of Reason" History Today (Apr 1960) 19#4 pp 223–231

Historiography edit

  • Ambrosius, Lloyd E. "Woodrow Wilson and Wilsonianism a Century Later." (2020). online
  • Cooper, John Milton. "The World War and American Memory" Diplomatic History (2014) 38#4 pp 727–736. online.
  • Doenecke, Justus D. "American Diplomacy, Politics, Military Strategy, and Opinion‐Making, 1914–18: Recent Research and Fresh Assignments." Historian 80.3 (2018): 509–532.
  • Doenecke, Justus D. The Literature of Isolationism: A Guide to Non-Interventionist Scholarship, 1930-1972 (R. Myles, 1972).
  • Doenecke, Justus D. Nothing Less Than War: A New History of America's Entry into World War I (2014)
  • Fordham, Benjamin O. "Revisionism reconsidered: exports and American intervention in World War I." International Organization 61#2 (2007): 277–310.
  • Gerwarth, Robert. "The Sky beyond Versailles: The Paris Peace Treaties in Recent Historiography." Journal of Modern History 93.4 (2021): 896-930.
  • Herring, Pendleton (1974). "Woodrow Wilson—Then and Now". PS: Political Science & Politics. 7 (3): 256–259. doi:10.1017/S1049096500011422. S2CID 155226093.
  • Keene, Jennifer D. (2016). "Remembering the "Forgotten War": American Historiography on World War I". Historian. 78 (3): 439–468. doi:10.1111/hisn.12245. S2CID 151761088.
  • Kennedy, Ross A. ed. A Companion to Woodrow Wilson (2013) online[permanent dead link] coverage of major scholarly studies by experts
  • McKillen, Elizabeth. "Integrating labor into the narrative of Wilsonian internationalism: A literature review." Diplomatic History 34.4 (2010): 643–662.
  • Neiberg, Michael S. (2018). "American Entry into the First World War as an Historiographical Problem". The Myriad Legacies of 1917. pp. 35–54. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-73685-3_3. ISBN 978-3-319-73684-6.
  • Saunders, Robert M. "History, Health and Herons: The Historiography of Woodrow Wilson's Personality and Decision-Making." Presidential Studies Quarterly (1994): 57–77. in JSTOR
  • Sharp, Alan. Versailles 1919: A Centennial Perspective (Haus Publishing, 2018).
  • Showalter, Dennis. “The United States in the Great War: A Historiography.” OAH Magazine of History 17#1 (2002), pp. 5–13, online
  • Steigerwald, David. "The Reclamation of Woodrow Wilson?" Diplomatic History 23.1 (1999): 79–99. pro-Wilson online
  • Thompson, J. A. (1985). "Woodrow Wilson and World War I: A Reappraisal". Journal of American Studies. 19 (3): 325–348. doi:10.1017/S0021875800015310. S2CID 145071620.
  • Woodward. David. America and World War I: A Selected Annotated Bibliography of English Language Sources (2nd ed 2007) excerpt
  • Zelikow, Philip, Niall Ferguson, Francis J. Gavin, Anne Karalekas, Daniel Sargent. "Forum 31 on the Importance of the Scholarship of Ernest May" H-DIPLO Dec. 17, 2021 online

Primary sources and year books edit

  • Baker, Ray Stannard ed. The public papers of Woodrow Wilson (8 vol 1927-39). much less complete than Link edition, but more widely available in libraries. partly online; no ccharge to borrow
  • Link. Arthur C., ed. The Papers of Woodrow Wilson. In 69 volumes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (1966–1994); a complete collection of Wilson's writing plus important letters written to him, plus detailed historical explanation.
  • Robinson, Edgar Eugene, and Victor J. West. The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson, 1913-1917 online useful survey with copies and extracts from 90 primary sources
  • Seymour, Charles, ed. The intimate papers of Colonel House (4 vols., 1928) online
  • Stark, Matthew J. "Wilson and the United States Entry into the Great War" OAH Magazine of History (2002) 17#1 pp. 40–47 lesson plan and primary sources for school projects online
  • New International Year Book 1913 (1914) Comprehensive coverage of national and world affairs; strong on economics; 867pp
  • New International Year Book 1914 (1915), Comprehensive coverage of national and world affairs, 913pp
  • New International Year Book 1915 (1916), Comprehensive coverage of national and world affairs, 791pp
  • New International Year Book 1916 (1917), Comprehensive coverage of national and world affairs, 938pp
  • New International Year Book 1917 (1918), Comprehensive coverage of national and world affairs, 904 pp
  • New International Year Book 1918 (1919), 904 pp
  • New International Year Book 1919 (1920), 744pp
  • New International Year Book 1920 (1921), 844 pp
  • New International Year Book 1921 (1922), 848 pp

External links edit

  • "Woodrow Wilson and Foreign Policy"-- Secondary school lesson plans from EDSITEment! program of National Endowment for the Humanities

February 15, 2024
foreign, policy, woodrow, wilson, administration, foreign, policy, under, presidency, woodrow, wilson, deals, with, american, diplomacy, political, economic, military, cultural, relationships, with, rest, world, from, 1913, 1921, although, wilson, experience, . The foreign policy under the presidency of Woodrow Wilson deals with American diplomacy and political economic military and cultural relationships with the rest of the world from 1913 to 1921 Although Wilson had no experience in foreign policy he made all the major decisions usually with the top advisor Edward M House His foreign policy was based on his messianic philosophical belief that America had the utmost obligation to spread its principles while reflecting the truisms of American thought 1 Wilson executed the Democratic Party foreign policy which since 1900 had according to Arthur S Link consistently condemned militarism imperialism and interventionism in foreign policy They instead advocated world involvement along liberal internationalist lines Wilson s appointment of William Jennings Bryan as Secretary of State indicated a new departure for Bryan had long been the leading opponent of imperialism and militarism and a pioneer in the world peace movement 2 The main foreign policy issues Wilson faced were civil war in neighboring Mexico keeping out of World War I and protecting American neutral rights deciding to enter and fight in 1917 and reorganizing world affairs with peace treaties and a League of Nations in 1919 Wilson had a physical collapse in late 1919 that left him too handicapped to closely supervise foreign or domestic policy Contents 1 Leadership 2 Latin America 2 1 Mexico 2 2 Nicaragua 3 Asia 3 1 China 3 2 Japan 3 3 Philippines 4 Russia and its Revolution 5 Entry into World War 5 1 Brokering peace 5 2 German submarine warfare against Britain 5 3 Public opinion 5 4 Economic factors 5 5 Austria Hungary and Ottoman Empire 6 The Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles 6 1 Treaty of Versailles 6 2 Senate rejection 7 Idealism moralism and Wilsonianism 7 1 Missionary diplomacy 7 2 Fourteen Points 7 3 Principles of Wilsonianism 7 4 Impact of Wilsonianism 7 5 Alternative interpretations 8 See also 9 Notes 10 Sources 11 Further reading 11 1 General 11 2 World War I 11 3 Latin America 11 4 Biographical 11 5 Peace treaties and Wilsonianism 11 6 Historiography 11 7 Primary sources and year books 12 External linksLeadership editFor advice and trouble shooting in foreign policy Wilson relied heavily on his trusted friend Colonel Edward M House Wilson came to distrust House s independence in 1919 and ended all contact 3 After winning the presidency in the 1912 election Wilson had no alternative choice for the premier cabinet position of Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan had long been the dominant leader of the Democratic Party and had been essential to Wilson s presidential nomination Nevertheless the president elect was worried about Bryan s radical reputation and especially about his independent base 4 5 Bryan had travelled the world giving speeches promoting peace and meeting with world leaders Wilson had no such experience he had studied English constitutional history in depth but not its diplomatic history He had not travelled widely outside the U S and Britain Bryan proved very useful in helping pass major progressive domestic reforms through Congress especially the Federal Reserve law In foreign policy they worked together well at first Bryan handled routine work and Wilson made the major decisions Since Bryan had such a strong base in the Democratic Party Wilson kept him informed and allowed Bryan to pursue his own peace priority of drafting 30 treaties with other countries that required both signatories to submit all disputes to an investigative tribunal However he and Wilson clashed over U S neutrality in wartime Bryan resigned in June 1915 after Wilson sent to Berlin a note of protest in response to the Sinking of the RMS Lusitania a British passenger liner by a German U boat with the death of 128 Americans Bryan thought they travelled at their own risk into a war zone while Wilson considered it was a violation of the laws of war to sink a passenger ship without giving the passengers a chance to reach the lifeboats 6 Wilson selected Robert Lansing to replace Bryan because he was proficient in routine work and passive in ideas and initiative Unlike Bryan he lacked a political base The result was that Wilson could be and indeed actually was freer to personally make all major foreign policy decisions John Milton Cooper concludes that it was one of Wilson s worst mistakes as president 7 Wilson told Colonel House that as president he would practically be his own Secretary of State and Lansing would not be troublesome by uprooting or injecting his own views 8 Lansing advocated benevolent neutrality at the start of the war but shifted away from the ideal after increasing interference and violation of the rights of neutrals by Great Britain 9 According to Lester H Woolsey a top aide in the State Department and later Lansing s law partner Lansing by mid 1915 had very strong views against Germany He kept these to himself because Wilson disagreed Lansing expressed his views by manipulating the work of the State Department to minimize conflict with Britain and maximize public awareness of Germany s faults Woolsey states Although the President cherished the hope that the United States would not be drawn into the war and while this was the belief of many officials Mr Lansing early in July 1915 came to the conclusion that the German ambition for world domination was the real menace of the war particularly to democratic institutions In order to block this German ambition he believed that the progress of the war would eventually disclose to the American people the purposes of the German Government that German activities in the United States and in Latin America should be carefully investigated and frustrated that the American republics to the south should be weaned from the German influences that friendly relations with Mexico should be maintained even to the extent of recognizing the Carranza faction that the Danish West Indies should be acquired in order to remove the possibility of Germany s obtaining a foothold in the Caribbean by conquest of Denmark or otherwise that the United States should enter the war if it should appear that Germany would become the victor and that American public opinion must be awakened in preparation for this contingency This outline of Mr Lansing s views explains why the Lusitania dispute was not brought to the point of a break It also explains why though Americans were incensed at the British interference with commerce the controversy was kept within the arena of debate 10 The two key Allied ambassadors were Cecil Spring Rice for Britain and Jean Jules Jusserand for France The latter was highly successful achieving popularity with Americans from many backgrounds and perspectives 11 However Spring Rice was a close friend of Wilson s enemies Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge and never was comfortable in the Wilsonian milieu Wilson distrusted Spring Rice as incompetent and a mischief maker House solved the problem by a close friendship with Sir William Wiseman a British banker who took charge of financial negotiations as well as intelligence operations 12 Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff was the German ambassador suave and sophisticated He tried and failed to get Berlin to accept Wilson s proposals for peace plans Meanwhile he was organizing propaganda activities However after the war he denied any involvement with sabotage activities to disrupt the shipment of American supplies to the Allies such as the monster Black Tom explosion in 1916 13 14 15 Latin America editThe Panama Canal opened in 1914 just after the start of World War 1 It fulfilled the long term dream of building a canal across Central America and making possible quick movement between the Atlantic and the Pacific For the US Navy the canal allowed quick movement of fleets between the Pacific and the Atlantic Economically it opened new opportunities to the shippers to reach the Far East Britain insisted that treaty agreements meant its ships would pay the same toll as American ships and Congress agreed to the same tolls for every nation 16 To further protect the Canal in 1917 the US purchased the strategically located Danish West Indies for 25 million in gold from Denmark The territory was renamed the United States Virgin Islands Its population of 27 000 was over 90 per cent Black its economy was based on sugar 17 Mexico edit Main articles United States involvement in the Mexican Revolution and Mexican Revolution Washington had long recognized the dictatorial government of Porfirio Diaz As Diaz approached eighty years old he announced he was not going to run in the scheduled 1910 elections This set off a flurry of political activity about presidential succession Washington wanted any new president to continue Diaz s policies that had been favorable to American mining and oil interests and produced stability domestically and internationally However Diaz suddenly reneged on his promise not to run exiled General Bernardo Reyes the most viable candidate He had the most popular opposition candidate Francisco I Madero jailed After the rigged 1910 reelection of Diaz political unrest became open rebellion 18 nbsp Uncle Sam saying I ve had about enough of this as a small and barefoot Pancho Villa smoking gun in hand runs away In 1916 Wilson sent a punitive expedition to capture Villa after he murdered Americans in New Mexico It never caught Villa but did anger Mexicans After his Federal Army failed to suppress the insurgents Diaz resigned and went into exile An interim government was installed and new elections were held in October 1911 These were won by Madero Initially Washington was optimistic about Madero He had disbanded the rebel forces that had forced Diaz to resign retain the Federal Army and appeared to be open to friendly policies However the U S began to sour on the relationship with Madero and began actively working with opponents to the regime The new president Victoriano Huerta won recognition from all major countries except the U S Wilson who took office shortly after Madero s assassination rejected the legitimacy of Huerta s government of butchers and demanded that Mexico hold democratic elections to replace him 19 In the Tampico Affair of April 9 1914 nine American sailors were seized for about an hour by Huerta s soldiers The local commander apologized and released the sailors but refused the demand of the American admiral to salute the U S flag and punish the arrested officer The conflict escalated with Washington s approval and the U S Navy seized Veracruz Some 170 Mexican soldiers and an unknown number of Mexican civilians were killed in the takeover as well as 22 Americans 20 Pancho Villa 1878 1923 a local bandit who built up a regional base became a major national figure when he led anti Huerta forces in the Constitutionalist Army 1913 14 At the height of his power and popularity in late 1914 and early 1915 Washington considered recognizing him as Mexico s legitimate authority However Villa was decisively defeated by Constitutionalist General Alvaro Obregon in summer 1915 and the U S aided Constitutionalist leader Venustiano Carranza directly against Villa Villa much weakened conducted a raid on the small border village of Columbus New Mexico killing 18 Americans His goal was to goad Wilson into a war with Carranza 21 Instead Wilson sent the Army on a limited punitive expedition led by General John J Pershing deep into Mexico It failed to capture Villa 22 Mexican public and elite opinion turned strongly against the U S and war was growing more and more likely Wilson realized that escalating tensions with Germany were much more important and recalled the invasion force in early 1917 as war with Germany approached 23 nbsp Germany offers 3 southwestern states to Mexico if it joins a war against USA Editorial cartoon from Dallas Morning News 2 March 1917Meanwhile Germany was trying to divert American attention from Europe by sparking a war It sent Mexico the Zimmermann Telegram in January 1917 offering a military alliance to reclaim lands the United States had forcibly taken via conquest in the Mexican American War British intelligence intercepted the message and revealed it to the American government when tensions were high Wilson released it to the press escalating demands for American war against Germany The Mexican government rejected the proposal after its military warned of massive defeat if they attempted to follow through with the plan Mexico stayed neutral selling large amounts of oil to Britain for the Royal Navy 24 Nicaragua edit Further information Nicaragua United States relations According to Benjamin Harrison Wilson was committed in Latin America to the fostering of democracy and stable governments as well as fair economic policies 25 Wilson was largely frustrated by the chaotic situation in Nicaragua Adolfo Diaz won the presidency in 1911 and replaced European financing with loans from New York banks Facing a Liberal rebellion he called on the United States for protection and Wilson obliged Nicaragua assumed a quasi protectorate status under the 1916 Bryan Chamorro Treaty Under the treaty Nicaragua promised it would not declare war on anyone would not grant territorial concessions and would not contract outside debts without Washington s approval It permitted the US to build a naval base at Fonseca Bay and gave the US the sole option to construct and control an inter oceanic canal The US had no intention of building a canal but one of the guarantee that no other nation could do so The US paid Nicaragua 3 million for this option The original draft also asserted the duty of the United States to intervene militarily in case of domestic turmoil but that provision was rejected by Democrats in the Senate 26 27 The treaty was extremely unpopular in the Caribbean region but it was observed by both sides until 1933 Diaz was now able to serve out his entire term he retired in 1917 and moved to the United States though he briefly returned to power in 1926 1929 According to George Baker the main effect of the treaty was a higher degree of both political and financial stability in Nicaragua 28 President Herbert Hoover 1929 1933 opposed the relationship Finally in 1933 President Franklin D Roosevelt invoked his new Good Neighbor policy to end American intervention 29 Asia edit nbsp China unprepared to answer 21 demands by Japan in 1915 Bradley in Chicago Daily News March 13 1915China edit Main article History of China United States relations to 1948 After the Xinhai Revolution overthrew the emperor in 1911 The Taft administration recognized the new Government of the Chinese Republic as the legitimate government of China In practice a number of powerful regional warlords were in control and the central government handled foreign policy and little else The Twenty One Demands were a set of secret demands made in 1915 by Japan to Yuan Shikai the general who served as president of the Republic of China The demands would greatly extend Japanese control Japan would keep the former German concessions it had conquered at the start of World War I in 1914 Japan would be stronger in Manchuria and South Mongolia It would have an expanded role in railways The most extreme demands the fifth set would gave Japan a decisive voice in China s finance policing and government affairs Indeed they would make China in effect a protectorate of Japan and thereby reduce Western influence Japan was in a strong position as the Western powers were in a stalemated war with Germany Britain and Japan had a military alliance since 1902 and in 1914 London had asked Tokyo to enter the war Beijing published the secret demands and appealed to Washington and London They were sympathetic and pressured Tokyo In the final 1916 settlement Japan gave up its fifth set of demands It gained a little in China but lost a great deal of prestige in Washington and London 30 E T Williams the senior expert on the Far East in the State Department argued in January 1915 Our present commercial interests in Japan are greater than those in China but the look ahead shows our interest to be a strong and independent China rather than one held in subjection by Japan China has certain claims upon our sympathy If we do not recognize them we are in danger of losing our influence in the Far East and of adding to the dangers of the situation 31 Wilson has been criticized for accepting at the Paris Peace Conference the transfer of the German concession in Shandong to Japan instead of allowing China to reclaim it 32 However Bruce Elleman has argued that Wilson did not betray China because his action was in accord with widely recognized treaties which China had signed with Japan during the war Wilson tried to get Japan to promise to return the concessions in 1922 but the Chinese delegation rejected that compromise The result in China was the growth of intense nationalism characterized by the May Fourth Movement and the tendency of intellectuals and activists in the 1920s to look to Moscow for leadership 33 30 Wilson was in touch with several former Princeton students who were missionaries in China and he strongly endorsed their work In 1916 he told a delegation of ministers This is the most amazing and inspiring vision this vision of that great sleeping nation suddenly awakened by the voice of Christ Could there be any greater contribution to the future momentum of the moral forces of the world than could be made by quickening the force which is being set of foot in China China is at present inchoate as a nation it is a congeries of parts in each of which there is energy but which are unbound in any essential and active unit and just as soon as unity comes its power will come in the world 34 Japan edit In 1913 California enacted the California Alien Land Law of 1913 to exclude resident Japanese non citizens from owning any land in the state Tokyo protested strongly and Wilson sent Bryan to California to mediate Bryan was unable to get California to relax the restrictions and Wilson accepted the law even though it violated a 1911 treaty with Japan The law bred resentment in Japan which lingered into the 1920s and 1930s 35 36 nbsp Viscount Ishii Kikujirō Japanese special envoy with Secretary of State Robert Lansing in Washington in 1917 for the signing of the Lansing Ishii AgreementDuring World War I both nations fought on the Allied side With the cooperation of its ally Great Britain Japan s military took control of German bases in China and the Pacific and in 1919 after the war with U S approval was given a League of Nations mandate over the German islands north of the equator with Australia getting the rest The U S did not want any mandates 37 Japan s aggressive approach in its dealings with China however was a continual source of tension indeed eventually leading to World War II between the two nations Trouble arose between Japan on the one hand and China Britain and the U S on the other over Japan s Twenty One Demands made on China in 1915 These demands forced China to acknowledge Japanese possession of the former German holdings and its economic dominance of Manchuria and had the potential of turning China into a puppet state Washington expressed strongly negative reactions to Japan s rejection of the Open Door Policy In the Bryan Note issued by Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan on March 13 1915 the U S while affirming Japan s special interests in Manchuria Mongolia and Shandong expressed concern over further encroachments to Chinese sovereignty 38 In 1917 the Lansing Ishii Agreement was negotiated Secretary of State Robert Lansing specified American acceptance that Manchuria was under Japanese control while still nominally under Chinese sovereignty Japanese Foreign Minister Ishii Kikujiro noted Japanese agreement not to limit American commercial opportunities elsewhere in China The agreement also stated that neither would take advantage of the war in Europe to seek additional rights and privileges in Asia 39 At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 Japan insisted that Germany s concessions in China especially in the Shandong Peninsula be transferred to Japan President Woodrow Wilson fought vigorously against Japan s demands regarding China but backed down upon realizing the Japanese delegation had widespread support 40 In China there was outrage and anti Japanese sentiment escalated The May Fourth Movement emerged as a student demand for China s honor 41 In 1922 the U S brokered a solution of the Shandong Problem China was awarded nominal sovereignty over all of Shandong including the former German holdings while in practice Japan s economic dominance continued 42 Philippines edit Main article Insular Government of the Philippine Islands The Democratic party in the United States had strongly opposed acquisitions of the Philippines in the first place and increasingly became committed to independence Wilson himself was a conservative in the 1890s and supported McKinley s foreign policy and favored annexation of the Philippines 43 The election of a Democratic president and Congress in 1912 opened up opportunities and Wilson had changed He now wanted the islands to be governed by Filipinos until it became independent 44 He appointed Francis Burton Harrison as governor and Harrison replaced nearly all the mainlanders with Filipinos in the bureaucracy By 1921 of the 13 757 bureaucrats 13 143 were Filipinos they held 56 of the top 69 positions 45 Philippine nationalists led by Manuel L Quezon and Sergio Osmena enthusiastically endorsed the draft Jones Bill of 1912 which provided for Philippine independence after eight years but later changed their views opting for a bill which focused less on time than on the conditions of independence The nationalists demanded complete and absolute independence to be guaranteed by the United States since they feared that too rapid independence from American rule without such guarantees might cause the Philippines to fall into Japanese hands The Jones Bill was rewritten and passed a Congress controlled by Democrats in 1916 with a later date of independence 46 nbsp This poster advertises the passage of the Jones Law Wilson is third from the left The Jones Law or Philippine Autonomy Act replaced the Organic Act as the constitution for the territory Its preamble stated that the eventual independence of the Philippines would be American policy subject to the establishment of a stable government The law maintained an appointed governor general but established a bicameral Philippine Legislature and replaced the appointive Philippine Commission with an elected senate 47 Filipino activists suspended the independence campaign during the World War and supported the United States and the Allies of World War I against the German Empire After the war they resumed their independence drive with great vigour 48 In 1919 the Philippine Legislature passed a Declaration of Purposes which stated the inflexible desire of the Filipino people to be free and sovereign A Commission of Independence was created to study ways and means of attaining liberation ideal This commission recommended the sending of an independence mission to the United States The Declaration of Purposes referred to the Jones Law as a veritable pact or covenant between the American and Filipino peoples whereby the United States promised to recognize the independence of the Philippines as soon as a stable government should be established American Governor General Harrison had concurred in the report of the Philippine Legislature as to a stable government 49 50 Russia and its Revolution editFurther information Soviet Union United States relations Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War and Russian Revolution President Wilson believed that with the end of Tsarist rule the new country would eventually transition to a modern democracy after the end of the chaos of the Russian Civil War and that intervention against Soviet Russia would only turn the country against the United States He likewise publicly advocated a policy of noninterference in the war in the Fourteen Points although he argued that the Russia s prewar Polish territory should be ceded to the newly independent Second Polish Republic Additionally many of Wilson s political opponents in the United States including the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Henry Cabot Lodge believed that an independent Ukraine should be established Despite this the United States as a result of the fear of Japanese expansion into Russian held territory and their support for the Allied aligned Czech Legion sent a small number of troops to Northern Russia and Siberia The United States also provided indirect aid such as food and supplies to the White Army 51 52 At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 Wilson and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George despite the objections of French President Georges Clemenceau and Italian Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino pushed forward an idea to convene a summit at Prinkipo between the Bolsheviks and the White movement to form a common Russian delegation to the Conference The Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs under the leadership of Leon Trotsky and Georgy Chicherin received British and American envoys respectfully but had no intentions of agreeing to the deal due to their belief that the Conference was composed of an old capitalist order that would be swept away in a world revolution By 1921 after the Bolsheviks gained the upper hand in the Russian Civil War executed the Romanov imperial family repudiated the tsarist debt and called for a world revolution by the working class it was regarded as a pariah nation by most of the world 52 Beyond the Russian Civil War relations were also dogged by claims of American companies for compensation for the nationalized industries they had invested in 53 Famine and starvation raged in Russia and parts of Eastern Europe after the war A very large food relief operation centered mostly in Russia was primarily funded by the U S government as well as philanthropies and Britain and France The American Relief Administration 1919 1923 at first was under the direction of Herbert Hoover 54 55 Wilson had been reluctant to join but he sent two forces into Russia The American Expeditionary Force Siberia was a formation of the United States Army involved in the Russian Civil War in Vladivostok Russia from 1918 to 1920 The other force was the American Expeditionary Force North Russia a part of the larger Allied French and British North Russia Intervention under the command of British General Edmund Ironside The Siberian force was ostensibly designed to help the 40 000 men of the Czechoslovak Legion who were being held up by Bolshevik forces as they attempted to make their way along the Trans Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok and it was hoped eventually to the Western Front They had escaped from Russian POW camps and were headed to join the Allies on the Western Front The North Russia force had a mission of preventing the German army from seizing Allied munitions sent there before Russia dropped out of the war Neither force had an officially acknowledged combat mission Historians have speculated that Wilson shared the anti Bolshevik ambitions of the larger Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War 56 57 Entry into World War editMain article American entry into World War I nbsp President Wilson before Congress announcing the break in official relations with Germany on 3 February 1917Brokering peace edit From the outbreak of the war in 1914 until January 1917 Wilson s primary goal was using American neutrality to broker a peace conference that would end the war In the first two years neither side was interested in negotiations 58 However that changed in late 1916 when Philip D Zelikow argues both sides were ready for peace negotiations if Wilson would be the broker However Wilson waited too long failed to realize the importance of his financial power over Britain and put mistaken reliance on Colonel House and Secretary of State Robert Lansing who undermined his proposals by encouraging Britain to stall Zelikow emphasizes that German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg was seriously interested in peace but he had to fend off the demands of Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff who were taking dictatorial control of Germany Zelikow argues that when Wilson finally did make his peace proposal in January 1917 it was too little and too late and instead of peace the war escalated Hindenburg and Ludendorff had convinced the Kaiser that victory was at hand by using unrestricted submarine warfare and moving troops in from the Russian front to smash the French and British front lines 59 Wilson s decision to enter the war came in April 1917 more than two and a half years after the war began The main reasons were the German submarine campaign to sink American ships carrying supplies to Britain and his determination to make the world safe for democracy Joseph Siracusa argues that Wilson s own position evolved from 1914 to 1917 He finally decided that war was necessary because Germany threatened American global ideals of democracy and peace through militarism and Prussian autocracy Furthermore it was a threat to American commerce on the high seas and to American rights as a neutral 60 Public opinion elite opinion and Members of Congress gave Wilson strong support by April 1917 The U S took an independent role and did not have a formal alliance with Britain or France German submarine warfare against Britain edit With the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 the United States declared neutrality and worked to broker a peace It insisted on its neutral rights which included allowing private corporations and banks to sell supplies or loan money to either side With the tight British blockade there were almost no sales or loans to Germany only to the Allies Americans were shocked by the Rape of Belgium German Army atrocities against civilians in Belgium Britain was favored by elite WASP element Pro war forces were led by ex president Theodore Roosevelt who repeatedly denounced Wilson for timidity and cowardice Wilson insisted on neutrality denouncing both British and German violations The British seized American property the Germans seized American lives In 1915 a German U boat a kind of submarine torpedoed the unarmed British passenger liner RMS Lusitania It sank in 20 minutes killing 128 American civilians and over 1 000 Britons It was against the laws of war to sink any passenger ship without allowing the passengers to reach the life boats American opinion turned strongly against Germany as a bloodthirsty threat to civilization 61 Germany apologized and promised to stop attacks by its U boats Both sides rejected Wilson s repeated effors to negotiate an end to the war Berlin reversed course in early 1917 when it saw the opportunity to strangle Britain s food supply by unrestricted submarine warfare The Kaiser and Germany s real rulers the Army commanders realized it meant war with the United States but expected they could defeat the Allies before the Americans could play a major military role Germany started sinking American merchant ships in early 1917 Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war in April 1917 He neutralized the antiwar element by arguing this was a war with the main long term postwar goal of ending aggressive militarism and making the world safe for democracy 62 Public opinion edit Apart from White Anglo Saxon Protestant and Anglophile high society demanding a Special Relationship with the British Empire American public opinion in 1914 1916 reflected a strong desire to stay out of the war Support for American neutrality was particularly strong among those whom Wilson later demonised as Hyphenated Americans Irish Americans German Americans and Scandinavian Americans as well as among church leaders women and the rural white South 63 Due in large part to the anti German atrocity propaganda composed by British Intelligence at Wellington House and introduced into the American news media by Australian born Providence Journal editor John R Rathom pro Neutrality groups completely lost their broader influence By early 1917 most Americans had come to believe that Imperial Germany was the aggressor in Europe and the enemy of world peace 64 Economic factors edit While the country was at peace American banks made huge loans to the Entente powers which were used mainly to buy munitions raw materials and food from across the Atlantic Although Wilson made minimal preparations for the army before 1917 he did authorize a massive shipbuilding program for the United States Navy The president was narrowly re elected in 1916 on an anti war platform By 1917 with Belgium and Northern France occupied with Russia ending Tsarist rule and with the remaining Entente nations low on credit Germany appeared to have the upper hand in Europe 65 However the British economic embargo and naval blockade was causing shortages of fuel and food in Germany which then decided to resume unrestricted submarine warfare The aim was to break the transatlantic supply chain to Britain from other nations although the German high command realized that sinking American flagged ships would almost certainly bring the United States into the war Germany s Zimmermann Telegram outraged Americans just as German submarines started sinking American merchant ships in the North Atlantic Wilson asked Congress for a war to end all wars that would make the world safe for democracy and Congress voted to declare war on Germany on April 6 1917 66 The US immediately provided money and more supplies and a small military force American troops began major combat operations on the Western Front under General John J Pershing in the summer of 1918 arriving at the rate of 10 000 soldiers a day Austria Hungary and Ottoman Empire edit Main article United States declaration of war on Austria Hungary The Senate in a 74 to 0 vote declared war on Austria Hungary on December 7 1917 citing Austria Hungary s severing of diplomatic relations with the United States its use of unrestricted submarine warfare and its alliance with Germany 67 The declaration passed in the House by a vote of 365 to 1 The US never declared war on Germany s other allies the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria 68 The Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles editMain articles Paris Peace Conference 1919 1920 and Big Four World War I The Paris Peace Conference convened in January 1919 in Paris hosted by France The conference was called to establish the terms of the peace after World War I Though nearly thirty nations participated the representatives of Great Britain France the United States and Italy became known as the Big Four Italy quit after losing itsa claim to Fiume leaving the Big Three Wilson Prime Minister David Lloyd George and French premier Georges Clemenceau They dominated the proceedings and drafted the Treaty of Versailles to end the war with Germany The Treaty of Versailles articulated the compromises reached at the Paris conference It included the planned formation of the League of Nations which would serve both as an international forum and an international collective security arrangement Wilson focused on the League but fatally refused to work with the Republicans who controlled Congress Clemenceau focused on permanently weakening Germany 69 Lloyd George sitting he said between Jesus Christ and Napoleon tried to fashion compromises 70 According to Michael Neiberg Wilson received an ecstatic welcome from the people of Europe At least for a little while Europeans tired of war and conflict saw him as a potential savior from the old system and a possible architect of a newer more just world But that feeling did not last long European leaders quickly came to dislike Wilson s constant moralizing his lack of understanding of the problems of Europe and his stubborn unwillingness to see the destruction of France with his own eyes for fear he said of the devastation hardening his heart toward Germany By the time the conference ended almost everyone in Europe and many members of the American delegation itself had grown weary of Wilson and frustrated with his ineffectiveness at the conference 71 Treaty of Versailles edit Negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference were complicated Great Britain France and Italy fought together as the Allied Powers The United States entered the war in 1917 as an Associated Power While the U S fought alongside the Allies it was not bound by treaty with any of them Nor was it bound to honor pre existing agreements among the Allied Powers These secret agreements focused on postwar redistribution of territories President Wilson strongly opposed many of these arrangements including Italian demands on the Adriatic This often led to significant disagreements among the Big Four 72 Wilson strongly opposed the Italian demand for control of Fiume and had the support of Britain and France whereupon the Italian delegation went home However Colonel House had been supporting a compromise with the Italians which alienated Wilson Their close relationship slowly came to an end 73 74 Treaty negotiations were complicated by the absence of other important nations The Allies excluded the defeated Central Powers Germany Austria Hungary Turkey and Bulgaria Russia had fought as one of the Allies until December 1917 when its new Bolshevik Government withdrew from the war The Bolshevik decision to repudiate Russia s outstanding financial debts to the Allies and to publish the texts of secret agreements between the Allies angered the Allies The Big Four refused to recognize the new government in Moscow and did not invite its representatives to the Peace Conference 75 76 According to French and British wishes the Treaty of Versailles subjected Germany to strict punitive measures The Treaty required the new German Government to surrender approximately 10 percent of its prewar territory in Europe and all of its colonies It placed the harbor city of Danzig now Gdansk and the coal rich Saarland under the administration of the League of Nations and allowed France to exploit the economic resources of the Saarland until 1935 It limited the German Army and Navy in size and allowed for the trial of Kaiser Wilhelm II and a number of other high ranking German officials as war criminals Under the terms of Article 231 of the Treaty the Germans accepted responsibility for the war and the liability to pay financial reparations to the Allies The Inter Allied Commission determined the amount and presented its findings in 1921 The amount they determined was 132 billion gold Reichsmark or 32 billion U S dollars on top of the initial 5 billion payment demanded by the Treaty Germans grew to resent the harsh conditions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles 77 nbsp Childish USA resists Wilson s attempt to join League of Nations 1919 from Punch magazine London Senate rejection edit While the Treaty of Versailles did not satisfy all parties concerned by the time President Woodrow Wilson returned to the United States in July 1919 U S public opinion probably favored ratification of the Treaty including the Covenant of the League of Nations With a two thirds majority required for ratification Senate voted on several versions but never ratified any 78 The opposition focused on Article 10 of the Treaty which dealt with collective security and the League of Nations This article opponents argued ceded the war powers of the U S Government to the League s Council The opposition came from two groups the Irreconcilables who refused to join the League of Nations under any circumstances and Reservationists led by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Henry Cabot Lodge who wanted amendments made before they would ratify the Treaty While Chairman Lodge s attempt to pass amendments to the Treaty was unsuccessful in September he did manage to attach 14 reservations to it in November In a final vote on March 19 1920 the Treaty of Versailles fell short of ratification by seven votes Consequently the U S Government signed the Treaty of Berlin on August 25 1921 This separate peace treaty with Germany stipulated that the United States would enjoy all rights privileges indemnities reparations or advantages conferred to it by the Treaty of Versailles but left out any mention of the League of Nations which the United States never joined 79 nbsp President Wilson tells George Washington he destroys autocracy with his 14 pointsIdealism moralism and Wilsonianism editMain article Wilsonianism A Presbyterian of deep religious faith Wilson appealed to a gospel of service and promoted a profound sense of moralism Wilson s idealistic internationalism now referred to as Wilsonianism calls for the United States to enter the world arena to fight for democracy and has been a contentious position in American foreign policy serving as a model for idealists to emulate and realists to reject ever since 80 81 Missionary diplomacy edit Missionary diplomacy was Wilson s idea that Washington had a moral responsibility to deny diplomatic recognition to any Latin American government that was not democratic It was an expansion of President James Monroe s 1823 Monroe Doctrine 82 83 Fourteen Points edit The Fourteen Points was Wilson s statement of principles that was to be used for peace negotiations to end the war The principles were outlined in a January 8 1918 speech on war aims and peace terms to Congress by President Wilson By October 1918 the new German government was negotiating with Wilson for peace based on the Fourteen Points 84 However his main Allied colleagues Georges Clemenceau of France and David Lloyd George of Great Britain were skeptical of the applicability of Wilsonian idealism 85 Wilson called for the abolition of secret treaties a reduction in armaments an adjustment in colonial claims in the interests of both native peoples and colonists and freedom of the seas Wilson also made proposals intended to ensure world peace in the future For example he proposed the removal of economic barriers between nations and the promise of self determination for national minorities Most important of all the Fourteenth Point was a world organization that would guarantee the political independence and territorial integrity of great and small states alike a League of Nations 86 In his intense negotiations with Clemenceau and Lloyd George he was reluctantly willing to compromise on this point and that but always insisted on keeping the League 87 Principles of Wilsonianism edit The principles associated with Wilsonianism across the 20th century and into the 21st include 88 89 90 Conferences and bodies devoted to resolving conflict especially the League of Nations and the United Nations 91 Advocacy of the spread of democracy 92 Anne Marie Slaughter writes that Wilson expected and hoped that democracy would result from self determination but he never sought to spread democracy directly 93 Slaughter writes that Wilson s League of Nations was similarly intended to foster democracy by serving as a high wall behind which nations especially small nations could exercise their right of self determination but that Wilson did not envision that the U S would affirmatively intervene to direct or shape democracies in foreign nations 93 Emphasis on self determination of peoples 94 Advocacy of the spread of capitalism 95 Support for collective security and at least partial opposition to American isolationism 96 Support for multilateralism through collective deliberation among nations 93 Support for open diplomacy and opposition to secret treaties 96 97 Support for freedom of navigation and freedom of the seas 96 98 Impact of Wilsonianism edit American foreign relations since 1914 have rested on Wilsonian idealism argues historian David Kennedy Wilson s ideas continue to dominate American foreign policy in the twenty first century In the aftermath of 9 11 they have if anything taken on even greater vitality 99 100 Wilson was a remarkably effective writer and thinker and his diplomatic policies had a profound influence on the world Diplomatic historian Walter Russell Mead has explained Wilson s principles survived the eclipse of the Versailles system and that they still guide European politics today self determination democratic government collective security international law and a league of nations Wilson may not have gotten everything he wanted at Versailles and his treaty was never ratified by the Senate but his vision and his diplomacy for better or worse set the tone for the twentieth century France Germany Italy and Britain may have sneered at Wilson but every one of these powers today conducts its European policy along Wilsonian lines What was once dismissed as visionary is now accepted as fundamental This was no mean achievement and no European statesman of the twentieth century has had as lasting as benign or as widespread an influence 101 Alternative interpretations edit Historians and political analysts have been largely Wilsonian in their approach to American diplomatic history according to Lloyd Ambrosius However there are two alternative schools of thought as well Ambrosius argues that Wilsonianism is based on national self determination and democracy open door globalization based on open markets for trade and finance collective security as typified by Wilson s idea of the League of Nations as well as NATO and a hope bordering on a promise of future peace and progress 102 Realism is the first alternative school based on the outlook and policies of Theodore Roosevelt and represented most famously by George Kennan Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon They blame Wilson for giving too much emphasis on Democracy that for realists was a low priority they would eagerly work with dictators who supported American positions A third approach emerged from the New Left in the 1960s led by William Appleman Williams and the Wisconsin School It is called Revisionism and argues that selfish economic motivations not idealism or realism motivated Wilsonianism Ambrosius argues that historians generally agree that Wilsonianism was the main intellectual force in battling the Nazis in 1945 and the Soviet communists in 1989 It seemed to be the dominant factor in world affairs by 1989 103 Wilsonians were shocked when the Chinese Communists rejected democracy in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre and when Putin rejected it for Russia 104 Wilsonians were dismayed when George W Bush s initiative to bring democracy to the Middle East after 9 11 failed 105 It produced not an Arab Spring but instead antidemocratic results most famously in Egypt Iraq Syria and Afghanistan 106 107 See also editDiplomatic history of World War I Economic history of World War I History of China United States relations to 1948 France United States relations Germany United States relations Japan United States relations Latin America United States relations Mexico United States relations United States involvement in the Mexican Revolution United Kingdom United States relations Walter Hines Page US ambassador United States in World War I Edward M House Colonel House was Wilson s main advisorNotes edit Kissinger Henry 1994 Diplomacy Simon amp Schuster Paperbacks p 30 William A Link and Arthur S Link American Epoch A History of the United States Since 1900 Vol 1 War Reform and Society 1900 1945 7th ed 1993 p 127 Wilson s wife froze out House after the president became disabled Charles E Neu Colonel House A Biography of Woodrow Wilson s Silent Partner 2015 pp 427 432 434 Arthur S Link Wilson Volume II The New Freedom 1956 2 7 9 August Heckscher Woodrow Wilson 1991 pp 269 270 Ernest R May The World War and American Isolation 1914 1917 1959 pp 137 155 John Milton Cooper Woodrow Wilson a biography 2009 p 295 Arthur S Link Wilson the struggle for neutrality 1914 1915 1960 3 427 428 See Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States The Lansing Papers 1914 1920 Volume I Document 277 In the enclosure it is stated that If the British Government is expecting an attitude of benevolent neutrality on our part a position which is not neutral and which is not governed by the principles of neutrality they should know that nothing is further from our intention Lester H Woolsey Robert Lansing s Record as Secretary of State Current History 29 3 1928 386 387 Robert Young An American by Degrees The Extraordinary Lives of French Ambassador Jules Jusserand McGill Queen s University Press 2009 Neu 2015 pp 148 219 309 Link Wilson 5 278 280 Reinhard R Doerries Imperial Challenge Ambassador Count Bernstorff and German American Relations 1908 1917 1989 Stephen Irving Max Schwab Sabotage at Black Tom Island A wake up call for America International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 25 2 2012 367 391 William S Coker The Panama Canal Tolls Controversy A Different Perspective Journal of American History 55 3 1968 555 564 online Leila Amos Pendleton Our New Possessions The Danish West Indies Journal of Negro History 2 3 1917 267 288 online Karl M Schmitt Mexico and the United States 1821 1973 1974 pp 108 126 Peter V N Henderson Woodrow Wilson Victoriano Huerta and the Recognition Issue in Mexico The Americas 1984 41 2 pp 151 176 JSTOR 1007454 Jack Sweetman The Landing at Veracruz 1914 Naval Institute Press 1968 Michael E Neagle A Bandit Worth Hunting Pancho Villa and America s War on Terror in Mexico 1916 1917 Terrorism and Political Violence 33 7 2021 1492 1510 James W Hurst Pancho Villa and BlackJack Pershing The Punitive Expedition in Mexico 2008 James A Sandos Pancho Villa and American Security Woodrow Wilson s Mexican Diplomacy Reconsidered Journal of Latin American Studies 13 2 1981 293 311 Thomas Boghardt The Zimmermann Telegram Intelligence Diplomacy and America s Entry into World War I Naval Institute Press 2012 Benjamin T Harrison Woodrow Wilson in Nicaragua Caribbean Quarterly 2005 51 1 pp 25 36 Arthur S Link Wilson The New Freedom 1956 pp 331 342 Arthur S Link ed The Papers of Woodrow Wilson volume 27 1913 1978 pp 470 526 530 552 George W Baker Jr The Wilson Administration and Nicaragua 1913 1921 Americas 1966 22 4 pp 339 376 Alan McPherson Herbert Hoover Occupation Withdrawal and the Good Neighbor Policy Presidential Studies Quarterly 44 4 2014 623 639 online dead link a b Bruce Elleman Wilson and China A Revised History of the Shandong Question Routledge 2015 Arthur S Link Wilson Volume III The Struggle for Neutrality 1914 1915 1960 pp 276 quoting E T Williams head of the Far Eastern Division italics in his memo to Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan Madeleine Chi China and Unequal Treaties at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 Asian Profile 1 1 1973 49 61 Bruce A Elleman Did Woodrow Wilson really betray the Republic of China at Versailles American Asian Review 1995 13 1 pp 1 28 Eugene P Trani Woodrow Wilson China and the Missionaries 1913 1921 Journal of Presbyterian History 49 4 1971 328 351 quoting pp 332 333 Herbert P Le Pore Hiram Johnson Woodrow Wilson and the California Alien Land Law Controversy of 1913 Southern California Quarterly 61 1 1979 99 110 in JSTOR Arthur Link Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era 1954 pp 84 87 Cathal J Nolan et al Turbulence in the Pacific Japanese U S Relations during World War I 2000 Walter LaFeber The Clash A History of U S Japan Relations pp 106 116 J Chal Vinson The Annulment of the Lansing Ishii Agreement Pacific Historical Review 1958 57 69 Online A Whitney Griswold The Far Eastern Policy of the United States 1938 pp 239 68 Zhitian Luo National humiliation and national assertion The Chinese response to the twenty one demands Modern Asian Studies 1993 27 2 pp 297 319 Griswold The Far Eastern Policy of the United States 1938 pp 326 28 Clement 2009 p 75 Roy Watson Curry Woodrow Wilson and Philippine Policy Mississippi Valley Historical Review 41 3 1954 435 452 online Tony Smith America s mission The United States and the worldwide struggle for democracy in the twentieth century 1994 pp 37 59 Wong Kwok Chu The Jones Bills 1912 16 A Reappraisal of Filipino Views on Independence Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 1982 13 2 252 269 See Philippine Autonomy Act of 1916 Jones Law Sonia M Zaide The Philippines A Unique Nation 1994 p 312 Zaide pp 312 313 H W Brands Bound to empire the United States and the Philippines Oxford UP 1992 pp 104 118 Fourteen Points Text amp Significance Encyclopedia Britannica Retrieved 2020 02 07 a b Margaret MacMillan 2003 Paris 1919 six months that changed the world Random House pp 63 82 ISBN 9780375508264 Donald E Davis and Eugene P Trani 2009 Distorted Mirrors Americans and Their Relations with Russia and China in the Twentieth Century University of Missouri Press p 48 ISBN 9780826271891 Bertrand M Patenaude A Race against Anarchy Even after the Great War ended famine and chaos threatened Europe Herbert Hoover rescued the continent reviving trade rebuilding infrastructure and restoring economic order holding a budding Bolshevism in check Hoover Digest 2 2020 183 200 online Douglas Smith The Russian job the forgotten story of how America saved the Soviet Union from ruin 2019 online Betty Miller Unterberger President Wilson and the Decision to Send American Troops to Siberia Pacific Historical Review 24 1 1955 63 74 Eugene P Trani Woodrow Wilson and the decision to intervene in Russia a reconsideration Journal of Modern History 48 3 1976 440 461 Justus D Doenecke Neutrality Policy and the Decision for War in A Companion to Woodrow Wilson 2013 241 269 Philip Zelikow The Road Less Traveled The Secret Battle to End the Great War 1916 1917 PublicAffairs 2021 Joseph M Siracusa American Policy Makers World War I and the Menace of Prussianism 1914 1920 Australasian Journal of American Studies 1998 17 2 pp 1 30 Jerald A Combs 2015 The History of American Foreign Policy v 1 To 1920 pp 325 ISBN 9781317456377 For a wartime American analysis see Charles A Ellwood Making the world safe for democracy The Scientific Monthly 7 6 1918 511 524 online Jeanette Keith 2004 Rich Man s War Poor Man s Fight Race Class and Power in the Rural South during the First World War U of North Carolina Press pp 1 5 ISBN 978 0 8078 7589 6 Cooper The Vanity of Power 1969 pp 19 27 202 223 224 World War One BBC History Link Arthur S 1972 Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era 1910 1917 New York Harper amp Row pp 252 282 H J Res 169 Declaration of War with Austria Hungary WWI United States Senate Andrew Patrick Woodrow Wilson the Ottomans and World War I Diplomatic History 42 5 2018 886 910 See US State Department Office of the Historian Home Milestones 1914 1920 The Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles 2017 a US government document Margaret MacMillan Paris 1919 Six months that changed the world 2007 p 33 Michael S Neiberg The Treaty of Versailles A Concise History Oxford UP 2017 p xvii H Clarence Nixon Big Four The Virginia Quarterly Review 19 4 1943 513 521 online Neu 2015 p 416 On Italy and Wilson see Arthur Walworth Wilson and his Peacemakers American Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference 1919 WW Norton 1986 pp 335 358 George Kennan Russia and the Versailles Conference The American Scholar 1960 13 42 online Margaret MacMillan Paris 1919 Six months that changed the world Random House 2001 pp 63 82 MacMillan Paris 1919 2001 pp 194 203 Ralph A Stone ed Wilson and the League of Nations why America s rejection 1967 pp 1 11 Theodore P Greene ed Wilson At Versailles 1957 Introduction pp v to x online Patricia O Toole The Moralist Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made 2019 pp xv to xvii Richard M Gamble Savior Nation Woodrow Wilson and the Gospel of Service Humanitas 14 1 1 2001 pp 4 F M Carroll Wilsonian Diplomacy Friends and Enemies Canadian Review of American Studies 19 2 1988 211 226 Tony Smith America s Mission The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy Princeton University Press 2012 pp 60 83 John L Snell Wilson on Germany and the fourteen points Journal of Modern History 26 4 1954 364 369 online Irwin Unger These United States 2007 561 Wilson s Fourteen Points 1918 1914 1920 Milestones Office of the Historian history state gov Retrieved 2022 01 06 Margaret MacMillan Paris 1919 Six Months That Changed the World 2007 pp 83 97 John A Thompson Wilsonianism the dynamics of a conflicted concept International Affairs 86 1 2010 27 47 David Fromkin What Is Wilsonianism World Policy Journal 11 1 1994 100 111 online Amos Perlmutter Making the world safe for democracy A century of Wilsonianism and its totalitarian challengers U of North Carolina Press 1997 Trygve Throntveit Wilsonianism in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History 2019 Woodrow Wilson and foreign policy EDSITEment National Endowment for the Humanities a b c Anne Marie Slaughter Wilsonianism in the Twenty first Century in The Crisis of American Foreign Policy Wilsonianism in the Twenty first Century edited by G John Ikenberry Thomas J Knock Anne Marie Slaughter amp Tony Smith Princeton UP 2009 pp 94 96 Erez Manela The Wilsonian Moment Self Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism 2007 pp 41 42 Woodrow Wilson Impact and Legacy Miller Center 4 October 2016 Retrieved 2018 01 07 a b c Lloyd E Ambrosius 2002 Wilsonianism Woodrow Wilson and His Legacy in American Foreign Relations Palgrave Macmillan pp 42 51 Nicholas J Cull Public Diplomacy Before Gullion The Evolution of a Phrase in Nancy Snow amp Philip M Taylor eds Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy Routledge 2009 Joel Ira Holwitt Execute Against Japan The U S Decision to Conduct Unrestricted Submarine Warfare Texas A amp M Press 2008 pp 16 17 David M Kennedy What W Owes to WW President Bush May Not Even Know It but He Can Trace His View of the World to Woodrow Wilson Who Defined a Diplomatic Destiny for America That We Can t Escape The Atlantic Monthly Vol 295 Issue 2 March 2005 pp 36 For the presidential implementation of Wilsonianism see Tony Smith America s Mission The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy 2nd ed Princeton University Press 2012 Walter Russell Mead Special Providence 2001 Lloyd E Ambrosius Woodrow Wilson and World War I in A Companion to American Foreign Relations 2006 149 167 Ambrosius p 149 150 David G Haglund and Deanna Soloninka Woodrow Wilson Still Fuels Debate on Who Lost Russia Orbis 60 3 2016 433 452 Lloyd E Ambrosius Woodrow Wilson and George W Bush Historical comparisons of ends and means in their foreign policies Diplomatic History 30 3 2006 509 543 Bruce S Thornton The Arab Spring implodes we failed to understand the wave of change or to shape it because we failed to understand Islamism Hoover Digest 2 2014 130 138 Tony Smith Wilsonianism after Iraq in The Crisis of American Foreign Policy Princeton University Press 2008 pp 53 88 Sources editThe source for 1919 is US State Department Office of the Historian Home Milestones 1914 1920 The Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles 2017 a U S government document that is not copyright Further reading edit nbsp General edit Calhoun Frederick S Power and Principle Armed Intervention in wilsonion Foreign Policy Kent State UP 1986 Clements Kendrick A 1992 The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson University Press of Kansas covers all major foreign policy issues Combs Jerald A The History of American Foreign Policy From 1895 Routledge 2017 textbook Gardner Lloyd C Safe for democracy the Anglo American response to revolution 1913 1923 Oxford UP 1984 Hannigan Robert E The New World Power U of Pennsylvania Press 2013 excerpt Herring George C From Colony to Superpower U S Foreign Relations since 1776 Oxford UP 2008 online textbook Link Arthur S Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era 1910 1917 1954 major scholarly survey online brief summary of Link biography vol 2 3 4 5 Link Arthur S Wilson the Diplomatist A Look at His Major Foreign Policies 1957 online Link Arthur S ed Woodrow Wilson and a Revolutionary World 1913 1921 1982 essays by 7 scholars online Perkins Bradford The Great Rapprochement England and the United States 1895 1914 1968 online Reed James The Missionary Mind and American East Asian Policy 1911 1915 Harvard UP 1983 Robinson Edgar Eugene and Victor J West The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson 1913 1917 online useful survey with many copies of primary sources Smith Tony America s mission call in the United States and the worldwide struggle for democracy in the twentieth century 1994 Wells Samuel F 1972 New Perspectives on Wilsonian Diplomacy The Secular Evangelism of American Political Economy Perspectives in American History 6 389 419 World War I edit Ambrosius Lloyd E Woodrow Wilson and World War I in A Companion to American Foreign Relations edited by Robert D Schulzinger 2003 Bruce Robert B A Fraternity of Arms America and France in the Great War UP of Kansas 2003 Clarke Michael Primacy Unrequited American Grand Strategy Under Wilson in American Grand Strategy and National Security Palgrave Macmillan Cham 2021 pp 117 150 Clements Kendrick A 2004 Woodrow Wilson and World War I Presidential Studies Quarterly 34 62 82 doi 10 1111 j 1741 5705 2004 00035 x Cooper Jr John Milton The Vanity of Power American Isolationism and the First World War 1914 1917 Greenwood 1969 online Dayer Roberta A 1976 Strange Bedfellows J P Morgan amp Co Whitehall and the Wilson Administration During World War I Business History 18 2 127 151 doi 10 1080 00076797600000014 Doenecke Justus D 2013 Neutrality Policy and the Decision for War A Companion to Woodrow Wilson pp 241 269 doi 10 1002 9781118445693 ch13 ISBN 9781118445693 Doenecke Justus D Nothing less than war a new history of America s entry into World War I UP of Kentucky 2011 Doerries Reinhard R Imperial Challenge Ambassador Count Bernstorff and German American Relations 1908 1917 1989 Epstein Katherine C The Conundrum of American Power in the Age of World War I Modern American History 2019 1 21 Esposito David M The Legacy of Woodrow Wilson American War Aims in World War I 1996 Ferns Nicholas 2013 Loyal Advisor Colonel Edward House s Confidential Trips to Europe 1913 1917 Diplomacy amp Statecraft 24 3 365 382 doi 10 1080 09592296 2013 817926 S2CID 159469024 Flanagan Jason C Woodrow Wilson s Rhetorical Restructuring The Transformation of the American Self and the Construction of the German Enemy Rhetoric amp Public Affairs 7 2 2004 115 148 online dead link Floyd Ryan Abandoning American Neutrality Woodrow Wilson and the Beginning of the Great War August 1914 December 1915 Springer 2013 Gilbert Charles American financing of World War I 1970 online Hannigan Robert E 2017 The Great War and American Foreign Policy 1914 24 doi 10 9783 9780812293289 ISBN 9780812293289 Horn Martin Britain France and the Financing of the First World War 2002 with details on US role Kawamura Noriko Turbulence in the Pacific Japanese US Relations During World War I Greenwood 2000 Kazin Michael War Against War The American Fight for Peace 1914 1918 2017 Kennedy Ross A Wilson s Wartime Diplomacy The United States and the First World War 1914 1918 in A Companion to US Foreign Relations Colonial Era to the Present 2020 304 324 Kennedy Ross A 2001 Woodrow Wilson World War I and American National Security Diplomatic History 25 1 32 doi 10 1111 0145 2096 00247 Kernek Sterling J 1975 Distractions of Peace during War The Lloyd George Government s Reactions to Woodrow Wilson December 1916 November 1918 Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 65 2 1 117 doi 10 2307 1006183 JSTOR 1006183 Levin Jr N Gordon Woodrow Wilson and World Politics America s Response to War and Revolution Oxford UP 1968 New Left approach McAvoy Shawn 2021 We should not expect great benefit from America Japanese Expansion and the Breakdown of Communication within the Wilson Administration in 1914 Journal of Asia Pacific Studies 6 2 163 174 EBSCOhost 152071887 May Ernest R The World War and American isolation 1914 1917 1959 online a major scholarly study Mayer Arno J Wilson vs Lenin Political Origins of the New Diplomacy 1917 1918 1969 Safford Jeffrey J Wilsonian Maritime Diplomacy 1913 1921 1978 Smith Daniel M The Great Departure The United States in World War I 1914 1920 1965 Startt James D Woodrow Wilson the Great War and the Fourth Estate Texas A amp M UP 2017 420 pp Stevenson David The First World War and International Politics 1991 Covers the diplomacy of all the major powers Throntveit Trygve 2017 Power without Victory doi 10 7208 chicago 9780226460079 001 0001 ISBN 9780226459905 Trask David F The United States in the Supreme War Council American War Aims and Inter Allied Strategy 1917 1918 1961 Tooze Adam The Deluge The Great War America and the Remaking of the Global Order 1916 1931 2014 audio emphasis on economics Tucker Robert W Woodrow Wilson and the Great War Reconsidering America s Neutrality U of Virginia Press 2007 Venzon Anne ed The United States in the First World War An Encyclopedia 1995 Very thorough coverage Walworth Arthur America s moment 1918 American diplomacy at the end of World War I 1977 online Woodward David R Trial by Friendship Anglo American Relations 1917 1918 1993 Wright Esmond March 1960 The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson A Re Assessment Part 1 Woodrow Wilson and the First World War History Today 10 3 149 157 Young Ernest William The Wilson Administration and the Great War 1922 online edition Zahniser Marvin R Uncertain Friendship American French diplomatic relations through the Cold War 1975 pp 195 229 Ferguson Niall 9 April 2021 All the difference The peacemaking initiative that failed at vast cost Times Literary Supplement No 6158 pp 23 26 Gale A658753511 also C SPAN interview Latin America edit Further information Mexican Revolution International dimensions Baker George W The Wilson Administration and Nicaragua 1913 1921 The Americas 22 4 1966 339 376 Bemis Samuel Flagg The Latin American Policy of the United States 1943 pp 168 201 online Boghardt Thomas The Zimmermann telegram intelligence diplomacy and America s entry into World War I Naval Institute Press 2012 De Quesada Alejandro The Hunt for Pancho Villa The Columbus Raid and Pershing s Punitive Expedition 1916 17 Bloomsbury 2012 Gardner Lloyd C Safe for democracy the Anglo American response to revolution 1913 1923 Oxford UP 1984 Gilderhus Mark T Diplomacy and Revolution US Mexican Relations under Wilson and Carranza 1977 online Haley P Edward Revolution and Intervention The Diplomacy of Taft and Wilson with Mexico 1910 1917 MIT Press 1970 Hannigan Robert E The New World Power U of Pennsylvania Press 2013 excerpt Katz Friedrich The Secret War in Mexico Europe the United States and the Mexican Revolution 1981 online McPherson Alan A Short History of US Interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean John Wiley amp Sons 2016 Neagle Michael E A Bandit Worth Hunting Pancho Villa and America s War on Terror in Mexico 1916 1917 Terrorism and Political Violence 33 7 2021 1492 1510 Quirk Robert E An affair of honor Woodrow Wilson and the occupation of Veracruz 1962 on Mexico online Sandos James A Pancho Villa and American Security Woodrow Wilson s Mexican Diplomacy Reconsidered Journal of Latin American Studies 13 2 1981 293 311 online Tuchman Barbara W 1985 The Zimmermann Telegram ISBN 0 345 32425 0 Sherman David Barbara Tuchman s The Zimmermann Telegram secrecy memory and history Journal of Intelligence History 19 2 2020 125 148 Biographical edit Ambrosius Lloyd E 2006 Woodrow Wilson and George W Bush Historical Comparisons of Ends and Means in Their Foreign Policies Diplomatic History 30 3 509 543 doi 10 1111 j 1467 7709 2006 00563 x Clements Kendrick A Woodrow Wilson World Statesman 1987 288pp major scholarly biography excerpt Clements Kendrick A William Jennings Bryan missionary isolationist U of Tennessee Press 1982 online focus on foreign policy Cooper John Milton Woodrow Wilson A Biography 2009 online major scholarly biography Doerries Reinhard R Imperial Challenge Ambassador Count Bernstorff and German American Relations 1908 1917 1989 Ferns Nicholas September 2013 Loyal Advisor Colonel Edward House s Confidential Trips to Europe 1913 1917 Diplomacy amp Statecraft 24 3 365 382 doi 10 1080 09592296 2013 817926 S2CID 159469024 Fowler Wilton Bonham 1966 Sir William Wiseman and the Anglo American war partnership 1917 1918 Thesis OCLC 51693434 ProQuest 302236948 Graebner Norman A ed An Uncertain Tradition American Secretaries of State in the Twentieth Century 1961 covers Bryan pp 79 100 and Lansing pp 101 127 online Heckscher August 1991 Woodrow Wilson Easton Press online Hodgson Godfrey Woodrow Wilson s Right Hand The Life of Colonel Edward M House 2006 short popular biography online Lazo Dimitri D A question of Loyalty Robert Lansing and the Treaty of Versailles Diplomatic History 9 1 1985 35 53 Link Arthur Stanley Wilson online Wilson The New Freedom vol 2 1956 Wilson The Struggle for Neutrality 1914 1915 vol 3 1960 Wilson Confusions and Crises 1915 1916 vol 4 1964 Wilson Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace 1916 1917 vol 5 1965 Neu Charles E Colonel House A Biography of Woodrow Wilson s Silent Partner Oxford UP 2015 699 pp Neu Charles E The Wilson Circle President Woodrow Wilson and His Advisers 2022 O Toole Patricia The Moralist Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made 2018 Walworth Arthur 1958 Woodrow Wilson Volume I Volume II Longmans Green 904pp full scale scholarly biography winner of Pulitzer Prize online free 2nd ed 1965 Walworth Arthur Wilson and His Peacemakers American Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference 1919 1986 online Williams Joyce Grigsby Colonel House and Sir Edward Grey A Study in Anglo American Diplomacy 1984 online review Woolsey Lester H Robert Lansing s Record as Secretary of State Current History 29 3 1928 384 396 online nbsp Treaty was signed June 28 1919Peace treaties and Wilsonianism edit Ambrosius Lloyd E Woodrow Wilson and the American diplomatic tradition The treaty fight in perspective Cambridge UP 1990 online Ambrosius Lloyd E Wilson the Republicans and French Security after World War I Journal of American History 1972 341 352 Online Ambrosius Lloyd E World War I and the Paradox of Wilsonianism Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 17 1 2018 5 22 Ambrosius Lloyd E Wilsonian Statecraft Theory and Practice of Liberal Internationalism During World War I 1991 Ambrosius Lloyd E 2002 Wilsonianism doi 10 1057 9781403970046 ISBN 978 1 4039 6009 2 Bacino Leo C Reconstructing Russia US policy in revolutionary Russia 1917 1922 Kent State UP 1999 online Bailey Thomas A Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace 1963 on Paris 1919 online Bailey Thomas A Woodrow Wilson and the great betrayal 1945 on Senate defeat conclusion ch 22 online Birdsall Paul Versailles Twenty Years After 1941 Canfield Leon H The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson prelude to a world in crisis 1966 online Cooper John Milton Jr Breaking the Heart of the World Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations 2001 online Curry George Woodrow Wilson Jan Smuts and the Versailles Settlement American Historical Review 66 4 1961 968 986 Online Duff John B The Versailles Treaty and the Irish Americans Journal of American History 55 3 1968 582 598 Online Fifield R H Woodrow Wilson and the Far East the diplomacy of the Shantung question Thomas Y Crowell 1952 Graebner Norman A and Edward M Bennett eds The Versailles Treaty and Its Legacy The Failure of the Wilsonian Vision Cambridge UP 2011 Floto Inga Colonel House in Paris A Study of American Policy at the Paris Peace Conference 1919 Princeton UP 1980 Foglesong David S Policies toward Russia and intervention in the Russian revolution in A Companion to Woodrow Wilson 2013 386 405 Greene Theodore ed Wilson At Versailles 1949 short excerpts from scholarly studies online free Ikenberry G John Thomas J Knock Anne Marie Slaughter and Tony Smith The Crisis of American Foreign Policy Wilsonianism in the Twenty first Century Princeton UP 2009 online Jianbiao Ma At Gethsemane The Shandong Decision at the Paris Peace Conference and Wilson s identity crisis Chinese Studies in History 54 1 2021 45 62 Kendall Eric M Diverging Wilsonianisms Liberal Internationalism the Peace Movement and the Ambiguous Legacy of Woodrow Wilson PhD Dissertation Case Western Reserve University 2012 online 354pp with bibliography of primary and secondary sources pp 346 54 Kennedy Ross A The will to believe Woodrow Wilson World War I and America s strategy for peace and security Kent State UP 2008 Knock Thomas J To End All Wars Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order Princeton UP 1992 online Macmillan Margaret Paris 1919 Six Months That Changed the World 2001 online Menchik Jeremy Woodrow Wilson and the Spirit of Liberal Internationalism Politics Religion amp Ideology 2021 1 23 Perlmutter Amos Making the world safe for democracy a century of Wilsonianism and its totalitarian challengers 1997 online Pierce Anne R Woodrow Wilson amp Harry Truman Mission and Power in American Foreign Policy Routledge 2017 Powaski Ronald E 2017 Woodrow Wilson Versus Henry Cabot Lodge The Battle over the League of Nations 1918 1920 American Presidential Statecraft pp 67 111 doi 10 1007 978 3 319 50457 5 3 ISBN 978 3 319 50456 8 Roberts Priscilla Wilson Europe s Colonial Empires in A Companion to Woodrow Wilson 2013 492 online Smith Tony Why Wilson Matters The Origin of American Liberal Internationalism and Its Crisis Today Princeton University Press 2017 Smith Tony America s Mission The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy 2nd ed Princeton UP 2012 Stone Ralph A ed Wilson and the League of Nations why America s rejection 1967 short excerpts from 15 historians Stone Ralph A The irreconcilables the fight against the League of Nations 1970 online Tillman Seth P Anglo American relations at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 https archive org details angloamericanrel0000till 1961 online Walworth Arthur Wilson and his Peacemakers American Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference 1919 WW Norton 1986 online Wolff Larry Woodrow Wilson and the Reimagining of Eastern Europe Stanford University Press 2020 online review Wright Esmond The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson A Re Assessment Part 2 Wilson and the Dream of Reason History Today Apr 1960 19 4 pp 223 231Historiography edit Ambrosius Lloyd E Woodrow Wilson and Wilsonianism a Century Later 2020 online Cooper John Milton The World War and American Memory Diplomatic History 2014 38 4 pp 727 736 online Doenecke Justus D American Diplomacy Politics Military Strategy and Opinion Making 1914 18 Recent Research and Fresh Assignments Historian 80 3 2018 509 532 Doenecke Justus D The Literature of Isolationism A Guide to Non Interventionist Scholarship 1930 1972 R Myles 1972 Doenecke Justus D Nothing Less Than War A New History of America s Entry into World War I 2014 Fordham Benjamin O Revisionism reconsidered exports and American intervention in World War I International Organization 61 2 2007 277 310 Gerwarth Robert The Sky beyond Versailles The Paris Peace Treaties in Recent Historiography Journal of Modern History 93 4 2021 896 930 Herring Pendleton 1974 Woodrow Wilson Then and Now PS Political Science amp Politics 7 3 256 259 doi 10 1017 S1049096500011422 S2CID 155226093 Keene Jennifer D 2016 Remembering the Forgotten War American Historiography on World War I Historian 78 3 439 468 doi 10 1111 hisn 12245 S2CID 151761088 Kennedy Ross A ed A Companion to Woodrow Wilson 2013 online permanent dead link coverage of major scholarly studies by experts McKillen Elizabeth Integrating labor into the narrative of Wilsonian internationalism A literature review Diplomatic History 34 4 2010 643 662 Neiberg Michael S 2018 American Entry into the First World War as an Historiographical Problem The Myriad Legacies of 1917 pp 35 54 doi 10 1007 978 3 319 73685 3 3 ISBN 978 3 319 73684 6 Saunders Robert M History Health and Herons The Historiography of Woodrow Wilson s Personality and Decision Making Presidential Studies Quarterly 1994 57 77 in JSTOR Sharp Alan Versailles 1919 A Centennial Perspective Haus Publishing 2018 Showalter Dennis The United States in the Great War A Historiography OAH Magazine of History 17 1 2002 pp 5 13 online Steigerwald David The Reclamation of Woodrow Wilson Diplomatic History 23 1 1999 79 99 pro Wilson online Thompson J A 1985 Woodrow Wilson and World War I A Reappraisal Journal of American Studies 19 3 325 348 doi 10 1017 S0021875800015310 S2CID 145071620 Woodward David America and World War I A Selected Annotated Bibliography of English Language Sources 2nd ed 2007 excerpt Zelikow Philip Niall Ferguson Francis J Gavin Anne Karalekas Daniel Sargent Forum 31 on the Importance of the Scholarship of Ernest May H DIPLO Dec 17 2021 onlinePrimary sources and year books edit Baker Ray Stannard ed The public papers of Woodrow Wilson 8 vol 1927 39 much less complete than Link edition but more widely available in libraries partly online no ccharge to borrow Link Arthur C ed The Papers of Woodrow Wilson In 69 volumes Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1966 1994 a complete collection of Wilson s writing plus important letters written to him plus detailed historical explanation Robinson Edgar Eugene and Victor J West The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson 1913 1917 online useful survey with copies and extracts from 90 primary sources Seymour Charles ed The intimate papers of Colonel House 4 vols 1928 online Stark Matthew J Wilson and the United States Entry into the Great War OAH Magazine of History 2002 17 1 pp 40 47 lesson plan and primary sources for school projects online New International Year Book 1913 1914 Comprehensive coverage of national and world affairs strong on economics 867pp New International Year Book 1914 1915 Comprehensive coverage of national and world affairs 913pp New International Year Book 1915 1916 Comprehensive coverage of national and world affairs 791pp New International Year Book 1916 1917 Comprehensive coverage of national and world affairs 938pp New International Year Book 1917 1918 Comprehensive coverage of national and world affairs 904 pp New International Year Book 1918 1919 904 pp New International Year Book 1919 1920 744pp New International Year Book 1920 1921 844 pp New International Year Book 1921 1922 848 ppExternal links editExtensive essay on Wilson and shorter essays on each member of his cabinet and First Lady from the Miller Center of Public Affairs Woodrow Wilson and Foreign Policy Secondary school lesson plans from EDSITEment program of National Endowment for the Humanities Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Foreign policy of the Woodrow Wilson administration amp oldid 1206049340, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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