INTRODUCTION WAR, REVOLUTION, AND WILSONIAN LIBERALISM ‘The main outlines of recent American foreign policies were shaped decisively by the ideology and the intemational program developed by the Wilson Administration in response to world politics in the 1917-19 period. It was these years which saw both America’s entrance into World War I and the Bolshevik Revolu- tion in Russia, the two seminal events with whose endless conse- «quences the foreign relations of the United States have since been largely concerned. In the midst of these events, Wilsonians laid the foundations of a modern American foreign policy whose main thrust, from 1917 on, may be characterized as an effort to con- struct a stable world order of liberal-capitalist internationalism, at the Center of the global ideological spectrum, safe from both the threat of imperialism on the Right and the danger of revolution on the Left. It was the Wilson Administration, in its response to the chal- lenges of war and revolution, which forcefully articulated this conception of liberal-internationalism, a conception which had been both manifest and latent in the policies of earlier American statesmen. For Wilson, as for many of his successors in the ranks of American decision-makers, the national interest became merged with liberal ideology in such a way that he could act si multaneously as the champion of American nationalism and as the spokesman for internationalism and anti-imperialism. The2 WOODROW WILSON AND WORLD POLITICS policy of building a rational international-capitalist order served for the Wilson Administration, at one and the same time, the varied but related tasks of countering Germany's atavistic imperi- alism,* of answering Lenin's demands for world revolution, and, finally, of maximizing the moral and economic expansion of the liberal American nation-state. The crucial importance of Wilson- anism, then, in the context of twentieth-century American for- eign relations, lies in the fact that the Wilson Administration first defined the American national interest in liberal-internationalist terms in response to war and social revolution, the two dominant political factors of our time. While many in his own generation resisted Wilson’s vision of the United States as the prime mover in the creation of collective international defenses of world polit- ical and commercial order against threats from the Right and the Left, later generations of American decision-makers would seek fully to realize Wilson's design during World War II and, espe- cially, during the Cold War that followed. 1. THE WILSONIAN VISION OF AMERICAN LIBERAL- EXCEPTIONALISM Basic to any understanding of Wilson's foreign policy is an awareness of his complete faith in America’s liberal-exception- alism, For the President, the United States represented a new de- parture among the nations in both a moral and a political sense. ‘With the evils of militarism and pre-liberal reaction left behind in Europe, America had an historic mission to disseminate the progressive values of liberal-internationalism and to create a new world order. In Wilson's completely liberal ideology, imperialism and militarism were seen as essentially European phenomena as- sociated with a past which America had escaped. In Wilsonian terms, American exceptionalism consisted in the complete tri * The use of the word “atavistic” in this study is based on Joseph Schum. peter’s concept of imperialism as a “social atavism,” i.e. oldfashioned and irrational and vestigial in a period of supposed possible liberal-capitalist ra tionality and harmony.INTRODUCTION 3 umph of liberal-capitalist * values in the United States, a triumph. which ensured that American foreign policy could not be guided by the atavistic values of traditional European imperialism, Amer- ica, was for Wilson the incamation of the progressive future of European politics and diplomacy, after Europe had cast off the burdens of its militant and pre-bourgeois past in favor of more ra- nal liberal-capitalist development. The President never doubted that American liberal values were the wave of the future in world politics. Soon the whole world would follow the lead of the United States to the establishment of an international system of peaceful commercial and political order. For Wilson, then, American national values were identical with universal progressive liberal values, and an exceptionalist America had a mission to lead mankind toward the orderly international society of the future, Europe, however, was, in Wilsonian terms, scen to be still imprisoned in a combative “Hobbesian” state of * At this point I should indicate the manner in which I use such concepts as heral-capitalism, liberal-exceptionalism, liberalcapitalit internationalism, etc. Liberalism and liberal-capitalism both refer to a system of socio-political values ‘and institutions characterized by political liberty, social mobility, constitu tional government, and the capitalist mode of production and distribution. ‘The concept of American liberal-exceptionalism was developed by Louis Hartz in The Liberal Tradition in America. He argued that the United States was an almost purely liberal society from the outset. The United States was excep- tional: unlike other nations, it did not have to advance from feudalism toward liberal values and institutions. Thus, while being a liberal in Europe has meant the advocacy of values and institlions which are not necesanly univer accepted in one’s own country and which are often opposed by both the Left and the Right, in the United States “liberalism” has come to stand loosely for those political elements most anxious to use state power for moderately reformist ends in a society all of whose political culture is dominated by the classic form of liberalism defined above. Finally, the phrases liberal capitalist internationalism and liberal-internation alism are used interchangeably in this study to refer to the Wilsonian vision of 4 global situation beyond power politics to be characterized by open world trade and by great power co-operation within a framework of world law and intemational-capitalist commercial relationships. In Wilson's view, moreover, Leapitalist world order over traditional imperialism would represent the realization of America’s liberal mission to lead ‘mankind to a victory over the unenlightened past. Ironically, when Wilsonian liberal values became involved in world politics they were confronted by the ery enemies of iberalim who were absent fom the domestic American po litical universe,4 WOODROW WILSON AND WORED POLITICS nature, in which the balance of power and armed strength were the only things upon which nations could rely for their sclé- preservation, In Wilson's view, it was America’s historic mission to bring Europe into a peaceful international order based on world law. The Wilsonian goal was to create an international civil society, or social contract, making orderly and responsible world citizens out of the hitherto aggressive European nations. Wilson sought to “Lockeanize,” or to Americanize, the global political system by creating a world society under law, to be preserved through the moral and material strength of the international so- cial contract embodied in the League of Nations. Implicitly, these Wilsonian values were in large part congruent with those of European liberalinternationalists and democratic- socialists,* whose basic orientation was to make more rational and orderly the existing world system of competing nation-states, while avoiding the extreme solution of socialist revolution advo- cated by Lenin, In their own way, such European liberals and so- cialists as Joseph Schumpeter and Karl Kautsky joined Wilson believing that, Lenin’s proscriptions to the contrary, the inter- national-capitalist system could still put behind it the militant imperialism of the past and could increasingly stabilize itself through peaceful trade and through economic development of the backward areas of the world. If the world system of competing imperialist nationstates could be liberated from atavistic and m itaristic forms of traditional imperialism, and could also be re- structured in a more rational Wilsonian fashion, then Lenin’s predictions of inevitable conflict among capitalist nations might be refuted, and a new world system of international-capitalist ‘In this study, a basic distinction socialism and’ revolutionary drawn throughout between democratic- . Democraticsocialism refers to groups ot partis seeking to achieve sacl goal by constitutional means within the ‘context of traditional state authority. In this sense, except for its most radical proponents, the term democraticsocialism may be used inerchangeably with socialdemocracy. The term revolutionarysocialism will be used to indicate groups or parties seeking to achieve socialist goals by the use of violent or extralegal means outside the confines of existing state authority.INTRODUCTION 5 order might, in the future, avoid the related threats of war and revolution, Unlike the European liberals and democratic-socialists, who operated in societies in which preliberal military and traditional values were still powerful, however, Wilson was the leader of a nationstate in which preliberal values and classes did not exist. For this reason, Wilson's ideology permitted him to conceive of himself as acting, at one and the same time, with perfect internal consistency, as the defender of American national interests and as the champion of liberal-internationalism, For Wilson, there was no conflict between the needs of a burgeoning American political- economy to expand commercially and morally throughout the world and the European liberal-internationalist and moderate democraticsocialist program of a progressive, rationalized, and peaceful international-capitalist system. In other words, a Wil- sonian America was to be the historical agent of the world’s trans- formation from chaos and imperialism to orderly liberal rational- ity. In Wilsonian terms, America both participated in and yet, at the same time, transcended the existing system of international politics. America thus interacted as a nation-state with others in the “Hobbesian” realm of world poli and shifting alliances, while America was simultaneously the carrier of values seeking to rationalize and to pacify that very political universe. While the European moderate Leftist was often forced to think in class terms when he sought to oppose national imperialism, the Wil- sonian was faced by no such dilemma since America itself em- bodied the very ideology of liberal-internationalism which, in Surope, was the property only of certain classes but not of whole nations. 2, THE WILSONIAN ANTIHIMPERIALISM OF LIBERAL ORDER In general terms, there were essentially two separate but related strategies which Wilson could follow in his anti-imperialistic6 WOODROW WILSON AND WORLD POLITICS mission to liberalize or to Americanize international politics. On the one hand, the President could use America’s moral influence in an effort to absorb all the conflicting elements in world politics into a new liberal-international system under a League of Na- tions. Such an absorptive anti-imperialist approach was evident both in the Wilsonian attempts to offer American mediation in the interests of facilitating a constructive liberal settlement of the European War prior to 1917, and in the Administration’s postwar efforts at Paris to construct a new liberal European order through the League of Nations. On the other hand, however, the President could use American power to compel the most atavistic and militant practitioners of the Old World’s imperialist politics to enter into a new international society of law and stability. Such a more forceful American anti-imperialist approach was, of course, evident in the Wilsonian response to Imperial Germany after the submarine crisis of early 1917. Yet, in a larger sense, it could be argued that both of these Wilsonian antiimperialist approaches were combined in the war against German autocratic imperialism, since, in the President’s mind, despite his lingering distrust of Al: lied war aims, the antiGerman Entente alliance increasingly be came the possible nucleus for a progressive and inclusive postwar system of American-inspired liberal world order. Al forms of Wilsonian anti-imperialism were, however, clearly anathema to the values of Leninist revolutionary-socialism. In the first place, Wilson’s reformist desire to use America’s moral lead- ership to construct a liberal world community emphatically chal- lenged Lenin's belief in the inability of the international-capitalist system peacefully to resolve its own internal contradictions through gradual rational reform. Thus, while Wilson had developed his lib- eral anti-imperialist vision of a League of Nations prior to the emer- gence of Leninism, after 1917 the League would also become, in Wilsonian statements, implicitly and explicitly an anti-Leninist effort to resolve the contradictions of world imperialism by means of reform and without revolution. In the second place, Wilson’s efforts to transform the Entente’s struggle against the CentralINTRODUCTION 7 Powers into a crusade for intemationalliberalism was in direct opposition to Lenin’s desire to transform the war into a world revolution. Naturally, Lenin and other revolutionary-socialists saw the threat to their hopes in a Wilsonian ideology which provided a way for socialists in the Allied countries to legitimize possible support for the Entente’s war effort. Lenin sought to make a clear distinction between war and revolution, while Wilson and Keren- sky created ideologies which appeared to give a quasi-radical legit- imization to the war against German autocratic imperialism by making the war of the moment the precondition of progress in the future. For all these reasons, then, Wilsonianism and Lenin- ism came into conflict after 1917, as two opposed methods of moving the world from an imperialistic past to a progressive fu- ture. On one level, this conflict between Wilsonian and Leninist val- ues was acted out in the arena of revolutionary Russian politics. In wartime Russia, Wilsonians sought initially to buttress the pro- Allied liberal-nationalist regime of the March Revolution, in order to save the moral and material strength of a liberalized Rus- sia for the anti-German coalition. Then too, even after failing to prevent the triumph of Russian Bolshevism, the Wilson Admin- istration continued its limited efforts, by means of intervention and diplomacy, to end the singleparty rule of the Bolsheviks and hopefully to bring Russia back to the lost liberalism of the March Revolution. Beyond Russia, however, Wilsonianism and Lenin- ism clashed implicitly in relation to Wilson’s attempts to reform traditional imperialism, without socialist revolution, through the Politics of gradual liberalism. The impact on world politics of Wil- sonian reformist liberalism was anti-Leninist as well as anti- imperialist. Broadly speaking, Wilson's non-revolutionary anti-imperialism sought to use America’s moral and material power to create a new international order, safe from the related threats of war and revo- lution, in which America could serve mankind from a position of political and economic pre-eminence. Yet the attainment of such8 WOOPROW WILSON AND WORLD POLITICS a stable American-inspired world order was dependent, ultimately, on the Administration’s ability to contain the world’s anti- imperialist forces within the confines either of orderly liberal re- form or of legitimized liberal war. Indeed, Wilsonians feared that unless America could remain in control of all progressive inter- national movements, Leninist revolutionary-socialism might cap- ture Europe’s masses and destroy not only atavistic imperialism, ut all liberal values and institutions as well. Somehow then, Wilson had to use either liberal reform or liberal war to destroy traditional imperialism, while at the same time maintaining the inviolability both of the nation-state system and of world capitalist order in the face of the challenge posed by the more radical anti- imperialism of Leninist revolutionary-socialism, In the final analysis, Wilsonian ideology sought essentially to end traditional imperialism and the balance of power, without socialist revolution, by reforming world politics from within, The Wilsonian problem was how to be in but yet not completely of the existing international political system. Thus, while the United States, un- der Wilson, would aid the Allied coalition to defeat Germany and to liberate the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe, it would do so only with the hope of eventually reintegrating a liberalized but non-evolutionary Germany into a new co-operative world struc- ture of Jaw and liberal order under the League of Nations. The American nation-state could, therefore, participate in a world war alongside a major European military alliance and, at the same time, hope to remake the alliance into an agency of liberal- international reform. ‘The heart of the matter is that Wilson’s conception of Amer- ica’s exceptional mission made it possible for him to reconcile the rapid growth of the economic and military power of the United States with what he conceived to be America’s unselfish service to humanity. Yet, this Wilsonian reconciliation between national power and liberal internationalism was ultimately more successful in the realm of theory than in the universe of political and dip- lomatic action, At the Paris Peace Conference, for example, Wil-INTRODUCTION 9 sonian efforts to use American economic and political power on behalf of a more moderate peace led, in part, to the involvement of American power in a postwar extension of the Entente alli- ance. Indeed, the absorption of Wilson's America into the alli ance politics of postwar Europe was a constant possibility so long as the Administration ultimately saw American and Allied power asa safer agent to transform and to control Germany than some form of social revolution. Ultimately then, in their search for a new rational international-capitalist order, safe from war and revo- lution and open to the commercial and moral expansion of Amer- ican liberalism, Wilsonians would find it easier to enter than to transcend the traditional diplomatie system. For the President, however, the hope of this liberal transcen- dence was kept alive by his vision of the League of Nations. In Wilsonian terms the League not only secured the peace with Germany, it also created an ongoing structure capable of handling all future international contradictions and imperialist threats to world order, In broader terms still, the President saw the League of Nations as the fulfillment of his long effort to use America’s moral and material power to move the world from a warlike state of nature to an orderly global society governed by liberal norms. Indeed, even if all nations could not be transformed immediately into liberal polities on the American model domestically, they all could hopefully be brought, through participation in the League of Nations, at least to play the role of orderly citizens in a new Lockean world system of liberal-capitalist harmony. Finally, then, Wilson envisioned the League as an Americaninspired inter- national social contract, guaranteeing a world liberal order made safe from traditional imperialism* and revolutionary-socialism, In this study, the concept of traditional imperialism refers to the entire existing strucite of world politics in the late mineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a structure characterized by alliance systems, military preparedness, and especially by great power rivalry for colonies and spheres of influence in the underdeveloped world. The concept of the “old diplomacy,” developed by Amo Mayer it his Flies! Onginsof the New Diploma, lacy, oe responds to my usage of the term traditional imperialism in this study. This usage also relates to the inclusive sense in which both Wilsonians and Lenin-10 WOODROW WILSON AND WORLD POLITICS within which the leadership of the liberal-exceptionalist United States would be welcomed by mankind. ists used the concept of imperialism, while each offered, of course, quite diferent analyses of the roots of imperaism and quite diferent anti Petals programs. Moreover, even if, on another plane of analysis, the Tacologial bass for a new American impesium can be seen to. have been latent in. Wilson's vision of a new liberal world order led by the United States, it nonetheless remains true that the Wilsonian position was opposed to traditional imperialism as defined above.WAR AND REVOLUTION lBlank Page