The Legacy of Woodrow Wilson: American War Aims in WOrld War I. - book reviews

ORBIS, Fall, 1997 by Francis J. Gavin

What was Woodrow Wilson's legacy to the practice of American foreign policy and grand strategy? Throughout most of the cold war period, the scholarship on this question was divided into fairly straightforward categories. The first group, whose viewpoint might be labeled liberal internationalist, saw Wilson as a "prophet and pivot of the twentieth century,"(1) who guided the United States out of isolationism towards a role on the world stage which was designed to transform international politics. These scholars shared Wilson's belief that autocracy, closed economies, and the pursuit of realpolitik had poisoned international relations and made war more likely. They lamented the failure of the world fully to embrace Wilson's vision of a world made safe for democracy through collective security and national self-determination.

A second group, known as "realists," took a diametrically opposed view. They echoed George Kennan's harsh criticism of a U.S. foreign policy that had been "moralistic and legalistic" and had tried to portray the Americans as "more wise and noble than we really were."(2) For realists, Wilson's attack on power politics was wrongheaded. War was far more likely to occur when considerations of power were ignored. Wilsonian attempts to transform world politics were bound to fail because of a simple truth: the international system is an anarchic and ruthless arena where states compete for scarce security and have only limited incentives to cooperate. It is resistant to change. Even when states do cooperate, relative gain considerations and concerns about cheating prevent collective security systems from preventing aggression. So according to this realist perspective, Wilsonian efforts to promote democracy and national self-determination can do little to guarantee stability in international relations.

A third interpretation, most ably articulated by Gordon Levin, suggested that Wilson's foreign policy was largely motivated by economic aims. This provocative view depicts Wilsonianism as a program to advance America's interests through the promotion of a liberal capitalist world order.(3) But Levin's framework never really captured the imagination of foreign-policy specialists, and for most of the postwar period, the debate over Wilson's legacy has largely focused on the dash between liberals and realists.

This manichean dispute was so compelling because it reflected fundamental disagreements about the nature of man and the world he inhabits.(4) Because of its belief in an essentially good and malleable human nature, the liberal view held out hope for the eventual elimination of war through education and reform. History had demonstrated that progress was possible. If states and their civil societies could be recast so that they reflected the will of their citizens, and if democratic governments could come together to punish lawless states, then poverty, hatred, and political inequality would disappear and the major causes for conflict be eliminated. Realists, on the other hand, preferred to see man and the world as they are, not as they should be. Man is not perfectible. The composition of national governments has little impact on issues of war and peace. Politics is the clash of opposing interests, in an arena which discounted moral principles. This is especially true of international politics, where no sovereign existed to enforce laws. For both realists and liberals alike, Woodrow Wilson became the modern lightning rod for an age-old debate, a fact that helps to explain why opinions on his character, politics, and legacy have been so strongly held and so fiercely debated. After World War II, opinions about Wilson often mirrored feelings about the origins and course of the cold war. The argument over Wilsonianism, like arguments over the origins and course of the cold war, were highly politicized and left little room for compromise.

Why is there now a renewed interest in Wilsonianism and its impact on modern world politics? Is there really anything about Wilson and his legacy that was not already known? Is it possible that the intensity of the debate between liberals and realists obscured the true meaning of Wilsonianism? This is certainly the sense one gets when considering the new spate of books. Each one challenges some aspect of the conventional understanding of Wilson and his impact on American foreign policy, and - with the exception of Knock - each implicitly or explicitly challenges the validity of the realist-liberal divide in U.S. foreign policy.

One possible explanation for this reassessment of Wilson may come from the sense, produced by the sudden end of the cold war and the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union, that neither liberalism nor realism (nor, obviously, Marxism) were, by themselves, convincing frameworks to explain American grand strategy in the twentieth century. There is the impression that promoters of both frameworks were caught off guard by the dramatic events of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Realists certainly expected geopolitical competition but not a complete collapse of the Soviet Union, and liberals vastly underestimated the impact of military factors such as the Reagan buildup in bringing the bipolar conflict to an end. If liberals and realists were wrong about the cold war, maybe they were wrong about Wilson and the impact of his ideas on twentieth-century American policy.