The Diplomatic Skills of Woodrow Wilson - Research Paper Example

The Diplomatic Skills of Woodrow Wilson Mexican Revolution "Missionary diplomacy," as Arthur Link has referred to Wilson's foreign-policy efforts in the western hemisphere, was highlighted by American misadventures in Mexico. The president sought to shape the Mexican Revolution of 1913 into a pattern of his own design. Its most prominent features were moralistic and constitutional, the latter derived from his long study of government. Moral and constitutional elements figured generally in missionary diplomacy and were, in fact, inextricably linked together. If the lives of people in the Americas were to be improved and the well-being of society promoted, Wilson (and Bryan) believed that constitutional governments, which were the most moral form of government, had to be supported strongly. In the Caribbean area, however--in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti, where Wilson committed United States forces in unusual displays of American intervention (Blum, 1956). the people were not prepared to assume the kind of self-rule that Wilson held up as an ideal. Other factors, including inherited commitments, military-naval strategies, financial involvement, and the desire for personal gain on the part of some American officials, had to be figured into any comprehensive explanation of United States interference in the Caribbean states. What made the whole of the package palatable to Wilson was the presence of the moral and constitutional elements that the president hoped to promote by American influence. Contemplation and admiration of representative government gave him an ill-founded confidence that, through conscious effort, any people could measure up to the responsibilities of self-government. This was quite apart from whether vested interests in the country or grasping and corrupt leadership would permit self-rule to come about. For all his learning Wilson had little awareness of the Latin American political sense or of the history of the Latin American states. For this reason he blundered time and again during U.S. involvement in the Mexican Revolution from 1913 to 1917. At first the president was morally repulsed by the coup in Mexico whereby Victoriano Huerta, in the process of coming to power by a forceful overthrow of the established government, murdered the deposed president, Francisco Madero. Second, the President moved to support the anti-Huerta movement led by Venustiano Carranza because Carranza promised his followers to support the reforms instituted by Madero and to do so through a new constitutional government. The Carranza party called itself the Constitutionalists. Brushing aside the prior question of whether the United States should directly intervene in the politics of a sovereign nation, however noble the intention, Wilson was soon entangled in a rapidly shifting power struggle in Mexico. Had his interference not been prompted by his obsession with a moral and constitutional outcome, it is doubtful that he could have been drawn so deeply into Mexican affairs (Bragdon, 1967). The study of history guided Wilson's Mexican policy in still another way. He believed passionately that good men made the difference between good and bad government. The form of the polity was less critical than the quality of the individuals who carried on the affairs of a nation. The president had his share of historical heroes, Lincoln and Gladstone among them, men of integrity and high resolve. At one point in the Mexican crisis the British diplomat, Sir William Tyrrell, asked the president what exactly his Mexican policy was (Craig, 1960). The reply was a telling one, an unguarded response for the biographer to prize because it revealed Wilson's deepest convictions: "I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men." A further question must be asked: What made a public man good, in Wilson's judgment? A man who "was sternly honest in his conduct and a staunch advocate of constitutional government would have been Wilson's unhesitating response, based as it was on his own moral sense and on his study of history and government. The conduct of policy between the United States and Mexico--with Caribbean affairs, the Chinese loan question, differences with Japan over discrimination against the Japanese in California, and negotiations over tolls charged at the Panama Canal thrown in for added measure--would have been more than enough to keep the State Department busy. Larger problems, of course, were to come with the outbreak of hostilities in Europe in the summer of 1914, less than a year and a half after Wilson came into office. The war would be an increasing worry for the president and his advisers until the United States entered the conflict in the spring of 1917 (Diamond, 1943). Woodrow Wilson's scholarly concerns had centered on the phenomenon of government and on the history of the people and leaders of the United States. A dedicated student of the British constitution as well, he had gained much knowledge of and insight into human affairs from his reading and writing over the years. In these enterprises, however, he had not become well or widely acquainted with international politics. The history of other countries was viewed from the lofty perch of Anglo-American constitutional success and with little sustained attention given to diplomacy. Wilson displayed hardly any feel for geopolitics, though it was a subject much discussed at the close of the nineteenth century. There was no sense of Captain Mahan's ideas about his outlook and not much appreciation of the need for a Weltpolitick along the lines suggested by Brooks Adams. Wilson's travels abroad were limited largely to friendly climes where the culture was much the same as his own. He had no foreign experience similar to William Howard Taft's sojourn among the Filipinos, much less Theodore Roosevelt's wide acquaintance with the world beyond the United States (Elletson, 1965). . Comparable experiences would have enlarged Wilson's understanding of foreign countries and various peoples. He had depended heavily on his book knowledge of government and history to guide him in his presidential political moves at home. Although as a highly educated man, he had amassed a great deal of information about the world beyond America, his lack of studious attention to international affairs over a long period of research and writing made for a deficiency in his preparation to be the main architect of American foreign policy. Wilson had to learn the diplomatic ropes and to learn them quickly. This he did readily enough but they were lessons learned from experience rather than from contemplating theory and studying history, which were his natural habit. Promotion of Independence for the Philippines The Clayton Anti-Trust Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act became law in 1914, each being consistent with if not fully satisfying Progressive requirements. What was Wilson's contribution to the passage of these laws, and what use did he make of presidential prestige and power? He huddled with legislative leaders and went before the Congress again to address a joint session, the fifth time he had done so, in order to explain in detail the administration's antitrust proposal. The fact was, however, that neither Wilson nor the Democratic leadership in Congress could agree on the bill's particulars. It was a perfect opportunity for Wilson to take charge, but the most he was prepared to do was remain stoutly opposed to the exemption of labor from the operation of the antitrust law. The uncertainty forced the president to ponder his ideological future. Louis Brandeis is usually credited with drawing Wilson in the direction of government regulation of big business, especially in his draft version of the Federal Trade Commission Act, a prophetic indication of Wilson's later reorientation. In 1914 all this appeared more a case of drift (Freud, 1967). At the end of that year Wilson announced himself convinced that the passage of the four critical laws dealing with the tariff, banking, the trusts, and interstate trade had fulfilled the reform program. Many moderate Progressives were less sure: advanced Progressives were dismayed. Wilson had preached reform and laws had been enacted, but he seemed unaware that more steps would have to be taken for the new laws to take hold and make a difference in society. His appointments, to the Federal Reserve Board, for example, were men of conservative outlook. As was his preacher father before him, Wilson was convinced that sound directives were enough. The laws would somehow produce the intended results. The longer Woodrow Wilson remained in politics the more of a politician he became. During 1915 his progressivism had been subordinated to serious foreign policy matters; 1916 was an election year, however, and Wilson's concern with Progressive issues suddenly revived. To win the presidency again would require the construction of a coalition of old-line Democrats and dedicated Progressives, of eastern workers and western farmers, of urban dwellers and small-town voters. The year 1916 began on a controversial note when the president nominated Brandeis, the doctrinaire liberal, to the Supreme Court and immediately exercised his privilege of leading the contest for confirmation (George, 1956). The nomination connoted morality and Wilson warmed easily to the fight. Soon the president announced himself converted to the long-pending scheme for rural credits and executed a remarkable volte-face on child labor by pushing for passage of the Keating-Owens bill. In the matter of a child labor law Wilson displayed both force and skill as he persuaded a number of southern senators to agree to accept the idea. Continuing to speak the advanced Progressive line he advocated acceptance of the Jones bill, which enhanced the opportunities for self-rule in the Philippines. While the final version of this law contained no definite promise of independence, Wilson had demonstrated his own brand of anti-imperialism. The president agreed to the Adamson Act, limiting the hours of railroad workers to eight a day, as readily as he had to the revision of the tariff in 1913. These various initiatives appealed directly to the components of the ad hoc Democratic, or better still, Wilsonian coalition. "Fourteen Points" Peace Plan during World War I At this critical juncture in the war, the president took decisive action to speed the American mobilization. First, he overcame his own scruples and put speculator Bernard Baruch in charge of a revitalized War Industries Board. Second, he appointed a hard-charging new army Chief of Staff, General Peyton March, to light a fire under the army bureau and staff officers. He even waffled briefly on amalgamation, but he was "overruled" by Pershing, who insisted on keeping the integrity of the AEF. General March sacked incompetent officers, brought businessmen into the War Department, and created an air arm, tank corps, and chemical warfare service. With the help of George W. Goethals, builder of the Panama Canal, he reorganized the army's chaotic acquisition system into one purchase, storage, and traffic division. Wilson reserved uncharacteristic vehemence for the treaty of BrestLitovsk. The German government had shown unmistakably how it regarded his fourteen points: the only peace it was interested in was total conquest. Thus the American commander-in-chief chose the anniversary of the congressional declaration of war to call upon his fellow citizens to make their utmost effort to beat back the German hordes. Germany's challenge, he averred, was to "the sacred rights of free men everywhere." With the German summer offensive repulsed, Allied and American forces counterattacked in late August. In the middle of September, Austria-Hungary asked Wilson to arrange an informal conference to discuss peace, but he refused. By the end of the month, the Allied expedition in Salonika had forced Bulgaria to capitulate. Writing to the shaken readers of the Berliner Tageblatt, retired German naval captain Lothar Persius chided German experts, including Tirpitz, who had earlier deprecated American military aid to the Allies. He refuted those Germans who believed that America's entry into the war was based on simple economic motivation: he noted "the enormous power which issues from the high idealism which on the whole prevails" in the U.S. He argued that Americans had a "spirit of deep religious and moral culture" and warned that "only the ignorant will speak of American hypocrisy and cant." The Americans were coming, and in great force. True Americans rejected war "like every other species of barbarism" but recognized "the justification of a struggle against despotism and slavery." Persius understood Wilson's war aims better than most of America's allies (Grayson, 1960). At the end of September, Ludendorff prompted German civilian leaders to ask Wilson to make peace based on his Fourteen Points and other statements. Clearly, they were not thinking of this address, or his 1917 Flag Day speech, or his reply to the pope. They either did not know or did not wish to know that several of his points would take territory away from Germany. In his January speech Wilson had demanded the evacuation and restoration of Russia (point 6), Belgium (7), France, including Alsace-Lorraine (8), and the reconstitution of Poland (13). Nor did he promise to prohibit Allied demands for reparations. Even in the summer of 1918, German leaders refused to forgo their annexationist dreams. As late as August 1918, the German government would not submit the Brest-Litovsk treaty or the fate of Alsace-Lorraine to the judgment of a postwar peace conference (Link, 1947). On October 5, the new chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, asked Wilson, through the Swiss government, for an immediate armistice and peace negotiations based on Wilson's program. American editors expected a swift rejection. Instead, Wilson demanded the Germans evacuate occupied territory, recall their submarines, allow Allied generals to stipulate the military terms of the armistice, and hinted that the kaiser must go. After a week-long debate, the German government accepted Wilson's terms and Ludendorff's resignation. Now the president had to see if the Allies would accept his fourteen points. At the same time, Wilson rejected calls from such Republican stalwarts as Senator Lodge for a campaign to force unconditional surrender on Germany. He did not believe that it was worth another million Allied lives to march to Berlin as long as the Germans were willing to reform their governmental institutions and sign an armistice. When Baker warned the president in late October that U.S. actions might be seen as an attempt to coerce the Allies, Wilson replied that they needed coercion, because they were "grasping for more than a peace of justice required." Later, at a cabinet meeting, he used a homey western metaphor to make the same point: he said he wanted to go to the peace conference "armed with as many weapons as my pockets will hold so as to compel justice." Wilson sent House to Paris to coordinate prospective armistice terms with British and French leaders. On 28 October he cabled the Colonel to say that he wanted to make sure that the terms would prevent the renewal of hostilities by Germany, yet be otherwise moderate. He declared, "Too much success or security on the part of the Allies will make a genuine Peace Settlement exceedingly difficult if not impossible." The president's message was garbled in transmission to read "too much severity" instead of "success and security." This accident seriously diminished the impact of his words (Mulder, 1978). Active Campaign to Establish a League of Nations Wilson defined America's stake in resolution of the world war in his famous address to the Senate of January 22, 1917. He developed several familiar themes as he explained the results of his peace initiative to the assembled legislators. He argued that "a concert of power" would have to replace the present and inherently unstable balance-of-power system. America would transcend its provincial past and participate in a League of Nations to guarantee permanent peace, but only if the war were settled justly. In perhaps his most grandiloquent phrase (and the one that struck fear into the hearts of virtually every belligerent statesman), Wilson called for "a peace without victory." He reasoned that only a peace between equals would last. 5 It was likely Wilson's greatest forensic exercise, and if a barrage of words could have stopped the carnage, the Great War would have ended that day. Peace without victory was the consummate formulation of America's ideological interpretation of the war. The origins of the conflict were murky, belligerent practices abominable, and American rights, honor and perhaps even security threatened. Wilson seized on the idea of American exceptionalism, which had been heretofore a rather static concept, and made it dynamic. He called his fellow citizens to share their unique heritage with the world. This meant America would have to be consulted in the peace process, because U.S. participation in the new postwar system would be critical. The great game of the balance of power was over, and Wilson hailed the dawn of a new international order based on collective security. Even as he called his fellow citizens to international commitment, he lit a fire behind all the belligerents to make peace on a rational basis. This resolution of the conflict would protect American interests, maintain U.S. neutrality and preclude the exemplary triumph and punishment that Wilson had warned against since 1914 (Weinstein, 1981). The president demanded of the belligerents the ruthless suppression of passion by logic that he had achieved in himself. And if any great leader had reason to be furious in late January 1917, it was Wilson: the American minister in Berne, Switzerland, had informed him only two weeks before of an abortive German plot on his life. 8 The revelation made no discemable impact on Wilson's behavior or his diplomacy. An eminent historian of American foreign relations has recently argued that President Wilson was not neutral and only waited for the political climate to change so he could move against Germany. 9 The president's statements quoted above, his intervention to limit Allied credit, his unsolicited and unwelcome peace move, and his definition of peace without victory do not support such an interpretation. Although he distrusted the Germans and felt that they presented a real danger to American security, he was pragmatic enough to be willing to work with them to achieve a negotiated peace. And although he made any number of pro-English statements early in the war, he had little good to say about the Entente after the collapse of the House-Grey initiative in the summer of 1916. Whereas once he had professed that a peace dictated by the Allies could not harm American interests, their behavior in 1916 (especially the implications of the Paris Economic Conference) indicated that there was little to chose among the belligerents. It further validated his early supposition that the best possible resolution of the war was a stalemate, to which he added his ideas of freedom of the seas and for a League of Nations. All would preclude future contests of strength so prejudicial to American interests. On his way to Paris aboard the George Washington, the president told his subordinates, "Tell me what's right and I'll fight for it." When he arrived, he found that sometimes justice is a relative quantity. At the same time, his ability to persuade foreign statesmen was circumscribed. During the war the AEF was a powerful lever to use upon the Allies, but after the Armistice its power to coerce was limited. He discovered that the financial power he expected to yield was no greater. Having loaned huge sums to the Allies, he discovered that he did not have debtors, but partners. American prosperity depended on their economic recovery, and the Allies refused to be coerced. In the end, Wilson's sentiments of 1916 were made manifest two years later when the war ended without the statesmen of the world achieving most of their war aims, with all sacrifices wasted, and the war serving as the ultimate symbol of the folly of national ambition. World War I ended bereft of glory. Resources 1. Blum John M. Woodrow Wilson and the Politics of Morality. Boston: Little, Brown, 1956. 2. Bragdon Henry W. Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967. 3. Craig Hardin. Woodrow Wilson at Princeton. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960. 4. Diamond William. The Economic Thought of Woodrow Wilson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1943. 5. Elletson D. H. Roosevelt and Wilson, a Comparative Study. London: J. Murray, 1965. 6. Freud Sigmund, and Bullitt William C. Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study. New York: Houghton, 1967. 7. George Alexander and Juliette. Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House: A Personality Study. New York: J. Day and Company, 1956. 8. Grayson Cary T. Woodrow Wilson: An Intimate Memoir. New York: Holt, Reinhart, & Winston, 1960. 9. Link Arthur S. Woodrow Wilson. 5 vols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947-. 10. Wilson the Diplomatist: A Look at His Major Foreign Policies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957. 11. Mulder John M. Woodrow Wilson: The Years of Preparation. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1978. 12. Weinstein Edwin a. Woodrow Wilson: A Medical and Psychological Biography. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Read More