Download Woodrow Wilson-Foreign Affairs

Woodrow Wilson
Foreign Affairs
Woodrow Wilson and his secretary of state, William
Jennings Bryan, came into office with little experience in
foreign relations but with a determination to base their policy
on moral principles rather than the selfish materialism that
they believed had animated their predecessors' programs.
Convinced that democracy was gaining strength throughout
the world, they were eager to encourage the process. In 1916,
the Democratic-controlled Congress promised the residents
of the Philippine Islands independence; the next year, Puerto
Rico achieved territorial status, and its residents became U.S.
citizens. Working closely with Secretary of State Bryan,
Wilson signed twenty-two bilateral treaties which agreed to
cooling-off periods and outside fact-finding commissions as
alternatives to war.
In a statement issued soon after taking office, Wilson
declared that the United States hoped "to cultivate the
friendship and deserve the confidence" of the Latin American
states, but he also emphasized that he believed "just
government" must rest "upon the consent of the governed."
Latin Americans were delighted by the prospect of being free
to conduct their own affairs without American interference,
but Wilson's insistence that their governments must be
democratic undermined the promise of self-determination. In
1915, Wilson responded to chronic revolution in Haiti by
sending in American marines to restore order, and he did the
same in the Dominican Republic in 1916. The military
occupations that followed failed to create the democratic
states that were their main objective. In 1916, Wilson
practiced an old-fashioned form of imperialism by buying the
Virgin Islands from their colonial master, Denmark, for $25
million.
Aggressive Moral Diplomacy
Mexico posed a special problem for Wilsonian diplomacy.
Having been in revolution since 1899, Mexico, in 1913, came
under the rule of the counterrevolutionary General Victoriano
Huerta, who clamped a bloody authoritarian rule on the
country. Most European nations welcomed the order and
friendly climate for foreign investments that Huerta offered,
but Wilson refused to recognize "a government of butchers"
that obviously did not reflect the wishes of the Mexican
people. His stance encouraged anti-Huerta forces in northern
Mexico led by Venustiano Carranza.
In April of 1914, Mexican officials in Tampico arrested a
few American sailors who blundered into a prohibited area,
and Wilson used the incident to justify ordering the U.S. Navy
to occupy the port city of Veracruz. The move greatly
weakened Huerta's control, and he abandoned power to
Carranza, whom Wilson immediately recognized as the de
facto president of Mexico. One of Carranza's rivals, Pancho
Villa, moved to provoke a war between the Carranza
government and the United States by crossing the border into
New Mexico on March 9, 1916, and killing several Americans.
Wilson, without securing permission from Carranza, sent an
expedition of 7,000 U.S. soldiers commanded by General John
"Black Jack" Pershing into Mexico in pursuit of Villa. The
expedition failed to capture Villa but provoked a
confrontation between the Americans and Carranza's forces
in which men on both sides were killed and several Americans
were captured. Alarmed by the danger of war, Wilson
reaffirmed his commitment to Mexican self-determination
and agreed to discuss methods of securing the border area
with the Mexican government.
Early in 1917, when it began to appear that the United
States could not avoid being dragged into the European war,
Wilson withdrew all U.S. forces from Mexico. The decision
coincided with the publication of an intercepted message
from Arthur Zimmermann in the German foreign office to the
German minister in Mexico, instructing him to propose an
alliance with Mexico against the United States if Germany and
the United States went to war. Following an American defeat,
Mexico would regain New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and
California, which had been ceded to the United States after
the Mexican War in 1848. Wilson's release of the
"Zimmermann Telegram" solidified U.S. public opinion
against Germany, though Mexico was never tempted to accept
the German proposal.
Neutrality in World War I
With the outbreak of fighting in the "Great War" in
Europe in August 1914, President Wilson appealed to
Americans to remain strictly neutral. He believed that the
underlying cause of the war, which would leave 14 million
Europeans dead by 1917, was the militant nationalism of the
major European powers, as well as the ethnic hatreds that
existed in much of Central and Eastern Europe. The conflict
lined up the Central Powers—Germany, Austria-Hungary,
Turkey, and Bulgaria—on one side, against the Allied
Powers—initially Great Britain, France, Russia, and Serbia,
and later Italy, Japan, Portugal, certain Latin American
nations, China, and Greece—on the other. It started with the
assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand of AustriaHungary by a young Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo in June
1914. This incident triggered an explosion of demands and
counterdemands. Within months, a complex set of entangling
and secret treaties and alliances engulfed much of the
world—due to the imperial holdings of Germany, France, and
England—in war.
With nearly one in every seven Americans having been
born in the countries at war, Wilson believed the United
States must remain neutral. Because the American economy
was in a recession when the war began, however, and the
British and French were eager to buy American products, the
administration interpreted neutral duties in ways that tended
to favor the Allies. When Germany retaliated by using
submarines to blockade the British Isles, Wilson refused to
ban U.S. travel on British or American passenger ships or to
cut off arms sales to the warring nations, as the Germans
demanded.
End of Neutrality
In May 1915, a German submarine—called a "U-boat,"
which was a relatively fragile vessels that depended on
surprise attacks from below the surface for its success—
torpedoed the British liner Lusitania off the coast of Ireland,
killing nearly 1,200 people, including 128 Americans. Wilson
urged patience but demanded that Germany either halt or
drastically curtail submarine warfare. Convinced that the
President's policy would lead to an unnecessary war, Secretary
Bryan resigned in June 1915. For a time, German concessions
preserved peace, but Britain refused to abandon its blockade
of Europe, and early in 1917, Germany resumed its submarine
warfare. The Germans calculated that the move would force
the United States into the war but not before they could
mount a massive attack on Allied forces while destroying the
British navy. After several American ships were sunk and the
public release of the Zimmermann telegram outraged
Americans, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on
Germany. The Senate voted 82 to 6 to declare war on April 4,
1917; the House concurred on April 6 by a vote of 373 to 50.
Jeannette Rankin of Montana, the first woman to serve in the
House of Representatives, was among those who voted
against the war.
Wilson's war message condemned German U-boat attacks
as "warfare against mankind" but emphasized that the main
goal of the war should be to end militarism and make the
world "safe for Democracy," not merely to defend American
ships. He promised that the United States would fight to
ensure democracy, self-government, the rights and liberties of
small nations, and an international peace organization that
would end war forever.
American Troops in the War
Wilson had proposed a program of military preparedness
as early as 1915. This helped the U.S. Navy move quickly to aid
the British fleet in destroying the threat of German
submarines to Allied shipping by late 1917. The Army required
more time, however, before it was ready for action. Congress
passed the Selective Service Act in May of 1917, and eventually
2.8 million men were drafted—about 72 percent of the entire
Army. No women were drafted, but 13,000 joined the military,
serving in clerical capacities in the Navy and Marines.
Although the Army refused to enlist women, nearly 18,000
served in the Army Corps of Nurses but without rank, pay, or
benefits. Another 5,000 civilian women served in various
capacities in France, sometimes near the front lines. Many of
these women were wealthy and well-educated; at first, they
saw the war as a grand adventure, but like the soldiers, they
soon understood its true horror.
Approximately 400,000 African Americans also served in
the war, and 200,000 were sent overseas. Emmett J. Scott, an
African American and former secretary to Booker T.
Washington, functioned as the special assistant to the
secretary of war in charge of black soldiers. Nonetheless,
black soldiers were generally treated as second-class
participants. Most black troops were commanded by white
officers, served in segregated Jim Crow units in the Army that
received the worst assignments, were relegated to food service
in the Navy, and were totally excluded from the Marines.
Commanded by General John J. Pershing, American
troops, defined as "associated" rather than Allied forces to
preserve their independence, joined the Allied forces just in
the nick of time. In the spring of 1918, a massive German
offensive was launched to within fifty miles of Paris. When
Russia pulled out of the war after the Bolshevik Revolution in
November of 1917, tens of thousands of German soldiers were
freed from the eastern front to join the assault on the western
lines. With fresh American troops, the Allies launched a
counteroffensive in July of 1918. A large contingent of newly
arrived American soldiers and thousands of U.S. mules, which
were used to pull heavy equipment through the viscous mud
of the European front, pushed back German forces in a
stunning one-day offensive at the Battle of St. Mihiel. By early
November, after the victorious Allied offensive in the MeuseArgonne region, the Germans faced defeat and called for an
armistice. At that point, more than 2 million American
soldiers were in France, giving the Allies an advantage of
almost 600,000 men. Of the more than 8 million soldiers and
6 million civilians killed in the war, the United States lost
115,000 men, including 48,000 killed in action. The rest died
from diseases and accidents, especially a global influenza
epidemic that killed 600,000 Americans at home and abroad.
Wilson and the Fourteen Points
Victorious in war, Wilson hoped to revolutionize the
conduct of international affairs at the peace table. He first
outlined his vision in the "Fourteen Points" speech delivered
to Congress in January 1918. It called for a "new diplomacy"
consisting of "open covenants openly arrived at." No more
secret treaties, like the ones that had pulled the world into
war in 1914 would be tolerated, and all territories occupied
during the war must be evacuated. Wilson wanted to
dismantle the imperial order by opening up colonial holdings
to eventual self-rule and all European sections of the Ottoman
and Austro-Hungarian empires to immediate independence.
He also proposed a general disarmament after the war, with
the Germans and Austrians giving up their armed forces first.
Fair treatment of revolutionary Russia, he declared, would be
the "acid test" of the peace. Other points included freedom of
the seas at all times and free trade all over the world. But
Wilson's most important proposal was the prevention of
future wars by means of a new international organization, a
league of nations, open to membership by all democratic
states. This new world body would be in charge of
disarmament and the dismantling of colonial possessions.
Most importantly, the League would hold power over all
disputes among its members. Wilson believed that this
League would transform international relations and usher in a
new era of world peace.
When Wilson sailed for France in December of 1918 to
head the American peace delegation, it marked the first time
an American President in office had gone to Europe. He
brought along some 200 experts on European history, culture,
and ethnology but no Republicans as advisers, although a
Republican majority controlled the Senate that would have to
approve the final treaty. Everywhere he went in France,
Britain, and Italy, huge crowds cheered him as the leader of
the nation that had finally brought the slaughter to an end.
He knew that few of the Allied leaders were ready to accept
his proposals, but he hoped that if he could get his message to
ordinary people, they would force their leaders to listen. The
alternative, he feared, would be a victory for communism or a
return to prewar militarism and imperialism. But ordinary
Europeans, like their leaders, were embittered by four years of
war and wanted vengeance on Germany.
In the end, faced with the determined insistence of Allied
leaders to punish Germany with heavy reparations, territorial
occupation, and total disarmament, Wilson was forced to
compromise on most of his points. He got his League of
Nations, but instead of a "peace without victory," the "Big
Four" leaders—David Lloyd George (Great Britain), Georges
Clemenceau (France), Vittorio Orlando (Italy), and Wilson—
held secret negotiations and produced the Treaty of
Versailles. This treaty imposed harsh terms on Germany, and
Wilson was forced to present to the Senate a treaty that bore
little resemblance to the ideal peace most Americans
expected.
The opposition at home equaled the opposition abroad.
Senate Republicans, who controlled the Senate, were split
into two groups: the "reservationists" and the
"irreconcilables." The first group was led by Henry Cabot
Lodge, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Lodge believed the obligations of the League would
compromise American independence and proposed
amendments to meet that threat. The second group was
smaller and was opposed to any involvement of the United
States in world affairs. Most Senate Democrats supported
Wilson and the treaty.
Embittered over Republican opposition, Wilson launched
into an arduous speaking tour to rally the nation to his
cause—9,981 miles with speeches in twenty-nine cities. The
effort depleted his already exhausted body, and he collapsed
in Pueblo, Colorado, on September 25. Soon after, he suffered
a serious stroke that left him half-paralyzed and totally
secluded for the remainder of his presidency. In one of the
most controversial episodes in presidential history, Wilson—
completely out of touch with the situation in the Senate—
refused to consider any compromises to the League, issuing
his orders via his wife, who was one of the few people, other
than his doctors, who spoke with him during the League
battle. When the Senate Republicans amended the treaty—to
ensure that the President could not use U.S. forces on League
business without securing congressional assent—Wilson told
his supporters to vote against the amended treaty, and they
joined with the Republican "irreconcilables" to reject the
League. America never joined the international organization
that Wilson had envisioned as the foundation of his new
world order. This failure of the League was a devastating
conclusion to Wilson's almost superhuman efforts for world
peace based upon international cooperation and the peaceful
solution of international disputes.