By now, "Birth of a Nation" has been released. I wonder how many voters will remember the Wilson quote at the beginning? Will the North condemn his Lost Cause writings, or are they sufficiently hidden from the public eye?
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These are just two of the reasons I have a deep and profound dislike of Wilson.
Racist domestically, moronic abroad, and an all round asshat.
That being said, still the most significant president of the 20th century...unless we count world ending disasters in which case Truman, Ike and JFK were the most significant by default...
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Well, technically there is a portrait of Theodore Roosevelt in an earlier chapter that discloses his time spent as President!
But the 1912 election is certainly one of the great "what ifs" had Roosevelt and the Bull Moose Party had won the presidency and what that would have meant for our national political landscape with a more aggressive national-progressive party, a laissez-faire party, and the Democratic Party...The fear of Moscow is real, even in this timeline!
We'll Wilson's policy proposals in action very soon. Needless to say, perhaps much to admire, and much to be cynical about! Just like the real Wilson.
This is very true, however it is important to remember the white northern voting public wasn't much dissimilar from their southern brethren at the turn of the century. When Birth of a Nation opened in Boston, it was a sell out spectacular. The anti-Lost Cause writing in the North is a post-1960s manifestation. The North was more "bloody shirt" waving, claiming that since they had won the Civil War only they could be trusted with piloting the American republic.
I think it might be a truism that the most consequential presidents have always been unsavory characters. Only Washington and Lincoln, despite some obvious personal flaws, tend to be the most immune from this analysis. Jefferson, Jackson, both Roosevelts, Wilson, LBJ, etc. can all fit that description. Unfortunately, we're soon approaching our conclusion so we may not get to some of those other significant 20th century presidents.
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CHAPTER XXI: THE GREAT WAR
X
The Peace of Paris and the Election of 1916
The Peace of Paris and the Election of 1916
Wilson’s Fourteen Points seemed to make an impression on American voters. There was a growing concern from Roosevelt’s fourth term ambitions, as well as the obvious reality that the American military and navy had been extensively expanded during his duration as president. Isolationist Republicans, anti-war Democrats and populists—led by former President Bryan—and Americans with a general fatigue of Roosevelt’s three terms, were beginning to rally around the Wilson candidacy.
Although the Paris Peace Treaty was more or less set, the bickering and bantering between the allies dragged out the peace process on minor, or at least what Americans perceived as minor, technicalities that the French and the British considered extremely important. Questions of North Sea shipping, the German navy, Middle East, and the question of Italy in the Mediterranean were all issues that preoccupied the British and French delegations that Roosevelt sought to arbitrate toward compromise.
From afar, on the campaign trail as Roosevelt was in Paris whilst having his lackeys promoting his successful three terms and victory in the war, Wilson argued that Roosevelt was not pacificist-minded enough to secure a lasting peace. The newspapers reported on the resentment and revenge wanted by France and Britain on Germany and Britain’s imperial pretensions alongside France’s disposition at the peace conference. France wanted to retain her belief of continental supremacy and power. While acknowledging Italy as a new emergent power in the Mediterranean, and with ever present British Mediterranean Squadron, France also wanted to strike the balance of Mediterranean power—to be the largest and most powerful force to project power in the Mediterranean. The British, however, didn’t want an all-powerful France in the central sea of Europe. Neither did the Italians who still had emergent imperial ambitions of their own.
Dreadnaughts and battlecruisers, like the one above, were a target of Wilson’s criticism. Military disarmament, especially on the high seas, was one of Wilson’s most adamant goals.
While Roosevelt sought compromise on these “minor” issues, Wilson outlined a grander global plan of free shipping, naval reduction, and a League of Nations to resolve political disputes diplomatically. It was Wilson’s belief that free travel, reduced naval arms, and a diplomatic league of nations—rather than singular treaties between belligerent powers—was the best means of securing a lasting peace and avoiding the horrors of modern mechanical war.
The movement toward peace, Wilson continued, started in America with a President who could strike the balance between the new realities of international cooperation and military disarmament. America as the “citadel of peace” was Wilson’s mantra. And his pitch was becoming increasingly popular to the American voters.
Before the November election, when Roosevelt finally returned in mid-October declaring victory in Europe and peace in Paris, there was an immediate fight when the peace treaty was brought to the Senate where the irreconcilables and Democrats erected an unified front against Roosevelt’s work. While the irreconcilables were equally distressed by Wilson’s proposed League of Nations, that was, as far as they considered, an unreality conjured up in the fantasies of a former university president and historian. It was purely theoretical. Roosevelt’s working in the Paris Peace Treaty which would bring the United States into European affairs was a concrete reality.
If the United States was the arbiter of European peace, as the irreconcilables believed the work of Roosevelt had done—for who else could enforce the stipulations? surely not the Europeans themselves with their long history of internal rivalry and war—this would fundamentally alter the nature of American foreign policy. “From Promised Land to Crusader State,” Senator Lodge, the leading irreconcilable, thundered in his opposition to the peace treaty. The anti-Roosevelt coalition that emerged sought a new strategy. One, they believed, they could force upon Wilson if elected. The United States would simply orchestrate its own non-aggression peace treaty with the new Germany and what was left of the Ottoman Empire. The United States had simply declared war on Germany and the Ottoman Empire. America had no plans or political motives in the war, as the Europeans may have had, so America didn’t need to be a signatory on the Paris Peace Treaty. Spilling ink on Paris Peace Treaty would therefore oblige the United States to honor the compact. That was, for the irreconcilables, a bridge too far.
Roosevelt, despite all his accomplishments: conservation and the creation of the National Park Service; urban renewal and planning; railroad and anti-trust regulation; establishment of pensions and pension reform for military veterans and government employees; minimum wage laws; victory in war; he suddenly found himself on the defensive. The first three term president, running for a fourth, was now on the defensive. What should have been his ultimate triumph, the crowning achievement of his duration as America’s President, was suddenly a wedge issue that was hotly contested. Perhaps the country was also just getting tired of the indefatigable Roosevelt as president; after all, he inherited McKinley’s term just three months into the job and had been effectively president for the last 12 years minus a few months. The fire and fury of the pacifists, isolationists, and the populists were all brewing to oust America’s first progressive-nationalist president, the man whose administration brought America into the modern world and foresaw the importance of a global United States, strong economy and military, and energetic executive on behalf of the fragile global order decaying from the slow decline of the British Empire and its many emergent rivals.
The 1916 election proved to be a shock for many. Especially outside observers. There was a concern among the Europeans, whether Wilson would be as cooperative as Roosevelt was. It was clear who they preferred as president. While some in Britain and France didn’t, on principle, reject Wilson’s alternative proposals—the liberals and socialists in Britain and France certainly agreed with Wilson’s free trade, free travel, and naval reduction beliefs, as well as his want for a diplomatic league of cooperative nations. Yet there was a concern whether a Wilson or a future president like Wilson would be as dedicated to European peace as Roosevelt was.
November 7, 1916, proved a pivotal election in the first half of the twentieth century for the United States. Three competing visions were vying for the future of the country. Roosevelt’s was of a muscular progressivism, an America that would use force and power with its strong economy and military to preserve and expand democracy around the globe and protect the fragile democratic peace in Europe. Wilson’s view was of a pacifistic and diplomatic progressivism—less nationalist and more internationalist—that sought to integrate democratic economies instead of the protectionism offered up by Roosevelt. It was a vision that would also see international cooperation on anti-trust legislation to prevent the proliferation of militarized industries around the globe, a major target of ire for liberal progressives which were protected by modernists nationalists like Roosevelt. The third vision was the traditional isolationists and populist spirit, one that rejected America’s emerging role in global and international affairs.
The alliance of the isolationists and diplomatic cooperationists, populists and progressives, was strong enough to win victory in a tight election. Wilson carried the day, with 49% of the vote, and 13 more electoral college votes than Roosevelt. The Lion of America was defeated, but his ideology that would, in turn, become a strong basis for neoconservatism in the United States, would live on and rise to greater prominence in the later half of the twentieth century. But Wilson’s victory marked an important watershed for international progressivism in the United States. America, arbiter of peace, now had its opportunity on the global stage.
Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, 1917-1925.
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At least you weren't the one playing the game, manipulating the election outcome by having states promote the Democratic Party to make sure Wilson won the election!allow me to be the first to express my disappointment
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The big question on everyone's lips:
Will the League of Nations actually work this time?!
Will the League of Nations actually work this time?!
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NoThe big question on everyone's lips:
Will the League of Nations actually work this time?!
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Nobody tends to get what they want when one of the negotiators changes. Let's see how much influence Wilson can manage from the position of newcomer, rather than war-proven ally!
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The big question on everyone's lips:
Will the League of Nations actually work this time?!
While my realism is inclined to agree with BC, I think the bigger problem we have about the League of Nations as now envisioned and proposed by Wilson is that the Victoria 2 timeline doesn't extend far enough to know what happens!
But these are the kind of endings I like. You can imagine the twentieth century as you wish; and it tells you a lot about yourself!
This is a very important point to acknowledge! Wilson is coming late to the game, with peace already proposed, and seeking to amend what has already been established with the war-weary winners unlikely wanting any change.
NOTE: While everyone here has been patient with the ongoing slow march to the finale, which I do appreciate, I am announcing that I am slated to be the incoming Head Editor at VoegelinView (an online academic and public journal) that focuses on the thought of Eric Voegelin as well as art, culture, film, literature, philosophy, political theory, theology and more. I have been an associate editor there since my time at Yale but as some of you devoted Paradoxians have intellectual tastes and possibly aspirations, considerations on breaking into the wonderful world of publishing can be PM'd to me. VoegelinView is run by the Eric Voegelin Society in partnerships with Louisiana State University and the University of Wisconsin and will be meeting during the American Political Science Association Meeting. So now might be the time to consider some lofty ambitions that you might have contained in your soul as you know -- and some are friends of -- the incoming editor.
But hopefully we do finish this AAR before the end of the year when I take on those editorial duties! LOL. We're so close to the end! And in quintessential Volksmarschall fashion we're approaching five years on this AAR pilgrimage.
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I'm pretty sure that whatever happens, in whatever reality, the League of Nations will not work. At least, it won't work at maintaining the peace and order of the world (it may do actually useful stuff like a world health organisation or something), given that in OTL, we've been trying to have various versions of a global multinational peacekeeping and dispute resolution organisation for at least the last 2 centuries and none of them have actually been any good at it. Including the United Nations.
It's good to hear that you're moving up in the world and still keeping in touch with the character we've come to appreciate and know. Even if it's a career, I firmly believe it's one that you enjoy.
CHAPTER XXII: “PEACE IN OUR TIME”
In his days may the righteous flourish, and peace abound, till the moon be no more! ~ Psalm 72:7
In his days may the righteous flourish, and peace abound, till the moon be no more! ~ Psalm 72:7
The election of Woodrow Wilson brought a new chapter in American history. The movement of the United States toward an international ordering was the priority of the Wilson Administration. However, there must be some things understood by the Wilsonian vision of internationalism that he exalted and wanted the rest of Europe to follow. Here, of course, lay the great tension between the powers of the old world and the new.
America, Wilson argued, was no longer an isolated nation protected by two oceans, a friendly and subdued northern neighbor, and an agitated but incompetently weak southern neighbor. The world was changing. The advent of flight, steam shipping, and international trading lanes made the world smaller, more compact, more interconnected. The prospects of war, as all had just witnessed, was horrifying on the global scale. It was necessary, then, for the dream of an international rules-based system for all nations to abide by.
The United States, Wilson also argued, was primed to be the leader of this rules-based system for all nations. Wilsonian internationalism was still governed by a certain spirit of American exceptionalism. The United States as leader of the international order rather than the United States dominating its national interests and projecting its force of power, was the main difference between the liberal internationalism espoused by Wilson and the Democrats vis-à-vis the progressive “new nationalism” of Roosevelt and the pro-Roosevelt Republicans. A legislative and juridical America, not a muscular and combative America, was Wilson’s vision.
The New York Naval Conference
While the World War had come to an end, and Wilson was rebuffed over his attempts to change the already existent Treaty of Paris, Wilson’s first moves as the new President of the United States with the lingering outcome of the peace still in the air was to convene a call for the belligerent powers of the war to meet in New York to discuss naval matters under the guise of international trade. During the leadup to the war and the war itself, the United States had come to amass the second largest surface fleet in the world behind the United Kingdom and eventually surpassing Germany. The longstanding pacificist and isolationist policies of the Bryan Administration were finally washed away between 1905-1915, a ten year period which saw an exponential rise of the American navy and the “Great White Fleet” as Theodore Roosevelt had termed it.
Wilson sought a naval reduction treaty with the major belligerents which would also be used as the medium to achieve a new international trade system that would benefit the United States (in particular).
It must be remembered that, as a southerner, Wilson was wedded to the longstanding southern tradition of international free trade that went as far back as to the Jefferson Presidency and further back in its roots to the British transatlantic trade network from the colonial era. The success of the Republican Party since the Civil War had brought high tariffs, protectionism, and a general restriction on the cotton, tobacco, and other material goods that were much in demand elsewhere around the world. The devastation of Europe and the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East, and the rise of Japan and colonial ports in Africa, afforded a great opportunity for the United States to flex its economic power through trade—northern industry and southern agriculture and cotton included.
The problem, of course, was the British Empire and its imperial system of trade which privileged low trade rates across half the globe: the half it controlled. A new order of international trade, Wilson conceived, would achieve the limitation of British power (something he desired) and the integration of the United States into the emergent global economic order (something he also desired).
The New York Naval Treaty and its contingent “trade agreement” was arguably Wilson’s greatest success during his first term. He arranged with Britain, France, and a decimated Germany, along with an opportunistic Italy and rising Japan, to cut their tonnage of military warships by 50% (Germany), 40% (Britain), 30% (France, Italy, and Japan) and capped military tonnage based on the reduction limits. Other nations included China, Brazil, the Netherlands, and Portugal. America’s own battleship fleet was reduced from 25 ships to 14 and Britain’s from 28 to 16.* While the UK and US still possessed the two largest fleets in the world, their reduction paved the way for the other powers to honor their agreements in naval disarmament.
Dignitaries of the New York Naval Conference, 1917.
Naval disarmament was accompanied by the opening of British ports to global goods, especially American goods, which were also allotted import premiums throughout the rest of Europe and Asia. Global tariffs, on the whole, were reduced from 45% to 20%, the United States being the primary beneficiary. Britain, on the whole, was the primary loser. But the strengthening of US-UK ties was to the supposed advantage of the British Empire. The fears of American intervention in Canada, the threat of the American navy to British naval superiority, especially in the Atlantic, were assuaged through the New York Naval Conference.
In September 1917, the Senate ratified the New York Naval Treaty through the alliance of Democrats and populist Republicans who saw the opportunity for agricultural goods and products from the Midwest to have greater appeal and reach under the treaty. Wilson’s cutthroat realpolitik internationalism was forging a new coalition in American politics. The Republicans still held control of the House and Senate, albeit by slimmed margins. The six seat advantage in the House and three seat advantage in the Senate was an alliance in tension between Republican populists who dominated the Midwest and Republican industrialists who dominated New England. The Democratically controlled South, with its own populist sentiments, occasionally aligned with the populist disposition of Midwestern Republicans who supported, in such moments, Wilson’s legislative agenda. Wilson drove a knife into this wedge and the often-contradictory populism of the Republican Midwest: isolationist in foreign policy, but pro-trade in agricultural economics, protectionist in industrial economics. Wilson’s appeal was that the new trading system wouldn’t harm American industry and, moreover, the new trading system would ensure “peace in our time” and serve as a buttress against imperial aggrandizement.
Wilson’s International Gambit
The lynchpin of Wilson’s international dreams, however, wasn’t in naval reduction and a global trade system that reduced tariffs globally primarily to the advantage of certain sectors of the American economy. His vision, as he outlined, was a League of Nations. While rejected in the Paris Peace Treaty that brough an official end to the World War, he still sought the creation of a League of Nations independent of the Paris Peace Treaty. In many ways, Wilson saw this as a possible blessing in disguise.
Republicans were by and large antagonistic toward the idea. But with a friendly liberal party in London and social democrats in Paris, Wilson embarked on his efforts to get the three greatest powers of the world to set aside their political ambitions in order to come together to create a new international system of global governance that could “maintain the peace” that they had achieved in Paris during the summer of 1916. Wilson was also able to sell the League of Nations to Americans as not something that would be binding due to treaty obligations but a whole new creation which the United States would be able to dictate and lead rather than be subservient to.
Heading into the spring of 1918, fresh off the New York Naval Treaty, Wilson called for a convention of the leaders of Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Brazil, and Argentina to meet in San Francisco for the preliminary groundworks for the League of Nations. Wilson had tactfully chosen spring 1918. It was an election year. He hoped that, through the press, he could win the public support of the American people and turn their support into anti-Republican sentiment because of their opposition to the idea. Wilson was willing to stake his political future, even the future of his party, on this egoistical gambit.
*As imagined by the author in the reduction of America’s own naval forces after the war.
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Is that an accurate depiction of Wilson's attitude regarding Mexico? Cause the historical count of who started wars along that border suggests it's someone else that's agitated. Not that I should be surprised at blatant racism from Wilson, I suppose.
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I have to say, it was actually very cool to be in England (grad school studies at the time) in November 2018, the 100th anniversary of the Armistice. There was just something more somber, and even special, about being in Europe than America for that day.
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My experience was driving from VA to Boston, Saturday 22 September 2001. (Vacation was long planned.) The display of flags was very moving.