Why Wilson Matters

The Origin of American Liberal Internationalism and Its Crisis Today

Tony Smith

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780691183480, 9780691171678
• eBook ISBN: 9781400883400
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

How Woodrow Wilson's vision of making the world safe for democracy has been betrayed—and how America can fulfill it again

The liberal internationalist tradition is credited with America's greatest triumphs as a world power—and also its biggest failures. Beginning in the 1940s, imbued with the spirit of Woodrow Wilson's efforts at the League of Nations to "make the world safe for democracy," the United States steered a course in world affairs that would eventually win the Cold War. Yet in the 1990s, Wilsonianism turned imperialist, contributing directly to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the continued failures of American foreign policy.

Why Wilson Matters explains how the liberal internationalist community can regain a sense of identity and purpose following the betrayal of Wilson's vision by the brash "neo-Wilsonianism" being pursued today. Drawing on Wilson's original writings and speeches, Tony Smith traces how his thinking about America's role in the world evolved in the years leading up to and during his presidency, and how the Wilsonian tradition went on to influence American foreign policy in the decades that followed—for good and for ill. He traces the tradition's evolution from its "classic" era with Wilson, to its "hegemonic" stage during the Cold War, to its "imperialist" phase today. Smith calls for an end to reckless forms of U.S. foreign intervention, and a return to the prudence and "eternal vigilance" of Wilson's own time.

Why Wilson Matters renews hope that the United States might again become effectively liberal by returning to the sense of realism that Wilson espoused, one where the promotion of democracy around the world is balanced by the understanding that such efforts are not likely to come quickly and without costs.

PART I

THE ESSENTIAL WILSON: WILSON’S WILSONIANISM

CHAPTER ONE

Woodrow Wilson on Democracy Promotion in America

The consent of the governed must at every turn check and determine the action of those who make and execute the laws.… That is “constitutional government.” When we speak of a constitutional government we mean a government so constituted that those who govern and those who are governed are brought by some systematic and efficient means into concord and counsel; and in which law, accordingly, is made and enforced in conformity with principles and by methods agreed upon between them. The real problem of democracy, therefore, is how to devise and maintain in full efficiency the best means of intimate counsel between those who are to make and administer the laws and those who are to obey them … governments should retain their power as it is that [the citizenry] should be free … modern democracy … speaks always of the sovereignty of the people, and of rulers as the people’s servants.… Modern democracy is government subject to systematic popular control.¹

—Woodrow Wilson, “The Real Idea of Democracy,” 1901

The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone and remain as free as before.

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762

The introduction argued that in strictly theoretical terms the dominant theme of the Wilsonian tradition is demonstrably democracy promotion. The institutions and character that the spirit of democracy calls forth assure that the good functioning of the other aspects of liberal internationalism is reinforced—the virtues of open markets integrating the world’s economies and fostering the strength of the middle class; multilateral institutions that handle a host of issues among democratic nations, from national security to economic coordination; the responsible conduct of American foreign policy as the world’s foremost democracy—which together provide us the best hope we can reasonably argue for to establish the foundations of a world of enduring peace.

However, my argument rested basically on the logic of liberal theory, not so much on proof offered from Woodrow Wilson’s own writings and speeches, which he gave in abundance and to which we now turn in more detail. Here we shall see that his guiding concern from a young age was not simply to understand the historical origins of democratic life as a scholar, but as an activist to promote the well-being of democratic society and institutions at home and (at a somewhat later point in his life) to do as best he could for the sake of world order to foster such ideals and practices elsewhere around the globe.

Here the comparison between Karl Marx and Woodrow Wilson is surprisingly illuminating. As Marx (1818–1883) was to an economic explanation of the dynamics of historical change and development, so Wilson (1856–1924) was to a political explanation. For both men, history moves in terms of what Marx would have called (and Wilson surely would have agreed) a “materialist” fashion. That is, changes occur over time because of developments within the structure of economic relations (for Marx) or political relations (for Wilson). Such changes are “unconscious” in the sense that as these developments take place, the men and women who bring them about are unaware of the larger, long-term consequences of their acts. More, prior to the nineteenth century, the mix of forces defied conceptualization because of their very complexity and apparently random nature. “It is now plain to everyone that [democracy’s] inspiration is of man and not of God,” Wilson wrote in 1885. Marx would most decidedly have held the same to be true of international capitalism.²

Moreover, as both Marx and Wilson might agree, by the late eighteenth century, changes in the material base of society meant political “consciousness” was for the first time coming into its own as an active agent of history. In line with Enlightenment thinking, reasoned analysis could provide correct ways of perceiving the world and improving the human condition. People could control their lives and their destinies in a way never before imaginable. Leaders of men might see this earlier than others, but in due course the working class (for Marx) or the middle class (for Wilson) would insist on taking charge of affairs directly. Marx awaited the beginning of political change leading to what he called “the dictatorship of the proletariat” in an advanced industrial country (Germany being the most likely, but perhaps Great Britain), whereas Wilson saw the United States as leading the world toward democracy.

The analytical focus of Marx’s work was on the logic of capitalism. The industrial revolution and the rise of international capitalism—whatever the horrors they had brought forth—had created a new and more promising stage of history, the prelude to human freedom and peace. Marx knew himself to be a man of genius, yet ideas such as his had to await a certain level of material development for his thinking to appear. But once it did, he was confident of what he could contribute to the forward march of history: “Communism is the riddle of history solved and knows itself to be that solution,” he wrote as he awaited the worsening contradictions of “the anarchy of capital” and the rise in working-class “consciousness.”

For Wilson, in contrast, the analytical focus was on democracy. The rise of a democratic culture and institutions, starting most vividly with the American Revolution, opened a new stage in history that by the beginning of the twentieth century was moving this country into being what Marx might have called “the vanguard nation,” one whose domestic freedom and stability, Wilson felt sure as early as 1885, would be of relevance to the greater forces of history moving abroad. As Marx would instruct the working class, so Wilson would instruct his fellow Americans and, in due course, those who sought a model for the construction of constitutional democracy elsewhere.

In something akin to a religious calling, Wilson’s life’s mission was to be among the first to explain democracy to those favored to live under its terms so that this form of government and society might gather its strength for the sake of a better world:

When political institutions come to be viewed in their true historical proportions and perspective, it will be seen that it has not been without reason that Americans have regarded their system of government as standing at the front of the world’s progress and politics.… Our best claims upon the world’s attention will appear when … we penetrate further, to the analysis of our constitutional being and discover in full historical light the true genesis of our form of government and, by consequence, the general principles which lie at the foundation of all practicable government by the people. The present trend of all political development the world over towards democracy is no mere episode in history. It is the natural resultant of now permanent forces which have long been gathering, which brought modern lights out of mediaeval shades, and which have made the life of the most advanced nations of our day the wide, various, vigorous, complex expanding thing that it is.³

Thus, for Marx and Wilson alike, this new stage of history should be welcomed as one of enormous promise. Marx could foresee the development of a new world order of freedom emerging from the anarchy of capitalist production and the maturity of the class consciousness of an increasingly numerous and immiserated working class. The result would be not bourgeois, but genuine, popular democracy and world peace. For his part, Wilson could foresee the eventual triumph of democratic government worldwide based on an increasingly educated, cosmopolitan, prosperous middle class: “it is a more serious matter for the individual to belong to a great democratic nation than to live under any other polity. He is put upon his honor; he is challenged to use his strength; he is thrown into the midst of solemn opportunities, and trusted to use them; he is given leave to create great occasions.”⁴ As a result of the emergence of these “new men,” be they communists for Marx or constitutional democrats for Wilson, the promise would be an expansion of world freedom and peace.

But political action had to be taken. As a young man, Marx wrote, “the philosophers have only understood the world; the point is to change it.” The young Wilson was much of the same mind. As early as 1885, he could write, “The object of all political thought should be action … it should always point out the way of progress. It ought to teach that wise sort of boldness which can afford to make mistakes because it knows what is essential and guards that from risk while it ventures all else for the sake of liberty.… It ought, in brief, to produce a philosophy of statesmanship.”⁵

An important source of Wilson’s commitment to the protection and expansion of democratic culture, institutions, and leadership came from the inspiration he found at Princeton University, the leading institution of higher learning for Presbyterians and one of the greatest centers of learning in the United States. After being a student at Princeton (1875–1879), he became a professor of politics there (1890–1902) before becoming president of the university (1902–1910). Calvinist beliefs were obviously of importance to Wilson, who read the Bible daily and who invoked his reliance on Providence with some regularity.

However, Christian teachings were not of as much importance so far as Wilson was concerned in his relations with others as much as the teachings of duty, honor, a sense of the communal interest, and a need to come to an organized, and so institutional, form of group solidarity that for Calvinists meant “covenanting,” which to Wilson was a form of constitutionalism. The practice was of immense importance to Wilson, for it meant that other peoples who might not be Reformed Protestant Christians could nonetheless be constitutionalists. Thus, Reformed Judaism would appeal to his sense of proper group behavior (and presumably helps explain his willingness to appoint Jews for the first time to the Princeton faculty, then to high office in unprecedented numbers when he became president). By contrast, Catholics, with their dependence on a rigid clerical authority structure over a congregation, or evangelical Christians who followed the teachings of a self-appointed, charismatic “frontier preachers,” as Wilson called them, were in organizational terms less suited to provide a social base to democratic government, although Wilson appeared confident that in due course persons of all religious confessions could become practiced in the spirit of self-government.

The secular mission of Princeton to advance the cause of democracy was thus bound up in its religious vocation both doctrinally and in terms of the organizational structure of Calvinist churches. In his famous address of October 1896, “Princeton in the Nation’s Service,” Wilson stressed that although the university had been founded primarily to train ministers of the faith, it was from the first “a school of duty,” “a seminary of statesmen.” He reminded his listeners of the great John Knox Witherspoon, president of Princeton from 1768 to 1794. This Scottish, Presbyterian minister who arrived in New Jersey having been acquainted with some of the most brilliant minds of the Enlightenment in his homeland (including both David Hume and Adam Smith), presided over a new class of some 100 young men every year. Witherspoon had himself signed the Declaration of Independence, been a leading member of the Continental Congress from 1776 to 1782, then saw nine former students during his years at Princeton sign the Constitution of 1787 (there were a total of thirty-nine signatures), twenty become senators and twenty-three representatives in the national Congress, thirteen be elected governors, three join the Supreme Court, one made vice president of the United States, and James Madison (a student at Princeton from 1769 to 1771, who stayed on to study Hebrew, in which he became fluent, and political philosophy with Witherspoon after his graduation) be elected president of the United States.

Amazingly, Witherspoon achieved all of this out of a combined student population during his tenure of some 2,600 students. Here was a man for Wilson truly to measure himself against, and he set himself to the task. Invoking Witherspoon’s spirit, Wilson declared:

Princeton is not likely to forget that sharp schooling of her youth, when she first learned the lesson of public service.… The quiet scholar has his proper breeding and truth must be searched out and held aloft for men to see for its own sake.… But not many pupils of [Princeton] are to be investigators: they are to be citizens and the world’s servants in every field of practical endeavor.…

The University in our day is no longer inclined to stand aloof from the practical world, and, surely, it ought never to have had the disposition to do so. It is the business of a University to impart to the rank and file of the men whom it trains the right thought of the world, the thought which it has tested and established, the principles which have stood through the seasons and become at length part of the immemorial wisdom of the race.… The business of the world is not individual success, but its own betterment, strengthening, and growth in spiritual insight.⁶

WILSON EXPLAINS DEMOCRACY TO ITSELF TO INCREASE ITS SELF-AWARENESS

Before becoming governor of New Jersey (1910–1912) and so a policy-maker, Wilson’s ambition was to explain democracy to itself through an impressive corpus of books and articles (augmented by a demanding round of public lectures) and thereby to strengthen the nation’s fiber, both morally and efficiently. “Only history can explain modern democracy either to itself or to those who would imitate it,” he wrote in 1885, and the efforts he deployed in this endeavor were prodigious. As he put it decades later, in 1919, “I have saturated myself in the traditions of our country; I have read all the great literature that interprets the spirit of our country; and when I read my own heart with regard to these great purposes, I feel confident that it is a sample American heart.”⁷

Accordingly, Wilson wrote with authority on the “nature and form of government”; on “the functions and objects” of the state; on the character of law in the Western experience from ancient Greece and Rome to his day; on the structure of constitutional government in the United States; on the administrative adaptations that would make governmental bureaucracies function more perfectly with respect to improving state-society relations; on the character of social forces that would behave responsibly in such a political order (with special attention to the behavior of corporate capitalism, whose reform he urgently pushed forward for the sake of democratic life); on political parties (for here was the key to the success of representative democracy, modernity’s great advance over ancient democracy, one that would keep it from degenerating as Aristotle had warned democracy always would); on the demanding role of political leadership in a democracy (both in general and in terms of great American personalities, selecting out especially Washington and Lincoln); and on the history of the American people (in five volumes, later reprinted as ten) from the founding of the colonies unto his day.⁸

With respect to domestic legislation as president, Wilson’s greatest acccomplishments deriving from his work as a political scientist were surely the range of economic reforms he convinced the Congress to pass during his first term in office. His most outstanding successes in his drive for “The New Freedom” lay in his efforts to secure tariff, banking, and business reforms, which included the lowering of tariff rates (combined with an offsetting raise in the income tax) in the Revenue Act of October 1913; the Federal Reserve Act of December 1913; the Clayton Anti-Trust Act of October 1914; the Federal Farm Loan Act of July 1916; the Child Labor Act of 1916; the Workingmen’s Compensation Act of September 1916; the Adamson Act of August 1916 (which established better working conditions for interstate railway employees); and the introduction of the inheritance tax.⁹ Wilson’s core argument with respect to all these reforms was not simply that they served the prosperity of the nation but rather, much more critically, that they undergirded the common interest and so strengthened democracy in America.

The striking aspect of Wilson’s impact on world affairs after he became president is that in his academic writing there is li...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Know Thyself: What Is “Wilsonianism”?
• Part I: The Essential Wilson: Wilson’s Wilsonianism
• Part II: Wilsonianism After Wilson
• Conclusion: Reviving Liberal Internationalism
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index