February 9, 2005
85 YEARS LATE, BUT NOT TOO LATE:
To Withdraw Now Would Be Folly: The price of liberty in Iraq? Ten years' vigilance. (NIALL FERGUSON, February 9, 2005, Wall Street Journal)
Mr. Bush is the world's first idealist-realist. Part of him understands very well that the success of American policy in the Middle East depends on tenacity and the credibility that comes with it. But another part of him is excited to the point of unrealism by his own grand visions of a democratic revolution throughout the Middle East.American presidents have a professional obligation to indulge in highfalutin rhetoric, and President Bush's speechwriters have served him well this winter. "The road of providence is uneven and unpredictable, yet we know where it leads: It leads to freedom." That's not a bad punch line. The echoes of FDR and JFK in the inaugural address last month were also skillfully crafted. Yet there is another president--whom I have yet to hear the president quote directly--who nevertheless hovers like a shadow over the Bush second term. That president is Woodrow Wilson.
"Our aim is to build and preserve a community of free and independent nations, with governments that answer to their citizens, and reflect their own cultures. And because democracies respect their own people and their neighbors, the advance of freedom will lead to peace." Mr. Bush's words. But Wilson's concept.
As the First World War drew to a close, Wilson--who had intervened in it with the greatest reluctance--was possessed with a messianic idea of how the U.S. could win "the war to end all wars" and "make the world safe for democracy." To be sure, his vision of an international order based on collective security and international law is not one to which President Bush would subscribe. But what the two men undeniably have in common is the idea that a world based on national self-determination and democracy will be an inherently peaceful world.
It could very well be that President Bush is right about the Middle East. Maybe democracy and freedom really are "on a roll" there. But it also seemed, for a time, that Wilson was right about Europe, the region he set out to transform politically.
The tragedy of Wilson was that he was willing to trade the rest of his vision for one transnational institution, the League of Nations. The triumph of George Bush is that he's willing to trash all the existing to transnational institutions and arrangements to achieve the rest of his vision. The world tragedy is that Wilson was no George W. Bush--imagine how many lives, how much money, and how much damage to various societies would have been spared had Wilson ditched the League and insisted on decolonization and democratization in 1919? Posted by Orrin Judd at February 9, 2005 12:00 AM
"Governments answerable to their own citizens" is an anathema to the heirs of the transnational half of Wilson's dream. Governments are, in the transnational scheme, supposed to be accountable to international institutions. Wilson never saw the tension there, I don't think. His immediate heirs did, though, and dealt with it by ignoring democracy in favor of the institutions. It's remarkable that it's taken 85 years to switch things around.
Posted by: Timothy at February 9, 2005 1:37 AMYou are correct that Wilson's great mistake was not supporting decolonization and democratization of the decaying European empires. Had he supported Rhee and Ho at Versailles, the world would be a lot better for it. The contagion that is Communism would have essentially been bottled up in Europe and the leadership of the Third World wouldn't be reflexively anti-American as it still is today.
Why Wilson did this I have no idea. Was he a racist? His treatment of American Blacks, segregating the Civil Service, not welcoming any to the White House, etc would indicate he was. If so, it is truly sad that an otherwise decent and intelligent man could be so blind and allow that blindness to cause so much harm.
Posted by: Bart at February 9, 2005 8:12 AMOtherwise decent? He was a hater. They're always bad leaders.
Posted by: oj at February 9, 2005 8:24 AMThe League of Nations kerfuffle was the second of three major events that pretty much shaped the modern political alignment in America (No. 1 being the creation of the Income Tax a few years earlier and No. 3 being FDR's New Deal and its subesquent outgrowths). Wilson's messanic vision was combined with the belief still-prevelent today within his political party that down deep the Europeans are, in the end, just plain smarter and more sophisticated than we uncultured hicks from beyond the pond.
Seante Republicans kept the U.S. out of the League, but Wilson should have been able to figure out from France's desire to bankrupt Germany in perpetuity after World War I that these guys were people whom you made your co-equals only at your own risk.
Posted by: John at February 9, 2005 8:25 AMWas Woodrow Wilson racist?
Yes, arguably the most racist President since Johnson (Andrew).
Posted by: TimF at February 9, 2005 9:25 AMHow could Wilson back Ho as long as he held on to the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, etc.? He couldn't very well denounce the French or British empires as long as he had one of his own (admittedly a small and comparatively benign one).
The world would have been better off had Wilson thought like Orrin but there's no way a Virginian whose mind was formed during Reconstruction was going to think like a liberator. Even if he had, Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Orlando, or the Mikado wouldn't have listened to him.
Posted by: George at February 9, 2005 10:22 AMTimF,
Edward D White was Catholic, and thus it was impossible for him to be a member of the antebellum Klan, as is alleged early in the article. Such an egregious error makes the rest suspect. But the article was from Reason, and they are pretty sloppy.
OJ,
Churchill, Washington, Bismarck, Ataturk were bad leaders?
George,
When did hypocrisy ever stop any world power? It would have been easy to simply state that we were transitioning those places to democratic self-rule. After all, we did in fairly short order install elected local governments in most of them.
It would have been nice for us to have been the nation that the Gandhis, Mandelas, Hos, Rhees, Nkrumahs, Nyereres etc turned to instead of letting the Soviets have that honor. We were that shining beacon for Juarez, Bolivar, San Martin, Garibaldi and Kossuth in the 19th century.
You are probably right about Wilson, that there was no way someone raised in a family with major league 'status anxiety' during Reconstruction could have thought any other way. Especially, when such vileness was found in high places all over the American intellectual landscape, e.g. Madison Grant, Ulrich Philips.
Churchill was.
Washington and Ataturk weren't haters.
Bismarck hated the French which is universal.
Posted by: oj at February 9, 2005 11:42 AMWashington was a slaveowner.
Ataturk massacred the Anatolian Greeks.
Bismarck did initiate the Kulturkampf, which I thought would have made him the focus of your obloquy.
Churchill was a bad leader? 'We will fight them on the beaches...' He certainly was a hater when it came to the colonies.
As an aside, I would have liked it had FDR conditioned Lend Lease on Home Rule for the British Raj, but he was every bit the racist that Wilson probably was.
Posted by: Bart at February 9, 2005 12:36 PMBart:
So.
So.
So.
Yes--he cost Britain mightily and benefited only the Soviets.
Posted by: oj at February 9, 2005 6:15 PM