Four new takes on Wilson, World War I, and the making of the post-war order

ABSTRACT

The books under review here, by Robert F. Hannigan, John A. Thompson, Trygve Throntveit, and Adam Tooze, offer an interpretation of Wilsonian internationalism and what happened to it in the 1920s. For Tooze and Hannigan, Wilsonianism was primarily a project to attain American predominance in the world. For Throntveit, Wilsonian internationalism constituted a pragmatic yet radical effort to end competitive power politics. Thompson disagrees with these arguments and asserts that the key to understanding US policy lay in how US leaders conceptualized American power. Thompson’s interpretation is especially compelling in explaining why the United States failed to engage itself more assertively in international affairs in the 1920s – a failure Tooze suggests undermined the viability of the postwar international system.

KEYWORDS:

• Woodrow Wilson
• World War I
• Wilsonianism
• league of nations
• internationalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ See Ernest R. May, ‘The United States underuse of military power,’ in Ernest R. May, Richard Rosecrance, and Zara Steiner (eds.), History and Neorealism (NY: Cambridge UP 2010) 228–45.

² The best book on U.S. policy in the 1920s remains Melvyn P. Leffler, The Elusive Quest: America’s Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, 1919–1933 (NC: University of North Carolina Press 1979). For a more recent treatment, see Patrick O. Cohrs, The Unfinished Peace after World War I: America, Britain and the Stabilisation of Europe, 1919–1932 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2008).

³ On the US and Britain, see Rodney Carlisle, Sovereignty at Sea: U.S. Merchant Ships and American Entry into World War I (FL: University Press of Florida 2009), 20–21; Thomas A. Bailey and Paul B. Ryan, The Lusitania Disaster: An Episode in Modern Warfare and Diplomacy (NY: Free Press 1975), 31–32; John. W. Coogan, The End of Neutrality: The United States, Britain, and Maritime Rights, 1899–1915 (NY: Cornell UP 1981), 203–7; and Arthur S. Link, Wilson: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 1916–1917 (NJ: Princeton UP 1965), 165–289. On the submarine crisis, Link has the most detailed narrative, although I do not agree with his interpretation of events. See Link, Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, 1914–1915 (NJ: Princeton UP 1960); Link, Wilson: Confusions and Crises, 1915–1916 (NJ: Princeton UP 1964); and Link, Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace. On Wilson and Germany after April 1917, see Ross A. Kennedy, The Will to Believe: Woodrow Wilson, World War I, and America’s Strategy for Peace and Security (OH: Kent State UP 2009), 61, 128–45, 171.

⁴ ‘The Covenant of the League of Nations,’ 28 Ap. 1919, Arthur S. Link, et al., ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 69 vols. (NJ: Princeton University Press 1966–1994), 58:188–98. For recent analyses of the Covenant and its creation, see Zara Steiner, The Lights That Failed: European International History 1919–1933 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2007), 40–46; Cohrs, Unfinished Peace, 44–67; Peter Jackson, Beyond the Balance of Power: France and the Politics of National Security in the Era of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2013), 262–73; and Peter J. Yearwood, Guarantee of Peace: The League of Nations in British Policy 1914–1925 (NY: Oxford University Press 2009), 88–137.

⁵ See Ross A. Kennedy, ‘Strategic Calculations in Woodrow Wilson’s Neutrality Policy, 1914–1917,’ Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,’ forthcoming. For historians suggesting that Wilson paid little attention to the war’s relationship to U.S. national security, see, for example, Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace (IL: Arlington Heights 1979); M. Ryan Floyd, Abandoning Neutrality: Woodrow Wilson and the Beginning of the Great War, August 1914-December 1915 (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); John. M. Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (NY: Alfred A. Knopf 2009); and Justus D. Doenecke, Nothing Less Than War: A New History of American Entry into World War I (KY: University Press of Kentucky 2011). For another example of a historian who does see a security component in Wilson’s thinking, Frank Ninkovich, The Wilsonian Century: U.S. Foreign Policy since 1900 (IL: University of Chicago Press 1999).

⁶ For excellent treatments of the League fight, see John Milton Cooper, Jr., Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations (NY: Cambridge UP 2001); and Herbert F. Margulies, The Mild Reservationists and the League of Nations Controversy in the Senate (MO: University of Missouri Press 1989).

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Notes on contributors

Ross A. Kennedy

Ross A. Kennedy is the author of The Will to Believe: Woodrow Wilson, World War I, and America’s Strategy for Peace and Security (Kent State, 2009), which the Scott Bills Prize in Peace History. He also edited A Companion to Woodrow Wilson (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) and has written extensively on American domestic politics and foreign policy during World War I. Kennedy’s current project, entitled The United States and the Origins of World War II, analyzes how the policies of the United States contributed to the structure of Great Power politics from 1918 to 1939. He teaches at Illinois State University, where he is Professor of History and Chair of the History Department.