WILSONIANISM WITHOUT APOLOGY
Here's something interesting I just read; and it is bound to fluster some of my more ideological readers, be they right or left.Nonpartisan
, the guiding spirit at Progressive Historians
, which Cliopatria's
avuncular Dr. Ralph Luker
called " A sort of Daily Kos for the historical set" has posted a ringing defense of Woodrow Wilson and Wilsonianism from a progressive perspective:
"Woodrow Wilson to historians: Stop lying about my record!
"That's it. I'm sick and tired of people unfairly maligning Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy. I'm tired of people like John Lewis Gaddis calling Wilson's foreign policy "Fukuyama plus force." (That's the same Francis Fukuyama, if you didn't know, who declared American hegemony the beneficent and permanent result of "The End of History.) And I'm particularly fed up with people like Tufts professor Tony Smith calling Bush's imperialism Wilsonian:
The repeated assertions by President George W. Bush since 2002 that the national security of the United States depends on the spread of democratic government to the Middle East qualifies to make the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 a Wilsonian undertaking.
Woodrow Wilson was NOT a neocon (though his predecessor and sometime opponent, Theodore Roosevelt, was). He was not an imperialist. The differences are subtle but critical; they have to do with how Wilson viewed America and now the neocons view it. And some people could stand to get a clue.
....Wilson's America, the one I believe in, was exceptional and unique, but not because the American race or country deserved to be supreme. Rather, America was a vehicle for one of the greatest ideas in the history of the world: democracy. America was beautiful, but democracy was sublime. America only mattered, in Wilson's view, insofar as it could assist in the spread of democracy to the world.
This may sound like a neocon position, but it isn't. Neocons switch the two priorities and declare America the supreme goal of the world, with democracy as its mechanism. The result is the narrowest kind of nationalism, blind support of American supremacy at whatever cost. This can include toppling popularly elected regimes like that of Hugo Chavez because they subvert American ends. Or banning the crack trade and thus putting the desires of American social conservatives over the need for Colombia's elected government to defund murderous Marxist rebels. Or supporting an unelected dictator like Pervez Musharraf because he abets American hegemony. Or pulling out of international treaties like Kyoto and the International Criminal Court because they try to treat Americans equally. Or -- most notably of all -- de-funding the UN because we disagree with its priorities.
When Wilson wanted to bring America into the League of Nations in 1919, it was the paleocons like Henry Cabot Lodge who brought down the idea and the President. Sure, nutty isolationists like Hiram Johnson and William Borah were its most vocal critics; but it was Lodge and his confreres who shot down the League of Nations, the bilateral security treaty with France, and the International Criminal Court -- all because of a desire for worldwide American hegemony -- and then lamely signed a no-more-war treaty with France (yeah, that big enemy of ours) nine years later
Read Nonpartisan's post in full
Provocative and debatable.Theodore Roosevelt
, of whom I am a qualified admirer, was a nationalist and at times an imperialist but he would not have been a neoconservative, despite Bill Kristol's affinity for "national greatness conservatism". T.R. was very much a progressive at home, at times moreso than was Wilson
, particularly on racial questions, an issue that carried over into foreign affairs with Japan and China. While Roosevelt was a gung-ho militarist, he strived to prevent a general war from breaking out amongst the great powers in his diplomatic efforts and in doing so, tilted against the interests of autocratic states
like Imperial Germany and Tsarist Russia. States, T.R. correctly perceived as potential threatening to peace and unadmirable in their political systems. Roosevelt was, far and away, a more effective diplomat than was Wilson, though Wilson's visionary ideas of national self-determination, democracy promotion and a League of Nations made the greater longitudinal impact on the world stage.
Given Wilson's record in Mexico, I find the idea of Wilson chumming up to Hugo Chavez a stretch. If anything, it would be Chavez and Pancho Villa who would be knocking back tequilas together if the latter were alive today. On the other hand, I think Nonpartisan is right on Wilson's motivations regarding democracy and America's role in world affairs. Wilson was an intellectual and approached the world through a prism of abstractions.
While I understand Nonpartisan's partisan motivation in casting out the neocons as apostates in the Wilsonian Church, and his description fits for some of them, it doesn't fit for all of them. For those neoconservatives for whom the intent to plant democracy in Iraq was sincere, that idea is firmly in the Wisonian tradition of teaching South American republics to " elect a few good men".
Reader thoughts ?