Why Wilson Matters
The Origin of American Liberal Internationalism and Its Crisis Today
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Political science professor Smith makes a valiant effort to assert that Woodrow Wilson's view of how America should relate to the world has relevance today, though the election of Donald Trump may make some of his points moot. He honestly concedes where his arguments are susceptible to challenge, even on as fundamental an issue as whether it is legitimate to consider the 28th president's views on international affairs a coherent doctrine meriting the label Wilsonism. Smith performs a service to readers looking to place current domestic political developments in historical context, tracking the evolution of Wilson's view that human progress happens when "democratic cultures, societies, and governments gain in strength," and thus the U.S.'s task was to "sponsor the expansion of democracy as best it could." And he carries the analysis forward after Wilson's administration, through a close examination of successive presidents' foreign policies up through Barack Obama's second term. Despite the book's flaws, he achieves his stated goal of providing background "to the pressing matters of today," so that people dealing with them "the young and those in policy-making or implementing positions" can "learn what they can from the past."