Woodrow Wilson...war? Summary and closer look.

I imagine it must be an inconceivably difficult moral task for anyone to decide to lead their country into war; most of all for Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson was an idealist, and above all, he was a believer in America. While studying towards his PhD, Wilson’s doctoral dissertation was specifically centered on America’s congressional government. He had his own ideas about the system -- for example, he believed that the US should have a parliamentary system closer to Britain’s -- but nonetheless he focused his scholarly efforts on America.

After earning his PhD, Wilson started his career as an educator, and his resume boasts the names of colleges such as Cornell, Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan, New York Law School and Princeton. At all these schools, Wilson lectured on American political science. Wilson’s academic career was committed to the study of the American system, and when he became president in 1912, Wilson, like many presidents before him, had  notably little experience in foreign affairs.

In 1916, Wilson was up for reelection. His opponent, Hughes, was a fellow professor and ex-colleague at the New York Law School. The Democrats claimed that Hughes would throw America into the war. However Wilson did not openly say that he would avoid war. He knew that would be a difficult promise to uphold.

So how did Wilson, the American idealist, end up in front of Congress on April 2, 1917, somberly asking them to declare war on Germany?

It was inevitable. Despite Wilson’s constant attempts to make agreements with both the Allies and the Central Powers, the Kaiser’s dogged refusal of these agreements and numerous naval actions against American ships meant that Wilson had no choice but to declare war, going against every fiber of his body. The textbook would have you believe that Wilson’s subsequent message of a war to “make the world safe for democracy” was a tactic to convince wary Americans to support the war. But I think it was a little more than that -- I think Wilson also had to convince himself. He somehow had to justify to himself that by fighting in the Great War, he would be able to engineer the war to end all wars by spreading democratic ideals. He could not simply fight for peace.

Wilson attempted to live up to his moral justifications of war by crafting his Fourteen Points...but that’s for another blog post.

Do you think Wilson was fundamentally against war? Do you think he still could have avoided entering the war, or was it inevitable? What do Wilson’s actions -- entering the war, lead his country to support the war, and ultimately engineer an attempt at a  moral end to the war, despite his reluctance -- say about his leadership abilities?

EDIT: Fun fact -- Wilson learned German as part of his PhD studies. I wonder how he felt about kids angrily throwing away German books in support of the war he had reluctantly joined.