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Abstract
This paper investigates the role of transatlantic Wilsonian values in the entry of the United States in to the First World War. Arguing that the offshore balancing thesis and economic rational are not sufficient to explain US entry and we must engage with Wilsonian explanations to understand this conflict.
Notes on contributor
Dr Ashley Cox is a Lecturer in Diplomacy and Public Policy at SOAS University of London. His research interests include The History of American foreign relations, American Diplomacy and US Security Policy. He is a member of the International Studies Association, the American Political Science Association the United States Foreign Policy Group and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.
Notes
2. For a further discussion of democratic peace see: B. Russett, C. Layne, D. Spiro, and M. Doyle, ‘The Democratic Peace', International Security, 19, no. 4 (1995): 164–84, S. Weart and B. Russett, ‘A Separate, Democratic Peace', Foreign Affairs, 78, no. 3 (1999): 160–162 and M. Doyle, ‘Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 12, no. 3 (1983): 205–35.
3. Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (New York: Routledge, 2002), location 2581.
4. M. Doyle, ‘Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs', Philosophy & Public Affairs, 12, no. 3 (1983): 216.
5. Stephen R. Rock, Why Peace Breaks Out: Great Power Rapprochement in Historical Perspective (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989) and Sam W. Haynes et al., Manifest Destiny and Empire: American Antebellum Expansion (Arlington: Texas A&M University Press, 1997). For further reading on Great Britain’s attempts to prevent regional hegemony see Ephraim D. Adams, British Interests and Activities in Texas 1838-1846 (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1910) and H.C. Allen, Great Britain and the United States: A History of Anglo-American Relations, 1783-1952 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954).
6. John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001).
7. Sir Alistair Horne, The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1962).
8. Paul G. Halpern, A Naval History of World War I (Annapolis: US Naval Institute Press, 1994) and V.E. Tarrant, The U-Boat Offensive 1914-1945 (London: Arms and Armour Press, 1989).
9. R. Trouton, ‘Cancellation of Inter-Allied Debts’, The Economic Journal, 31, no. 121 (1921): 38–45 and Stephen Broadberry and Mark Harrison, eds., The Economics of World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
10. Melvin Small, ‘The United States and the German "Threat" to the Hemisphere, 1905-1914’, The Americas, 28, no. 3 (1972): 252–270 and Michael C. Meyer, ‘The Mexican-German Conspiracy of 1915’, The Americas, 23, no. 1 (1966): 76–89 and Patrick L. Cox, ‘“An Enemy Closer to Us than Any European Power”: The Impact of Mexico on Texan Public Opinion before World War I’, The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 105, no. 1 (2001): 40–80.
11. Text available at https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/zimmermann.
12. Galen Jackson, ‘The Offshore Balancing Thesis Reconsidered: Realism, the Balance of Power in Europe, and America's Decision for War in 1917’, Security Studies, 21, no. 3 (2012): 455–89, 487.
13. Ibid., 483.
14. David Reynolds, America, Empire of Liberty (London: Penguin Group, 2009), 354.
15. This line of thinking would eventually lead to the US neutrality Acts of the 1930s see: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/neutrality-acts.
16. H.C. Engelbrecht and F.C. Hanighen, Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armament Industry (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1934), 175.
17. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (London: Random House, 1987), 346.
18. Engelbrecht and Hanighen, Merchants of Death, 176.
19. Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War and Peace (New York: AHM Publishing, 1979), 35.
20. John Milton Cooper, Jr, ‘The Command of Gold Reversed: American Loans to Britain, 1915-1917’, Pacific Historical Review, 45, no. 2 (1976): 209–30.
21. E.L. Stewart Patterson, ‘London and New York as Financial Centers’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 68, America's Changing Investment Market (1916): 264–77 and P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism 1688-2000 (Abingdon: Pearson Education Limited, 2001).
22. The 14 points available at https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=62&page=transcript.
23. L.S. Rowe, ‘America as the Defender of Neutral Rights’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 55, no. 3 (1916): 259–66 and Alice M. Morrissey, ‘The United States and the Rights of Neutrals, 1917-1918’, The American Journal of International Law, 31, no. 1 (1937): 17–30.
24. The declaration of London was the declaration following the London naval conference of 1908 between the world’s naval powers to govern the conduct of naval warfare with an emphasis on the rights of neutrals. For Further reading on this see James Brown Scott, ‘The Declaration of London of February 26, 1909 Part 1’, The American Journal of International Law, 8, no. 2 (1914): 274–329, James Brown Scott, ‘The Declaration of London of February 26, 1909: Part II’, The American Journal of International Law, 8, no. 3 (1914): 520–64 and Paul S. Reinsch, ‘The Declaration of London’, The North American Review, 190, no. 647 (1909): 479–87.
25. Cruiser Rules were essentially a series of customs governing the behaviour of warships and there relations to civilian ships, such as allowing the crew time to disembark before sinking the merchant vessel.
26. Woodrow Wilson, ‘War Message, April 2 1917’, Our Documents, http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=61 (accessed July 21, 2013).
27. Kendrick A. Clements, ‘Woodrow Wilson and World War I’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, 34, no. 1, Going to War (2004): 62–82.
28. Woodrow Wilson, ‘War Message, April 2 1917’, Our Documents, http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=61 (accessed July 21, 2013).
29. Robert Tucker, Woodrow Wilson and the Great War: Reconsidering America’s Neutrality (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007), 132–3.
30. Wilson, ‘War Message'.
31. Woodrow Wilson, ‘Address on Unrestricted Submarine Warfare, 19 Apr. 1916’, Woodrow Wilson E-library, http://wwl2.dataformat.com/Document.aspx?doc=30461 (accessed March 3, 2014).
32. Ross Gregory, The Origins of American Intervention in the First World War (New York: Norton and Company, 1971), 59.
33. Link, Woodrow Wilson, 69.
34. Marion C. Siney, ‘British Official Histories of the Blockade of the Central Powers During the First World War’, The American Historical Review, 68, no. 2 (1963): 392–401.
35. Gregory, The Origins of American Intervention in the First World War, 55.
36. Ibid., 56.
37. Tucker, Woodrow Wilson and the Great War, 133.
38. This was demonstrated by the outrage that surrounded the sinking of the Lusitania see: Thomas A. Bailey, ‘The Sinking of the Lusitania’, The American Historical Review, 41, no. 1 (1935): 54–73 and its long lasting effects in: Frank Trommler, ‘The Lusitania Effect: America's Mobilization against Germany in World War 1’, German Studies Review, 32, no. 2 (2009): 241–66.
39. This is not an uncontested opinion for alternative opinions see: David Reynolds, ‘Rethinking Anglo-American Relations’, International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), 65, no. 1 (1988–1989): 89–111.
40. Tucker, Woodrow Wilson and the Great War, 142.
41. For further reading on the February revolution see: Robert Bruce Lockhart, ‘“The Unanimous Revolution”: Russia, February 1917’, Foreign Affairs, 35, no. 2 (1957): 320–33, Michael C. Hickey, ‘Discourses of Public Identity and Liberalism in the February Revolution: Smolensk, Spring 1917’, Russian Review, 55, no. 4 (1996): 615–37, David S. Anin, ‘The February Revolution: Was the Collapse Inevitable?’, Soviet Studies, 18, no. 4 (1967): 435–57 and Boris Ivanovich Kolonitskii, ‘"Democracy" in the Political Consciousness of the February Revolution’, Slavic Review, 57, no. 1 (1998): 95–106.
42. Although this government was itself to fall to the communist revolution in October/November at the time of the American declaration of war all of the major allied powers were democracies. Also it is important to note that the term ‘democratic' in reference to the provisional government is a liberal interpretation of the term
43. Gregory, The origins of American Intervention in the First World War, 127.
44. G.J. Sosnowski, ‘Letter to Woodrow Wilson’, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, http://wwl2.dataformat.com/Document.aspx?doc=35544 (accessed May 1, 2014).
45. Wilson, ‘War Message'.
46. Woodrow Wilson, ‘Letter to Cyrus H. McCormick, 27 Apr. 1917’, Woodrow Wilson E-library, http://wwl2.dataformat.com/Document.aspx?doc=36387 (accessed March 3, 2014).
47. Woodrow Wilson, Constitutional Government in the United States, Kindle ed. (New York: Quid Pro Quo Books, 2011), 1.
48. Ibid., 17.
49. In 1914 the U.S. had the economic power to warrant grate power status but had been reluctant to take on the other aspects of great power status such as a large standing military. For further reading on the United States rise to Great Power Status see: Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, and Paul Kennedy, ‘The First World War and the International Power System’, International Security, 9, no. 1 (1984): 7–40.
50. Indeed Wilson ran on a peace platform during the 1916 election: see Arthur S. Link, Wilson: Confusion and Crisis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964), Edward Cuddy, ‘Irish-Americans and the 1916 Election: An Episode in Immigrant Adjustment’, American Quarterly, 21, no. 2, Part 1. (1969): 228–43 and James Allen Beatson, ‘The Election the West Decided: 1916’, Arizona and the West, 3, no. 1 (1961): 39–58.
51. Arthur S. Link, Wilson the Struggle for Neutrality 1914-1915 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 25.
52. Sydney Brooks, ‘The United States and the War: A British View’, North American Review (1915): 237.
53. Link, Wilson the Struggle for Neutrality, 25.
54. Wilson, ‘War Message'.
55. Lloyd E. Ambrosius, Wilsonianism: Woodrow Wilson and His Legacy in American Foreign Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillen, 2002), 37.
56. As an associate power the United States retained more independence of action than the Allied powers. The United States was not at war with the Ottoman Empire and could conclude a separate peace with Germany if it chose to do so.
57. Wilson, ‘War Message'.
58. Ibid.
59. Edward M. House, ‘Letter to Woodrow Wilson, 17 Aug.1917’, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, http://wwl2.dataformat.com/Document.aspx?doc=36121 (accessed May 13).
60. Adam Quinn, U.S. Foreign Policy in Context: National Ideology from the Founders to the Bush Doctrine, (London: Routledge, 2010), 95.
61. Mead, Special Providence, 163.
62. Adam Quinn, U.S. Foreign Policy in Context, 89.
63. Ibid., 90.
64. Link, Woodrow Wilson, 34.
65. Esther Caukin Brunauer, ‘The Peace Proposals of December, 1916–January, 1917', The Journal of Modern History, 4, no. 4 (1932): 544–71.
66. Robert Hannigan, The New World Power: American Foreign Policy 1898-1917 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 250.
67. House, ‘Letter to Wilson August 1917’.
68. Woodrow Wilson, ‘Fourteen Points, 8 January, 1918’, Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/wilson14.asp (accessed May 6, 2014).
69. Also the Zimmerman Telegram was essentially a proposal of a secret alliance with Mexico.
70. On this point Wilson was successful as it is now received convention that treaties should be public see G.R. Berridge, Diplomacy: Theory and Practice (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 72.
71. It was popular at the time to blame the European arms race and the failure of deterrence for the conflict. For discussion of the validity of this idea see: Theresa Clair Smith, ‘Arms Race Instability and War’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 24, no. 2 (1980): 253–84.
72. Indeed on the run up to World War Two we see secret clauses in the Ribbentrop-Molotov packed to divide Poland between the USSR and Nazi Germany. Gabriel Gorodetsky, ‘The Impact of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact on the Course of Soviet Foreign Policy’, Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique, 31, no. 1 (1990): 27–41.
73. Tony Smith, America’s Mission: The United States and the World Wide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 84.
74. Ibid., 82.
75. Woodrow Wilson, ‘Address to the United States Senate: January 22nd 1917’, First World War, http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/peacewithoutvictory.htm (accessed July 21, 2013).
76. Smith, America’s Mission, 85.
77. The Napoleonic period gives a good comparison as this was the last major European conflict which leads to American belligerence with a European great power since the War of 1812 discussed previously. Spain having fallen out of the great power ranks by the time of the Spanish American War. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars can be consider to have been between 1792 and 1815.
78. It is a fair assessment that that takeover of the communist government was the most important factor in the default.
79. This is of course what happened when the debt was effectively written off by the Hoover moratorium in 1931. Herbert Hoover, ‘Statement on the Moratorium on Intergovernmental Debts and Reparations. July 6, 1931’, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=22735 (accessed June 20, 2013).
80. David R. Woodward, Trial by Friendship: Anglo-American Relations 1917-1918 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), 80.
81. Wilson, –War Message'.