Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as Cultural Icons of U.S. Foreign Policy

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 747-776 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen G. Walker ◽  
Mark Schafer
Age of Iron ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 38-69
Author(s):  
Colin Dueck

This chapter describes the efforts of various Republican presidents and congressional leaders to balance nationalist with global foreign policy priorities between 1901 and 1960. Theodore Roosevelt was quite effective in doing so, within the context of his time. GOP conservatives struggled to respond to Woodrow Wilson, splintering into factional disputes, but agreeing that Wilson’s League of Nations could not be supported unrevised. Republican presidents from Warren Harding to Herbert Hoover then tried to cultivate a pacified international system while promoting US national interests, but were unwilling to sustain the necessary costs. Fierce debates over foreign policy characterized internal GOP politics during 1939–1941. Finally, in the mid-1950s, President Eisenhower hit upon a reasonable balance of national and global priorities, internationalizing the Republican Party.


1962 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warner R. Schilling

… we must take, so far as we can, a picture of the world into our minds. Is it not a startling circumstance for one thing that the great discoveries of science, that the quiet study of men in laboratories, that the thoughtful developments which have taken place in quiet lecture rooms, have now been turned to the destruction of civilization? … The enemy whom we have just overcome had at its seats of learning some of the principal centres of scientific study and discovery, and used them in order to make destruction sudden and complete; and only the watchful, continuous cooperation of men can see to it that science, as well as armed men, is kept within the harness of civilization.These words were spoken in Paris in January 1919 by Woodrow Wilson, addressing the second Plenary Session of the Peace Conference. Wilson believed he had found a watchdog for civilization in the League of Nations. In this he was sadly mistaken. Science and armed men have indeed been harnessed, but in order to promote and maintain the goals of conflicting polities. Whether in the pursuit of these ends the cause of civilization will yet be served remains, we may hope, an open question.


Author(s):  
Tony Smith

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Wilsonianism, which comprises a set of ideas called American liberal internationalism. More than a century after Woodrow Wilson became president of the United States, his country is still not certain how to understand the important legacy for the country's foreign policy of the tradition that bears his name. Wilsonianism remains a living ideology whose interpretation continues either to motivate, or to serve as a cover for, a broad range of American foreign policy decisions. However, if there is no consensus on what the tradition stands for, or, worse, if there is a consensus but its claims to be part of the tradition are not borne out by the history of Wilsonianism from Wilson's day until the late 1980s, then clearly a debate is in order to provide clarity and purpose to American thinking about world affairs today.


Author(s):  
Toby Dodge

This chapter examines the main dynamics that have transformed U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East over the last eighty-five years, from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama. It first considers the applicability of realist, Marxist, and constructivist theories of international relations before discussing the role that the Cold War, oil, and Israel have played in shaping U.S. foreign policy. It shows how, in each of these three areas, U.S. tactical approach to the Middle East has produced unintended consequences that have increased resentment towards America, destabilized the region, and undermined its long-term strategic goals. The chapter also explores the Bush Doctrine, launched after 9/11 and the resultant invasion of Iraq. It concludes by assessing Obama’s attempts to overcome the tensions and suspicion causes by previous U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.


2021 ◽  
pp. 487-526
Author(s):  
Mark Lawrence Schrad

Chapter 17 examines the Anti-Saloon League’s pivot to pressing for the Eighteenth (Prohibition) Amendment. In 1912 former president Theodore Roosevelt ran as a third-party Progressive against his handpicked Republican successor, William Howard Taft, as Taft had undermined Roosevelt’s signature Pure Food and Drug Act, which included purity standards on alcohol. The electoral split gave the presidency to Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who was agnostic toward prohibition. World War I and the accompanying “cult of military sobriety” strengthened prohibitionist sentiment, while the election of 1916 secured the legislative supermajorities needed for a prohibition amendment. Once passed in December 1917, the amendment was ratified with unprecedented speed by January 1919, to come into effect one year later. In the meantime, drys pushed for a “wartime prohibition” until demobilization was complete. With prohibition in America secured, activists looked abroad through the World League Against Alcoholism (WLAA) and its chief emissary, Pussyfoot Johnson.


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