Wilson as Diplomat
Buehrig, Edward H.
Wilson as Diplomat Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, 1914-1915, Vol. Ill, by Arthur S. Link, Princeton University Press. 736 pp. $10. Reviewed by Edward H. Buehrig Woodrow Wilson's foreign...
...The interesting question whether this differential treatment of German and British efforts to control the seas was to a significant degree the result of political bias—or the result merely of circumstance and convenience— remains to be answered in subsequent volumes...
...It seems to me necessary that a provisional government essentially revolutionary in character should take action to institute reforms by decree before the full forms of the constitution are resumed...
...He sought his objectives with tenacity and decision...
...Link achieves this not through the dramatic quality of his writing but through his exhaustive knowledge and a liberal display of the record (as voluminous a record as exists for any period of history), his astute interpretation of the evidence, and his inclusion of the agony of decision in Berlin as an integral part of the story...
...But there was no growing edge permitting constitutionalism to take hold...
...In Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Wilson's democratic evangelism led step by step to occupation and complete control...
...And Britain (notably in the case of cotton) made important accommodations to American distress...
...Above all, Wilson was seeking democratic order on the basis of constitutions and elections...
...We know, however, that Wilson never brought the British to heel...
...The lack of any inhibition on Wilson's part—or Bryan's—regarding intervention in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti is today almost incomprehensible...
...The altered course was long overdue...
...Here the volume ends...
...Calling a halt to plans for imposing a general election on Mexico, Wilson instructed Lansing in August, 1915: "The first and most essential step in settling affairs of Mexico is not to call general elections...
...The standard economic explanations of imperialism were not, Link believes, the controlling considerations...
...This was a reversal of his earlier position, which obliged Lansing to shift 180 degrees in his negotiations with certain Latin American governments, designed to achieve a united policy on Mexico...
...The American economy rapidly became geared to Allied purchases...
...Nor was the strategic importance of the area an impelling factor—though in the early stages of the Mexican turmoil, prior to the war in Europe, the threat of European, particularly British, intervention was an important goad to American action...
...These societies were politically bankrupt and the Marines held them in receivership...
...while it did not forestall the subsequent difficulties with Villa, it at least recognized that constitutions and elections are not a panacea to be prescribed indiscriminately...
...For one thing, in Mexico's President Carranza Wilson encountered a stubbornness that was a match for his own...
...A similiar culmination • failed to materialize in Mexico...
...His tactics and timing, and the verbal power of his diplomatic notes arrested German submarine warfare, holding it at bay for nearly two and one-half years...
...Let us pass on to Wilson's Mexican and Caribbean policies, which have always been highly puzzling...
...For another, Wilson came to an important realization...
...This feat the student of history is likely to be acquainted with, but he probably does not appreciate fully the skill and brilliance with which Wilson conducted the struggle...
...The President, in this instance, was less successful in getting his own way...
...Notable, too, is the clarity of Link's account of Wilson's confrontation of British sea power...
...Link treats them in detail1 (on the basis of much new evidence), and he again, through mastery of his materials, produces an interpretation that is altogether persuasive...
...The submarine incidents shielded British practices...
...Yet Link demonstrates that the vigorous note of October 21, 1915, was a protest against the British "blockade" which was meant to mean business...
...Link points out that Wilson was "the most extraordinary interventionist in Latin America in the history of the United States...
...Paradoxically our different outlook is largely owing to the impact on world opinion of Wilson's own passionate advocacy of the territorial integrity and political independence of nations and of the sanctity of small nations in particular...
...Reviewed by Edward H. Buehrig Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy had bite...
...For that matter, no historical account has succeeded as does Link's in revealing the inner workings of Wilson's diplomacy...
...The man who usually abhorred the very thought of employing force in international relations became the first President in American history to use violent means to impose the will of the United States . . . upon nations that were at least technically free and sovereign...
...Viewed in this light, his actions were not incompatible with protestations of pan-American brotherhood—indeed Wilson sympathized with the objectives of revolutionary reform...
Vol. 25 • July 1961 • No. 7
