Germany, he said, had embarked upon a policy of waging “warfare against mankind. In his war message to Congress of April 2, 1917, for example, Wilson declared German aggression to be a threat not simply to the United States but to humanity itself. Instead, he cast America’s purpose in cosmic terms. Thus, when at Wilson’s urging the United States flung itself into World War I, the President did not justify the departure from America’s tradition of so-called isolationism as necessary to secure vital national interests. American power and American ideals would transform international politics, leading to that Lasting Peace Woodrow Wilson and his successors routinely claimed as the ultimate reward of the nation’s exertions. entered World War I, this expectation has been central to the way that Americans have viewed the world whatever the trials and tribulations of the moment, history would in the end propel others to embrace our values. With few exceptions, we assume that those ideals and values are destined to encompass the globe. Similarly, in matters of foreign policy, although we are not uniformly enamored with the more extreme expressions of missionary diplomacy, virtually every American accepts the proposition that American political ideals are universal in application. While we may be selective in drawing on Jefferson’s view of democracy, we nonetheless rely heavily on it Jefferson’s vision of liberty and equality is intrinsic to our definition of nationhood. To examine the Bosnian crisis squarely and honestly is to understand that the entire Wilsonian enterprise, the cornerstone of American diplomacy since the United States entered upon the world stage, faces collapse today.Īs Americans, we are all Wilsonians-just as we are all Jeffersonians. Bosnia rankles because the intractability of the problems manifested there mocks the premises of modern American diplomacy. The cynicism of loathsome politicians who fan ethnic hatred in pursuit of petty ambitions fills us with disgust.īut however disturbing the grisly images beamed into our living rooms from Sarajevo and however despicable the latest reported machinations of such Bosnian Serb leaders as the toad-like Radovan Karadzic, outrage alone does not explain the extent to which this particular crisis has disconcerted the United States. The suffering of innocents resulting from the break-up of Yugoslavia afflicts our conscience. efforts to end the conflict there-stings Americans as no other event in the brief time after the Cold War. Yet the ongoing debacle in Bosnia-more specifically, the utter ineffectiveness of U.S. When the definitive catalogue of twentieth-century horrors is assembled, the agonies endured by Bosnia in the 1990s are unlikely to rate many pages.
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