Missionary diplomacy was the policy of US President Woodrow Wilson that Washington had a moral responsibility to deny diplomatic recognition to any Latin American government that was not democratic. It was an expansion of President James Monroe's 1823 Monroe Doctrine. [1]
"Missionary diplomacy" is a descriptive label often applied to the policies and practices of the United States in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, as well as China, during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921). According to Arthur S. Link: [Secretary of State William Jennings], Bryan and Wilson were both fundamentally missionaries of democracy, driven by inner compulsions to give other peoples the blessings of democracy and inspired by the confidence that they knew better how to promote the peace and well-being of other countries than did the leaders of those countries themselves." [2] Wilson related both missionary diplomacy and the New Freedom, his domestic program, to his concepts of morality and democratic government. [3]
Woodrow Wilson came to the presidency with little knowledge of or interest in foreign affairs. His well-known remark to a Princeton friend, "It would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs," seemed to emphasize his concentration on domestic questions. But from the start of his term, Wilson saw close relationships between domestic and foreign policies. The New Freedom envisaged a return to free competition in the United States. The monopolistic interests had to be destroyed at home and their influence in foreign policy dispelled, and thus Wilson's initial rejection of "dollar diplomacy." Although he was not unqualifiedly hostile to business interests, he believed that their activities ought to serve, rather than dominate, the public interest. Wilson's ethical and religious beliefs profoundly influenced his foreign policy as president. Nations, like individuals, should adhere to high ethical and moral standards. Democracy, Wilson thought, was the most Christian of governmental systems, suitable for all peoples. The democratic United States thus had a moral mandate for world leadership. At the end of World War I, the president saw the League of Nations as an instrument for the application of Wilsonian democracy on an international scale. Wilson's foreign policy promoted liberal and humanitarian ends and was based on morality and idealism. [4]
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. He was the only Democrat to serve as president during the Progressive Era when Republicans dominated the presidency and legislative branches. As president, Wilson changed the nation's economic policies and led the United States into World War I. He was the leading architect of the League of Nations, and his stance on foreign policy came to be known as Wilsonianism.
Robert Lansing was an American lawyer and diplomat who served as the 42nd United States Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson from 1915 to 1920. As Counselor to the State Department and then as Secretary of State, he was a leading advocate for American involvement in World War I.
The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs is a professional public policy school at Princeton University. The school provides an array of comprehensive coursework in the fields of international development, foreign policy, science and technology, and economics and finance through its undergraduate (AB) degrees, graduate Master of Public Affairs (MPA), Master of Public Policy (MPP), and PhD degrees.
The Smith Richardson Foundation is a private foundation based in Westport, Connecticut that supports policy research in the realms of foreign and domestic public policy.
Idealism in the foreign policy context holds that a nation-state should make its internal political philosophy the goal of its conduct and rhetoric in international affairs. For example, an idealist might believe that ending poverty at home should be coupled with tackling poverty abroad. Both within and outside of the United States, American president Woodrow Wilson is widely considered an early advocate of idealism and codifier of its practical meaning; specific actions cited include the issuing of the famous "Fourteen Points".
Anne-Marie Slaughter is an American international lawyer, foreign policy analyst, political scientist, and public commentator. From 2002 to 2009, she was the dean of Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs and the Bert G. Kerstetter '66 university professor of politics and international affairs. Slaughter was the first woman to serve as the director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department from January 2009 until February 2011 under U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton. She is a former president of the American Society of International Law and the current president and CEO of New America.
Gilford John Ikenberry is an American political scientist. He is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Known for his work on international relations theories, such as books After Victory (2001) and Liberal Leviathan (2011), he has been described as "the world's leading scholar of the liberal international order."
Wilsonianism, or Wilsonian idealism, is a certain type of foreign policy advice. The term comes from the ideas and proposals of United States President Woodrow Wilson. He issued his famous Fourteen Points in January 1918 as a basis for ending World War I and promoting world peace. He was a leading advocate of the League of Nations to enable the international community to avoid wars and end hostile aggression. Wilsonianism is a form of liberal democratic internationalism.
Dollar diplomacy of the United States, particularly during the presidency of William Howard Taft (1909–1913) was a form of American foreign policy to minimize the use or threat of military force and instead further its aims in Latin America and East Asia through the use of its economic power by guaranteeing loans made to foreign countries. In his message to Congress on 3 December 1912, Taft summarized the policy of Dollar diplomacy:
Arthur Stanley Link was an American historian and educator, known as the leading authority on U.S. President Woodrow Wilson.
The Fourth Party System was the political party system in the United States from about 1896 to 1932 that was dominated by the Republican Party, except the 1912 split in which Democrats captured the White House and held it for eight years.
Liberal internationalism is a foreign policy doctrine that supports international institutions, open markets, cooperative security, and liberal democracy. At its core, it holds that states should participate in international institutions that uphold rules-based norms, promote liberal democracy, and facilitate cooperation on transnational problems.
The presidency of Woodrow Wilson began on March 4, 1913, when Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated as the 28th President of the United States, and ended on March 4, 1921. He took office after defeating incumbent President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 presidential election. Wilson was a Democrat, who previously served as governor of New Jersey. He gained a large majority in the electoral vote and a 42% plurality of the popular vote in a four-candidate field. Wilson was re-elected in 1916 by a narrow margin. Despite his New Jersey base, most Southern leaders worked with him as a fellow Southerner. Wilson experienced several strokes in the last year and a half of his presidency causing him to be largely incapacitated. He was succeeded by Republican Warren G. Harding, who won the 1920 election.
Moraldiplomacy is a form of diplomacy proposed by President Woodrow Wilson in his 1912 United States presidential election. Moral diplomacy is the system in which support is given only to countries whose beliefs are analogous to that of the nation. This promotes the growth of the nation's ideals and damages nations with different ideologies. It was used by Woodrow Wilson to support countries with democratic governments and to economically injure non-democratic countries. He also hoped to increase the number of democratic nations, particularly in Latin America.
Princeton University was founded in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, shortly before moving into the newly built Nassau Hall in Princeton. In 1783, for about four months Nassau Hall hosted the United States Congress, and many of the students went on to become leaders of the young republic.
The Empire of Liberty is a theme developed first by Thomas Jefferson to identify what he considered the responsibility of the United States to spread freedom across the world. Jefferson saw the mission of the U.S. in terms of setting an example, expansion into western North America, and by intervention abroad. Major exponents of the theme have been James Monroe, Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson (Wilsonianism), Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.
History of the United States foreign policy is a brief overview of major trends regarding the foreign policy of the United States from the American Revolution to the present. The major themes are becoming an "Empire of Liberty", promoting democracy, expanding across the continent, supporting liberal internationalism, contesting World Wars and the Cold War, fighting international terrorism, developing the Third World, and building a strong world economy with low tariffs.
This bibliography of Woodrow Wilson is a list of published works about Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States. For a more comprehensive listing see Peter H. Buckingham, Woodrow Wilson: A bibliography of his times and presidency.
Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) was the prominent American scholar who served as president of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, as governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913, and as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. While Wilson's tenure is often noted for progressive achievement, his time in office was one of unprecedented regression in racial equality, with his presidency serving as the lowest point of the nadir of American race relations.
The foreign policy under the presidency of Woodrow Wilson deals with American diplomacy, and political, economic, military, and cultural relationships with the rest of the world from 1913 to 1921. Although Wilson had no experience in foreign policy, he made all the major decisions, usually with the top advisor Edward M. House. His foreign policy was based on his messianic philosophical belief that America had the utmost obligation to spread its principles while reflecting the 'truisms' of American thought.