To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order

by Thomas J. Knock

In his widely acclaimed To End All Wars, Thomas Knock provides an intriguing, often provocative narrative of Woodrow Wilson's epic quest for a new world order. The account follows Wilson's thought and diplomacy from his policy toward revolutionary Mexico, through his dramatic call for "Peace without Victory" in World War I, to the Senate's rejection of the League of Nations. Throughout Knock explores the place of internationalism in American politics, sweeping away the old view that isolationism was the cause of Wilson's failure and revealing the role of competing visions of internationalism--conservative and progressive.

Genres: History, American History, Politics, United States, Nonfiction, World War I, 20th Century

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Thomas J. Knock is Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor at Southern Methodist University. A native of Harrison, Ohio, Knock received his A.B. from Miami University, his M.A. from Boston College, and his Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over the years I have read – and written – so much about Woodrow Wilson, his administration, the First World War, the Versailles Peace Treaty, and the failure of the US Senate to accept the League of Nations that I even dream about all of this!
So what, you might reasonably ask, might yet another book – let alone a review by me – produce that is new, or even interesting?
Believe it or not, there was much that was both new and deepening of my understanding in this book since Knock’s principal focus is on both Wilson’s evolving conceptualization of his dream of a League of Nations and of how others contributed to, criticized, or played some other role in advancing similar concepts during the crucial years of World War I and its immediate aftermath.

What stood out for me?

The Linkage between Wilson’s foreign and domestic policies AND the widespread support for some kind of postwar league or international council

 How Wilson’s Presbyterian understanding of covenant played a seminal role in his approach to foreign and domestic policy. Unlike much of the prevailing understanding of both international and domestic struggles – one side against another, as in balance of power or labor vs. capital – Wilson was strongly inclined to seek harmonious integration; nations working together, labor and capital, etc.

 How as the war broke out and quickly deteriorated in the bloody stalemate of trench warfare so very many people in many nations were thinking about some form of post-war international forum by which such wars would be blocked or avoided in the future.

 How intertwined were Wilson’s domestic policies and goals with his internationalist vision. In fact, up until 1916 his closest collaborators, allies, and advisors exchanged ideas constantly with liberals, progressives, and socialists. Despite his Southern-influenced backward views on “races” – e.g., Blacks, Chinese, Japanese – Wilson was closely aligned with the Progressive movement of the early 20th century and enjoyed widespread support among even avid socialists. He also enjoyed, in the all-too-brief “spring” of the Russian Revolution in 1917, a rapport with Alexander Kerensky of the democratic socialist left in Russia.

 That even in the United States there was widespread support for some form of postwar international association. Knock helpfully describes the positions and key differences between those whom he calls progressive and conservative internationalists.
o Progressive internationalists were “feminists, liberals, pacifists, socialists, and social reformers of varying kinds…. For them, domestic politics and foreign policy had suddenly become symbiotic: Peace was essential to change – to the survival of the labor movement and of their campaigns on behalf of women’s rights, the abolition of child labor, and social justice legislation in general…. Thus the raison d’etre of the progressive internationalists was to bring about a negotiated settlement of the war.”
 One of the principal examples and leaders of this group was Jane Addams who, along with Lillian Wald, organized the Woman’s Peace party in January 1915, “the first organization of its kind…to engage in direct political action (and on a variety of fronts) in order to achieve its goals.”
 Addams “became the comminating figure at the International Congress of Women, which met at the Hague during the last week of April 1915.” (Pp. 50-51)
o Conservative internationalists “made up the largest and, generally speaking, the most influential segment of the broad American league movement. Unlike their liberal and left-wing counterparts, most leading conservative internationalists had helped found peace organizations – such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the American Society for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes – in the prewar years. They therefore benefitted from a financially secure base of operations and from the kind of respectability and power that came with membership in the establishment. Almost all of them had been ardent imperialists and champions of Anglo-American entente since the 1890s.
 “Many conservative internationalists…were so-called legalists. Seeking stability rather than change in international relations, legalists viewed the concept of world peace primarily through the prism of international law. Conflicts between major powers [Senator Elihu] Root argued throughout the 1910s, could best be ameliorated through the steady growth of international legal precedents stablished by a world court. Other conservatives, such as William Howard Taft…put greater faith in compulsory arbitration of certain kinds of disputes sustained by coercive sanctions to compel the submission of a dispute to a tribunal.” (Pp. 55-56)
 The platform of the League to Enforce Peace, founded in June of 1915, “called for American participation in a postwar league in which representatives from all nations would assemble periodically to make appropriate changes in international law. Member nations would also be bound to submit ‘justiciable’ disputes (questions pertaining to treaty obligations and international law) to a judicial tribunal or council of arbitration, and ‘non-justiciable’ disputes (questions of national honor or vital national self-interest) to a board of conciliation. Finally, the plan would require signatories to bring economic and military force to bear against any state that made war on another signatory before submitting its grievance to the foregoing process.” By the end of 1916 the LEP had established “some four thousand branches in forty-seven states….” P. 56)

 Wilson communicated with, and borrowed from, all sorts of groups with varied political or programmatic platforms in order to both “flesh out” his ongoing evolution of his League as well as to build collaborative fences. With regard to the conservative internationalists, “Wilson surely realized that on certain points their platform conversed with his own prescriptions” as well as with those of his progressive and socialist ideational allies. “But what the LEP omitted was as important as what it prescribed. On the one hand, its recommendations for settling disputes squared with [then Secretary of State William Jennings] Bryan’s cooling-off treaties [the idea that states with disputes would submit their grievances to arbitration and be bound to withhold military action for a prescribed period of time], and its position on sanctions was roughly similar to Wilson’s own thoughts about mutual guarantees of territorial integrity and political independence…. On the other hand, the LEP did not concern itself much with the economic causes of the war, with disarmament or self-determination, and certainly not with the ‘democratic control’ of foreign policy. Thus, even though the two wings of the American internationalist movement were very broadly constituted, the differences between them were substantial; in most respects, fundamental.” (P. 57)

 “…Wilson did not regard collective security and arbitration as adequate by themselves to prevent future wars,” although he did seem them as “absolutely vital.” Rather, “self-determination, reduction of armaments, and free trade were equally important to the community of nations to come. Moreover, he and the progressive internationalists sought to mediate an end to the war and believed a fair peace settlement to be one based on a stand-off in Europe. In contrast, most conservative internationalists made no bones about their wish to see the Allies win a clear-cut victory…. Finally, for progressive internationalists, a league of nations symbolized the confluence of other dreams and purposes. The ultimate objective of Wilson and the progressive internationalists was a lasting peace that would accommodate change and advance democratic institutions and social and economic justice; and a just peace was dependent on the synchronous proliferation of political democracy and social and economic justice around the world.” (P. 57)


How, despite all this, the dream of US involvement in such a League of Nations fell apart

 Many historians and political observers have pointed out the deadly effect that war always has on progressive domestic efforts, and it was the poison of WWI that was ultimately responsible for killing Wilson’s dream.
o Domestically,
 There was a sundering between Wilson and the Democratic Party and progressives, liberals, and socialists over the repressive domestic programs embraced by Wilson during the war, especially with regarding the jailing of opponents of the war and the widespread interference by the US Post Office in suppressing any form of dissenting material. Although there was still enough support in 1916 to allow Wilson to win his narrow re-election, it had fallen apart during 1917, and this was a key reason why the Republicans were able to win narrow margins of victory in both the House and Senate in 1918.
 At the same time, the Republican Party – and its major players, such as Roosevelt, Taft, and Lode – increasingly took a harder line against Wilson on all matters. Part of this was standard political opportunism – the chance to win control of Congress – but part was also a reaction to growing fears of socialist and, after 1917, Russian Communist alleged infiltration into the US. Wilson’s labor proposals and calls for “peace without victory” seemed too close to similar pronouncements coming from foreign “radical” sources. Putting it simply, what Wilson was for, the Republicans were increasingly against!
o Internationally,
 As the war came to its exhausting end, there were two overwhelming concerns for the leaders of the major victorious powers (France and Britain):
• The absolute need to ensure that Germany would never again be able to threaten them. This what led them at Versailles to insist on territorial and financial concessions from Germany that served to plant the seeds of the failure of the Weimar Republic and the corrosive soil for Hitler and his Nazis, and
• A growing fear that the next likely danger would come from the emerging Soviet Union. While the peace conference was meeting these leaders were aware of worker unrest throughout Europe and the growing influence of avowedly communist parties in their own countries.
 What this meant in practice is that they were able to weaken practically every one of Wilson’s “14 Points” that he insisted be the basis for a secure peace in order to achieve their territorial and financial demands by catering to – or seeming to cater to – Wilson’s insistence on the centrality of the League of Nations to any peace settlement.
 As Knock points out (and others even observed at the time) while Wilson’s program enjoyed overwhelming support among the people of Europe, he was simply the only established national leader fighting for it at Versailles. Yes, there were some others – such as Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh and the defeated Germans who were not allowed to negotiate at all – who desperately hoped for Wilson’s platform to be accepted, but they had no say or legitimacy at Versailles.

 Finally, the crucial matter of Wilson and his Republican opponents in the Senate
o The 1918 elections pulled the chair from out of Wilson politically, and it was illustrative of a growing public concern about the peace treaty itself.
 Those opposing Wilson falsely implied not only that the Treaty required things that it did not – for example, that it bound the US to respond militarily to a situation even if the Senate and the people objected – but also that Wilson was rigid in his interpretation of the Treaty and the League’s provisions.
• Knock takes great pains in showing how Wilson consistently expressed his opinion that the League’s conventions – in which he had skillfully compromised and adjusted his own provisions to accommodate others’ contributions – were but the starting point.
• Wilson frequently stated that how the League evolved, or even whether it would prove eventually successful, depended upon its evolution by those guiding it. Wilson hoped that it would perform as he envisioned, but he repeatedly said that whether or not it did so would depend upon member states’ future actions.

o It does appear that a majority of the Senate was prepared to accept the League with reservations – not amendments that would have required acceptance by the other signatories.
 Knock acknowledges that a major problem was that Wilson and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge apparently genuinely hated each other! This was a character flaw of both men (and the Lord knows that there are many political figures who have been unable to “forgive and forget”).
 However, there is every evidence that there were a sufficient number of Republican senators willing to join the Democrats in support of the League if they had been able to attain the kind of reservations embodying some of the concerns of the conservative internationalists (for example, clarifying that the League would not be able to modify the Monroe Doctrine or compel the US at a future date to become involved militarily without the consent of Congress).

 Then how do we explain the failure of the US to join the League?
 An inescapable factor is Wilson’s failing health and, ultimately, his serious stroke!
 By the time Wilson returned from the long months at the Peace Conference, where he was continually up against those who opposed most of his 14 Points, he was physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted.
 He came back to a nation which he had failed to adequately inform or educate about the Treaty and the League, but which had for months been inundated with the beating drums of Republican concerns about both.
 Moreover, the country was jittery!
• The flood of returning veterans upset labor relations and became an occasion for large corporations to attempt to roll back some of labor’s wartime gains.
• Concerns about socialists and communist infiltration of labor unions, factories, and mines led to a rash of repressive measures, some initiated by the US attorney general and a lot by local businesses and towns.
• The country was also well on its way to wishing to put the whole damn matter of the war and its related concerns behind it!
 By the time Wilson decided to try to counter all of this with his whistle-stop nation-wide tour to inform and persuade the American people – something his doctors were vehemently against! – it was, Knock concludes, likely far too late for any hope that the League could pass the Senate without some reservations.
 When Wilson was felled by two strokes – the second, far serious one after returning to Washington – the final die was cast.
• The physical and emotional costs of these strokes robbed him of his ability and will to bargain or compromise.
• For many months, it was his wife who decided just who could see and speak with him and who could not, decisively removing any last chance that any of his Democratic allies could persuade him to adopt non-fatal reservations that would allow the League to be adopted.
• Unfortunately, Wilson held firm in refusing to all any reservations to be adopted and insisting until the end that only an unmodified League was acceptable to him and that anything short of that had to be voted down.
• And so it was.

But Have We Learned from This?
In his final chapter, Knock does something very interesting: in noting how Wilson’s reputation and efforts to achieve a just peace and a League of Nations have bounced back in the last half century from the disparagement they had received in the ‘30s and ‘40s, and that many people – historians included – have regarded FDR’s successful efforts to birth the United Nations as a vindication of Wilson’s vision.

But, Knock argues, both the United Nations – in structure and functioning – and the behavior of the United States since 1945 suggest that it is Lodge’s vision of what the League should have been and the role of the United States in it that has triumphed!

Consider the evidence:
• Both FDR and Stalin envisioned a post-war order in which the United States and the Soviet Union would essentially preside over their respective spheres of interest, a conclusion based upon the devastation of all of the warring countries and the survival of only two major military powers: the US and the USSR.

• Even though Roosevelt’s death and the origins of what became the Cold War dashed this vision of cooperative relations between the two sides, in the decades that followed both resorted to an updated version of both spheres of interest and the “old game” of balance of powers. Both were decidedly not part of Wilson’s hopes for the future; in fact, both were stratagems he specifically condemned as responsible for the outbreak of World War I.

• Moreover, the United States, the Soviet Union and modern Russia, and many other powers – including India, Israel, and Iran – have shown little regard for the international community’s sentiments or the idea of collective security when they have acted unilaterally by interfering in the affairs of other nations. This, too, reflected Lodge’s reservation that nothing could or should interfere with America’s “right” to act to protect what it regarded as its vital interests.

• And, as to the behavior of the US, other powers, and the UN itself in the 21st century, we see only polite bows to the principal of respecting the opinions of all humankind while major and rising powers continue to act regardless of the expressed sentiment of “humankind” as present and expressed in the United Nations’ General Assembly.

• Further, there appears to be little interest in pursuing disarmament of the concept of cooling off treaties, both of which were central to Wilson’s vision.

So, does this mean that Wilson’s vision was – and remains – flawed or impossible? I would like to believe otherwise; I desperately need to hope otherwise! But in my eight plus decades on this planet I have learned too much about the darker aspects of what we humans are capable of to expect the realization of his vision.

Final Thoughts
My admiration for Wilson’s goals, and for most of the ways he conducted himself, remains untarnished. And yet, how typical is this entire story! Pettiness, putting self above the greater good, egoism, and its related short-sightedness are not new in human affairs but, rather, all too common.

This is a masterfully written account of what might have been if only…more of us were angels!

[Jim Gulley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Woodrow Wilson embodied the rapid rise and fall of the Progressive Era in American history. He was elected President due to a schism in the Republican Party between Teddy Roosevelt and W.H. Taft, won a razor-thin re-election on the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War,” only to enter WWI a few months later. Wilson’s obsession was in creating a “new world order” of international cooperation as administered by a League of Nations, the forerunner to today’s United Nations. Dr. Knock chronicles the political history that ultimately led to the disastrous Treaty of Versailles and the demise of Wilson’s aspirations for a league.

Knock sets up the domestic politics as a struggle between “progressive internationalists” who had socialist and pacifist leanings, and “conservative internationalists” who were pushing Wilson into the war. Once the US entered the war, Wilson’s political complications trebled as he sought to find common ground with the Allied nations, who had divergent goals and priorities. The book provides great detail on the negotiations between stakeholders that produced the Covenant establishing the League and the treaty that set the terms for the ending of WWI.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thomas Knock argues that Wilson represented the vanguard of "progressive internationalism", an approach to the world that gained currency among left-leaning Americans in the mid 1910s. This strand of thought shaped Wilson's vision for a League of Nations, but his acquiescence in the clampdown on the left following the declaration of war neutralized political forces he needed to secure the ratification of the vision.

He argues that Wilson was not a realist and that his vision for the post-WW1 world bore little resemblance to what emerged following WW2. Unlike realists, Knock in his narrative also emphasizes the influence of omestic politics on foreign policy making.

A very useful book on the Wilson administration.

[Liv Stapleton · Rating 3 out of 5]

like okay? sure

[Jeremy Perron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thomas Knock's book To End All Wars is a study of President Wilson's foreign policy. There is a bit of a mini-biography in the beginning the traces President Wilson's intellectual development and rise to the presidency. Everything else focuses on the President's work abroad. In his first term the book's focus is on United States' relationship with other nations in the Americas. The Knock's focus on second term is partly on World War I but more so the battle to create the League of Nations.

One of the ironies the Knock points out is: with all the major foreign policy issues that would arise with President Wilson's time in office, the 1912 election had almost nothing to do with foreign policy. Knock however is quick to defend Wilson's own remark about how it would be ironic if foreign policy were to cover his Administration. Knock argues that Wilson's comment was based on the content of the election campaign not on his personal study of the issues.

"The election of 1912, like almost all the others of the preceding century, did not hinge on foreign policy. President Taft now and then reflected upon his futile exertions for reciprocal trade with Canada and arbitration treaties with the European powers. Debs viewed foreign policy as irrelevant to working-class interests, just as he had done during the debate over imperialism in 1900. The Progressive platform advocated free passage through the Panama Canal for American coastwise shippers and recommended the construction of two battleships per year, while the Democratic platform called for independence for the Philippines. But none of the candidates said much about even these rather innocuous issues." (pg. 19)

Wilson was an idealist but Wilson was not alone in his idealism. There were many people and movements on both sides of the political spectrum who wanted to change from the theories that used balance of power and national interest in guiding foreign policy, and to replace it with a new internationalism that would embrace the rule of law over nations.

"Jane Addams played a key a pivotal in this wing of the internationalist movement; indeed, she personified its purposes and values perhaps better than anyone else. Dismayed by the failure of the established peace societies to show any muscle, Addams, with the help of Paul Kellogg and Lillian Wald, organized the Woman's Peace party in January 1915. The Woman's Peace party distinguished itself as the first organization of its kind--unlike the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace or the World Peace Foundation--to engage in direct political action (and on a variety of fronts) in order to achieve its goals." (pg.50-1)

There is very little in this book about World War I as a conflict. It discusses how Wilson had America enter as an associate belligerent power rather than an ally. Wilson was disgusted with the allies and their plans to divide up the spoils after the war. Wilson wished for a new way of doing things and the actions of the allies, to him, represented what was wrong with the world.

"In addition to arbitration, Wilson concentrated on disarmament. Sounding much like a card-carrying member of the American Union Against Militarism, he posed to alternatives to his audiences--disarmament through the League or the eventuality of a national security state. Should it stand apart, he argued, the United States would have to be `physically ready for whatever comes.'" (p.261)

Wilson's view of what America might become has become reality. I am not sure his ideas for change were a realistic alternative. The League was not worth much and even the U.N. that replaced it has some terrible flaws. It is ironic that the ship Wilson used to go France in was the called the George Washington. I can think of no president whose views on foreign policy were closer to the exact opposite of Wilson than Washington. I am not talking about entangled alliances either. Washington was a realist who felt that nations would only go along with whatever aligned with their interests. Wilson talked of `equity of nations'. Why would a great power like Great Britain want to be on an equal footing with Luxemburg? Wilson's goals were admirable and maybe one day be attainable, but his methods were questionable at best.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I personally think this author did his best to be non-biased. I learned a lot about Woodrow Wilson and the events surrounding the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles.

[Reader2007 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for U.S. Mil Hist paper. Clearly written--focuses on Wilson's policies with the League of Nations as well as how he changed the course of American ideology with regards to foreign policy.

[Tristan · Rating 4 out of 5]

my feelings of this book are complex. I think he nailed that Wilson's mind cannot be understood simply

[Leonardo]

Sobre Woodrow Wilson y la suerte del internacionalismo progresivo.

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