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Introduction: The Two Utopianisms: Wilsonian Liberal Internationalism vs. Secularized Eschatology
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1 INTRODUCTION the two UtoPianiSmS Wilsonian Liberal Internationalism vs. Secularized Eschatology When the Czech ex-president, playwright, human rights activist, and former dissident Václav Havel died peacefully at his country cottage in Hrádeček in northeastern Bohemia on Sunday morning, December 18, 2011, the news spread fast. Within hours, his haggard face stared from the front page of every major media portal, and the Czech people and government found themselves inundated with condolences from leaders in every corner of Europe and beyond. The following Monday the European Union and NATO lowered their flags to half-staff, and on Wednesday the Czech Republic shrouded itself in three days of official mourning, culminating in a majestic funeral mass in Prague’s St. Vitus Cathedral attended by, among others, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Nicolas Sarkozy, and David Cameron. Ten thousand people braved the cold and joined the funeral procession, in whose course the coffin bearing Havel’s body traversed the Charles Bridge and ascended to the Prague Castle. It travelled on the same horse-drawn hearse that in 1937 carried to rest Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the founding president of the first independent Czechoslovak republic after World War I. The symbolism commemorated Havel’s leading role in resurrecting the democratic spirit of that republic after decades of Soviet oppression during the Cold War: in 1989, he was the key figure in Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution against communist dictatorship. 2 STATECRAFT AND SALVATION The remarkable outpouring of sympathy reflected Havel’s status as a widely revered defender of freedom, but if many people in his native country and around the world celebrated him for his commitment to liberal principles, he, in turn, carried deep admiration for another supporter of democracy: the American president Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856– 1924). On no other occasion did this become clearer than on October 5, 2011, Havel’s seventy-fifth birthday. Visibly sick, frail, and nearing the end of his life, he had by then retreated from the public stage and, a few exceptions aside, was no longer accepting visitors even in private. That day, however, TV cameras spotted Havel sitting in the front row during a special outdoor ceremony in Prague: the unveiling of Woodrow Wilson ’s statue. At a time when many notable domestic and international politicians, intellectuals, and artists were vying for one last chance to see Havel and wish him well to what everybody sensed was his final birthday , he turned them all down and instead paid a visit to the twenty-eighth president of the United States. This anecdote is not exceptional, but illustrative: ninety years after his death, Woodrow Wilson continues to be admired not just among Czechs, but also in many other places across Europe. The origins of his lasting legacy there, which dwarfs that of any other American statesman save perhaps for Franklin D. Roosevelt, go back to the Great War, in whose immediate aftermath Wilson’s liberal internationalist principles laid the foundations for Europe’s new political organization. His ability to shape the postwar order was in no small measure due to his position as commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces, whose entry into the conflict decided the Allied victory. He failed to secure the ratification of the Versailles Treaty by the U.S. Senate, a series of strokes in late 1919 disabled him for the remainder of his presidency, and he died a broken man in February 1924, but many of his ideals survived nonetheless. For better or worse, they set the parameters for the conduct of international politics in Europe throughout the interwar period—whether in the shape of peace movements, the League of Nations, or newly self-determined sovereign states such as Czechoslovakia. For these and other reasons, Wilson remains fondly remembered in Europe. The various public symbols , ranging from the Palais Wilson (current headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva) to the Avenue du Président Wilson in Paris and the Wilson Train Station in Prague, attest to this affection. In marked contrast to all such adoration, the following study exudes a much cooler, less enthusiastic attitude toward Wilson’s principles and [54.198.37.250] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:42 GMT) INTRODUCTION 3 legacy. It excavates the neglected religious-eschatological presuppositions of his liberal internationalism through a critical rereading of his ideas and practice in light of the so-called secularization theory, and it draws attention to the largely unacknowledged illiberal and totalizing implications...