The Will to Believe: Woodrow Wilson, World War I, and America’s Strategy for Peace and Security (review)

Offering a welcome addition to the Wilson literature, Kennedy examines the views of leading American policy and opinion makers about various debates concerning World War I. From August 1914 to April 1917, the month America entered the war, disputes focused upon the proper response to the actions of the belligerents, particularly the British blockade of western Europe and Germany’s U-boat warfare against neutral trade with the Allies. Between 1917 and 1920, the year when the Senate repudiated the Versailles Treaty for the second time, contention lay in the appropriate response to the Paris peace accord. Behind such immediate issues were wider questions relating to the nature of the international system, the desirability of alliances and world organization, and the relationship between peace and democratic political systems.

In analyzing these controversies, Kennedy divides the nation’s leaders into three distinct groups. First were the “pacifists” (loosely defined), who abhorred standing armies and binding alliances and who were represented by such individuals as Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, Senator Robert M. La Follette, and settlement worker Jane Addams. Second were “liberal internationalists,” who reluctantly supported armed force to create a collective security system and who listed in its ranks such figures as Woodrow Wilson and former president William Howard Taft. Third were the “Atlanticists,” believers in some sort of security relationship with Great Britain; Theodore Roosevelt and Senators Elihu Root and Henry Cabot Lodge could be found in their ranks.

More than previous works, this book stresses the degree to which fear of militarism permeated American culture, as well as the extent to Wilson was supposedly animated by desires to contain German power. The president, Kennedy claims, confronted the paradox of “practicing power politics to end power politics” (xiii–xiv). Sources include the published papers of Wilson, Roosevelt, Root, Colonel E. M. House, and the League to Enforce Peace; the New York Times and such contemporary journals as the New Republic and the Independent; the Congressional Record; the Foreign Relations series; and a host of scholarly books and articles.

Much of the narrative has long been known to specialists, though Kennedy’s organization enables him to offer fresh insights. He is particularly stimulating in his critique of the various historical figures. Pacifists increasingly isolated themselves from the national debate by ignoring the entire matter of power relations. Before the war, the Atlanticists lacked a consistent strategic vision. When the conflict ended, they refused to push for a national-security strategy oriented toward power politics. Such liberal internationalists as Wilson neither defended American rights against both sets of belligerents nor sought to defeat Germany through quick intervention. The president in particular fell into a blundering diplomacy that failed to achieve America’s security interests. Wilson’s League of Nations appeared to require a member state to intervene everywhere, even if no immediate interest existed, thereby leaving the United States in constant conflict while subverting Congress’ war powers and necessitating a massive military establishment.

Kennedy’s discussion of wider great-power relations and of the international structure is usually based upon the findings of other historians, such as Graebner, Gaddis, and Ninkovich.¹ Although he draws upon the work of such political scientists as Nordlinger, Waltz, and Mearsheimer, international-relations theory plays a minor role in this study.²

In any event, The Will to Believe is certainly provocative. One awaits the response of Wilson’s defenders.