The week’s readings reflect the contrast between Woodrow Wilson and his predecessors, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Unlike Roosevelt and Taft, who preferred the “big stick” and the “dollar diplomacy” approaches to build stable democracies around the world, Wilson believed that the interventionist methods previously utilized by the United States did not have a place in his administration (Herring 2008, 378). However, Wilson’s reluctance to intervene in foreign issues and his adherence to moral diplomacy were not much different than the approaches taken by Roosevelt and Taft. Ultimately, the Wilson administration supported more military interventions than Roosevelt and Taft combined (Herring 2008, 388). The Wilson administration’s failed aspirations to avoid foreign entanglements can serve as an important source of study for current politicians wanting and supporting American isolationism.
Furthermore, Woodrow Wilson’s vast knowledge did not prolong to global matters, “He had not traveled widely
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Referring to Russia, Wilson stated “The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their naïve majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world…” (Merrill and Paterson 2010, 32). However, that same Russian revolution that deposed Emperor Nicholas II lasted less than a year and its government was overthrown by the Bolsheviks. This had to be a surprise to Wilson, who ended up sending troops to Russia right after the end of WWI to fight the communists. Certainly, I would have chosen the monarch over what was about to come for the Russian people and the