The Liberal Internationalism: The Invasion Of Iraq

On March 20, 2003, one of the most controversial decisions in modern American history was made. George W. Bush sent American troops to invade Iraq in an attempt to remove dictator Saddam Hussein from power. Along with overthrowing Hussein, America would restructure the Iraqi government to align with both democratic principles and American ideologies. Bush justified the actions of his campaign by accusing Iraq of possessing weapons of mass destruction as well as being a threat to global security.

The invasion of Iraq echoes the ideological view of Woodrow Wilson, immediately following World War I. In Wilson’s opinion, his Liberal Internationalism was a cure-all end-all to conflicts between nations. His matrix of diagnoses and prescriptions

The first Liberal Internationalists, including Wilson, were a very ethnocentric, non diverse group. They had two driving questions that they wanted to have answered from their new ideology. Those questions were, how do we prevent war, and what causes war? When analyzing these questions, liberal internationalists focused on both the domestic and international level.

When examined at the domestic level, Liberal Internationalists concluded that illiberal, nondemocratic regimes are to blame for wars, and the only way to prevent wars was by allowing nations self determination through democracy. Similar to the domestic level, when analyzing the international level, they found nations go to war because they exist in a state of anarchy. This was directly due to a lack of a world government. This led Liberal Internationalists, such as Wilson, to believe that in order to prevent wars on the global scale, they must implement the League of

Both Woodrow Wilson and George W. Bush lacked adequate international relations experience to successfully handle their respective situations, therefore causing substantial similarities to occur in their respective programs. Prior to Wilson’s presidency, foreign relations had just started to become more prominent with his predecessors, as America had just moved out of isolationism prior to the Spanish-American War, which ended in 1892. Wilson, as well as his Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, had little foreign relations experience when he entered office. Arthur Link, renowned Wilson scholar, asserts that Wilson developed a “Missionary Diplomacy” towards Latin America in the early years of his presidency. This was a belief that he knew better than other leaders what was best for their nations. In fact, the years between 1912 and 1914 were marked by failures in Latin America due to the Wilson Administration 's lack of familiarity with the subject. This lack of experience impeded Wilson’s ability to organize a successful and realistic international organization in the post World War