Woodrow Wilson's "New Diplomacy"

U.S. fears of regional instability? Concern over humanitarian abuses? The need for regime change to curb "rogue" behavior while fostering democratization? Respect for the rule of law? Promoting self-determination? Does not all of this sound familiar? Ninety years ago, many of these very same issues were already on the table as Wooclrow Wilson came to grips with the first serious foreign policy crisis of his presidency.

-The Editors

I

It is an old story that Woodrow Wilson came to office expecting to deal mainly with domestic affairs. There is his well-known remark to a friend during his presidential inauguration in March 1913: "It would be an irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs." The remark has often been taken as a candid, if unguarded, confession of inadequacy in the field of diplomacy. If so, it seems quite out of character for so self-confident a man. More likely, as the distinguished historian Arthur Link once observed, Wilson "was simply recognizing the obvious fact of his primary concern with domestic issues and his superior training for leadership in solving them."1