Dear Deetee,
There are several reasons. Some were beyond Wilson's control:
- His poor health, that demanded more and more of his resources:
"Although the Wilsonian Fourteen Points enunciated his exalted
democratic goals for a just peace, the president's national campaign
failed to bring the United States into the League of Nations. In 1919
he suffered a severe stroke that left him almost incapacitated.
Instead of resigning, which a president today would be required to do
according to the 25th Amendment, his condition was kept secret"
(SOURCE: Explore DC, Woodrow Wilson,
<http://www.exploredc.org/index.php?id=109>).
- The effect the end of the First World War had in Russia (USSR),
Germany and Japan: "To hear critics tell it, the American
preoccupation with promoting democracy around the world is the product
of a dangerous idealistic impulse..... It fuels periodic American
"crusades" to remake the world, which, as President Woodrow Wilson
discovered after World War I, can land the country in serious
trouble...
[...]
After President Wilson's spectacular failure to create world order
through the League of Nations after World War I, liberal
internationalism was badly discredited. And the charge that Wilson and
his followers were sentimental idealists was not unjustified. "In the
conduct of foreign affairs," writes Wilson biographer Arthur S. Link,
Wilson's "idealism meant for him the subordination of immediate goals
and material interests to superior ethical standards and the
exaltation of moral and spiritual purposes."....
[...]
Woodrow Wilson was probably the purest believer in the proposition
that democracies maintain more peaceful relations, and his great
optimism about the prospects for democracy around the globe after
World War I accounts for his exaggerated hopes for world peace. "A
steadfast concert of peace can never be maintained except by a
partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be
trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants," he declared
in 1917.
[...]
Emerging from World War I, Woodrow Wilson believed that the world
stood on the brink of a great democratic revolution, and so it seemed
obvious to build order around the idea of a universal democratic
community. But the democratic revolution never came, as Russia lapsed
into totalitarianism and even Continental Europe failed to develop the
democratic qualities Wilson expected." (SOURCE: G. JOHN IKENBERRY, G.
John Ikenberry, "Why Export Democracy?: The 'Hidden Grand Strategy' of
American Foreign Policy'" The Wilson Quarterly (Vol. 23, no.2 (Spring
1999), <http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/exdem.htm>).
There are reasons that are mroe closely related to the structure of
the House of Repersentatives in 1917-1918: " later presented to the
Senate the Versailles Treaty, containing the Covenant of the League of
Nations, and asked, "Dare we reject it and break the heart of the
world?" But the election of 1918 had shifted the balance in Congress
to the Republicans. By seven votes the Versailles Treaty failed in the
Senate." (SOURCE: Woodrow Wilson, White House Biography,
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/ww28.html>).
Search terms:
Woodrow Wilson, failure, world order
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