Getting Wilson Wrong

On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked a joint session of Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. Wilson declared, "The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty." In the century since, most U.S. presidents have echoed Wilson to one degree or another. And, especially in the years after the Cold War, Americans took it for granted that their nation must promote or defend democracy across the globe because, with Soviet Communism relegated to the dustbin of history, people everywhere would naturally gravitate to freedom and capitalism. Today, it has become an axiom among many public intellectuals and political figures that fundamental freedoms are on the line at home and abroad, from Ukraine to Taiwan. President Joseph R. Biden frequently frames U.S. foreign policy in terms of a global confrontation between democracy and autocracy. In this episode, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David M. Kennedy explores the origins of the Wilsonian idea that now permeates our basic political thinking. We may be getting Wilson wrong in one important respect. Declaring that the "world must be made safe for democracy" is not the same as saying "we must make the world democratic."

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