Making the World Unsafe through Democracy

In 1918 President Woodrow Wilson addressed Congress calling for a declaration of war against Imperial Germany and delivered his famous line “the world must be made safe for democracy”.

Since World War I the United States has embarked on a democratic crusade, justifying war on the pretense of liberating people from their oppressive governments. Wilson was convinced that democratizing foreign nations by force if necessary would in his words lead to the “elevation of the spirit of the human race”. From the war with Imperial Germany to Saddam’s Iraq, America’s foreign policy maintains an enduring Wilsonian influence. Within mainstream political opinion democracy is considered an unquestionable and universal good that should be spread to foreign countries for their benefit and ours. This is the narrative often told with schools depicting a heroic Wilson saving Europe and spreading democracy an image the United States still carries with it when attempting to democratize Middle Eastern countries . In international relations theory this strategy of democratizing nations by force is known as liberal hegemony which as John Mearsheimer explains is essentially a mandate for eternal conflict. What do you mean you don’t run your country by popularity contest, oh you poor misguided people but don’t worry we have plenty of rifles, tanks, and jets to show you how one forms a “civilized” democracy. The theory behind liberal hegemony is that democracies are peace-loving, human right supporting, and are just lovely kumbaya singing countries so if we have a world of democracies we have world peace. Which makes sense if you ignore the American Civil War, the Israeli conflicts, India Pakistan conflict, the Yugoslavia Wars or any other conflict between democratic states then yes liberal hegemony makes perfect sense. But after the US so graciously “liberated” Iraq of its dictator, you may have noticed that world didn’t become particularly safer in fact it seems to have become more dangerous. To further dispel this romanticized theory of democratic peace, we must exam it’s inception during World War I where Wilson turned an unfortunate war between the European powers into an unmitigated world changing disaster.

Prior to World War I the United States was no stranger to foreign interventions as seen with the Spanish-American War and the annexation of Hawaii but these conflicts were comparatively small, contained within America’s “backyard”, and weren’t laden with ideological preachiness. Also there were prominent anti-war sentiments among the American people as seen with the formation of Anti-Imperialist League whose famed member Mark Twain wrote “I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land”. While difficult to imagine from a modern perspective, the position of neutrality or at least restraint in foreign affairs was a serious position not ridiculed as it is today as some Ron Paul fantasy of “isolationism” and the concept of empire was distasteful to many Americans who did not wish to become like the warmongering nations of Europe. American’s entrance into World War I would do away with these past sentiments as the vulgarity of war would be re-branded as the evangelization of democracy.

Historically President Woodrow Wilson is often viewed as a man of peace tragically forced into declaring war but this ignores Wilson’s ideological intentions of “elevating the human spirit” and the Entente propaganda that deceived the American public into supporting the war. (Historian Hunt Tooely has articles detailing this https://mises.org/wire/these-deeply-momentous-things-united-states-intervention-world-war-i ) The American public initially did not want to intervene in European affairs but opinion changed after news of German war atrocities and the killing of American citizens by German U-boats was sensationalized by the press. The so called atrocities of barbaric Hunnic German soldiers butchering and eating Belgium children were entirely fabricated by the Entente powers to influence the American public. The infamous sinking of the RMS Lusitania by a U-boat, killing over a hundred American citizens was propagated by the press not mentioning the ammunition stored on board or that the ship had deliberately sailed into a declared war zone. The final straw that would sway American opinion was the Zimmerman Telegraph, when Germany offered a conditional alliance with Mexico if the United States entered the war. The telegraph was viewed by the public as an underhanded tactic despite the fact that the United States had already threaten war with Germany before.

With the masses roused into supporting the allied powers, Wilson would finally have his war to spread democracy. The United States would officially enter World War I in 1917 changing the simple conflict of nations into an ideological war between democracy and the monarchies of the Central Empire Powers. It should be noted that Imperial Germany wasn’t any less democratic then the British Empire, positions in the Reichstag were granted democratically but the British are our cool Anglo friends so they get a pass. Political theorist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn in his work Monarchy and War, explains the disastrous effects of Wilson’s intervention. America’s entrance into the war caused a severe imbalance of power between the Allied and Central Powers, eliminating any chance of a compromised peace. The Allies having the upper hand lost any incentive to negotiate a simple ceasefire but would instead purse the absolute surrender of the Central Powers. Even our favorite whiskey drinking cigar smoking Prime Minister Winston Churchill confessed ( which he later denied) in an interview with the New York Enquire that “America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn't entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917”. The prolongation of the war and addition of America’s overwhelming power led to a heavily skewed peace agreement in the Treaty of Versailles, placing heavy burdens of guilt and reparations on Germany while also reshaping the entire political landscape of Europe.

The monarchical Houses of Hohenzollern in Germany and ancient Hapsburg in Austria proposed an armistice which could have saved the life’s of thousands but Wilson rejected the proposal. For peace as many depict was not Wilson’s primary objective but the forceful democratization of Europe. The unnecessary prolongation of the war caused the monarchies who had ruled Europe for centuries to collapse. The “spirit” of the German people was elevated through the formation of the democratic Wiemar Republic which amounted into an utterly dysfunctional government. Without the ideological tradition of monarchy and the harsh economic conditions laid by the treaty, the conditions were fertile for the growth of extreme ideologies( national socialism and communism). In the Austro-Hungarian Empire the fall of the monarchy and advent of democracy split the once strong European power into a multitude of weak ethnically based democracies.

The results of World War I did not make the world safe as Wilson intended but instead turned it into a powder keg . Once the Nazis and their collaborators had won 51% of seats in the Reichstag, the democratic process was complete and Hitler was free to enact totalitarian policies by popular mandate. The power vacuum left by Austro-Hungarian Empire which traditionally had curb Germany from dominating Central Europe was filled by Nazi Germany . The newly formed ethically German Austrian Republic was easily annexed by Nazi Germany, thanks to the fall of the Hapsburgs. Wilson’s crusade had inadvertently set the geo-political stage for Hitler’s conquest leading Kuehnelt-Leddihn to write “If Hitler had had any sense of humor, he would have erected a colossal monument to Woodrow Wilson”.

To this day Wilson’s ghost continues to haunt US foreign policy, pursing the false-utopia of liberal hegemony over our own strategic interest. The overthrowing of Saddam Hussein in Iraq did not make the world safer but may have in fact endangered it further. Just as with the dissolution of Austria-Hungary the balance of power in the region has shifted in this case towards the favor of Iran no longer opposed by Saddam and is actually supported by the democratically elected Shia majority in Iraq. The purist of liberal hegemony has ironically empowered a country that commonly shouts “death to America”. Anyone with even a tertiary knowledge of Middle Eastern geo-politics could have foreseen this but America’s democratic fervor takes precedent over realism. If the call to democratization doesn’t convince the public to support a war then the intelligence community and media conglomerates will accuse the soon be enlightened nation of possessing weapons of mass destruction or committing war crimes. During the Gulf War a predecessor to the conflict to eventually dispose Saddam, the now disproven Nayirah testimony was heavily promulgated by the media claiming that Iraqi soldiers were deliberately removing babies from incubators to kill them. There was also false stories claiming Saddam executed his political opponents by feeding them into a wood chipper like some sort of cartoonish super-villain. In fact I also recall a tale told by my high school history teacher that Saddam had a personal backyard were he hunted his political opponents like a real-life “Most Dangerous Game”, though I couldn’t find anything on the internet about it.

All these ridiculous stories harken to how our nation was first propagandized into war against the “barbaric” Germans. Now a new tale is propagated about Syria to justify American intervention. In the monolithic mainstream media Assad is depicted as a deranged lunatic who uses chemical weapons against his own people for no other reason then pure sadism. Very convenient that as Assad is winning the civil war to regain control of his country, he does the one thing that can turn the whole thing around on him. Commit war crimes that would provoke the US to dispose him. His disposition is the real goal of the Wilsonian project so that democracy may be imposed on Syria while the propaganda serves only to grease the wheels for the public to accept US intervention.

President Trump's campaign rhetoric of ‘America First’ presented a foreign policy finally exorcised of Wilson’s influence but it’s easier said then done. While it is almost certain that we would currently be engaged in full-scale conflict with Syria if Clinton had won the election, Trump cannot simply leave Syria alone. The monolithic media continues to try and rally public support for war through yellow journalism just has been done many time before and the ideology of liberal hegemony is entrenched within Washington’s elite. Trump’s missile strike against Syria in April which caused no casualties nor any significant infrastructure damage served only as a symbolic gesture to satisfy the media but this may not be enough. In Trump’s recent UN speech he states

“Our shared goals must be the de-escalation of military conflict, along with a political solution that honors the will of the Syrian people…. But, rest assured, the United States will respond if chemical weapons are deployed by the Assad regime.”

It seems a mere symbolic missile strike may not be able to stave off a future full-on conflict and the comment “ a political solution that honors the Syrian people’ reeks of Wilson’s idealism. Democracy in Syria will be about as successful as Iraqi democracy the internal tension between Sunnis, Shias, Christians, Arabs and Kurds is held back by Assad’s dictatorship. If Syria was democratized the ethnic and religious tensions will be unleashed into the political landscape breaking down into sectarian violence. A failed Syrian state would only be a repeat of this depraved comedy, attempts to make the world safe for democracy have inevitability led to the opposite. Hopefully Trump can maintain his America First doctrine, keeping us out of Syria and finally end this wretched Wilsonian project.
(But what about Japan and post WW II Germany these are surely proofs of Wilson’s doctrine, I will perhaps address those points in another essay but even if those are considered success stories the failure rate of liberal hegemony invalidates it)