Although Wilson had primarily been elected to reform national
politics and initiate new progressive policies in Washington, he
spent the majority of his time as President dealing with foreign
policy rather than domestic. Wilson's predecessors, including McKinley, Theodore
Roosevelt, and Taft, had viewed the United States as an emerging
power that needed to extend its influence throughout the world
in order to serve national interests. This imperialist policy was
justified by the commonly held belief that it was America's duty as
a Christian republic to spread democracy throughout the world. These
three Presidents significantly expanded America's influence abroad
with the annexation of colonies throughout the world, such as the
Philippines and Cuba.
Wilson, however, abandoned this imperialist policy and
brought to the White House a new way of looking at America's relations with
the outside world. Even though he too believed that the United States
was the most politically enlightened nation under God, he felt
that all peoples throughout the world had the right to self-determination–that
the people in every country should have the right to choose their
own governments. Wilson, along with his Secretary of State Bryan,
felt that it was America's duty to protect democracy and
free peoples in other countries rather than to spread it throughout
the globe.
Prior to the outbreak of World War I, protecting democracy throughout
the world primarily meant protecting the fledgling republics in
Latin America that had struggled in decades past with corrupt governments,
pressures from European powers, and even American imperialism under
President Roosevelt. To atone for these mistakes, and to demonstrate
that the United States did indeed intend to uphold the Monroe Doctrine,
Wilson spent several of his first years dealing with Latin American
issues. He persuaded Congress to repeal the 1912 Panama Canal Act
which exempted many American ships from paying the required toll
for passage through the canal. He signed a treaty with the South
American country of Colombia to apologize for Roosevelt's acts
of aggression during the American- driven Panama Revolution in 1903.
These were Wilson's only successes in Latin American relations, however.
The rest of his dealings with South, Central, and Caribbean American
countries largely failed, and many of them even resulted in bloodshed.
Wilson's attempt to help Nicaraguan rebels eventually required
him to occupy the country by force in 1914. The same blunder occurred
in Haiti in 1915 and the Dominican Republic in 1916, when Wilson
eventually sent in American troops to occupy the islands. During
Wilson's Presidency, the United States also purchased the Virgin
Islands from Denmark. It is ironic that despite his loathing of
imperialism and his deep belief in self-determination, Wilson resorted
to military action in Latin America just as his predecessors had.
Although Wilson had problems in the Caribbean, his greatest challenge
came from Mexico. In 1913, Mexico fell into a bloody revolution
when Mexican general Victoriano Huerta overthrew the nation's government
and declared himself its military dictator. Wilson immediately
denounced Huerta, declaring that the United States could not and
should not recognize violent dictators who seized government in
pursuit of their own agendas. The President attempted to initiate
peaceful negotiations between Huerta and the usurped government,
but both sides refused to submit to his proposal. Unsure how to
proceed, Wilson permitted Huerta's enemies, the Constitutionalists,
to purchase military equipment and arms in the U.S. in order to
stage a counterrevolution.
When the dictator's army seized a small group of American
sailors on shore leave in Mexico, Wilson demanded an apology. He also
demanded that Huerta publicly salute the American flag in Mexico,
which Huerta naturally refused to do. Wilson responded with force:
in April 1914, he sent American Marines to take and occupy Veracruz,
Mexico's primary seaport. Veracruz was taken, but eighteen Americans
were killed in the battle. Not wanting to commit the U.S. to war,
Wilson also requested the ABC powers–Argentina, Brazil, and Chile–to
mediate the dispute. With their arbitration, the conflict was eventually
resolved. Huerta fled the country, and a new government was established
in 1915 under the leadership of Constitutionalist President Venustiano
Carranza.
Despite the settlement, Wilson's Mexican troubles were
not yet over. Soon after Carranza was instated as Mexico's new
president, one of his chief generals, Pancho Villa, led a second
revolution to depose Carranza. A second bloody civil war erupted
in Mexico barely after the first had ended. To encourage the American
military to enter the conflict, Villa sent his forces into the U.S.,
where they destroyed the town of Columbus, New Mexico, and killed
nineteen Americans. This produced the reaction Villa sought: within
days of the raid on Columbus, Wilson sent the Punitive Expedition
of 5,000 U.S. Army regulars, led by General John J. Pershing, into
Mexico to find Villa.
Within a month, Pershing and his men had traveled over
300 miles south into the heart of Mexico in an unsuccessful pursuit
of Villa. Wilson ignored President Carranza's threats of war, and
the two armies eventually clashed on April 12, 1916, and again
on June 21, 1916. Both countries prepared for war; Wilson mustered 100,000
troops on the border in Texas. Fortunately, however, war was averted
when Carranza petitioned for mediation. An agreement was reached
in early January 1917 when Wilson recalled Pershing and officially
recognized Carranza's government.
Yet, despite his troubles in the Caribbean and with Mexico,
President Wilson did not fail entirely. Prior to World War I, he
did have a few minor foreign policy successes besides those in
Panama. Though he was forced to abandon his belief in self determination
in Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, Wilson was successful
in persuading Congress to pass the Jones Act in 1916, which gave
the American-occupied Philippines Islands significantly more political
autonomy. He also encouraged Chinese independence–unlike McKinley,
Roosevelt, and Taft, who had all sought to increase American influence
in East Asia at China's expense–and supported China in a territorial
dispute with Japan.
These early exercises in foreign policy, although they
appeared dire at the time, proved to be mere tests for Wilson compared
to problems he faced in his second term. Within a year of Wilson's
second inauguration, Europe collapsed into the deadliest war conceivable,
and the rest of the world soon followed. It eventually fell on Wilson
to determine America's course of action, the outcome of the Great
War, and the new world order that would emerge.
