... turned into a powerful tool of soft power determining America’s moral leadership
In 1918, President of the United States Woodrow Wilson presented a draft peace treaty to Congress aimed at putting an end to four years of bloodshed caused by the First ... ... offset by its devious nature, with its irresistible passion for destruction. Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the greatest critics of liberalism in international relations, would subsequently strengthen this thesis, pointing out that the depravity of the human ...
... plausible. It placed great emphasis on legality and on form.” Wallerstein identifies three fundamental principles of Wilsonianism: universalism (openness), rationalism and legal determinism (normativity).
One can agree with Wallerstein in his appraisal of Woodrow Wilson’s ideas as highly traditional and even somehow “old fashioned” for Western political thought. For Wallerstein, the main merit and innovation of Wilsonianism is that the traditional foundations of liberalism are applicable not only to individuals within a state, but also to the state itself. He thus brought the classical liberal construction to its logical conclusion. After the Fourteen Points were presented to the world, all the followers of the ...