Woodrow Wilson: Idealism and American Exceptionalism

"The world must be made safe for democracy."

- April, 2, 1917, Woodrow Wilson 

Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States, was most known for leading America through World War One, referred to as "The Great War" at the time, and his idealistic views of diplomacy and foreign policy. However, embedded within his idealism lies a firm belief of American exceptionalism. This is the idea that America is somehow different from other nations, and founded upon "American" values of liberty, democracy, and individualism.

Woodrow Wilson's idealism can clearly be seen in the way he justified American intervention in World War One, and the way he handled the resolution of the war. While realists of the time period, such as Theodore Roosevelt, believed that American intervention may have been necessary because of actual, physical threats to US security posed by the war and the undermining of the European balance of power, idealists, as shown through Wilson, would justify intervention as a "moral crusade" and that "morality" must be the guiding principle of American policy. Specifically, Wilson announced that there was something vital at stake in this war, democracy, and thus sent America into war. This more abstract justification for intervention reveals the key element of idealism.

Wilson's Fourteen Points, a list of principles for the peace concluding World War One, further communicated his idealistic interpretation of international relations. Specifically, the final point called for a League of Nations and the maintenance of a "collective security" to prevent future wars from breaking out. This reveals two things: first, Wilson's idealistic view that all countries could realistically come together under one common banner of collective security despite personal interests of the individual nations; second, Wilson's abstract belief that there was an underlying, structural issue with the current state of international relations that required a League of Nations in order to be solved.

Wilson's idealism was also firmly grounded in the belief of American Exceptionalism. This can already be seen in his claims of a "moral crusade", that America is "the force of moral principle", and that America "is to serve humanity." This shows how Wilson's idealism also manifested into a belief that America was beyond other countries and meant to take a moral leadership role for the world. Beyond the war, this American exceptionalism guided Wilson through other interventions in countries such as Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua. In Mexico, for example, he intervened because he believed that Mexicans were not fit for self-government, and thus needed American democracy in order to stabilize them. 

Ultimately, Woodrow Wilson represented an idealistic view of foreign policy, in stark contrast to the realists of his time, but he also fused this idealism with elements of American exceptionalism: the defense of democracy, freedom, and American values.