Monsicha Hoonsuwan

Critical Book Review

Professor Curt Cardwell

U.S. Interventionism

October 4, 2010

Wilson’s Way of Waging War

On October 24, 1917 Old Style (November 7, 1917 New Style) an armed

rebellion in Petrograd marked a significant shift in Russian’s political destiny, when the

Bolsheviks overthrew Kerensky’s Russian Provisional Government in the event that

became known as The October Revolution or the Bolshevik Revolution. Led by Vladimir

Lenin, the Red Guards took over major government facilities and the Winter Palace,

whose fall prompted the Bolshevik-led Second Congress of Soviets to ratify the

revolution, transforming the parliamentary Russian state into a socialist one. As common

to all revolutions, the Bolshevik Revolution was met with oppositions—in this case, by

the White Army, a loose union of anti-revolutionary forces, and the Allied armies whose

control over various parts of Soviet Russia undermined the legitimacy of the Bolshevik

government, which the U.S. refused to recognize until 1933. It is a fact that the U.S.,

during President Woodrow Wilson’s administration, was a part of this Allied intervention

scheme, but the reason to why Wilson decided to participate in this intervention remains

controversial. While many monographic studies of the Allies intervention in Russia

suggest that Wilson’s initial rationale could be anything but his anti-Bolshevik mentality,

David S. Foglesong argues in America’s Secret War Against Bolshevism that Wilson’s

heart was never with the Bolsheviks to begin with, and his decision to intervene in Soviet

Russia was deliberate, but was done secretly. The U.S. went into Russia with a firm

determination to topple the Bolshevik government because the Bolsheviks, in Secretary

of State Robert Lansing’s words, “threatened us (the U.S.) with revolution” and was

“dangerous—more so than Germany” (p. 66). Ironically, Wilson’s reluctance to deviate

from his publicized image of a stanch believer in self-determination and

noninterventionism led him to avoid public criticism and resort to “new diplomacy” (p.

3), characterized by clandestine economic and military operations that are “methods

beyond conventional diplomacy but short of outright war” (p. 12). Therefore, concludes

Foglesong, Wilson was an “exemplar of humanitarian intervention around the world” (p.

298) whose policy failed to live up to his principles.

Foglesong’s thoroughly researched and heavily documented historiography offers

a new perspective to Wilson’s true intentions behind his perplexing decision to intervene

in Russia—a sign of discrepancies between his public address and administrative actions

that had manifested itself in several cases prior to 1917 such as the Mexican Civil War.

Constantly speaking to his opponents, Foglesong notes their arguments and refutes them

with full credibility. He brings up many opposition’s viewpoints that try to explain the

presence of U.S. troops in Russia in a way that will certainly please the Wilson

worshippers: to rescue the Czech army, to preserve the open-door policy with the

Japanese, to block the German forces from resources and weaken them, or even to

promote democracy in Russia. Foglesong, in contrast, delivered a more straightforward,

shocking conclusion that, in fact, Wilson’s Bolshevism-aversion was the main

determinant; he did not give in to the pressure from other Allied members, but took

initiative to secretly support the White Army in the Russian Civil War and label any plans

to offer assistance to the Soviet government “out of the question” (p. 66).

The book’s nine chapters outline Foglesong’s logic as to why he concludes that

Wilson waged a secret war against Bolshevism. Starting from investigating Wilson’s

background, Foglesong reveals that Wilson was racist, anti-Semitic, and religious—but

was not initially anti-Bolshevik. His anti-Bolshevik stance was later influenced by the

“shadowy fears” (p. 40), which refer to the “swarthy immigrant(s)” who were infected

with “fanciful and vicious theories of social orders,” as Lansing said (p. 41), rumors

about Jewish connections to Bolshevik conspiracies, and increasing African American

militancy. Furthermore, the “undefined antipathies” (p.42) linked Russian radicalism with

domestic sexual, moral, and religious turmoil. Eventually, Wilson came to see

Bolshevism as a challenge to the American way of life.

It was also Wilson’s faith in the virtue of democracy and capitalism that

intensified his anti-Bolshevik attitude. Wilson believed strongly that if the people were

left to choose for themselves, they would naturally choose the U.S.-like system of

government. Any deviation from democracy and capitalism is unnatural; therefore,

Bolshevism in Wilson’s eyes was merely a “Russian perversion” (p. 294), not a genuine

interest expressed by the people of Russia. Having this mindset, the mere existence of

Bolshevism became a threat to Wilson because it offered an alternative to the U.S. system

—which, in the minds of Wilson and many U.S. people, is the only system that works

Consequently, despite Wilson’s commitment to the principles of self-

determination and noninterventionism, he only applied them in a way that was convenient

to him. According to Foglesong, Wilson sometimes said “that Russia should be left to

settle her own affairs in her own way,” insofar as “she does not become a menace to

others” (p. 293). Although Wilson did have a case against the Bolsheviks—that

Bolshevism was a threat to the American way of life—he could not afford a full-scale

military intervention because it would force the Bolsheviks to align with the Germans,

provoke nationalistic backlash rallying around the Soviet, and most importantly,

contradict Wilson’s own commitment to self-determination and noninterventionism.

Finding the way around these limitations did not seem like a problem for Wilson,

however. He believed strongly that “enlightened statesmen would judge more wisely than

the broad masses of the people” (p. 2) and “thought lying was justified in some

instances…where it related to matters of public policy” (p. 2). Consequently, while

Wilson tried his hardest to cling on to his conception of “limited, indirect intervention,”

he also found a way to escaped public scrutiny by keeping the intervention secret from

the American public. From giving clandestine financial support to groups opposing to the

Bolsheviks to approving the use of German troops against the Bolsheviks in 1919—when

most U.S. leaders agreed that Bolshevism was “more dangerous threat than Prussianism”

(p. 255), the U.S. use of underhanded methods to overthrow the Bolsheviks was not a

strange inconsistency with Wilson’s foreign policy, Foglesong argues.

The virtue of Foglesong’s historiography lies in last chapter where he gives the

readers a brief insight to the Soviet’s side of the story. It was clear that the Soviet Union

had no interest in waging an ideology war with the U.S. The country was war-torn and

was too busy trying to recuperate economically and politically. Hence, as Foglesong

argues, the Soviet Union offered many concessions only to establish economic ties with

the U.S. whom it deemed the most desirable source of modern technology and assistance

to Soviet development (p. 273). Yet, the Soviet friendliness was met with a cold shoulder

from Wilson, who did not believe that the Soviet Union would last long and did not want

to recognize the Bolshevik government as legitimate. After reading the last chapter, it is

difficult for one to argue against Foglesong’s conclusion that Wilson’s decision to

intervene was based mainly on his anti-Bolshevism—not U.S. economics or military

interests. Furthermore, it would be a lie to deny that all the clandestine operations

initiated by the U.S. stood in sharp discordance with Wilson’s “we are not at war with

Russia” (p. 189) proclamation. Indeed, the U.S. was at war with the Soviet Union; the

U.S. populace just did not know about it.

For a president who is known for his Fourteen Points—principles addressing the

importance of self-determination and the world that is safe for democracy, Wilson is one

of the most hypocritical presidents, exercising his power to intervene in foreign countries

more often than anyone else in U.S. history. Woodrow Wilson’s reputation as one of the

most popular presidents should be reconsidered. Not only did he deceive the U.S. public,

but his clandestine operations and his ignorance of what the U.S. public really wanted—

nonintervention—was also a disgrace to the U.S. highly valued democracy. Foglesong’s

America’s Secret War Against Bolshevism informs the U.S. populace about the truth

behind the Wilsonian policy and raises another important question that every U.S. should

be able to honestly answer: when did the Cold War really start, and who actually started

it?