What Was Woodrow Wilson's Foreign Policy During The Progressive Era

There were many influential presidents during the progressive era but the lasting influence came from Woodrow Wilson and his vision for foreign policy. During this progressive era, many different types of foreign policy were introduced into the United States’ government. Theodore Roosevelt put forth a plan to “speak softly and carry a big stick” and William Taft tried to expand the economy to foreign nations with his “Dollar Diplomacy”. These ideals were set before Wilson came into office, and he was able to forge a different approach in which would eventually make him the most influential among the three. He was able to incorporate his ideals with the others, eventually creating a foreign policy that brought the best out of all of them. The …show more content…
Despite the fact that Wilson had envisioned the League of Nations, the United States would ultimately not join due to Wilson’s death and the appointment of an anti-League Of Nations executive. However, the League of Nations was designed to be a system “whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration.” Collective security was a way to ensure peace among the countries, and that they would all team up if one of the countries were to breach the peace. Disarmament is reducing and limiting a country’s weapons and military forces. This League was designed to promote world peace: the essence of Wilson’s vision. Wilson wanted to make his vision very clear through his Fourteen Points. A document citing 14 different specific morally diplomatic ideals that he wanted implemented into countries worldwide including the United States. Not only was he trying to push for world peace, he also wanted to improve trade and the freedom of trading including the land and seas used by and for merchants. His vision was also somewhat aggressive in the sense that he wanted for all the targeted countries to have their country boundaries drawn and …show more content…
It wasn’t realized until years after his death how beneficial the creation of the League of Nations was. The League Of Nations was a flawed system, but with the right intentions, and the United Nations is direct result of it. The United Nations is a more functional replication of the League Of Nations that promotes world peace and enforces it. This was a result of Wilson’s plan for world peace and moral diplomacy. However, the way moral diplomacy has actually been combined with a strive for world peace was the Vietnam war. The United States entered Vietnam to stop the spread of communism, an effort that is very morally diplomatic, even if it is not obvious. The idea behind moral diplomacy is to spread democracy, and one of the ways Wilson was able to implement this ideal was to set economic strains on countries that US traded with, and when Vietnam was starting to become communist, he saw it as a potential threat to the spread of democracy (and trade in this case). As a side note, the United States was also worried about the domino effect of the spread of communism, meaning that their intentions were greater for going into the war. Be that as it may, the impact that Woodrow Wilson has had on the modern form of foreign policy has influenced other policies and ideals to be effectuated based on his main principle: the Fourteen