Wilson's Mistake?
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Fascinating read.
I'll be curious to see what our members who are better-versed in history than I am think of it.
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Fascinating read.
I'll be curious to see what our members who are better-versed in history than I am think of it.
What might have happened in Russia if the United States had stayed out of World War I? Russia almost certainly would have quit the war earlier, with the Russian Army still intact and capable of defending the Provisional Government from a Bolshevik coup.
I dispute that along with most of the author’s argument.
The imperial Russian army was in tatters long before the US even entered the war. Besides that, the Russian army generals had little or no intention to prop up the Provisional Government at any time in 1917. Rather, individual generals, like Kornilov, wanted to seize power for themselves and rule. Russia was heading for civil war regardless of whether the Bolsheviks launched their coup or not. In fact, in the ensuing civil war had the military remnant of the Russian Empire been victorious it would have brought to power a totalitarian ideology every bit as brutal as Stalinism was later to become. An ideology that was based on race and militarism before an unknown Austrian corporal even entered the Munich beer hall. In short, what we know as Nazism would have been brought to Europe by Russia, not Germany.
Overall though I believe the author is wrong in his assessment of Wilson and US involvement in WWI. The US entered the war because it was in its political and economic interests to do so. That and the fact Germany was going out of its way to bring the US into the conflict through unfettered U-boat actions against all American shipping and its attempt to entice Mexico to ally with Germany as a belligerent against the USA.
Really, the whole essay is a thinly veiled example of what Bill Maher derisively refers to as “presentism”. The difference this time is the presentist attack is from the libertarian right rather than the left. In short, interpreting and judging Wilson’s policies through the lens, or more accurately, prism of present day American partisan politics.
