Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

International relations between war and revolution: Wilsonian diplomacy and the making of the Treaty of Versailles

  • Original Article
  • Published:
International Politics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The Peace Treaties of 1919 retain a prominent place within the study of International Relations (IR).The theoretical significance of Versailles for IR can hardly be overstated. For much rests on the question of whether the post-war settlement was problematic due to its liberal nature or in spite of it. Yet, explanations as to why Versailles diplomacy was so problematic vary significantly. What were the central factors affecting policymaking at Versailles? And what does Paris Peace diplomacy tell IR theory about modern foreign policymaking processes? This article provides a critique of standard IR interpretations of Wilsonian diplomacy at Versailles, illustrating how realist and liberals’ uncritical acceptance of Wilson as the quintessential ‘idealist-liberal’ statesman glosses over a core contradiction at the heart of Wilsonian diplomacy: the wielding of power politics to transcend power politics. In doing so, it examines the effects of the Bolshevik revolution as a paradigm-rupturing event transforming the nature and dynamics of the First World War and the post-war settlement. This traces the unique sociological patterns of uneven and combined development thrown up by the war and the geopolitical problems this created for Wilson and the Allies in forging a new international order.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The Peace Treaties included St-Germain (with Austria), Neuilly (with Bulgaria), Trianon (with Hungary), Sévres (with Turkey) and Versailles (with Germany). When referring to the ‘Paris Peace Conference’ or ‘Versailles diplomacy’, however, I will be mostly using this as shorthand for the outcome of all the treaties combined.

  2. For an outline of the kind of methodology this entails, see Shilliam (2009, pp. 13–19).

  3. This is a legacy that has survived in US foreign policymaking to this day. For an examination of the relationship between the Wilsonian tradition and the Clinton administration, see Cox (2000), and for the contemporary Obama administration, see Anievas et al (2012).

  4. On Wilson’s racialized conceptions of social and international order, see Ambrosius (2007).

  5. On the racial basis of the often evoked ‘self-mastery’ concept in contemporary discourses, see Hannigan (2002, pp. 5–9).

  6. For Wilson’s self-identification as an imperialist, see (Wilson and Link, 1966, XV, p. 171; XVI, p. 297).

  7. For Wilson’s thought on this, see (Wilson and Link, 1966, XV, p. 143).

  8. As Randall Schweller (2001) has noted, there are surprisingly few substantive studies within IR specifically examining the making of peace settlements and particularly Versailles (but see Holsti, 1991; Ikenberry, 2001; Ripsman, 2002; Dueck, 2006).

  9. See, for example, the treatments by Holsti (1991), Ruggie (1998), Kegley and Raymond (1999), Reus-Smit (1999) and Ikenberry (2001).

  10. On the trans-partisan character of the debate on US intervention in Bolshevik Russia, see Mayer (1967, pp. 329–337).

  11. On Wilson’s interventionist Russian policy forming the basis of post-WWII US ‘modern methods of covert action’ combining ‘idealistic publicity, secrecy and circumscribed operations’, see Foglesong (1995).

  12. On Wilson’s admiration of Burke’s conservatism, see Wilson and Link (1966, VIII, pp. 318, 335, 342).

  13. 26 June 1914, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House (1926, Vol. 2, pp. 264–265).

  14. On Germany’s combined development and the origins of the First World War, see Green (2012); Anievas (2013, forthcoming); Rosenberg (2013); Tooze (forthcoming).

  15. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/leagcov.asp#art22, accessed 27 December 2009.

  16. By the end of 1918, there were approximately 118 000 Allied troops fighting in the Siberian theatre.

  17. This compromised peace included, against Wilson’s original aims, a moderately high reparations settlement and a rejection of Wilson’s freedom of the seas clause while doing little to remove economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions as stipulated in Wilson’s Fourteen Points.

  18. On uneven and combined development’s contribution to this regard, see Rosenberg (2006).

References

  • Ádám, M. (2004) The Versailles System and Central Europe. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agnew, J. (1987) The United States in the World-Economy: A Regional Geography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ambrosius, L.E. (1990) Imperialism and revolution. In: H.-J. Schröder (ed.) Confrontation and Cooperation: Germany and the United States in the Era of World War I, 1900–1924. Providence, RI: Berg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ambrosius, L.E. (2002) Wilsonianism: Woodrow Wilson and His Legacy in American Foreign Relations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ambrosius, L.E. (2007) Woodrow Wilson and the birth of a nation: American democracy and international relations. Diplomacy & Statecraft 18 (4): 689–718.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anievas, A. (2011) The international political economy of appeasement: The social sources of British foreign policy during the 1930s. Review of International Studies 37 (2): 601–629.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anievas, A., Adam, F. and Robert, K. (2012) Back to ‘Normality’? US Foreign Policy under Obama International Socialism 136, www.isj.org.uk/?id=846.

  • Anievas, A. (2013) 1914 in world historical perspective: The ‘uneven’ and ‘combined’ origins of the First World War. European Journal of International Relations 19 (4): 721–746.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anievas, A. (ed.) (forthcoming) Marxist theory and the origins of the First World War. In: Cataclysm 1914: The First World War and the Making of Modern World Politics. Leiden, NL: Brill.

  • Anthony, C.G. (2008) American democratic interventionism: Romancing the iconic Woodrow Wilson. International Studies Perspectives 9 (3): 239–253.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baker, R.S. (1922) Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement, 3 Vols.1st edn. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bell, S. (1972) Righteous Conquest: Woodrow Wilson and the Evolution of the New Diplomacy. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bromley, S. (2008) American Power and the Prospects for International Order. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bucklin, S.J. (2001) Realism and American Foreign Policy: Wilsonians and the Kennan-Morgenthau Thesis. Westport, CT: Praeger.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carr, E.H. (1939) The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, I. (1997) Globalization and Fragmentation: International Relations in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohrs, P.O. (2006) The Unfinished Peace after World War I: America, Britain and the Stabilisation of Europe, 1919–1932. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Coogan, J.W. (1994) Wilsonian diplomacy in war and peace. In: G. Martel (ed.) American Foreign Relations Reconsidered, 1890–1993. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Costigliola, F. (1984) Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919–1933. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cox, M. (2000) Wilsonianism resurgent? The Clinton administration and American democracy promotion in the late 20th century. In: M. Cox, G.J. Ikenberry and T. Inoguchi (eds.) American Democracy Promotion: Impulses, Strategies, and Impacts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Doyle, M.W. (1997) Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism, 1st edn. New York: Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dueck, C. (2006) Reluctant Crusaders: Power, Culture, and Change in American Grand Strategy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foglesong, D.S. (1995) America’s Secret War against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917–1920. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gardner, L.C. (1984) Safe for Democracy: The Anglo-American Response to Revolution, 1913–1923. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Green, J. (2012) Uneven and combined development and the Anglo-German prelude to World War I. European Journal of International Relations 18 (2): 345–368.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hannigan, R.E. (2002) The New World Power: American Foreign Policy, 1898–1917. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heckscher, A. (1991) Woodrow Wilson. New York: Scribner.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hinsley, F. (1963) Power and the Pursuit of Peace: Theory and Practice in the History of Relations between States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoff, J. (2008) A Faustian Foreign Policy from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush: Dreams of Perfectibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoffmann, S. (1977) An American social science: International relations. Daedalus 106 (3): 41–60.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holsti, K.J. (1991) Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order, 1648–1989. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hoover, H. (1958) The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson, 1st edn. New York: McGraw-Hill.

    Google Scholar 

  • House, E.M. and Seymour, C. (1926) The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, 4 Vols. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hurrell, A. (2007) On Global Order: Power, Values, and the Constitution of International Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ikenberry, G.J. (2001) After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ikenberry, G.J., Knock, T.J., Slaughter, A.M. and Smith, T. (2009) The Cisis of American Foreign Policy: Wilsonianism in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackson, R.H. (2000) The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jahn, B. (2005) Kant, Mill, and illiberal legacies in international affairs. International Organization 59 (1): 177–207.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jones, G.S. (1972) The history of American imperialism. In: R. Blackburn (ed.) Ideology in Social Science. London: Fontana.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kegley, Jr. C.W. (1993) The neoidealist moment in international studies? Realist myths and the new international realities. International Studies Quarterly 37 (2): 131–146.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kegley, C.W. and Raymond, G.A. (1999) How Nations Make Peace. New York: St Martin’s.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kennan, G.F. (1951) American Diplomacy, 1900–1950. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kennedy, D.M. (1980) Over Here: The First World War and American Society. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kissinger, H. (1994) Diplomacy. New York: Simon & Schuster.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knock, T.J. (1992) To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • LaFeber, W. (1993) The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lansing, R. (1971) The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Narrative. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leffler, M.P. (1979) The Elusive Quest: America’s Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, 1919–1933. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Legro, J. (2005) Rethinking the World: Great Power Strategies and International Order. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lenin, V.I. (1969) On the National Question and Proletarian Internationalism. Moscow: Novosti Press Agency.

    Google Scholar 

  • Levin, N.G. (1968) Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America’s Response to War and Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lippmann, W. (1944) U.S. War Aims. London: H. Hamilton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Manela, E. (2006) Imagining Woodrow Wilson in Asia: Dreams of east-west harmony and the revolt against empire in 1919. American Historical Review 3 (5): 1327–1351.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marx, K. (1976) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. I. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mayall, J. (1990) Nationalism and International Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mayer, A.J. (1959) Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917–1918. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mayer, A.J. (1967) Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918–1919, 1st edn. New York: Knopf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morgenthau, H.J. (1950) The mainsprings of American foreign policy: The national interest vs. moral abstractions. American Political Science Review 44 (4): 833–854.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morgenthau, H.J. (1977) The pathology of American power. International Security 1 (3): 3–20.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ninkovich, F.A. (1999) The Wilsonian Century: U.S. Foreign Policy Since 1900. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Novack, G.E. (1976) America’s Revolutionary Heritage: Marxist Essays. New York: Pathfinder Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Offner, A.A. (1986) The Origins of the Second World War: American Foreign Policy and World Politics, 1917–1941, Reprint edn. Malabar, FL: R.E. Krieger Pub. Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parrini, C.P. (1969) Heir to Empire: United States Economic Diplomacy, 1916–1923. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburg Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parrini, C.P. (1976) Review: The United States and the stabilization of industrial capitalism as a system after World War I. Reviews in American History 4 (3): 428–435.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reus-Smit, C. (1999) The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ripsman, N.M. (2002) Peacemaking by Democracies: The Effect of State Autonomy on the Post-World War Settlements. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenberg, E.S. (1982) Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890–1945, 1st edn. New York: Hill and Wang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenberg, J. (1994) The Empire of Civil Society: A Critique of the Realist Theory of International Relations. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenberg, J. (1996) Isaac Deutscher and the lost history of international relations. New Left Review 215 (I): 3–15.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenberg, J. (2006) Why is there no international historical sociology? European Journal of International Relations 12 (3): 307–340.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosenberg, J. (2013) Kenneth Waltz and Leon Trotsky: Anarchy in the mirror of uneven and combined development. International Politics 50 (2): 183–230.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ruggie, J.G. (1993) Multilateralism Matters: The Theory and Praxis of an Institutional Form. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ruggie, J.G. (1998) Constructing the World Polity: Eessays on International Institutionalization. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Russett, B.M. (1993) Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwabe, K. (1985) Woodrow Wilson, Revolutionary Germany, and Peacemaking, 1918–1919: Missionary Diplomacy and the Realities of Power. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schweller, R.L. (1998) Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler’s Strategy of World Conquest. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schweller, R.L. (2001) The problem of international order revisited: A review essay. International Security 26 (1): 161–186.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shilliam, R. (2009) German Thought and International Relations: The Rise and Fall of a Liberal Project. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, N. (2003) American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, T. (1994) America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steigerwald, D. (1999) The reclamation of Woodrow Wilson. Diplomatic History 23 (1): 79–99.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stevenson, D. (1988) The First World War and International Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, J.M. (1966) Russia, Bolshevism, and the Versailles Peace. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tooze, A. (2014) The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order. London: Allen Lane.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tooze, A. (forthcoming) Capitalist peace or capitalist war? The July Crisis revisited. In: A. Anievas (ed.) Cataclysm 1914: The First World War and the Making of Modern World Politics. Leiden, NL: Brill.

  • Thorsen, N. (1988) The Political Thought of Woodrow Wilson, 1875–1910. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Trotsky, L. (1936) The Third International after Lenin. New York: Pioneer Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, F.J. (1966) The Significance of the Frontier in American History. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms.

    Google Scholar 

  • Waltz, K.N. (1959) Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, W.A. (1972) The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, 2nd rev. and enl. edn. New York: Dell Pub. Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, W. (1908) Constitutional Government in the United States. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, W. and Link, A.S. (1966) The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (PWW), 69 Vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Josef Ansorge, Tarak Barkawi, Lloyd C. Gardner, and Nivi Manchanda for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. I must also acknowledge the generous funding and support provided by the Leverhulme Trust.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, The Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT, UK

    Alexander Anievas

Authors
  1. Alexander Anievas
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Anievas, A. International relations between war and revolution: Wilsonian diplomacy and the making of the Treaty of Versailles. Int Polit 51, 619–647 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2014.26

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2014.26

Keywords

Search

Navigation