Woodrow Wilson's Heir

Washington comPost ^ | 6/5/2009 | Robert Kagan

[markomalley]

President Obama likes to see himself as a pragmatist, but in foreign policy he is proving to be a supreme idealist of the Woodrow Wilson variety.

Like Wilson's, Obama's foreign policy increasingly seems to rest on the assumption that nations will act on the basis of what they perceive to be the goodwill, good intentions or moral purity of other nations, in particular the United States. If other nations have refused to cooperate with us, it is because they perceive the United States as aggressive or evil. Obama's job is to change that perception. From the outreach to Iran and to Muslims, to the call for eliminating all nuclear weapons, to the desire for a "reset" in relations with Russia, the central point of Obama's diplomacy is that America is, suddenly, different. It has changed. It is better. It is time, therefore, for other nations to cooperate.

(snip)

It is conceivable that this theory may prove correct. Certainly, it will soon be tested. But let us not call it realism. The last president who sincerely pursued this approach was Woodrow Wilson. He, too, believed that the display of evident goodwill and desire for peace, uncorrupted by the base motives of national interest or ambition, gave him the special moral authority to sway other nations. And Wilson was as beloved around the globe as Obama is today, possibly more beloved, at least for a moment. Millions took to the streets in the great cities of Europe when he crossed the Atlantic in 1918. His gifts to persuade, however, proved ephemeral, and the results of his efforts were, from his own perspective, an utter failure. Not only the nations of the Europe but his own United States proved more self-interested and less amenable to moral appeals.

(snip)

[Ben Ficklin]

"Name a few"

Scowcroft and the crowd associated with him. Also George Schultz and Kissenger.

"define"

You have the key words, google it.

This is a real problem for some in the GOP in trying to define the shift in policy as beginning with Obama. It actually happened in 2006, more specifically, the day Bob Gates resigned from the Iraq Study Group to become Sec of Defense.