A world in conflict, a nation uncertain
1917-1920
“The world must be made safe for democracy.” With these words to Congress on April 2nd 1917, President Woodrow Wilson called for the country to enter the first world war. He was also articulating a moral and political justification for the projection of American power abroad that would endure into the 21st century. In foreign policy American liberalism would come to be characterised by a struggle between Wilsonian thinking—interventionist, idealistic—and a more isolationist impulse that countries should mind their own affairs.
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