7-21-03
Mr. Fleming's new book, The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I, was published by Basic Books on June 1.
Maybe it's time to revive one of Massachusetts' most
famous men. From a distance of almost a hundred years,
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge may have a lot to tell us about
how to conduct America's foreign affairs in a chaotic
world.
For too long Lodge has been demonized as the prototype
of the isolationist, because he led the fight against
President Woodrow Wilson's 1919 attempt to make the United
States a member of the League of Nations.
In fact, Lodge was a strong advocate of American
involvement in world affairs. From his election as senator
in 1893, his greatest ambition was to become chairman of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He saw an active
foreign policy as crucial to forming America's national
character.
Lodge was profoundly influenced by America's Civil
War, which he saw as a conflict between good and evil. He
thought America's role in the world was to fight similar
battles beyond its shores. This meant America had to be
strong. He pushed hard for a big navy and an expanded army.
He supported the Spanish American War. The struggle for an
independent Cuba was "a great broad question" in which
"right and wrong are involved."
Lodge saw America's world role as a way to attract
young people to a "new ideology of leadership" where they
would find "fresh sources of energy" more ennobling than
the commercial and material ethos of American big business.
He believed American idealism could become a more
significant force in world affairs than the often "sordid"
imperialism of Britain, France and Russia, who dominated
two thirds of the globe.
When Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901,
Lodge enthusiastically supported his internationalism. He
backed the creation of the Panama Canal and Roosevelt's
role as a mediator in the Russian-Japanese War. He was
equally enthusiastic about insisting on an "Open Door"
policy in China. He exulted when Roosevelt sent America's
"great white fleet" around the world.
For Lodge the worst foreign policy sin was inaction
and pale neutrality. During the first three years of World
War I, President Woodrow Wilson seemed to embody these
vices. Lodge was convinced that Great Britain and her
allies, France and Russia, were fighting for "the right"
and Germany was not only wrong but evil.
Wilson's claim that there was no moral difference
between the European antagonists struck Lodge as close to
blasphemy. Lodge wanted America to side with the Allies and
join the victorious powers in a "League to Enforce Peace,"
after the war. He repeatedly condemned Wilson as a weak
indecisive leader, an opinion the senator did not change
after America finally entered the war on April 6, 1917.
After the war, Wilson's concept of a League of Nations
that would obligate the United States to fight future wars
without the consent of Congress violated Lodge's belief
that the use of force should spring from the united will of
the American people.
Wilson saw Lodge as a meanspirited narrow man who was
ready to "break the heart of the world" for partisan
political advantage. He grew to hate Lodge and his
supporters as "bungalow minds" and refused to accept their
insistence on reservations in the League covenant to
preserve American sovereignty.
Lodge won the political battle. Wilson, the League and
the Democratic Party were routed in the election of 1920.
But Wilson's backers managed to demonize Lodge so
thoroughly, he barely won reelection to the Senate in 1922.
The demonization grew apace in the decades after Lodge's
death in 1924. Forgotten was his vision of an America that
could bring a new idealism to international affairs under
the inspiration of strong leaders.
Succeeding generations of voters and politicians have
backed Henry Cabot Lodge, not Woodrow Wilson, in affirming
an international commitment but retaining control of
America's sovereignty. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. the
senator's grandson, pointed this out after World War II.
Writing to one of the senator's biographers, the younger
Lodge noted that "the United Nations of today falls
squarely within the limits of that [Lodge] proposition. The
representatives of nations at the United Nations are
ambassadors, and for the very reason that the sovereignty
of their country is not compromised." The younger Lodge
added that the decision of the American people in 1920 in
the light of America's experience in subsequent years
"seems remarkably far-sighted."
Lodge's vision of an America that is prepared to work
with the international organizations such as the World Bank
and the United Nations but retains the freedom to act
independently when necessary seems remarkably close to
President George W. Bush's approach to war in Iraq and
Afghanistan. In the future, let's hope that Mr. Bush
retains Lodge's conviction that the use of force must
always be on behalf of justice and freedom.