Jack J. Roth

The slender volume edited by Jack J. Roth, in which Gordon Craig's article appears, provides thumbnail sketches of the changes in Europe and America which resulted from the "Great War," as World War I was called by contemporaries. Craig's article is the most directly useful for students of American foreign policy and diplomacy, since he provides an international context in which to understand Woodrow Wilson's role in the war and its aftermath. Wilson is cause and symbol of the changes in war and diplomacy Craig identifies.

Craig laments the passing of 19th century European stability. Since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the conduct of war in Europe had conformed to Clausewitz's dictum that war vias "politics by other means." One did not destroy today an adversary who might be an ally tomorrml. WWI destroyed Europe's alliance system along with the professional military and diplomatic castes with supported balance of power diplomacy. It was this alliance system, Craig stresses, which had maintained stability in Europe for nearly a century.

Sweeping away the Hohenzollerns, Hapsburgs, and Romanovs, the war broke down the "intellectual homogeneity" of a European diplomatic system which conducted its business within the confines of a balance of power. The Americans and the Russian Bolsheviks, both of whom assumed prominent roles in European diplomacy as a result of the war, proved unwilling to follow the old rules. Each injected into the diplomatic discourse its own messianic vision of a world transformed.

Wilson's behavior, particularly in his distrust of "the old diplomacy," is paradigmatic in Craig's account. By taking it upon himself to go negotiate in person, the American president politicized the conduct of diplomacy and introduced the volatile element of ideology into the discussion of a post-war order for Europe. Wilson's behavior also personified a broader trend toward ideologically driven diplomacy, a trend which would have disastrous effects in the 20th century. Neither the rise of Hitler nor the onset of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War would have been possible under the old European system.… (meer)