Tag Archives: Woodrow Wilson

On the Commemoration of World War I: From Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump

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It is altogether fitting that the US attack on a Syrian airport, the dropping of a MOAB on defenseless Afghanistan, and the potential outbreak of nuclear war with North Korea have all come in the very month one hundred years earlier that an American president led the nation on its road to empire. President Trump’s aggressive actions and all of America’s previous imperialistic endeavors can ultimately be traced to Woodrow Wilson’s disastrous decision to bring the country into the First World War on April 6, 1917.

This month, therefore, should be one of national mourning for the decision to enter that horrific conflict changed America and, for that matter, the world for the worse.

Had the US remained neutral, the war would most likely have come to a far quicker and more politically palatable conclusion, however, the entry of America on the Entente side prolonged the conflict and extended its economic and political destruction to such a degree that the Old Order could not be put back together again. The great dynasties (Germany, Russia, and especially Austria) were ruthlessly dismantled at the conclusion of WWI by the explicit designs of Wilson which left a power vacuum across Central Europe. The vacuum, of course, was filled by the various collectivist “isms” which produced the landscape for another global conflagration even greater than WWI.

For America, after a brief revival of isolationism and non-interventionist sentiment throughout the land, the country, led by another ruthless and power-mad chief executive, provoked and schemed its way into the second general European war within a generation, this time via “the backdoor” with Japan. A second US intervention, making the war global, could not have come about had there been no WWI, or if that war had ended on better terms.

After the Second World War, the US emerged as the world’s dominant power with bases across the globe and entered into a string of never ending hot and cold wars, regime changes, destabilizations, assassinations, bombings, blockades, and economic sanctions that have continued to this very day and hour. Quickly after the war’s conclusion, the American media, academia, and the security and military industrial complex had to invent the myth that the Soviet Union and the US were of equal military might which turned out to be a blatant lie. After being decimated in WWII and its adherence to unworkable and economic destructive socialistic planning, the Soviet Union could never produce the wealth necessary to maintain a global empire as the US did, and still does. The “Soviet threat” was always a ruse to get gullible Americans to vote for and support greater and greater “defense” spending.

Besides Ron Paul and to a far lesser extent his son, Donald Trump was the only viable candidate who spoke of taking a new, less interventionist foreign policy which is why he was able to garner so much support from millions of empire-weary Americans during the presidential campaign. He rightly called the Iraqi War a “disaster,” spoke of getting along with Russia, and the US’s commitment to NATO should be rethought, among other refreshing comments on foreign affairs.

In one of the most memorable and hopeful passages of his Inaugural Address, the new president championed non-intervention abroad:

We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world, but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example. We will shine for everyone to follow.

Unlike Ron Paul, however, Trump had no grounding in a true America First foreign policy. While critical of his predecessors’ foreign policy decisions, Trump was not opposed philosophically to the US Empire or saw it as the greatest threat to world peace which currently exists.

Without an ideological basis against American globalism, Trump was easy pickings against the threats and machinations of the Deep State. Without a refutation of the ideology which drove Wilson and all of his successors to promote military adventurism abroad, Trump will be little different than his imperial predecessors and with a personality that is thin-skinned, impulsive and unpredictable, Trump could, God forbid, become another Woodrow Wilson.

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

Charles A. Beard, “American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940″*

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Review: Charles A. Beard, American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940: A Study in Responsibilities. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946.

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Introduction

Last year, 2016, marked the 70^th anniversary of the publication of Charles Beard’s masterful study of United States foreign policy prior to the nation’s disastrous entrance into the Second World War, American Foreign Policy in the Making1932-1940: A Study in Responsibilities(AFPM). The book was soon accompanied by President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 published in 1948, the year of the great historian’s passing.

The two volumes were extremely influential and became cornerstones of World War II revisionism. AFPM chronicled US policy in the crucial decade prior to the fateful attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The records released and the research done in the decades following Beard’s studies have only substantiated the historian’s interpretation of events.*

The most recent of the growing literature of WWII revisionism has been by the German historian Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof, and his provocative book, The War That Had Many Fathers.**As Beard did with AFPM, Schultze-Rhonhof seeks to assign responsibility for the outbreak of WWII in the European theatre. Like Beard, and in contrast to the official historical interpretation, Schultze-Rhonhof blames the provocative actions of the “Allied” governments in the years leading up to the conflict.***

Continue reading at: https://antoniusaquinas.com/history/

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com/

*This essay is dedicated to the late Charlie McGrath of Wide Awake News.

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The Donald Versus Killary: War or Peace?

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Although history does not exactly repeat itself, it does provide parallels and sometimes quite ominous ones. Such is the case with the current U.S. Presidential election and the one which occurred one hundred years earlier.

The dominating question which hung over the 1916 campaign was whether the country would remain neutral in regard to the horrific slaughter which was taking place on the European battlefields in probably the greatest act of mass insanity ever recorded, World War I.

President Wilson had maintained that the U.S. would continue a policy of strict neutrality. By all indications, the nation wanted no part of the war, with the President’s own party at his nomination delivering an emphatic “No” to any foreign intervention.

Although Wilson maintained a neutral policy through the election and briefly afterwards, his advisors and Cabinet had been lobbying for war and continued to do so even more vehemently after the President’s re-election was secured. Nearly all of them, including Wilson himself, had deep financial, family, and political ties to J.P. Morgan. Wilson received considerable Morgan financial backing for his two presidential runs.

The Morgan operatives within the Administration were pushing for war because the House of Morgan had “invested” heavily in the “Allied” cause and a defeat or a negotiated settlement with any favorable concessions to Germany would be a catastrophe for Morgan financial interests.

Germany understood the cozy Morgan relationship with the Wilson Administration and the Allied powers as Morgan representatives, especially the sinister Colonel House, had repeatedly rebuffed peace proposals from the Central Powers. The Allies and their opponents understood that Wilson’s re-election would mean U.S. entry into the conflict.

Tragically, for the U.S. and for the course of war-ridden 20^th century history, Wilson capitulated and brought the U.S. into the battle despite the campaign promise of neutrality and no real German threat. The House of Morgan’s financial bacon was saved at the cost of a devastated Western world.

One hundred years later, the U.S. and the world stand at another critical juncture and face a similar choice: the election of a known war criminal who has not only shown no remorse for her murderous policies, but promises, if elected, to continue them; or the election of a candidate who has spoken of negotiating with America’s supposed principle enemy, a possible pull back in the nation’s unsustainable global empire, and the enactment of a legitimate use of federal authority – protection of the country’s borders.

It is difficult to believe that Donald Trump is not sincere in seeking accommodation and friendly relations with Russia. It would be far easier for the billionaire businessman and would most likely secure his election if he followed the bellicose policy of the Democrat and Republican Presidents of the recent past who have continued to antagonize and threaten Russia. The most hopeful sign for peace coming from the U.S. in quite a while has been Trump’s talk of de-escalation of tensions and a pledge to place American interests first in foreign policy, instead of mouthing the global domination designs of the crazed neocons.

Some of the things he has said about Vladimir Putin and Russia have been, to say the least, quite encouraging:

I think I would get along with Vladimir Putin.

I just think so.*

It is always a great honor to be so nicely

complimented by a man [Putin] so highly respected

within his own country and beyond.**

I have always felt that Russia and the United States

should be able to work well with each other towards

defeating terrorism and restoring world peace, not

to mention trade and all of the other benefits derived from

mutual respect.***

Although not a non-interventionist, a President Trump is unlikely to provoke Russia or China into a civilization-ending conflagration and has displayed the instincts of a true peace maker.

There is, however, little hope for a reduction of global tensions if his sociopathic opponent becomes Commander-in-Chief. Killary has repeatedly demonstrated that she is a willing tool of the neocons and the global financial forces that will profit mightily from continued U.S.- instigated conflicts. If she makes it past the finish line, either legitimately or more likely through fraud, she will surely do their bidding.

For once, politicians and pundits who routinely call every election “the most crucial of a generation” are right. This year’s Presidential election is the most significant one since at least the fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. If the U.S. electorate wants to avoid the disaster not only to its own land and the world that followed in the wake of the 1916 election, there can be only one choice in November of 2016.

* Andrew Rafferty, “Trump Says he Would ‘Get Along Very Well’ With Putin.” NBCNews.com 30 July 2015.

**Maxwell Tani, “Vladimir Putin’s Praise is ‘A Great Honor.'” Business Insider. 17 December 2015.

***Ibid.

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com/