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In response to
"I think of WW1 as having European origins and causes. Unless you’re talking about American entry into WW1?"
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Roger More
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Pretty much that. I don't think anyone has argued that the Wilson Administration could have prevented WWI. Neither do I think the Administration -- (edited)
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Caused WWI to happen. But Wilsonian foreign policy was essentially arrogant, snobbish Americans thinking that we were saviors of the world--if we chose to be so--after existing as a country for 100+ years. At worst, Wilsonian foreign policy was crass and cruel imperialism.
This was the foreign policy rooted in the Spanish-American War and fulfilled during the Mexican Civil War. It was a foreign policy based not on the question of "how can we work best with other countries?" but on the conclusion--as a starting point--that America was exceptionally better than all other countries, especially those dirty, dusty, old monarchies of Europe.
Yes, WWI arose in Europe, but all those European countries were paying extremely close attention to the Spanish-American War and other post-Civil War conflicts. Germany gambled that America would not involve itself in European conflicts, and the gamble paid off.
The argument about Wilsonian foreign policy aggravating or catalyzing WWI rests on the timing of American intervention: we didn't get in there soon enough, so we weren't a serious player. By the time America did get involved directly, the war was largely over but for the Armistice.
Had America intervened when it could have (or should have), our diplomats would've been deeply involved in the peace negotiations. But they weren't. They literally did not have a seat at the table.
Instead of spreading American democracy, or striving for American influence in those post-war peace negotiations, Wilson left Britian and France to clean up the mess and carve up Europe. And we now how that went.
I think another sound argument is that American intervention in 1916 would have caused Germany to not just be defeated, but to suffer an abject *military* defeat. Instead, certain Germans were able to make spurious arguments about why Germany merely "accepted defeat," but was not defeated; i.e., it wasn't German military might or its people that were defeated, it was the long, drawn-out economic strain that set up Germany to be stabbed in the back by minorities (they were using the term "non-Aryan" well before 1930) and weak-willed political elites. The winding down of WWI immediately set the foundation for the Nazi party resurgence beginning in 1920.
If Germany had suffered a sound defeat--a clear military defeat--that foundation for Nazi ideology largely disappears because there is no "great German military might" or "the might of its people" for Nazis to fall back on.
If their military had been crushed from the outset, with help from America, the foundation for the Nazi Party emergence certainly would have been weaker. But maybe even nonexistant?
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