The Great War and American Foreign Policy, 1914-24

Robert E. Hannigan's The Great War and American Foreign Policy, 1914–24 is one of the best of recent works that seek to explain U.S. diplomacy related to World War I and its aftermath. Hannigan emphasizes patterns and consistencies in U.S. foreign policy and diplomatic thought that shaped the efforts of Woodrow Wilson. The bulk of the book focuses on Wilson and his administration in the periods of neutrality (1914–1917), belligerency (1917–1918), and peacemaking (1918–1921). The book's excellent first chapter, “The United States Steps Out,” lays the groundwork of the transformation of the United States's relations with the world from the 1890s to the onset of World War I. The final two chapters provide fresh global insights by examining the United States's role in China, Latin America, and Europe at the end of the war and into the 1920s. With this geographical sweep, Hannigan moves outside a narrow wartime focus and concern with U.S. diplomatic positions vis-à-vis Europe. Hannigan makes a strong case for wider context. He demonstrates that American leaders saw merits in “essential elements” of the British-centered international system even as the United States hoped to supplant the United Kingdom (p. 4). “Washington's response to the Great War,” Hannigan asserts along these lines, “is fundamentally the story of how the United States sought to protect and then put on more stable foundations an international order to which American leaders, well before 1914, had already become strongly attached” (p. x

China · Context (archaeology · Diplomacy · Economic history · Foreign policy · Great power · Latin Americans · Neutrality · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · World War II · History · Law · World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact