Woodrow Wilson’s hidden stroke of 1919: the impact of patient-physician confidentiality on United States foreign policy

2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. E6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard P. Menger ◽  
Christopher M. Storey ◽  
Bharat Guthikonda ◽  
Symeon Missios ◽  
Anil Nanda ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War I ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
American People ◽  
United States Foreign Policy ◽  
World War ◽  
The Impact

World War I catapulted the United States from traditional isolationism to international involvement in a major European conflict. Woodrow Wilson envisaged a permanent American imprint on democracy in world affairs through participation in the League of Nations. Amid these defining events, Wilson suffered a major ischemic stroke on October 2, 1919, which left him incapacitated. What was probably his fourth and most devastating stroke was diagnosed and treated by his friend and personal physician, Admiral Cary Grayson. Grayson, who had tremendous personal and professional loyalty to Wilson, kept the severity of the stroke hidden from Congress, the American people, and even the president himself. During a cabinet briefing, Grayson formally refused to sign a document of disability and was reluctant to address the subject of presidential succession. Wilson was essentially incapacitated and hemiplegic, yet he remained an active president and all messages were relayed directly through his wife, Edith. Patient-physician confidentiality superseded national security amid the backdrop of friendship and political power on the eve of a pivotal juncture in the history of American foreign policy. It was in part because of the absence of Woodrow Wilson’s vocal and unwavering support that the United States did not join the League of Nations and distanced itself from the international stage. The League of Nations would later prove powerless without American support and was unable to thwart the rise and advance of Adolf Hitler. Only after World War II did the United States assume its global leadership role and realize Wilson’s visionary, yet contentious, groundwork for a Pax Americana. The authors describe Woodrow Wilson’s stroke, the historical implications of his health decline, and its impact on United States foreign policy.

The Mutual Defense Assistance Program

1951 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert H. Connery ◽  
Paul T. David
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Assistance Program ◽  
Good Laboratory ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Impact

The Mutual Defense Assistance Program represents the military portion of an important foreign policy of the United States, that of aid to free nations. While assisting allies by grants of money and supplies is by no means a new undertaking, even for the United States, the scope of this program, under which expenditures may soon exceed $7 billion annually, makes it a good laboratory specimen to illustrate the impact of a positive foreign policy on the structure of the national government. Furthermore, analysis of the program clearly shows the tremendous changes that have taken place in the methods of formulating and administering American foreign policy since the end of World War II.For more than a generation prior to 1916, the Secretaries of State, War, and Navy occupied the same building at the seat of government.

Protectionist Empire: Trade, Tariffs, and United States Foreign Policy, 1890–1914

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin O. Fordham
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
International Economic Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Foreign Policy ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Political Cooperation ◽  
Trading Partners ◽  
The One

Between 1890 and 1914, the United States acquired overseas colonies, built a battleship fleet, and intervened increasingly often in Latin America and East Asia. This activism is often seen as the precursor to the country's role as a superpower after 1945 but actually served very different goals. In contrast to its pursuit of a relatively liberal international economic order after 1945, the United States remained committed to trade protection before 1914. Protectionism had several important consequences for American foreign policy on both economic and security issues. It led to a focus on less developed areas of the world that would not export manufactured goods to the United States instead of on wealthier European markets. It limited the tactics available for promoting American exports, forcing policymakers to seek exclusive bilateral agreements or unilateral concessions from trading partners instead of multilateral arrangements. It inhibited political cooperation with other major powers and implied an aggressive posture toward these states. The differences between this foreign policy and the one the United States adopted after 1945 underscore the critical importance not just of the search for overseas markets but also of efforts to protect the domestic market.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and US Foreign Relations

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Cross
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Active Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
American People ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact

Franklin D. Roosevelt was US president in extraordinarily challenging times. The impact of both the Great Depression and World War II make discussion of his approach to foreign relations by historians highly contested and controversial. He was one of the most experienced people to hold office, having served in the Wilson administration as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, completed two terms as Governor of New York, and held a raft of political offices. At heart, he was an internationalist who believed in an engaged and active role for the United States in world. During his first two terms as president, Roosevelt had to temper his international engagement in response to public opinion and politicians wanting to focus on domestic problems and wary of the risks of involvement in conflict. As the world crisis deepened in the 1930s, his engagement revived. He adopted a gradualist approach to educating the American people in the dangers facing their country and led them to eventual participation in war and a greater role in world affairs. There were clearly mistakes in his diplomacy along the way and his leadership often appeared flawed, with an ambiguous legacy founded on political expediency, expanded executive power, vague idealism, and a chronic lack of clarity to prepare Americans for postwar challenges. Nevertheless, his policies to prepare the United States for the coming war saw his country emerge from years of depression to become an economic superpower. Likewise, his mobilization of his country’s enormous resources, support of key allies, and the holding together of a “Grand Alliance” in World War II not only brought victory but saw the United States become a dominant force in the world. Ultimately, Roosevelt’s idealistic vision, tempered with a sound appreciation of national power, would transform the global position of the United States and inaugurate what Henry Luce described as “the American Century.”

The League of Nations and the United States

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlie Laderman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
International Peace ◽  
World War ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
New States ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Global Affairs

Although the League of Nations was the first permanent organization established with the purpose of maintaining international peace, it built on the work of a series of 19th-century intergovernmental institutions. The destructiveness of World War I led American and British statesmen to champion a league as a means of maintaining postwar global order. In the United States, Woodrow Wilson followed his predecessors, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, in advocating American membership of an international peace league, although Wilson’s vision for reforming global affairs was more radical. In Britain, public opinion had begun to coalesce in favor of a league from the outset of the war, though David Lloyd George and many of his Cabinet colleagues were initially skeptical of its benefits. However, Lloyd George was determined to establish an alliance with the United States and warmed to the league idea when Jan Christian Smuts presented a blueprint for an organization that served that end. The creation of the League was a predominantly British and American affair. Yet Wilson was unable to convince Americans to commit themselves to membership in the new organization. The Franco-British-dominated League enjoyed some early successes. Its high point was reached when Europe was infused with the “Spirit of Locarno” in the mid-1920s and the United States played an economically crucial, if politically constrained, role in advancing Continental peace. This tenuous basis for international order collapsed as a result of the economic chaos of the early 1930s, as the League proved incapable of containing the ambitions of revisionist powers in Europe and Asia. Despite its ultimate limitations as a peacekeeping body, recent scholarship has emphasized the League’s relative successes in stabilizing new states, safeguarding minorities, managing the evolution of colonies into notionally sovereign states, and policing transnational trafficking; in doing so, it paved the way for the creation of the United Nations.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth McKillen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Governance ◽  
International Labor Organization ◽  
World War ◽  
American Federation ◽  
International Labor

This book explores the corporatist alliance between President Woodrow Wilson and the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and how it sparked debates over his foreign policy programs within labor circles. During World War II, Wilson pledged to make the world “safe for democracy.” For Wilson, the cooperation of the United States and international labor movements was critical to achieving this goal. To win domestic and international labor support for his foreign policies, Wilson solicited the help of AFL's conservative leaders. This book traces the origins of the partnership that developed between the Wilson administration and AFL leaders to promote U.S. foreign policy, from its tentative beginnings during policy deliberations over how the United States should respond to the Mexican revolution, through World War I, to its culmination with the creation of the International Labor Organization (ILO). It details the significant opposition to the Wilson–AFL collaboration that arose among U.S., transnational, and international labor, Socialists, and diaspora Left groups and how this opposition affected Wilson's efforts to create a permanent role for labor in international governance.

The Impact of the United Nations on United States Foreign Policy

1951 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin V. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Foreign Policy ◽  
Active Participant ◽  
International Issues ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Impact

During the last five years the United States has been an active participant in the work of the United Nations. During this period the most vital international issues have come before various organs of the United Nations, have been discussed, and in various ways have been acted upon. The question naturally arises what has been the impact of the United Nations on the foreign policy of the United States?

“Steeped in Greek Mythology”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila Murnaghan ◽  
Deborah H. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Greek Mythology ◽  
World War ◽  
Classical Myth ◽  
Folklore Studies ◽  
American Children ◽  
The Impact

This chapter surveys myth retellings for children in the first half of the twentieth century, mostly in anthologies but also in other fictional forms in which modern children interact with figures from classical myth. Key developments include the impact of anthropology and folklore studies, the emergence of the United States as a center of children’s publishing after World War I, questions about the relevance of myth to American children, the assimilation of myths to fables and tall tales, innovative approaches to illustration, and mid-century nostalgia for earlier myth books. Among the authors discussed are Andrew Lang, Padraic Colum, James Daugherty, Robert McCloskey, Edith Hamilton, Roger Lancelyn Green, and Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire.

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