20th Century Politics

In the frantic search for unified war aims among the Allies, the central novelty of Wilsonian and Leninist diplomacy was the way the USA and the emerging USSR looked over the heads of old European ruling circles and addressed the peoples of various nations directly. There was an odd way in which Wilsonian and Leninist diplomacy made no essential distinction between the peoples who lived within the jurisdiction of Allied governmental authority and those who lived within the jurisdiction of the Central Powers. Wilson and Lenin, in other words, were internationalists. However different, they were also both radical democrats. In a sense, the diplomatic challenge was an extension of the domestic political, social and economic challenge posed to old Europe by radical liberalism (Wilson) and radical social democracy (Lenin). Together they challenged old Europe with a surprising combination of what we have identified as the first two phases of the modern European revolutionary tradition [ID]. Mayer places a lot of emphasis on Wilson's and Lenin's struggle for support among the peoples of all warring nations in this devastating European struggle. Taking a lesson from John Stuart Mill [ID], Mayer describes this struggle as a factional conflict between "parties of movement" (progressive liberal and socialist parties, "the left") and "parties of order" (conservatives and reactionaries, established elites, "the right"). Diplomacy and domestic politics were now entwined. 
Category:Politics
Category:History