Woodrow Wilson, Human Rights, and U.S. Foreign Policy

Introduction: Wilson's Idealism and the Roots of Human Rights Policy

The issue of human rights remains to this day one of the most important aspects of international law, often seen as the cornerstone of international cooperation and the basis of continuous legal development. Despite the fact that this issue dominates the front pages of newspapers almost daily, the human rights movement traces its roots to the beginning of the twentieth century — specifically to Woodrow Wilson's idealism and its promotion of equality among states as a matter of right and a concern of international law. Elements of the Monroe Doctrine remain present in the foreign policy approach of the United States to this day, from Cold War strategies to the Obama administration's reactions to the Arab Spring.

The global campaign of President Wilson in championing the rights of the silent and dominated, paved the way for an American foreign policy centered on human rights and democracy. This approach took shape in the early twentieth century. Wilsonian principles resounded clearly in the Atlantic Charter. Although that document was proclaimed by Franklin Roosevelt — the intellectual beneficiary of Wilson — it expressed U.S. disappointment with the absence of rights for colonized peoples. The concern for democracy and human rights is therefore embedded in the legacy of U.S. foreign policy, particularly toward the African continent. The prominence of these ethical standards in foreign policy practice has endured despite the realist foundations of American strategy, as was evident during the Cold War. The status of these ideals in post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy, however, remains an open question.

The Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary

The Monroe Doctrine was not a particularly effective or pivotal document in the history of the American continents at the time of its issuance. The United States did not yet possess a strong navy or army, and Latin American revolutionaries of the era — most notably Simón Bolívar — regarded the Monroe Doctrine as well-intentioned but ultimately useless.

The document was also vulnerable to many different interpretations. The Roosevelt Corollary asserted that "chronic wrongdoing…may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation." By assuming this role, the United States officially shifted its position from that of a political entity to an international police force and emerging superpower. While this was not the first time the United States had attempted to establish political dominance over the American continents, it was the most notable instance and would continue to shape U.S. foreign policy throughout the twentieth century. Critics such as Noam Chomsky have argued that the Monroe Doctrine — and especially the Roosevelt Corollary — was designed primarily to establish the United States as the dominant continental hegemony.

Nevertheless, the Monroe Doctrine was one of the first public statements framing state equality as a matter of right rather than indulgence. More precisely, at the Pan American Union in December 1913, President Wilson announced that the Monroe Doctrine was evolving into a new framework: the Wilson Doctrine of Pan Americanism. The president stated, "We must prove ourselves their friends and champions upon terms of equality and honor. You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality" (p. 186). This statement demonstrated that President Wilson had set the groundwork for a new type of foreign policy — one rooted in the equality of states — an aspect that would later form the foundation of the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations. From Wilson's perspective, treating all states as equals was the basis of an honorable foreign policy, and the United States was morally obliged to follow it. This desire for equality extended beyond foreign policy to the domestic level, as President Wilson was also a vocal supporter of racial and gender equality.

Wilsonianism and the Cold War Dilemma

The historical events following the end of the First World War were the most influential and crucial to U.S. foreign policy and its views on state and human rights. On the international scene, the creation of the Soviet state was widely interpreted as a validation of the right to self-determination — a right demanded by most European nations, including Greece, Hungary, Poland, and Romania (p. 18). At the same time, the threat of communism compelled a redrafting of U.S. foreign policy — not necessarily by altering its democratic principles, but by reordering its priorities.

At the Yalta Conference in 1945, the United States allowed the Soviet Union to continue occupying Eastern European nations named in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact — the agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union — on the condition that the Soviets would hold free elections. Churchill believed Stalin would honor his word, claiming that "Poor Neville Chamberlain believed he could trust Hitler. He was wrong. But I don't think I'm wrong about Stalin" (Berthon & Potts, 2007). Although it became apparent within a few years that elections in the Eastern Bloc were being rigged to install communist governments, neither the United States nor its allies intervened, fearing direct conflict with the Soviet Union.

This outcome may have pushed the United States toward an explicitly anti-communist foreign policy stance. Regardless of Wilson's Fourteen Points, in order to ward off the expansion of Soviet communism, the U.S. supported dictators with records of human rights abuses so long as they declared themselves anti-communist (Galvan, 2012). Although this course of action may have appeared strategically sound at the outset, it established precedents that would reverberate throughout the Cold War and beyond.

Wilsonianism Shelved: U.S. Policy in Africa During the Cold War

In the 1960s, America promoted decolonization and freedom in Africa in the spirit of Wilsonianism. However, as the Cold War became the central stage of global politics, sustaining American investments and interests came to be pursued through opposition to socialism in Africa and elsewhere. These concerns were visible even before African independence movements gained momentum. After visiting the African continent, then Vice President Nixon argued that the trajectory of development in Africa could prove to be the decisive factor between global communism and freedom.

Concerns about democracy and human rights did surface periodically in U.S. foreign policy discussions. For example, the U.S. Congress enacted legislation linking military and economic assistance to human rights and democracy standards in the early 1960s. Section 116 of the 1961 Foreign Aid Act barred the president from providing development assistance to countries engaged in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights. The Congressional Foreign Aid Act of 1976 further required the U.S. to encourage environments that respect human rights and democratic freedoms around the globe, stipulating that U.S. security assistance must be extended in ways that promote — rather than undermine — human rights.

Yet these legislative efforts should not obscure the extent to which U.S. foreign policy in practice ran counter to the principles of Wilsonianism. The record of U.S. engagement in Africa during the Cold War reveals recurring actions against Wilsonian idealism, often justified in the name of opposing communism. These included U.S. support for authoritarian leaders such as Moi, Mobutu, Barre, Selassie, and Nimieri, whose human rights records were exceedingly poor. Millions of dollars were funneled into efforts to suppress socialism, and U.S. military assistance played significant roles in conflicts in Angola, Namibia, Ethiopia, Zaire, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Liberia, and Uganda.

The succession of U.S. foreign policy decisions also reflects a broader reluctance to uphold Wilsonian idealism. Guided by key strategic interests — including access to North Atlantic Treaty Organization bases in the Azores — the United States declined to act against colonial drives in Portuguese-controlled African territories. The 1960 UN resolutions on self-determination and decolonization, which clearly inscribed Wilsonian values, were not endorsed by the Eisenhower administration. America was among nine nations — alongside South Africa, Australia, the Dominican Republic, Belgium, Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal — that abstained from voting in the UN General Assembly on those resolutions. This abstention signaled tacit authorization of racial segregation, oppression, and gross human rights violations by colonial powers across Africa.

U.S. vacillation on the question of Rhodesia further illustrated this reluctance. Although the Johnson administration upheld UN financial sanctions against the white minority government in Rhodesia in response to human rights violations, President Nixon permitted U.S.-based Union Carbide to import an estimated 145,000 tons of chromium from Rhodesia. Nixon's administration also expanded military assistance to South Africa, violating the UN arms embargo. These policies placed the U.S. on the side of the South African apartheid government, directly undermining the human rights frameworks associated with Wilson's legacy. The Ford and Nixon administrations' preference for national security over Wilsonianism only worsened existing conditions in the region. The foreign policy patterns of this period were marked by continuous and conflicting shifts that carried into the Carter Administration (1977–1981).