Posted on 07/16/2020 12:34:14 PM PDT by Red Badger
Wilson was not only an avowed racist, but also an architect of a sanctions regime that continues to kill to this day.
The link between former US President Woodrow Wilson's legacy of 'peaceful sanctions' and his legacy of racism and imperialism are difficult to ignore, writes Nanopoulos [File/AP Photo]
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A Nobel Peace prize holder usually remembered for his idealism, Woodrow Wilson, president of the US from 1913 to 1921, supported segregationist policies at home and played a key role in defeating a Japanese proposal to write the principle of racial equality into the Covenant of the League of Nations. His views on race stemmed from a deeper belief in white supremacy as a guarantee of peace, order and stability.
Already in 2015, the Black Justice League, an activist student organisation, occupied the office of the Princeton University's president, demanding that the Ivy League institution recognise Wilson's "racist legacy" and remove his name from all university premises. Princeton refused to budge, citing Wilson's important contribution to the university.
In the wake of George Floyd's murder and the massive anti-racist mobilisations that followed, the university recently announced that it will remove Wilson's name from its School of Public and International Affairs. That battle was finally won. Modern sanctions
Another battle, however, awaits to be fought. Less known is that President Wilson was also one of the architects of modern sanctions, packaging them as peaceful alternatives to war. Upon returning from the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, he addressed an Indianapolis crowd with enthusiasm about the new system of sanctions that would guarantee peace. Without recourse to armed force, he said, the League of Nations would be able to "Apply this economic, peaceful, silent, deadly [and] terrible remedy. It does not cost a life outside the nation boycotted but it brings a pressure upon the nation which, in my judgment, no modern nation could resist."
There always was a degree of irony in Wilson's juxtaposition of peace and death. Be that as it may, history would soon prove him wrong. Not only did sanctions fail when applied to powerful states or did little to avert the second world war, but over the last three decades, their increased popularity, itself the product of their allegedly peaceful character, has cost an unprecedented number of lives. Half a million children are said to have died as a result of UN sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s, and more than 40,000 civilians due to US sanctions against Venezuela today.
More generally, sanctions do not only isolate their target but frequently set the clock back on industrial, socio-economic and political progress with disastrous effects on the social fabric and the prospects of long-term reconstruction. Israel's longstanding siege on Gaza is a case in point.
Transnational civil society campaigns have consistently rejected efforts to cast sanctions as peaceful, and have mobilised the language of war and violence to call for their abolition: sanctions do kill, and in the context of a global pandemic, the effects of the lack of adequate medical supplies can be a death sentence and are unlikely to stop at the national border. Imperial legacies
Wilson's legacy, however, should also prompt us to ask to what extent was the concept of "peaceful sanctions" tied to the racist colonial order of the 19th and early 20th centuries? And how is the current proliferation of sanctions linked to the persistence and deepening of racialised imperial structures in the present?
Peaceful sanctions adopted outside a formal state of war, from so-called "pacific blockades" to embargoes, became a routine practice among colonial powers in the 19th century. These sanctions were not limited to the enforcement of international obligations or the pursuit of foreign policy objectives but were also adopted to collect debt, enforce private contracts and secure compensation for injury to their nationals. All served the same cause: to advance imperial ambitions without assuming the risks and responsibilities of war. With the establishment of the League of Nations, multilateral sanctions became part of an international arsenal used to effectively preserve the colonial status quo.
The imperial chain was not broken with the foundation of the United Nations. The Security Council's power to impose sanctions in response to threats to peace was seen as a mechanism for policing weaker states. After decades of inactivity during the Cold War, it would be deployed to restore order in post-colonial societies, particularly in Africa, and to punish states defying the values and norms of the "new world order", such as North Korea.
In today's globalised capitalist system characterised by market dependency, unequal structures of production and exchange, and the dominance of the US dollar, sanctions have also proven a strategy of choice for the US and its allies.
The link between Wilson's legacy of "peaceful sanctions" and his legacy of racism and imperialism are, therefore, difficult to ignore. One needs only to take a look at the cartography of sanctions to see clear parallels with the geography of the colonial era.
If his legacy has anything to teach us, it is that calls for the abolition of sanctions should not only be tied to a humanitarian agenda concerned with minimising human suffering, but to a decolonising project which understands the inhumanity of sanctions as a constitutive feature and symptom of imperial ordering.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Eva Nanopoulos is a Lecturer in Law at Queen Mary, University of London.
Neither was the word P****!
For all of his flaws including a racism that was pretty extreme even for his time, Wilson was an intelligent man who tried (and failed) to keep something like WWI from happening again.
He didn’t want to get involved in WWI and did manage to keep the U.S. out of the war for nearly 3 years. He pretty much refused to let U.S. forces be used in the meat grinder of trench warfare and when the war was over really tried to achieve a peace without winners or losers. Of the winning side, the U.S. did not gain territories or colonies.
Ironically, even though Wilson’s claims for rights of people to get to get to decide which nation to be a part of did not include people in colonies, his rhetoric inspired many nationalist movements in the colonies.
I know the road to hell is paved with good intentions and Wilson got to experience the road when the U.S. Senate refused to join his brainchild, the League of Nations, which without us in it was crippled at birth. And of course while campaigning for the League suffered a stroke that left him shattered and left the nation with the first de facto woman President.
Wilson wasn’t just any Democrat. He was a progressive icon of the Democrat party for generations. I believe Hillary Criminal was a big fan, too.
True, Edith Wilson was in fact POTUS, in everything except name................
This is why he’s a major progressive hero.
The key words are tried and failed.
For all Wilson's "good intentions" the end result was that he was a bunging fool, typical of the bungling fools who flocked to the Democrat Party then and who do today.
Islamofascist op-ed from al-Jazeera stooge Eva Nanopoulos.
Well... the Japanese wanted a clause declaring the Japanese to be the equal of white Europeans. Not exactly what the article implies.
The longevity of some political myths is sometime amazing to see. Go read the memoir of Wilson's Secretary of State, Robert Lansing. It clearly describes how the Wilson administration actively supported the British from the start and secretly planned to bring the US into the war after the 1916 election. The America First movement was born as a result of the publication of that book. This is old and settled history. The myth that Wilson wanted to keep us out of the war is just plain nonsense.
The first true “progressive” U.S. president.
I have no doubt that Wilson’s sympathies lie much more towards the Allies than the Central Powers, not the least being common language, shared political legal traditions, etc. as well, of course German unrestricted warfare and the Zimmerman telegram.
But the fact that we did stay out until 1917 is not a myth, it is fact. I realize that Wilson is not well-loved by many today and I can’t say that I’m a fan. All that said, from what I’ve read, his opponent in the election of 1916, Charles Evans Hughes, also wanted us to declare war on Germany after events in 1917, so history might well have turned out the same.
That is not in dispute, but what is also a fact is that Wilson always planned to bring us into the war after the 1916 election, and that he did exactly that. The narrative that he tried to keep us out of the war is simply false. He was just biding his time. William Jennings Bryan resigned in protest over this very issue.
The British had effectively cut off Germany through mining the North Sea, the Germans had no choice but to use U-Boats to try to level the playing field.
A true neutral would have told Britain to stop the naval blockade of Germany if the US were to risk their shipping in sending supplies to Britain.
The problem Germany had with its submarine warfare, was that it broke the conventional “rules of war” as they existed at the time. It was perfectly legal for Britain to blockade Germany, as long as it was effective. British warships were within their rights to stop neutral vessels, and either capture or sink them if they carried war material/contraband. They were required to safely evacuate the crew and land them in England or a neutral port.
But submarines couldn’t do this and survive. So when Germany started unrestricted submarine warfare, they were breaking the rules of the time. I understand why they did it, and it almost won them the war.
Our neutrality allowed either side to buy war supplies, but only the Brits and French could really do so—the Brits wouldn’t allow a German-flagged ship anywhere near our coast and neutral flagged ships would be stopped by the Brits. The Germans did have a freight submarine, the Deutschland, which successfully broke the British blockade. The American press treated the captain as something of a hero.
My point that we weren’t a true “neutral”. British actions towards German ships ultimately put ours in peril. It was going to be difficult in that situation to completely stay neutral, without offending the Brits, and the Brits had too many supporters in the government.
Personally, I think Britain had no business in the war in the first place, she had her Empire, if Britain ever needed a “Brexit”, it was in 1914.
Personally, I think Britain had no business in the war in the first place, she had her Empire, if Britain ever needed a “Brexit”, it was in 1914.
You may or may not know, that British silver coins were sterling (.925 silver) before the war. After the war, the percentage dropped to 50%. World War II took all of the silver out of their coinage.
Hitler was ultimately successful in two of his goals. Jews, for the most part, vanished from Europe, and the British Empire vanished as well.
After what Leopold did in The Congo, F Belgium!
Can’t argue with that. How did the Belgians treat the Congo after they ended Leopold’s control? It had to have been better.
Point being, Germany was no better nor worse than the other Allied Powers.
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