History of the United States II / Unit 8 USH2 1055 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Morality and Force
The idea
Wilson called his policy moral diplomacy, a foreign policy based on principle rather than self-interest. In practice it produced two armed interventions in Mexico within two years. In April nineteen fourteen the navy occupied Veracruz, at a cost of about one hundred fifty lives. In nineteen sixteen more than eleven thousand troops under Pershing pushed three hundred miles into Mexico in pursuit of Villa, until Mexico's own president demanded that they leave.
In practice
A president speaking of morality in foreign affairs while American troops occupy a Mexican port.
Where people slip
The confusion to avoid is taking the policy's name as a description of its record. Both halves are true: Wilson meant the principle, and he used force. The anchor calls Mexico emblematic of how hard it was to set the country on a course of moral leadership, and the same tension runs through Wilson's war and his peace.
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