From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (65 page)

A year of relative quiet followed. In Mexico itself, the civil war raged on, rival factions under populist leaders Emiliano Zapata in the south and Francisco "Pancho" Villa in the north challenging Carranza's fragile government. To promote order and perhaps a government he could influence, Wilson tried to mediate among the warring factions, issuing at least a veiled threat of military intervention if they refused. Carranza and Zapata flatly rejected the overture. Villa's fortunes were obviously declining, and he appeared receptive, opening a brief—and fateful—flirtation with the United States. Carranza continued to gain ground militarily, however. Increasingly preoccupied with the European war, having just weathered the first U-boat crisis with Germany, and fearful of growing German intrigue in Mexico, Wilson did an abrupt about-face. Even
though he considered Carranza a "fool" and never established the sort of paternalistic relationship he sought, he reluctantly recognized the first chief's government. He even permitted Carranza's troops to cross U.S. territory to attack the Villistas.
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Villa quickly responded. To the end of 1915, he had seemed among various Mexican leaders the most amenable to U.S. influence. A sharecropper and cattle rustler before becoming a rebel, the colorful leader was a strange mixture of rebel and caudillo.
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At first viewed by Wilson and other Americans as a dedicated social reformer, a kind of Robin Hood, he sought to secure arms and money by showing restraint toward U.S. interests in areas he controlled. He refused even to protest the occupation of Veracruz. As his military and financial position worsened, however, he began to tax U.S. companies more heavily. Several major military defeats in late 1915 and Wilson's seeming betrayal caused him to suspect—incorrectly—that Carranza had made a sordid deal with Wilson to stay in power in return for making Mexico an American protectorate.
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Denouncing the "sale of our country by the traitor Carranza" and claiming that Mexicans had become "vassals of an evangelizing professor," Villa struck back.
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He began to confiscate U.S. property, including Hearst's ranch. In January 1916, his troops stopped a train in northern Mexico and executed seventeen American engineers. Even more boldly, he decided to attack the Americans "in their own den" to let them know, he informed Zapata, that Mexico was a "tomb for thrones, crowns, and traitors."
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On March 9, 1916, to shouts of "
Viva Villa
" and "
Viva México
," five hundred of his troops attacked the border town of Columbus, New Mexico. They were driven back by U.S. Army forces after a six-hour fight in which seventeen Americans and a hundred Mexicans were killed. Villa hoped to put Carranza in a bind. If the first chief permitted the Americans to retaliate by invading Mexico, he would be exposed as a U.S. stooge. Conflict between Carranza and the United States, on the other hand, might permit Villa, by defending the independence of his country, to promote his own political ambitions.
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Wilson had little choice but to respond forcibly. He may have feared that Villa's actions would have a domino effect throughout Central America in a time of rising international tension. In the United States, hotheads who had demanded all-out intervention since 1914, including oilmen, Hearst, and Roman Catholic leaders, grew louder. This first attack on U.S. soil since 1814 provoked angry cries for revenge that took on greater significance in an election year. Wilson may also have seen a firm response to Villa's raid as a means to promote his plans for reasonable military preparedness and strengthen his hand in dealing with European belligerents. He quickly put together a "punitive expedition" of more than 5,800 men (eventually increased to more than 10,000), under the command of Gen. John J. Pershing, to invade Mexico, capture Villa, and destroy his forces. United States troops crossed the border on March 15.
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The expedition brought two close, yet distant, neighbors to the brink of an unwanted and potentially disastrous war. Pershing's forces eventually drove 350 miles into Mexico. Even with such modern equipment as reconnaissance aircraft and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, they never caught a glimpse of the elusive Villa or engaged his troops in battle. Complaining that he was looking for a "needle in a haystack," a frustrated Pershing urged occupation of part or all of Mexico. All the while Villa's army, now estimated at more than ten thousand men, used hit-and-run guerrilla tactics to harass U.S. forces and seize northern Mexican cities. On one occasion, Villa reentered the United States, striking the Texas town of Glen Springs.
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Although Wilson had promised "scrupulous respect" for Mexican sovereignty, as Pershing drove south tensions with Carranza's government inevitably increased. Mexican and U.S. forces first clashed at Parral. On June 20, a U.S. patrol engaged Mexican troops at Carrizal. Americans at first viewed the incident as an unprovoked attack and demanded war. Wilson responded by drafting a message for Congress requesting authority to occupy all Mexico. Now embroiled in yet another dangerous submarine crisis with Germany, he also mobilized the National Guard and dispatched thirty thousand troops to the Mexican border, the largest deployment of U.S. military forces since the Civil War.

Cooler heads ultimately prevailed. Peace organizations in the United States, including the Women's Peace Party, pushed Wilson for restraint,
and when they publicized evidence that Americans had fired first at Carrizal, he hesitated. Carranza's freeing of U.S. prisoners helped ease tensions. Wilson admitted shame over America's first conflict with Mexico in 1846 and had no desire for another "predatory war." He suspected that it would take more than five hundred thousand troops to "pacify" Mexico. He did not want one hand tied behind his back when war with Germany seemed possible if not indeed likely.
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"My heart is for peace," he told activist Jane Addams. In a speech on June 30, 1916, he eloquently asked: "Do you think that any act of violence by a powerful nation like this against a weak and distracted neighbor would reflect distinction upon the annals of the United States?" The audience resoundingly answered "No!"
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After six months of tortuous negotiations with Mexico, the punitive expedition withdrew in January 1917, just as Germany announced the resumption of U-boat warfare.

Wilson's firm but measured response helped get military preparedness legislation through Congress in 1916, strengthened his hand with Germany during yet another U-boat crisis, and aided his reelection in November. Mobilization of the National Guard and the training received by the army facilitated U.S. preparations for war the following year.
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On the other hand, the failed effort to capture Villa left a deep residue of ill will in Mexico. Only recently dismissed as a loser, the elusive rebel joined the pantheon of national heroes as the "man who attacked the United States and got away with it."
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Carranza moved closer to Germany, encouraging Berlin to explore with Mexico the possibility of an anti-American alliance.

Wilson's Mexican policy has been harshly and rightly criticized. More than most Americans, he accepted the legitimacy and grasped the dynamics of the Mexican Revolution. He deeply sympathized with the "submerged eighty-five percent of the people . . . who are struggling towards liberty."
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At times, he seemed to comprehend the limits of U.S. military power to reshape Mexico in its own image and the necessity for Mexicans to solve their own problems. But he could not entirely shed his conviction that the American way was the right way and he could assist Mexico to find it. He could never fully understand that those Mexicans who shared his goals would consider unacceptable even modest U.S. efforts to influence their revolution. Conceding Wilson's good intentions, his actions were often
counterproductive. He averted greater disaster mainly because in 1914 and again in 1916 he resisted demands for occupation, even the establishment of a protectorate, and declined to prolong fruitless interventions.
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If Mexico, by Wilson's admission, was a thorn in his side, the Great War was far more, dominating his presidency and eventually destroying him, politically and even physically. On the surface, Europe seemed peaceful in the summer of 1914. In fact, a century of relative harmony was about to end. For years, the great powers felt increasingly threatened by each other, their fears and suspicions manifested in a complex and rigid system of alliances, an arms race intended to gain security through military and naval superiority, and war plans designed to secure an early advantage. Unstable domestic political environments in Germany and Russia cleared the path to war. When a Serbian nationalist assassinated the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo in June, what might have remained an isolated incident escalated to war. Its honor affronted, Austria-Hungary gained German support and set out to punish Serbia. Russia responded by mobilizing behind its Serbian ally, an act designed to deter Germany that instead provoked a declaration of war. Britain joined Russia's ally France in war against Germany. None of the great powers claimed to want war, but their actions produced that result. Expecting a short and decisive conflict, Europeans responded with relief and even celebration. Young men marched off to cheering crowds with no idea of the horrors that awaited them.
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The conflict that began in August 1914 defied all expectations. Technological advances in artillery and machine guns and an alliance system that encouraged nations facing defeat to hang on in expectation of outside support ensured that the war would
not
be short and decisive. The industrial revolution and the capacity of the modern nation-state to mobilize vast human and material resources produced unprecedented destructiveness and cost. Striking quickly, Germany drove to within thirty miles of Paris, reviving memories of its easy victory in 1870–71. This time French lines held. An Allied counteroffensive pushed the Germans back to France's eastern boundary, where they dug into heavily fortified entrenchments. By November 1914, opposing armies faced each other along a 475-mile front from the North Sea to the Swiss border. The combatants
had already incurred staggering costs—France's battle deaths alone exceeded three hundred thousand, and its losses from dead, wounded, or missing surpassed nine hundred thousand. Despite huge casualties on both sides, the lines would not move significantly until March 1917. These first months destroyed any illusions of a quick end and introduced the grim realities of modern combat.
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Conditioned by more than a century of non-involvement in Europe's quarrels, Americans were shocked by the guns of August. The outbreak of war "came to most of us as lightning out of a clear sky," one thoughtful commentator wrote. They also expressed relief to be remote from the conflict. "Again and ever I thank God for the Atlantic Ocean," the U.S. ambassador in Great Britain exclaimed.
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Americans were not without their prejudices. More than one-third of the nation's citizens were foreign born or had one parent who was born abroad. A majority, including much of the elite, favored the Allies because of cultural ties and a belief that Britain and France stood for the right principles. German Americans, on the other hand, naturally supported the Central Powers, as did Irish Americans who despised Britain, and Jewish and Scandinavian Americans who hated Russia. "We have to be neutral," Wilson observed in 1914, "since otherwise our mixed populations would wage war on each other."
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Whatever their preferences, the great majority of Americans saw no direct stake in the struggle and applauded Wilson's proclamation that their country be "neutral in fact as well as in name . . . , impartial in thought as well as in action." Indeed, in terms of the nation's long tradition of non-involvement in Europe's wars, the seeming remoteness of the conflict, and the advantages of trading with both sides, neutrality appeared the obvious course. The president even wrote a brief message to be displayed in movie theaters urging audiences "in the interest of neutrality" not to express approval or disapproval when war scenes appeared on the screen. From the outset, Wilson also saw in the war a God-given opportunity for U.S. leadership toward a new world order. "Providence has deeper plans than we could possibly have laid ourselves," he wrote House in August 1914.
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As a neutral, the United States could provide relief assistance to wartorn areas, and its people responded generously. The American Red Cross
shipped supplies worth $1.5 million to needy civilians; its hospital units cared for the wounded.
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Belgian relief was one of the great humanitarian success stories of the war. Headed by mining engineer and humanitarian Herbert Hoover, the program found ingenious ways to get around the German occupation and the British blockade to save the people of Belgium. Admiringly called a "piratical state organized for benevolence," Hoover's Commission for Belgian Relief had its own flag and cut deals with belligerents to facilitate its work. It raised funds from citizens and governments across the world, $6 million from Americans in cash, more than $28 million in kind. The commission bought food from many countries, arranged for its shipment, and, with the help of forty thousand Belgian volunteers, got it distributed. It spent close to $1 billion, fed more than nine million people a day, and kept a nation from starving. Known as the "Napoleon of mercy" for his organizational and leadership skills, Hoover became an international celebrity.
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The implementation of neutrality policy posed much greater challenges. It had been very difficult a century earlier for a much weaker United States to remain disentangled from the Napoleonic wars. America's emergence as a major power made it all the more problematical. Emotional and cultural ties to the belligerents limited impartiality of thought. Wilson and most of his top advisers, except for Bryan, favored the Allies. The United States' latent military power made it a possibly decisive factor in the conflict. Most important, its close economic ties with Europe and especially the Allies severely restricted its ability to remain uninvolved. At the outbreak of war, exports to Europe totaled $900 million and funded the annual debt to European creditors. Some Americans saw war orders opening a further expansion of foreign trade. At the very least, maintaining existing levels was an essential national interest. That this might be incompatible with strict neutrality was not evident at the beginning of the war. It would become one of the great dilemmas of the U.S. response.