Woodrow Wilson and the Beginnings of Democratic Peace Theory

The ironies of fate, and other unexpected happenings.

With Woodrow Wilson, the twenty-eighth president, a quintessentially American practice emerged—that of wanting to disassociate from the troubles of the world only to be dragged into them with greater force. It seems that with every president (except Trump) a similar tension emerges, of wanting to be one sort of president only to have events intervene. Sometimes it’s irony. Other times it’s tragedy.