America's Promise.

• Author: Chollet, Derek
• Position: "Why Wilson Matters: The Origin of American Liberal Internationalism and Its Crisis Today: and " - Book review

Tony Smith, Why Wilson Matters: The Origin of American Liberal Internationalism and Its Crisis Today (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 352 pp., $35.00.

Robert D. Kaplan, Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America's Role in the World (New York: Random House, 2017), 224 pp., $27.00.

Toward the end of his thought-provoking examination of Woodrow Wilson's enduring but contested foreign-policy legacy, the Tufts scholar Tony Smith describes the politics of 2016 by using the analytical metaphor of a "vicious diamond," in which the interaction of the "flaws in democratic governance in the common interest, questions about international economic integration and collective security, and debates over the role of American leadership in world affairs" conspire together under intense heat and high pressure to bring a "downward spiral in them all."

Reading these words with Donald Trump as president, with the prospect of America's tailspin only getting worse, this assessment seems all too true. So as we sift through the wreckage of punditry, polls and principles left in the wake of last year's election and Trump's tumultuous assumption of power in the White House, it is important to understand not just what happened, but the implications for America in the world moving forward.

The drama of our era will produce a mountain of books, but two that warrant immediate consideration are Smith's Why Wilson Matters and Robert Kaplan's Earning the Rockies. Although written before the 2016 election, both volumes provide a unique window into our troubled time. And while very different in approach and perspective--Smith comes from the academic left and is rooted in social-science theory, while Kaplan offers a more personal meditation, drawing on history, travel and geography--both books offer valuable insight into the recent history of U.S. foreign policy, and what it means for the future.

Smith's approach is more conventional. As one of the leading scholars of Woodrow Wilson, he seeks to resurrect the legacy of the twenty-eighth president from what he claims are the distortions promoted by neo-liberals and neoconservatives--those on the left and right that have essentially hijacked Wilson's ideas to justify military adventurism. By making the case for what he calls "classic" Wilsonianism, Smith offers a concise historical review of Wilson's concept of democratic change abroad and America's role in bringing that about. It's a reminder that Wilson's legacy is far more complicated than today's debates suggest.

But Smith has higher aims. He wants to reclaim Wilson's historical memory to bolster the very idea of liberal internationalism, which he correctly considers under assault. For Smith, the problem is not that the United States stands for liberal...