w aging w ar to t ransform the w orld 131On the other hand, the Wilson administration’s approach to mobili-
zation and to sustaining popular support for the war eff ort incurred a
political price. Many Progressives had signed on in support of the war
because they saw it as a vehicle to promote social justice at home and
abroad. Th ey could not have been more mistaken. Th e administration
enlisted business and conservative labor leaders to manage economic
mobilization and deputized nationalist vigilante groups to suppress
antiwar dissent and hound radicals into silence. By the time the war
ended, key constituencies backing social reform had been delegitimized,
even as strong ties formed between government and business.
Th e Wilson administration thus off ers an answer to another wartime
leadership puzzle—the question of why wars undermine presidential
domestic agendas and hopes for signifi cant social reforms. In this case,
the decisions by Wilson and key political appointees to empower con-
servative forces as key actors in the mobilization project and in the
attacks on critics of the war (and radicals more generally) placed those
forces in a far more infl uential position than they would have enjoyed
had America not entered the war.
Wilson’s inability to secure the kind of peace treaty that would justify
American intervention points up how problematic presidents find
peace-building. Much more than Lincoln, Wilson considered what the
postwar order should be. But there was an enormous mismatch between
his expansive vision for the future and his capacity to realize it. His
experience suggests two observations. First, presidents face a dilemma
when they seek to defi ne war goals. If they aim for modest stakes, it
becomes more diffi cult to justify the sacrifi ces that war entails. Wilson
would have found it hard to summon Americans to the colors merely
to make it safe for a handful of travelers to sail safely into a war zone.
On the other hand, by promising that war would yield transformative
results, such as the broad spread of democracy or an international order
that will check aggression, presidents risk leaving people disillusioned,
with potentially far-reaching repercussions.
Second, bolder goals require more resources, resources that presi-
dents are unlikely to retain at the end of a war. To secure his main
peace-building ends—the creation of an eff ective League of Nations, a
generous peace with Germany, and self-determination for former
imperial subjects—Wilson needed to dominate the peace conference in