John Ikenberry seems to me to be exactly right that Wilson showed himself to be realistic when the final Covenant of the League was set up. While it would have been preferable that the League be dominated by democratic states, in the world such as it was that could not be. What was possible was a system of collective security composed of a mix of regime types, the hope being that even autocratic states would often have an interest in peace and that the democratic form of government would be making progress in bringing more and more nations to the light. Wilson surely recognized as well that not all autocratic states were the same. I suspect he would have agreed with John Rawls that some were "relatively decent hierarchical states" and could be worked with. That said, Wilson was surely nervous that without the League being dominated by democracies it could be effective.

For where John is mistaken is in his belief that Wilson never seriously contemplated restricting the League to democracies. Apparently John has not read the drafts of the League from January and February 1919 that were written in Wilson's hand. There are four drafts by Wilson of the Covenant, the second, third, and fourth (the last dated Feb. 2) all written in Paris and all having the stipulation that those who want to join the League must abide by "the principle of popular self-government." Moreover, the states awarded Mandates by the League needed to assure there "fair" labor practices in the territories awarded, religious freedom, treatment of racial and national minorities the same as those the majority received, and, as he put it in the first Paris draft, "in the future government of these peoples and territories the rule of self determination, or the consent of the governed to their form of government, shall be fairly and reasonably applied." Nor is this all. I have been reading the reports (not exact verbal transcripts) of the meeting of the Commission setting up the League. On Feb. 5, 1919 there is a long discussion where it was determined by Wilson, in agreement with the French and Italians but apparently not with the British, that self-governing meant "a state whose institutions were democratic or liberal" thus giving precision to Wilson's proposal on that date that "only self governing states shall be admitted to the League." John is correct that Wilson did not use the word "democratic/democracy" but this is what he was thinking--liberal, constitutional government.

Then something happened. Between February 6 and March 22, Wilson altered his views. During this time he had returned to the US. But he also had come to realize that his definition would keep Japan out of the League and that Britain was continuing to insist that India be admitted as a member although in Wilson's mind it most certainly was not self-governing (in the discussions the president pointed out that for the same reason he would not consider proposing membership for the Philippines). Perhaps Wilson had come to the realization of John Ikenberry's point that in the world such as it was in 1919 to insist on a collective security system dominated by democracies was in effect to introduce a balance of power scheme pitting the world's democracies against the autocrats. Certainly he was already quite concerned about Bolshevism, although he never conceptualized what it meant to be "totalitarian," nor could he at this early moment. One of my projects this summer is to go through the enormous compilations of documents on the Versailles meetings to see if I can find out just when and why Wilson gave up on his insistence that democracy be a criterion of membership. I would appreciate hearing from any of you who has an insight into this. For the time being, I only assume that he settled for exactly what John says he settled for, but with far more regrets than John allows.

The initial preference of Wilson for a League dominated by democracies was never entertained by FDR, as Michael Lind correctly says in his blog. But the UN then came to be plagued by just the problems that Wilson would have anticipated: the autocracies and the democracies could not be of one mind about much of anything. Hence in the late 1990s we have Madeleine Albright with her Community of Democracies. I would like to hear more about this from John as I came across records showing him sitting on its directorship board. What could be more Wilsonian, John? Here surely was the origins of your and Anne-Marie Slaughter's notion of a Concert of Democracies in your 2006 Princeton Report--pure Wilsonianism. And here the model that John McCain took as his own in his 2008 presidential campaign. Finally the Wilsonian moment seemed to have arrived. And in all of it effective multilateralism depended on the organization being dominated by democracies, hence the primary importance of democratic government in the Wilsonian scheme of things.

Now one issue I have not addressed and will do so only if asked (the reader has surely had enough by now): does this mean that Wilson would forcibly promote democracy? My answer is that he would have if he could have, but he had doubts that in the world of 1919 the US would have been successful. So he had to wait for the times to change. And this they did between 1989 and 1991 with the fall of the Soviet empire and Union. Why not then become more assertive, as Wilson had been in Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic although without success? Wilson subscribed to the notion that not only did peoples evolve but so too there was a global evolution afoot. The neoconservatives seem to me to be legitimate heirs of Wilson in this regard. Why not apply a little force? John says that a liberal world order would induce other countries to democratize, but if this is true why were he and Slaughter explicit in their 2006 report that the Concert of Democracies they envisioned have as its primary task forcible interventions into countries that were gross human rights violators or harboring weapons of mass destruction? In effect there is no meaningful difference between Ikenberry and Slaughter one the one hand and the neocons on the other in 2006 except that they would multilateralize their interventions to make them more effective! When John writes that "Wilson and yours truly are not neo-cons" please allow me to smile.......