1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder

Historian Herman (senior fellow, Hudson Inst.; Douglas MacArthur) argues that both U.S. President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) and Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) were, to a degree, idealists who viewed the European political order, mired in war, as corrupt and unredeemable. In 1917, each man sought to remake that order. Wilson envisioned a peaceful revolution in which people lived free from violence and want with the right to govern one's self. Lenin sought class warfare, led by a revolutionary elite ruling through violence and fear, and with this revolution spreading beyond the borders of individual countries. According to Herman, the fundamental differences in these two worldviews shaped the character of the superpowers that emerged and influenced the course of World War II and the Cold War.