Woodrow Wilson Quotes
A powerful Navy we have always regarded as our proper and natural means of defense; and it has always been of defense that we have thought, never of aggression or of conquest. But who shall tell us now what sort of Navy to build? We shall take leave to be strong upon the seas, in the future as in the past; and there will be no thought of offense or provocation in that. Our ships are our natural bulwarks.
Wilson, Woodrow. "Second Annual Message to Congress." 8 Dec. 1914. The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, edited by Ray Stannard Baker and William E. Dodd, vol. 3, Harper & Brothers, 1927, p. 226.
This quotation illustrates several historical differences of the past with today. To be a world superpower, one had to have a dominant navy. Yet that navy was, in Churchill’s concept, a defensive system. It could protect the nation from invasion, and its merchant ships on the seas, but a navy provided no threat to invade towns and villages in Europe or elsewhere. Germany and France in contrast, with their large armies could invade other nations and menace Europe and Asia. It also illustrates why the navy and the army were considered completely separate departments of government in that they had different functions. The early American government had a Navy Department and Secretary but no Secretary of the Army or standing army.
Germany had a very small and insignificant navy. It was Tirpitz who persuaded the nation to develop sea power.
See {629350} for his reason that we had to have a strong navy.
Military men tend to rely so much on military history that they are almost always fighting the last war. Soon air power would supplant sea power as the critical factor. Then nuclear power, and then nuclear weapons became too severe for actual use and yet wars still continued with no consensus as to that will be in the future.
Japan was a militarist aggressive state when they started WWII in the Pacific. Their military brutalized China and almost every other country in Asia committing atrocities that those nations still are bitter about today. The unconditional surrender required that their new Constitution prohibit a military. However some of the Conservatives like Abe do not believe that Japan should be the only nation denied a military. Most of the rest of Asia even resents and fears the defense forces that they have and would seriously oppose a reestablishment of a military.
He was referring to attacking the Barbary States. The Barbary Pirates had an incredible extortion racket going in the Mediterranean. If nations would pay them an annual sum each year, they would not attack and seize merchant ships of that country and sell the ships and goods while holding the sailors for ransom. See {640846}.
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of Princeton University and as the 34th governor of New Jersey before winning the 1912 presidential election. As President, Wilson led the United States into World War I in 1917. He was the leading architect of the League of Nations, and his progressive stance on foreign policy came to be known as Wilsonianism. Scholars have generally ranked Wilson in the upper tier of U.S presidents, although he has been criticized for supporting racial segregation and white supremacy.
