Chapter 01: Wilson Condemns the Paris Commune and Opposes the Russian Communists, 1919–1921 (Part II)

The American interventionary forces were not dispatched for the explicit purpose of fighting the Bolsheviks, although several clashes did occur between the two sides. Wilson’s motives for intervention were not driven by particular malice; nevertheless, the deployment of U.S. troops aroused deep resentment among Russian communists. The intervention ultimately failed to prevent a bloody civil war. The Russian Civil War claimed the lives of tens of millions and brought even greater devastation to a society already in ruins. In April 1920, Wilson announced the withdrawal of most U.S. forces from Russia, although some units did not leave until 1922. This marked the first direct confrontation between the United States and communism.

In 1919, in the face of the Bolshevik victory in Russia, President Wilson warned: “The poison of communism has penetrated into the veins of free peoples.” Secretary of State Robert Lansing declared: “The Bolsheviks are a greater threat to the security of the United States than Germany.” The Russian Communists came to power through violence and deceit, and Wilson stated bluntly: “Moscow is a negation of America.” Fortunately, the communist movement did not shake the foundations of American constitutional democracy. Lin Feng observed: “Because of the supreme authority of the Constitution, the communist movements that swept across continental Europe from the latter half of the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century did not have much impact on America’s political order. Although the Communist Party was a legal political party in the United States, it failed to win many voters or hearts and never won any election. Within the American political spectrum, it was essentially negligible.”

President Wilson truly deserves to be regarded as a great president in American history. As early as 1919, he perceived the threat that the communist virus posed to humanity. With keen insight, Wilson recognized the dangers of communism and attempted to stop its spread.

Wilson issued sharp warnings about the viciousness and infiltration of communism, pointing out that the Russian Communists had seized power through violence and deception, stood in opposition to the United States, and constituted a denial of America—posing a greater threat than Germany. At that time, the threat of communism to the United States and to humanity was only beginning to emerge; the Chinese Communist Party had not yet been founded. One cannot but admire Wilson’s wisdom and far-sighted vision.

Placed in today’s context, Wilson’s words read like a prophetic warning delivered a century in advance. Exactly one hundred years have now passed. Historians estimate that during the Soviet Union’s seventy years of communism, the government killed nearly 62 million people. Beginning in 1919, the communist virus spread through hosts such as the Soviet Union, China, Yugoslavia, Poland, East Germany, Cuba, and Cambodia. Communist regimes throughout the twentieth century killed between 110 million and 260 million people and continue to harm humanity to this day. After a century of devastation, communism’s scourge upon mankind is approaching its end.

The scholar Yan Jiaqi has argued that people who lived through the twentieth century will not forget the two world wars and often regard the rise and fall of communism as a matter of first importance. Yet when we shift our perspective to the entire second millennium, it becomes clear that many other major events also shaped world history, such as the Mongol conquests, the expansion of Islam, the Reformation, the rise of colonialism, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the British and French revolutions, the American War of Independence, and the decolonization movements since the nineteenth century. The rise of communism was merely an episode in the final phase of the second millennium—a form of “self-protective reaction” by certain “underdeveloped countries” threatened by Western colonialism. Faced with colonial exploitation and the advance of free trade, planned economies and one-party rule became a wall of isolation and self-suffocation.

That the communist movement would inevitably “self-suffocate” due to its own structural contradictions and ultimately disappear from the earth has today become a common understanding. As the first U.S. president to engage directly with the communist movement in both theory and practice, Wilson perceived its dangers at the very moment communism began to emerge. This demonstrates the broad vision and strategic foresight of a “scholar-president.” Wilson’s resistance to communism laid the foundations of America’s anti-communist stance and also set the stage for the Cold War and the policy of containment toward the Soviet Union. Although there was not yet direct military confrontation, many essential elements were already present: suspicion, mutual aversion, fear, ideological hostility, and diplomatic isolation. The great drama of confrontation between capitalism and communism in the twentieth century was opened by President Wilson.

Regrettably, modern American history has seen several presidents who failed to clearly recognize the dangers of communism, including Roosevelt, Nixon, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and President Trump. They engaged in overly intimate and entangled relationships with leaders of communist states, relationships difficult to sever or resolve. Their conduct toward communist China will be discussed one by one later. By comparison, Wilson’s anti-communist stance and his foresight regarding the harm communism would inflict upon the world can only be described as extraordinary.

It has now been exactly one hundred years since Wilson’s presidency. During his time in office, he not only confronted the founding of the Soviet Union but also faced World War I and the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic. When the Spanish flu reached the United States, it initially spread through military camps and eventually became a full-scale pandemic.

John M. Barry, author of The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History, wrote: “President Wilson never made a public statement about the epidemic. In order to maintain morale during the war, the government lied. National public health leaders even made statements such as: ‘This is just another name for ordinary influenza.’ By deliberately downplaying the epidemic, more people died.”

The Spanish flu overwhelmed the U.S. healthcare system. Much like today’s COVID-19 pandemic, public spaces were largely deserted, and workplaces and social activities were shut down. By minimizing the severity of the epidemic, President Wilson himself, along with several close advisers and staff members, contracted the virus. Wilson later suffered a stroke, leaving him incapacitated.

By a strange coincidence, one hundred years after the birth of the communist system, the world has again been struck by a global pandemic—the “novel coronavirus.” Meanwhile, the century-long contest and struggle between constitutional democracy and communism has yet to reach its conclusion. The communist specter continues to haunt the world, from the highest heavens to the deepest abyss. Whether the United States can defeat communism is a decisive struggle of the twenty-first century, one that concerns the fate of humanity itself.

Zhong Wen concludes: In opposing communist ideology and its external expansion, Wilson possessed a truly global vision. He laid the foundations for America’s resistance to communism and deserves a perfect score for that achievement. However, his understanding of communism was still largely intuitive rather than fully analytical. At that time, communism was only beginning to emerge, and the full extent of the damage caused by the communist virus had not yet been revealed. After World War I, Wilson proposed the establishment of the League of Nations, but the U.S. Congress refused to approve it, causing the effort to fail at the final step and planting the seeds of the Second World War. Moreover, American political and intellectual circles lacked a rational understanding of the essence of communism and failed to exert sufficient effort to eliminate it at the embryonic stage, allowing the Soviet Union to expand continuously in Europe and Asia—especially by nurturing, giving birth to, and cultivating the Chinese Communist Party. As the old saying goes, even gathering all the iron of the nine provinces would not suffice to forge such a colossal mistake.