Civilization and the typhoon : America, land reform and "irrational revolution" in the Philippines, Vietnam and El Salvador 1950-1984

Abstract

In December 1918, en route to the Versailles Conference, President Woodrow Wilson of the United States remarked to his private secretary, Colonel Edward House, that that Conference must not become "another Congress of Vienna". He feared, he said, that "civilization" would be swamped by a tidal wave of ultra-radical revolution, unless such revolution was pre-empted by liberal and progressive leadership by the statesmen of the West. Alluding to the upheavals then already taking place in China, Mexico and Russia, he declared "civilization must be more liberal than ever, it must even be radical, if civilization is to escape the typhoon". Both the theme and the title of this dissertation are taken from this observation by the American President in the wake of the First World War. Woodrow Wilson believed that the tumults in China, Mexico and Russia in the 1910's were "irrational" revolutions, but he had grave doubts as to the moral and political possibilities for "counterrevolution". This ambivalence and anxiety was not peculiar to Woodrow Wilson. It has exercised liberal and even conservative statesmen, both in the West and elsewhere, ever since the French Revolution. In the era of the Cold War, it has especially characterized American democratic self-consciousness. This dissertation is an effort to explore American discourse in that era, in particular, concerning mediation between "irrational revolution" and "counter-revolution". After setting the terms of debate in the context of the debates over the great eighteenth century revolutions and the problem of "totalitarian" revolution in the twentieth century, the dissertation narrows its focus to concentrate on American responses to the prospect of radical revolution in the Cold War era.