Despite the fact of two foreign wars (Mexican War, 1846-1848; and Spanish American War, 1898) the foreign policy of Washington remained the policy of this nation, unaltered, for 121 years–until Woodrow Wilson's war message to Congress in April, 1917.
Wilson himself, when campaigning for re-election in 1916, had unequivocally supported our traditional foreign policy: his one major promise to the American people was that he would keep them out of the European war.
Yet, even while making this promise, Wilson was yielding to a pressure he was never able to withstand: the influence of Colonel Edward M. House, Wilson's all-powerful adviser. According to House's own papers and the historical studies of Wilson's ardent admirers (see, for example, Intimate Papers of Colonel House, edited by Charles Seymour, published in 1926 by Houghton Mifflin; and, The Crisis of the Old Order by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., published 1957 by Houghton Mifflin), House created Wilson's domestic and foreign policies, selected most of Wilson's cabinet and other major appointees, and ran Wilson's State Department.
House had powerful connections with international bankers in New York. He was influential, for example, with great financial institutions represented by such people as Paul and Felix Warburg, Otto H. Kahn, Louis Marburg, Henry Morgenthau, Jacob and Mortimer Schiff, Herbert Lehman. House had equally powerful connections with bankers and politicians of Europe.
Bringing all of these forces to bear, House persuaded Wilson that America had an evangelistic mission to save the world for "democracy." The first major twentieth century tragedy for the United States resulted: Wilson's war message to Congress and the declaration of war against Germany on April 6, 1917.
House also persuaded Wilson that the way to avoid all future wars was to create a world federation of nations. On May 27, 1916, in a speech to the League to Enforce Peace, Wilson first publicly endorsed Colonel House's world-government idea (without, however, identifying it as originating with House).
In September, 1916, Wilson (at the urging of House) appointed a committee of intellectuals (the first President's Brain Trust) to formulate peace terms and draw up a charter for world government. This committee, with House in charge, consisted of about 150 college professors, graduate students, lawyers, economists, writers, and others. Among them were men still familiar to Americans in the 1960's: Walter Lippmann (columnist); Norman Thomas (head of the American socialist party); Allen Dulles (former head of C.I.A.); John Foster Dulles (late Secretary of State); Christian A. Herter (former Secretary of State).
These eager young intellectuals around Wilson, under the clear eyes of crafty Colonel House, drew up their charter for world government (League of Nations Covenant) and prepared for the brave new socialist one-world to follow World War I. But things went sour at the Paris Peace Conference. They soured even more when constitutionalists in the United States Senate found out what was being planned and made it quite plain that the Senate would not authorize United States membership in such a world federation.