This volume suffers from serious shortcomings. It seeks to investigate how the congress and the public reacted to Woodrow Wilson’s Caribbean policy. Unhappily, it lacks focus, direction, conceptual coherence, and methodological rigor. Studies of public opinion require delicate handling. Usually they seek to demonstrate an impact (or lack thereof) on policy formation, or they present a discussion of policy alternatives. This work does neither. Rather, it reports unsystematically what was said by various figures in congress, in the press, and in the periodical literature. Ultimately it demonstrates that different people thought different things, although a majority seem to have supported President Wilson for reasons of security and humanitarianism.
Professor Carter proclaims as a “premise” an anti-Marxian position, holding curiously that an economic interpretation is refuted by the fact that policy initiatives came from government officials and not from members of the business community. Subsequently ignoring the implications of this perplexing claim, with which the author never comes to grips, Carter then recounts responses to the administration’s actions in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and the Danish West Indies. Although portions of this work are interesting, at times revealing, the book overall fails to provide an integrated and sustained analysis.
A sense of uncertainty of purpose pervades this study. It might have illuminated important issues such as the function of opinionmaking elites in foreign policy or the role of public opinion on policy makers. The author alludes to such matters but does not develop them. He observes correctly that contradictions in Wilson’s vision of hemispheric solidarity impeded the fulfillment of his aims, yet Carter does not push the matter. He is content to say that the congress, the press, and the president sometimes differed over methods but usually agreed upon the goals of peace, prosperity, and stability within the Caribbean. Such findings spring few surprises.
