When Woodrow Wilson became president in 1913, he pledged to open a new chapter in America’s relations with Latin America and the rest of the world. The United States would continue to support order, stability, and American access to overseas markets, but it would no longer “carry a big stick.” Disdaining power politics and the use of force, Wilson vowed to place diplomacy and moral persuasion at the center of American foreign policy. Diplomacy, however, proved less effective than he had hoped. Despite Wilson’s stated commitment to the peaceful resolution of international issues, during his presidency the American military intervened repeatedly in Latin American affairs, and American troops fought on European soil in the bloody global conflict that contemporaries called the Great War.