“Securing Political Intelligence” U.S. Pursuit of “Scientific Peace” and the Making of the 1919 Coolidge Mission

Abstract

The article examines the political, intellectual, and institutional conditions that led to the establishment of the 1919 Coolidge Mission in Vienna. Situating the mission within the context of the United States peace preparations and Woodrow Wilson’s pursuit of a “scientific peace,” it argues that the late 1918 demand for “securing political intelligence” in the territories of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire emerged as a response to the epistemic and institutional limitations of American diplomacy at the end of the First World War. Drawing on archival and published sources, memoirs, and secondary literature, and combining process tracing, contextual analysis, biographical and prosopographical elements, the article reconstructs how the pursuit for political intelligence was conceptualized, organized, and operationalized by the United States during the transition from wartime diplomacy to postwar peacemaking. Particular attention is given to the biography of Archibald Cary Coolidge, who was ultimately selected to lead the mission, as his academic expertise, institutional experience, and ties to the U.S. foreign service help explain how expert knowledge was mobilized in American diplomatic and peacemaking practices during and immediately after the First World War. The article demonstrates that the Coolidge Mission was a product of broader efforts to institutionalize knowledge production as a tool of American state power. By analyzing the making of the mission, the study contributes to the historiography of U.S. foreign relations by highlighting the interplay of Wilsonian ideals of rational, knowledge-driven policymaking and the institutional challenges the United States confronted as it sought to reshape the postwar international order.