Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points
A Post War Peace Plan Based on Utopian Idealism
Dec 15, 2008 Michael Streich
Responding to Woodrow Wilson’s post-war proposals in 1918, Georges Clemenceau supposedly said, “God Almighty gave mankind the Ten Commandments; and we rejected them. Now comes Wilson with his Fourteen Points…” Thought to be idealistic and Utopian, Wilson’s Fourteen Points were proclaimed January 8, 1918 before a Joint Session of Congress. Wilson’s introductory remarks presaged the tone of his points but also demonstrated his idealism: “The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of secret covenants…”
Wilson's 14 Points Stressed Open Covenants of Peace, Openly Arrived At
Wilson begins his address by noting the recent peace “parlays” between the Russian government and Germany (the Central Powers) at Brest-Litovsk. Wilson’s laudatory comments omit the fact that Russia was under Bolshevik control and that the separate peace being negotiated had little to do with making the world safer for democracy. Leon Trotsky had rolled out all of the pre-war secret agreements for everyone to see in an effort to prove the war had not been fought for noble purposes.
For Wilson, international diplomacy had to be based on openness. His first point referred to the post-war peace process. The covenants of peace coming out of that process must be open as well as the negotiations leading to the final treaty terms. Wilson continues, stating, “after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind…” This would be the ideal that most nations would never accept.
Wilson's Fourteen Points Insisted on Freedom of Navigation and Equality of Trade
Wilson’s second point reflected strong American notions of freedom on the high seas, an issue dating back to the Quasi War under John Adams. Imperial Germany’s policy of unrestricted submarine warfare had been one reason America entered the war in 1917. Similarly, the peace process should result in the removal of all economic barriers and “the establishment of an equality of trade…” Wilson knew that a global return to prosperity depended upon open and unfettered commerce between nations.
Armaments and Colonial Claims in the Post World War One World
Wilson’s call for arms reductions was noble but vague at the same time. How does a nation equate “domestic safety” with quantitative defense measures? How many guns constitute the “lowest point?’ The victorious Allies knew that, in part, victory was due to a pre-war arms race and that the merchants of death would continue their trade after the war, for there was always another war in European history and no nation wanted to be caught unaware.
The question of colonial claims went to the heart of secret treaties as Britain and France sought to dismember the German Empire. Wilson referred to “sovereignty” and “the interests of the populations concerned.” How could Britain, for example, agree to such a principle and not give home rule to India? Even in America, influential opposition Senators like William Borah of Idaho were calling on the government to grant independence to the Philippines.
Final Points Call for a League of Nations
Most of Wilson’s other points dealt with land settlements relative to war time occupation. The French particularly liked Point 7, giving them back Alsace-Lorraine which had been taken by the Germans in 1871. His final point, the creation of a League of Nations, was adopted, but the United States never joined.
Woodrow Wilson was calling for a new order in the world, in some ways, a millennial utopia: “ It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak.” Wilson saw the end of this, the greatest and most terrible of all wars, as an opportunity to fashion a new and enlightened world attitude that, in some ways, was influenced by his abiding Calvinism as well as American egalitarianism.
Sources:
Woodrow Wilson’s Address to Congress, January 8, 1918
Harold Nicolson, Peace Making 1919 (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1965)
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