The Fourteen Points presented by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in an address before the Congress in 1918, was primarily a peace program with an idealistic tone. Through this peace program, the President called for peace of moderation, open diplomacy, freedom of the seas, removal of economic barriers in international trade, an impractical adjustment of colonial claims, reduction of armaments, self-determination, and to him most important of all, the formation of a general association of nations – the League of Nations (George and George, 1964). In his Fourteen Points, Wilson sought the attention of his countrymen as well as that of the peoples of the Allied countries away from retribution and hatred and toward the building of a democratic and open new world order. Some of the Fourteen Points that he presented addressed specific issues of territorial adjustment after the war. Belgium must be “evacuated and restored.” The Germans had to quit France, return Alsace and Lorraine that they had taken during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 to France. The many distinctive peoples now ruled by the Austro-Hungarian, Turkish and German Empires must have the right to self-determination (George and George, 1964). A Polish state was to be created, and the smaller states of southeastern Europe must be restored and made independent. Wilson called for the evacuation of Russian territory by hostile German forces and fair adjustment of territorial, economic and political disagreements with the ultimate objective of forming a free Russian state, purged of its Bolshevik aberration, back into normal interactions with other nations. He also said that secret treated and other clandestine arrangements among the nations must be eliminated, and high seas must be open to all commerce without interference. He promoted free international trade with minimal tariffs and other barriers. He also called for a reduction in the production of armaments and said that disagreement over colonial matters must be resolved in a “free, open-minded and absolutely impartial” manner with the interests of the people involved duly considered. He called for a general association of nations that will be responsible for “affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.”
The normative political basis of Wilson’s vision of world order grew naturally from his progressive inclinations in domestic politics. Wilson believed that America working along with the League of Nations could establish world peace. Wilson, in his 1917 war message, openly declared that “a steadfast concert of peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations.” Though he did not directly invoke the need for universal democracy, Wilson indirectly calls for democracy by invoking the domestic political conditions necessary to implement the first point “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall always proceed frankly and in public view” (Russell and Antholis, 1995). Thus, Wilson believed by democratic methods and through the union of democratic nations, a new world order of peace could be established.
Wilson did not address Germany specifically in the Fourteen Points (Zieger, 2000). Moreover, some of the points were vague or contradictory. Poland, for example, was promised free access to the sea in Point XIII. But the only possible corridor to the sea ran through territory inhabited by a considerable body of Germans. If Poland did not get the corridor, one of the points would be violated; if she did get it, the point relating to self-determination would be at least partially violated: Moreover, Wilson made the mistake of pitching the Points in a highly idealistic note, making then sound unrealistic and susceptible to sloganizing. “Freedom of the seas,” “open covenants openly arrived at,” “self-determination for peoples.” Slogans prevent independent thinking and may lead to misinterpretation as well. The Allied governments favored the Fourteen Points as a weapon for disarming the enemy but did not accept it as a platform for peace. This was because the Fourteen Points failed to address the fact that they had already made a number of secret treaties among themselves for carving up the enemy’s territory, and they had no intention of giving up their territories on the basis of this program. These are some aspects Woodrow Wilson failed to pay attention to while presenting the peace program.
Bibliography
George, L. Alexander and George, L. Juliette (1964). Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House: A Personality Study. Courier Dover Publications.
Russett, M. Bruce and Antholis, William (1995). Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World. Princeton University Press.
Zieger, H. Robert (2000). America’s Great War: World War I and the American Experience. Rowman & Littlefield.