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Today in military history: Wilson calls for peace based on "Fourteen Points"
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The first assembly of the the League of Nations in Geneva, 1920. The League, which was eventually replaced by the United Nations, was established at the end of World War I, at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, who proposed it in his "Fourteen Points" speech. Ironically, the U.S. refused to join. (Photo courtesy of League of Nations Photo Archive)
On January 8, 1918, four years after the start of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson delivered his “Fourteen Points” speech to Congress. Anticipating the salient topics of peace negotiations, Wilson called for a fair and just peace that would recognize the sovereignty of the most oppressed and damaged nations:
What we demand in this war ... is that the world be made fit and safe ... for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and ... we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us.
Wilson urged the world to draft a peace treaty based on fourteen points (I put the most important ones in bold):
- Transparent international negotiations (no backdoor deals between any countries – ever again)
- “Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas” (unless necessary to enforce international treaties – and, even then, restrictions on navigation should be enforced through “international action”)
- Liberalization of trade and the establishment of a global free market, where “equality of trade conditions” prevailed
- Reduction of armaments “to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety”
- “A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims,” with equal consideration given to both the interests of colonized peoples and colonizing governments (to European governments, this was a radical and outrageous claim)
- The removal of foreign troops from Russian territory and the provision of any assistance necessary to help Russia independently pursue her own political development and enter the “society of free nations” (such a society was little more than an imagined bloc in 1918, since neither the United Nations nor its predecessor, the League of Nations, had been established yet)
- The removal of foreign troops from Belgium and the restoration of Belgian sovereignty. “Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired,” Wilson asserted. (Belgium would be a sore point in World War II. It wasn’t until the U.S. Army broke through the Ardennes on the Belgian border – after fighting the longest battle in Army history – that the Reichstag’s fate was really sealed. For more on the Battle of the Bulge, see December 26, 2008’s Today in military history: Patton's 4th brings relief to Allied forces in the Bulge.)
- The removal of foreign troops from France.
- The clarification of Italy’s borders.
- Giving the Austro-Hungarian people as many opportunities to freely develop themselves and their state as possible. (This was essentially a call for Allied European states, like Britain and France, to ease up on demands for retribution against the country that had caused the war. Austria-Hungary, which dissolved after the war ended in November 1918, included present-day Austria, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia (not formed then).)
- The removal of foreign troops from Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro; the clarification of these countries’ borders; and “international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity” of these states.
- Assurance of the sovereignty of “the Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire" and the opening of the Dardanelles (where the famous defeat of Allied forces occurred in the Battle of Gallipoli; it inspired the 1981 movie Gallipoli.)
- The establishment of an independent Polish state and assurance of its sovereignty.
- The establishment of an international political body “for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.”
Wilson got precious few of his fourteen points. The French wanted war reparations (i.e. retribution). The British didn’t want freedom of the seas. Wilson, willing to compromise for the sake of seeing the fourteenth point realized – the establishment of a “league of nations” – conceded other points. In any case, the U.S. Congress refused to ratify the resulting Treaty of Versailles or recognize the newly-created League of Nations. Without American leadership, the League's effectiveness was hampered. It proved unable to prevent World War II, which resulted, in large part, from the poor economic conditions that the Treaty of Versailles created in Germany. Poverty and need, coupled with German resentment of the humiliating terms of surrender in the First World War, set the stage for the introduction of a political party that promised to restore national pride and power in Germany: the Nazis.
For his leadership in establishing the League of Nations, Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919.
For more info: Wilson's Fourteen Points
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