Failure of Woodrow Wilson\'s Fourteen

FAILURE OF WOODROW WILSON'S FOURTEEN POINTS

played an important role in the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, but did not actually become part of the League of Nations. That was ironic since it was United States President Woodrow Wilson who first proposed its inclusion in the Treaty of Versailles peace treaty (Goldfield, Abbott, Argersinger, & Argersinger, 2004). The final peace settlement did include Wilson's famous Fourteen Points, but, more generally, Wilson was not as successful as he had hoped to be in influencing the outcome of the Conference through his proposed Fourteen Points (Goldfield, Abbott, Argersinger, & Argersinger, 2004).

The European Dynamic

One of the central assumptions made by Wilson that was an essential part of the lasting international peace that he envisioned was the end to the types of secret treaties, agreements, and alignments among the European powers. Therefore, their respective continuing commitment to those very types of arrangements in the post-war period immediately undermined the concept for peace that Wilson hoped to help impose after the war (LeFeber, 1994).

Ironically, Allied wartime propaganda had been so successful at generating hatred of the German people and of the Central European Powers that they also conflicted with the entire spirit of forgiveness that Wilson knew would be necessary do establish any long-lasting and meaningful peace in the postwar period (Goldfield, Abbott, & Argersinger, 2004). In general, the Treaty contained such punitive provisions that it virtually precluded the creation of any genuine spirit of international cooperation it envisioned.

The political representatives of the Allied victors were substantially bound by their respective domestic political pressures and the expectations on the part of their constituents that Germany (in particular) would be held fully accountable for all of the atrocities (both real and those exaggerated by wartime propaganda campaigns to build popular support for the war effort) they committed in occupied territories during the war. To whom their respective representatives were politically beholden domestically (Goldfield, Abbott, & Argersinger, 2004). By the time of the Conference, Wilson had himself already violated two of his own Fourteen Points by acceding to Britain's demands that contradicted Wilson's proposal for unrestricted international rights to the seas and by sending U.S. troops to Russia in connection with support for the anti-Communists instead of respecting Russia's right to self-determination (Goldfield, Abbott, & Argersinger, 2004).

Domestic Political Opposition Faced by Wilson