what happened to woodrow wilsons fourteen points policy

Woodrow Wilson

In this famous voice communication before Congress, Jan 8, 1918, most the stop of the First Globe War, President Wilson laid down fourteen points equally the "only possible" program for world peace. After these points were used every bit the ground for peace negotiations. The demand for this statement of war aims was prompted by the failure of the Allies to agree upon a conception of them, and by the overtures of Russia toward Frg. The 14 Points were based on a report prepared for the President by The Research, a committee organized by Colonel Due east. M. House for the purpose of studying Allied and American policy.

The The states was a reluctant argumentative in the Great War, and the Wilson administration did its best to remain neutral. Finally, withal, in response to entreaties from the Allies and a renewed German U-gunkhole campaign, the Usa declared state of war on the Central Powers in Apr 1917.
The European combatants had been preparing for war for several years, and a circuitous web of clandestine agreements tied various nations together; both the Allies and the Central Powers had aspirations of seizing command of their enemies' empires. The United States, however, had not been a political party to whatever of those agreements, and President Woodrow Wilson badly sought a footing for ending the war that would allow both sides to participate fully in building a lasting peace. Both before and afterwards American entry into the conflict, Wilson chosen on the belligerents to state their war aims. But since many of these aims involved territorial ambitions, both sides refused.

Finally Wilson lost patience, and on January eight, 1918, went before Congress to verbalize what he considered the bones bounds of a just and lasting peace. The Fourteen Points, as the program came to exist called, consisted of sure bones principles, such as freedom of the seas and open up covenants, a diversity of geographic arrangements carrying out the principle of self-decision, and above all, a League of Nations that would enforce the peace.

The Fourteen Points are of import for several reasons. First of all, they translated many of the principles of American domestic reform, known every bit Progressivism, into foreign policy. Notions of free trade, open agreements, democracy and cocky-determination were mere variants of domestic programs that reformers had been supporting for two decades. Second, the Fourteen Points constituted the simply statement by any of the belligerents of their war aims. They thus became the basis for German surrender, and the only criteria past which to judge the peace treaty.

Nearly important, where many countries believed that only self-interest should guide foreign policy, in the Fourteen Points Wilson argued that morality and ethics had to be the basis for the strange policy of a democratic society. While subsequent American governments have not e'er shared that conventionalities, many American presidents have agreed with the Wilsonian conventionalities in morality as a cardinal ingredient in strange as well as domestic policy.

For further reading: Arthur South. Link, Wilson the Diplomatist (1957); Arthur

Walworth, Woodrow Wilson and His Peacemakers (1983).
Gentlemen of the Congress …

Information technology will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when they are begun, shall be absolutely open and that they shall involve and let henceforth no secret understandings of whatever kind. The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by; then is also the day of hush-hush covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments and likely at some unlooked-for moment to upset the peace of the world. Information technology is this happy fact, now articulate to the view of every public man whose thoughts do not still linger in an age that is dead and gone, which makes it possible for every nation whose purposes are consistent with justice and the peace of the world to avow now or at any other time the objects it has in view.

Nosotros entered this war considering violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people incommunicable unless they were corrected and the world secured once for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is naught peculiar to ourselves. Information technology is that the earth be fabricated fit and prophylactic to live in; and particularly that information technology be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our ain, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, exist assured of justice and off-white dealing past the other peoples of the earth as confronting force and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the earth are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part nosotros see very conspicuously that unless justice be done to others it will not be washed to us. The program of the world'southward peace, therefore, is our programme; and that program, the only possible plan, as we see it, is this:

I. Open up covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which in that location shall be no private international understandings of any kind but affairs shall keep always frankly and in the public view.

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in state of war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part past international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

III. The removal, then far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade weather condition amongst all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest indicate consistent with domestic rubber.

V. A complimentary, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the all-time and freest cooperation of the other nations of the earth in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the contained determination of her own political development and national policy and clinch her of a sincere welcome into the lodge of costless nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than than a welcome, assistance likewise of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The handling accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their practiced volition, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

Vii. Belgium, the whole earth will concur, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other costless nations. No other single act will serve as this volition serve to restore confidence amidst the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with ane another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever dumb.

Viii. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the incorrect done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the thing of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for well-nigh fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more than be fabricated secure in the interest of all.

9. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italian republic should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.

X. The peoples of Austria-Republic of hungary, whose place among the nations nosotros wish to see safeguarded and bodacious, should be accorded the freest opportunity of democratic development.

Xi. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should exist evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the body of water; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.

XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are at present under Turkish dominion should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of an democratic development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

Thirteen. An contained Polish country should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure admission to the sea, and whose political and economical independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed past international covenant.

XIV. A general association of nations must exist formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording common guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to bully and small states alike.

In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions of right we feel ourselves to be intimate partners of all the governments and peoples associated together against the Imperialists. Nosotros cannot be separated in involvement or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end.

For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to fight until they are accomplished; but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such every bit can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to state of war, which this programme does not remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there is nada in this programme that impairs it. We grudge her no accomplishment or distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise such as take fabricated her record very bright and very enviable. We do not wish to injure her or to cake in any fashion her legitimate influence or power. Nosotros practice not wish to fight her either with artillery or with hostile arrangements of trade if she is willing to acquaintance herself with the states and the other peace-loving nations of the world in covenants of justice and police and fair dealing. Nosotros wish her only to have a identify of equality among the peoples of the world, — the new world in which nosotros now live, — instead of a identify of mastery.

Neither practice we presume to suggest to her any alteration or modification of her institutions. But it is necessary, we must bluntly say, and necessary as a preliminary to any intelligent dealings with her on our part, that we should know whom her spokesmen speak for when they speak to us, whether for the Reichstag majority or for the military political party and the men whose creed is imperial domination.

Nosotros take spoken now, surely, in terms as well concrete to admit of any farther doubt or question. An evident principle runs through the whole programme I have outlined. It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and condom with 1 another, whether they exist strong or weak. Unless this principle exist fabricated its foundation no part of the structure of international justice tin stand. The people of the United States could act upon no other principle; and to the vindication of this principle they are set up to devote their lives, their laurels, and everything that they possess. The moral climax of this the culminating and final war for human liberty has come up, and they are ready to put their own strength, their ain highest purpose, their ain integrity and devotion to the exam.

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Source: https://kr.usembassy.gov/education-culture/infopedia-usa/living-documents-american-history-democracy/woodrow-wilson-fourteen-points-speech-1918/

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