Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points: A Plan for World Peace
The Fourteen Point Peace Programme of US President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) was presented to Congress on 8 January 1918 and outlined a new world order that would hopefully avoid another disaster like the still ongoing First World War (1914-18). Aiming to persuade Germany and its allies to seek an armistice and achieve lasting world peace, the points in the list stated there should be freedom of the seas, free trade, disarmament, a redrawing of the map of Europe based on the principle of national self-determination, a commitment to open diplomacy with no more secret treaties, and the creation of an international assembly of nations.
A Plan for Peace
President Wilson identified certain causes of WWI he wanted never to replicate: self-interested and secretive diplomacy, the repression of minority groups within empires and larger states, and autocratic regimes ignoring their own people's wishes. A new international organization was required that would eradicate these three diseases of world diplomacy and champion instead democracy, self-determination, and openness. By working together, a collective security and environment of debate and negotiation could be achieved, where no war between nations would even start. That was the hope.
Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points were:
Open convenants of peace; no secret agreements.
Freedom of the seas, except when curtailed by international action.
The removal, wherever possible, of all economic barriers.
Guarantees for the reduction in armaments.
Impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, with the interests of the subject populations being equal with the claims of governments.
Evacuation of all Russian territory.
Restoration of Belgian sovereignty.
Occupied French territory to be restored, and Alsace-Lorraine to be returned to France.
Readjustment of Italian frontiers 'along clearly recognised lines of nationality'.
Opportunity of autonomous development for the peoples of Austria-Hungary.
Evacuation by occupying forces of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro; Serbia to have free access to the sea. Relations of Balkan states to be settled along lines of allegiance and nationality.
Opportunity of autonomous development for non-Turkish peoples within the Ottoman Empire. The Dardanelles to be free for all shipping.
Creation of an independent Poland with access to the sea.
Formation of a general assembly of nations with the aim of 'affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states'.
(Bruce, 133)
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⇒ Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points: A Plan for World Peace
