Fake New World Order
American Documents: Wilson's Fourteen Points
2026 is America’s 250th birthyear. To celebrate, I’m highlighting 50+ significant American documents from our history. So far I have covered The Mayflower Compact, Patrick Henry’s Speech, The Lee Resolution, The Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Treaty of Paris, the Virginia Plan, The Northwest Ordinance, The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Louisiana Purchase, the Star-Spangled Banner, the Monroe Doctrine, the Indian Removal Act, the Knickerbocker Baseball Club rules, Lincoln’s ‘House Divided’ Speech, the Emancipation Proclamation, Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address, the Appomattox Surrender Letters, the Homestead Act, the Gettysburg Address, the Alaska Purchase, the establishment of Yellowstone National Park, Susan B. Anthony’s Speech on Women’s Suffrage, the Nez Perce Surrender, the Dawes Act, the Newlands Resolution, and the Sixteenth Amendment.
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In case you haven’t picked up what I’m putting down, Woodrow Wilson is a terrible president and the starting point of every big bad idea that we’ve had to deal with on the international stage over the last hundred years.
Imagine the most obnoxious east-coast academic inbred professor. Put him in the White House. Then, in the middle of World War One, have him magnanimously go to Congress and make the case for losing that war, even as American sons were bleeding to death on European soil. That was Woodrow Wilson’s infamous Fourteen Points.
I’m not joking, the argument was literally for “peace without victory,” and would also include the formation of a “League of Nations,” a sort of proto U.N. that would cost a lot of money, convene irregularly, declare they were going to do something, and then not do it. (So not even “proto,” just “the U.N.”)
This is your brain on 1910s progressivism. Governments would be shunted aside, damn the people, in favor of a new world order run by international busybodies. There was even the pipe dream of disarmament, which is a suicidally naïve way for nations to realistically engage with one another.
The hell of it is, Wilson thought he would win by stealing the “moral high ground” from the Germans and Bolsheviks, as if they cared about anything other than victory and mandatory implementation of their wills. Cherry on top, it would remake America’s standing on the world stage exclusively in the image of Wilson’s vision. Fortunately most of it got diluted at Versailles, but the blueprint remained in a filing cabinet somewhere and would get dusted off when the next World War finished, leading to the flaccid rules-based order that is doing so much good in the world today.
Wilson’s Points are a textbook example of how elite internationalism sounds noble until it runs into reality.
The Points:
Open covenants — No more secret backroom deals; all diplomacy out in the open.
Freedom of the seas — Ships should sail freely outside territorial waters (except when the world police say otherwise).
Equal trade conditions — Knock down economic barriers and tariffs between nations.
Reduce armaments — Cut national militaries down to the bare minimum needed for safety.
Fair colonial claims — Give colonial populations a real say, not just the empires.
Russia — Let Russia figure out its own future without outside meddling.
Belgium — Restore full independence to Belgium.
France — Give back Alsace-Lorraine to France.
Italy — Adjust borders along lines of nationality.
Austria-Hungary — Give its peoples a chance at autonomous development.
Balkans — Restore and guarantee independence for Romania, Serbia, Montenegro.
Ottoman Empire — Secure sovereignty for the Turks and autonomous development for other groups; open the Dardanelles.
Poland — Create an independent Poland with sea access and guarantees.
League of Nations — Form a big international club to guarantee everybody’s borders and independence.
None of that commentary is as sarcastic as I want it to be, I trust you all to assess the practicality of these points on the international stage with your own intelligence. Some of it is niche and will require research. Not all of it is outright terrible. Other parts of it are pretty easy to distinguish from common sense.
This is the kind of thing you do when you haven’t had any meaningful experience running anything. Wilson was never in the military. He was in charge of Princeton for 8 years and New Jersey for 4. This is vibes-and-essays level foreign policy, and the hell of it is, some of it actually took effect in the long run.
You don’t hate Wilson’s presidency enough.
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