w aging w ar to t ransform the w orld 97the other Central Powers.) Although in theory it might be possible to
achieve these objectives through a negotiated peace with the Imperial
German government, he made plain that he believed future security
depended upon, to use a phrase that gained currency in a later gener-
ation, regime change in Berlin. “We know that in such a government,
following such methods, we can never have a friend; and that in the
presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we
know not what purpose, there can be no assured security for the dem-
ocratic governments of the world.” Nonetheless, Wilson still called not
for victory but a negotiated settlement, pointedly rejecting any goals
grounded in the raw emotions that confl icts stimulate: “Our motive
will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of
the nation.” It made for a pretty tepid brew, hardly the stuff to stim-
ulate the pulse of a people who would be asked to make great
sacrifi ces.
And so the president raised the stakes, by an order of magnitude. Th e
United States would fi ght for something far more important, more
worthy of great sacrifi ce. In going to war, Wilson continued, the nation
would expend its blood and treasure
for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its
peoples,... for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege
of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. Th e
world must be made safe for democracy.... We have no selfi sh ends
to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion.... We are but one of
the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfi ed when
those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of
nations can make them. Th us, beyond its own commercial and security interests, the United
States would fi ght in pursuit of a transformative agenda, one that would
radically alter the political status of subordinated peoples across the
world. We shall fi ght, as he so grandly pronounced, “for the right of
those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own govern-
ments.” And to sustain that right, the United States would also commit
itself to some kind of organization of free peoples “to bring peace and
safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.”