98 e lusive v ictories
At this pivotal juncture, when Wilson needed to make clear why
Americans had to join a war they had avoided for nearly three years, he
conveyed mixed signals about what was at stake. He confused real but
not very inspiring interests with an idealistic, indeed, nearly utopian
vision of a world in which all peoples would enjoy self-government,
justice, and peace. Wilson had broken relations with Germany and
decided on war due to the submarine attacks, a narrow rationale the
public grasped and evidently accepted. But he would not make great
sacrifi ces in the name of balance-of-power politics, forestalling German
hegemony, or preserving commercial opportunities. He could hardly
ask his fellow Americans to do so, either. Something more seemed
necessary, the kind of postwar settlement that had been taking shape in
the president’s mind over the many months of fruitless diplomatic over-
tures to the warring sides.
Yet in promising so much as the reward for war, Wilson vastly over-
reached, sowing the seeds for discontent with his postwar leadership
and friction with the other powers at war with Germany. He had not
yet secured the broad mandate from the American people that his
expansive peace-building goals would require. In eff ect, the president
had adopted a new foreign policy stance, one that implied, as one his-
torian observes, “extensive and sustained intervention supported by
the requisite military force.” Such a radical departure from American
tradition called for a careful preparing of the political ground, some-
thing that a handful of speeches over the previous year could not
accomplish.
Some months later, in January 1918, Wilson sought to clarify Amer-
ican war aims and articulate his conception of a new kind of postwar
order. He laid out in a speech to Congress the Fourteen Points that he
saw as a basis for bringing the war to an end. Some of the terms repre-
sented hard-headed conditions that would reduce the probability of war
(arms reductions), while others (eliminating economic barriers) would
redound to America’s advantage as the world’s leading economy. He
made clear, too, that the Central Powers could expect to retain no ter-
ritorial gains they had made through wartime conquest. But Wilson
also envisioned peace-building that encompassed justice for peoples
who had been denied a voice in their own government, to be guaran-
teed through an instrument of collective security. He insisted upon the