w aging w ar to t ransform the w orld 99“free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial
claims,” a process in which “the interests of the populations concerned
must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government
whose title is to be determined.” All of this would require, as the fi nal
point recognized, the creation of an international association with the
power and responsibility to preserve the independence and territorial
integrity of large and small states alike. Implicitly, the United States
would be a member of this association.
Wilson’s program put him on a collision course with the very nations
beside which the United States would fight. Rather than join the
Entente, the United States chose to wage war as a co-belligerent Asso-
ciated Power, sharing a common enemy but not necessarily common
war goals. Wilson understood that the Allied leaders would want to
make Germany pay heavily for the human and material damage caused
by the war. Th e United States, he made clear, would have no part in
such a peace. Indeed, where the Allies would want to make certain
Germany could not again threaten them, the president stressed his con-
tinuing faith in “German greatness” and sought to reassure the German
people that his program would allow for it.
Moreover, Wilson pledged himself broadly to a principle of self-
determination and anticolonialism—even as the United States had
yoked itself to the world’s two leading colonial powers, Great Britain
and France. He might have anticipated that they would have reserva-
tions about his program, which could complicate peace-building.
Although he would later claim that he knew nothing of the secret treaties
among the Allies that promised postwar territorial gains, his assertion
was not credible. Not only did the Bolsheviks publish the agreements to
embarrass the Allies, but British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour
reported that he had shown the treaties to the president in 1917. Th e
territorial questions addressed in the Fourteen Points were themselves
shaped by the secret treaties.
Despite the gap between his program and the Allies’ commitments,
Wilson did not seek discussion with the Entente powers of the Four-
teen Points or the proposed international association. One reason for
his failure to do so was that he did not construe his commitment to
self-determination as a broad-based attack on colonial empires so much
as an approach to redrawing boundaries in Central and Eastern Europe.