The Fable of the Fourteen Points: Woodrow Wilson and National Self-Determination

For decades, scholars have turned to Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points address of January 8, 1918, to explain his vision for a new international order after World War I. And for decades, one particular phrase has been closely linked to that vision: “self‐determination.” The phrase, however, appears nowhere in Wilson's address. Moreover, it is often shorthand for “national self‐determination,” connoting an ethno‐nationalist political ideal Wilson never held. Rather, Wilson idealized self‐government: the right of all to help direct their society's public affairs. By 1918, Wilson sought to promote both national and international self‐government through a deliberative League of Nations, equipped to accommodate changes in an increasingly interdependent global society. Prejudiced though he was, Wilson envisioned an egalitarian League, with adequate sovereign powers to advance justice within and among nations. Though Wilson poorly communicated this radical yet pragmatic ideal, it was his late abandonment of pragmatic compromise that prevented U.S. League membership. That outcome, despite its contingency, has limited American views of the nation's global role ever since.