What Was Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points Plan

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Woodrow Wilson was not thinking straight in reguards of entering the US into WWI due to the unrealism of achieving total peace by entering a war 3 years late. He turned his goals from keeping America out of war entirely to somehow solving all of the problems of the world. It’s clear that he let his dreams of peace and anti-violence distort his knowledge of the country’s goals and possible future success. He was so blinded by his desperation for world peace that he didn’t think about how difficult that might be, therefore distracting him from creating anything truly permanent or helpful. His 14 Points Plan was inspiring to many but it never reached the point of success that he hoped it would. Especially, regarding the Treaty of Versailles- …show more content…

Overall this was a plan that promoted international peace, equal trading rights, war prevention, and the formation of a new group that would be named the League of Nations. The League of Nations is still in existence now as an international forum that provides peace between countries. The 14 point plan was created as a post war plan as well as a prevention of future wars. It was a progressive plan and many people were actually very fond of it. However, people from other countries were not as fond as Americans. They felt threatened and didn’t trust the stability of the plan. They did use some of the ideas in the future but it never truly fulfilled its goal of preventing wars. Other countries were especially suspicious of point number 1: “there shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view”. Generally this was a good idea, it would prevent miscommunications that often end in violence breaking out. However it was almsot too late to stop international affairs. All governments everywhere were and still are corrupt and therefore most likely made and are still making secret deals between each other. If all of those deals had become public, it may have just created more problems. This was a general theme for Wilson’s points: they were inherently good ideas but just entirely unrealistic. Also, since his goal was essentially world peace, a lot of his points were plans for other countries. It wasn’t just a plan for America but a plan for the Earth. He wanted Russia to have independence, to fix the Italian borders, to open free economic trade over sea. Yet again these were good hearted ideas but simply unattainable. It’s difficult enough to have one country agree to a plan, but to have another 49 countries agree is completely unrealistic. Although Wilson’s 14 points weren’t taken seriously due to their unworkability, they were still