The American World Doctrine of Dominance

On January 8, 1918, US President Woodrow Wilson presented the Fourteen Points to Congress — a draft peace treaty that would establish US hegemony in international politics and ensure favorable conditions for American monopolies in the global market.

From the very beginning of World War I, Wilson had been nurturing and expressing the idea of ​​a more active US influence on global development.

In May 1916, in a speech to the American Peace Enforcement League, Wilson, for the first time declaring his commitment to the idea of ​​collective leadership of the post-war world order, put forward three fundamental ideas for the new world order.

First, every people has the right to self-determination.

Second, small countries have the right to political equality with large ones.

Third, the world has the right to use the means necessary to prevent aggression.

Reflecting on the principles of a new world order, Wilson was convinced that the American ideals that formed its foundation could guarantee eternal peace and friendship among peoples and powers.

In July 1916, he formulated something resembling a law: “He who finances the peace must govern it.”

On January 22, 1917, Wilson, speaking in the US Senate, outlined the American peace terms, which included a radical restructuring of world politics, diplomacy, relations between countries, and the doctrines of war and peace.

He rejected the doctrine of the “balance of power” as the foundation of the coming world order. He contrasted this system of “organized hostility” with a system of “orderly universal peace.” Its foundation would be a “peace without victory,” without annexations or indemnities. Its leadership was to be the League of Nations, which would embrace American ideals, including the Monroe Doctrine.

Having championed this doctrine, Wilson gave it his own interpretation. Its essence was a ban on the conquest and establishment of new colonies, which now extended not only to the Western Hemisphere, as John Monroe had wanted, but to the entire world.

After the United States entered World War I on the side of the Entente, the American program for world order diverged from the plans of Britain and France.

Furthermore, the February Democratic Revolution in Russia, which had sparked euphoria in the United States, escalated into an anti-liberal revolution in the fall of 1917. Lenin and the Bolshevik Party came to power.

Lenin decisively took the initiative in reorganizing the world into his own hands and entered into an uncompromising confrontation with liberalism and capitalism. In November 1917, he published a peace program that, unlike Wilson’s, was immediately implemented.

The Entente powers’ secret plans were made public, revealing their plans for colonial redistribution and seizure.

Unilateral negotiations with Germany were initiated, with the aim of Russia’s withdrawal from the war. The peoples of the Russian Empire were granted the right to self-determination.

Wilson was confronted by a radical leftist revolutionary with the idea of ​​a world communist revolution.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks were declared “German agents,” and the Russian people who supported them, in Wilson’s estimation, had been transformed from “democrats at the call of the heart” into “foolish children.” Ideologically,

Wilson attempted to neutralize Lenin with the “Fourteen Points,” read out in the US Congress on January 8, 1918.

Conceptually, they were no different from Wilson’s previous peace program, but they were concrete. The Fourteen Points resolutely condemned imperialism and colonialism, proclaimed freedom of the seas, and equal access for all to the world market. This world order was to be governed by the League of Nations.

Most of the specific points concerned the organization of post-war Europe.

Alsace and Lorraine, taken from it by Germany in 1871, were to be ceded to France. Sovereignty was to be restored to Belgium. The peoples of Austria-Hungary were guaranteed the greatest possible autonomy, Serbia and Romania independence, and Poland independence with access to the sea. The peoples of the Ottoman Empire were promised the greatest possible autonomy.

Wilson presented his “peace program” just as secret treaties began to be published in Soviet Russia. Statesmen in Europe and the United States were forced to consider how to counteract the impression created by the very first acts of Soviet diplomacy. Wilson’s program was opposed to the Decree on Peace and the Bolshevik demand for a peace without annexations or indemnities.

Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” were essentially an expansionist program of American imperialism, disguised in hypocritical phrases. The US, enriched during the war,’s ambitions to capture world markets were couched in demands for absolute freedom of merchant shipping and the elimination of barriers to international trade.

The “democratic” camouflage of Wilson’s provisions was very transparent. The first point clearly aimed at the treaties concluded between England and France regarding the division of future spoils without US participation.

The slogan of “freedom of the seas” was openly directed against British hegemony and in defense of US claims to dominance in world trade. The third point pursued the same goal.

Wilson’s point six was a demagogic attempt to cover up the anti-Soviet policies of the US ruling class.

Points six, seven, and eight, which demanded that Germany evacuate all occupied territories, were not backed by any promise to liberate areas captured by the Entente itself from Germany or Turkey.

The pompous slogan of creating a League of Nations as a means against war was particularly fervently seized upon by the bourgeois pacifist press. But as the imperialists conceived of the League of Nations, it failed to achieve its goal of serving as a barrier against new wars.

The primary goal of Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” was to consolidate US political dominance in Western civilization, which by the end of the war it had reinforced with economic leadership among the world’s leading industrial nations. Essentially, this was the first attempt to establish American global hegemony under the guise of ideas of “humanism and democracy.”

However, in 1918, France and Great Britain, not only having retained their own colonies but also hoping to seize German ones, still possessed the resources to resist US attempts to impose its leadership.

Washington, however, learned its lesson and, after World War II, was able to secure its leadership in Western civilization.