Even today, many people believe that Wilson’s Fourteen Points were too idealistic or that he tried to accomplish too much in a single page. However, that conclusion may fail to consider several elements of the bigger picture. In 1918, the U.S. government was eager to present Germany with a possible way out of the conflict. The 150 specialists who helped draft the Fourteen Points proposal agreed that Wilson should keep it simple and fairly vague--they were certain that any specific suggestions for settling the European conflict would have been unacceptable to one of the warring parties.

It's also important to remember the "secret" agreement that had been signed in 1916 by Britain and France. The Sykes-Picot Agreement, as it was later named, designated the proposed spheres of influence that Britain and France each expected to claim once the Central Powers were defeated. For instance, the two countries had already decided how they planned to control the Middle East after the war was over. Importantly, the U.S., while not an official party to the agreement, gained a foothold in that region as well. If Wilson was in fact aware of the agreement between Britain and France, his actual intentions in presenting the Fourteen Points take on a different shade of meaning.

To the extent that the Fourteen Points was intended to bring Germany to the negotiating table, it was successful. If these proposals had not been ready when Germany’s war machine ground to a halt in Western Europe in 1918, it is very likely that Germany would have moved all of its troops to the Eastern Front where the Germans had been having much more success. They were already expanding into Russian territory, following the abdication of Czar Nicholas, and they could have decided to help Austria-Hungary invade Italy.

Wilson's strategy for brokering peace did not satisfy very many, however, and definitely not the Republicans in the U.S. government. Led by former President Roosevelt, these critics attacked the Fourteen Points for not being more precise and direct. It was a difficult time for President Wilson, who was forced by serious health issues to remain out of sight in the White House while his European and American critics blamed him for failing to diffuse other countries' political disputes far away in Europe.

After the Versailles Treaty was announced, the point of view adopted by most Americans was fairly simple: The war had not happened for any good reason, and the United States had come to Britain’s rescue. In addition, the interests of U.S. businesses were not served by the Treaty that was the primary outcome of the war. Americans' preference for political isolationism, initially a response to the expansionist era of Roosevelt, returned after World War I. Sensing the change of mood, Congress refused to ratify the Versailles Treaty--they did not want to be obligated to send U.S. troops to assist other Treaty members. In many ways, Congress's rejection of the League of Nations solidified the tendency to view the Fourteen Points as a failure. However, Wilson’s ideas about secret treaties, freedom of the seas, free trade, and global disarmament were major additions to the Treaty of Versailles, and each of these ideals remains fundamental to modern global relations.