On January 8, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson delivered his Fourteen Points speech to the U.S. Congress, laying out his vision for the creation of a new world order and a new standard of international conduct. Wilson’s speech emphasized self-determination as a hallmark of the new world order—a notion to which oppressed people worldwide emphatically clung. From Greece to Korea, the idea of self-determination became a rallying cry for many seeking autonomy. Following centuries of Ottoman subjugation, the Arab world eagerly clung to this idea of national sovereignty.[1]

Wilson’s speech is popularly understood to have improved the United States’ standing among Arab nations. His words offered hope for a better political future in the new world order. Wilson’s rhetoric, however, ultimately proved detrimental to the Arab view of the United States. This article argues that by raising Arab expectations for national sovereignty Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points invited a moral taint on the U.S. in the eyes of Arab nationalists. This taint exacerbated the strain on U.S.-Arab relations that would follow the creation of the Israeli state.[2]

Global Reception: Fourteen Points and the Paris Peace Conference

In his speech, Woodrow Wilson methodically laid out his ideal world order. He characterized his vision with terms such as “freedom of navigation upon the seas,” “general association of nations,” and “opportunity for autonomous development.”[3] Wilson addressed the “other [non-Turkish] nationalities which are now under Turkish rule” (i.e., the Arab peoples of the Middle East) in the twelfth of his fourteen points.[4] He stated that the people of the Middle East should be “assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity for autonomous development.” These words would later take center-stage as Arab nations vied for self-determination.[5]

Cheering crowds welcomed  Woodrow Wilson when he arrived in France for the Paris Peace Conference in December 1918. Banners reading “Champion of the Rights of Man” and “Founder of the Society of Nations” greeted the American president.[6] Delegations from across the colonized world expressed enthusiastic support for the Fourteen Points through their impassioned  pleas for autonomy. Among them, delegates from the former Ottoman Empire submitted numerous  proposals and petitions to the conference for self-rule, including the Emir Faisal of the Hijaz,  the Egyptian Wafd, and Armenian and Lebanese delegations. Some delegates, such as the Imam of Yemen, wrote directly to Woodrow Wilson expressing their desire for self-determination. Wilson’s advocacy for self-determination in his 1918 speech enjoyed sweeping support at the conference. This support did not translate, however, into consensus among his fellow world leaders.[7]

If Wilson’s Fourteen Points were to become a reality, the support of his British and French counterparts was crucial. The British, including Prime Minister Lloyd George, held the American president’s rhetoric in high regard. However, Lloyd George and his compatriots were more focused on rebuilding Europe after the First World War than on applying the Fourteen Points to the Middle East. Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau did not care for Wilson’s Fourteen Points and especially resisted the speech as an idealistic basis for the new peace. Clemenceau saw Wilson’s Fourteen Points as an unattainable aspiration for the international order. He instead turned his attention to French interests. French resistance to the Fourteen Points and British focus on aiding Europe were further reinforced by the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. In the face of such opposition. Wilson raised no objection to his peer’s preoccupation with Western affairs. The divergence between Arab political expectations and political realities would continue to grow at an alarming rate.[8]

Arab Expectations

Beyond the Paris Peace Conference and corresponding with Wilson, Arab elites also made their political hopes clear through the General Syrian Congress and the report of the King-Crane Commission—an inquiry into the Ottoman territories that involved the Allied Powers but was largely led by U.S. representatives. The Commission was cast as a fact-finding body focused on understanding the condition and aspirations of colonized peoples—a charter very much in line with the Fourteen Points.[9] The work of both deliberative bodies together  illustrated a fateful disparity between Arab desires for sovereignty and the Western consensus around the creation of a Jewish state.

The General Syrian Congress convened in Damascus between June and July of 1919 to create a resolution regarding Arab political aspirations. The Congress consisted of delegates from Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. The delegates’ goal was to clearly articulate their claim for self-determination in a resolution for the King-Crane Commission. The General Syrian Congress’s resolution removed any remaining doubt that Arabs in the region of Syria not only desired autonomy but also looked to Wilson and the United States as their sole ally in their quest. The Congress wrote in its resolution “that President Wilson and the free American people will be our supporters for the realization of our hopes.”[10]

The King-Crane Commission, consisting of Harry C. King, Charles R. Crane, and a team of American advisors, reinforced the resolution of the General Syrian Congress. The Commission affirmed that many Arabs looked to the United States as their guarantor of future autonomy. Following two months of trekking throughout Syria, King and Crane submitted their findings to the U.S. State Department. In light of 1,863 surveys from around the Arab world, King and Crane recommended that the Western powers, via mandate authorities, should prepare the people of Syria—referring to Greater Syria—for independent self-government “as rapidly as conditions allow.”[11] Both the King-Crane Commission, by way of its report, and the General Syrian Congress greatly reduced any question as to the fervent desire of the peoples of the Middle East for ultimate political autonomy.[12]

The Danger of Hope and the J-Curve

In 1962, James Davies articulated a theory of relative deprivation known as the J-Curve Theory to explain social unrest and political violence. Davies argues that a given society’s expectations for a better quality of life increase steadily over time. These expectations are met at a similarly constant rate by the government, the economy at large, or some non-governmental institution with authority. People’s realities always lag slightly behind their hopes for a better future, leaving a small gap between the two. According to Davies, a decline in a society’s quality of life—which, graphically, appears in the shape of a “J”—fails to keep up with rising expectations. This widening gap leads to political activism and even revolution.[13]

In the context of Wilson’s ideas for the Middle East, the J-Curve Theory applies specifically to the expected achievement of autonomy free of foreign interference. Granted, President Wilsons’ rhetoric was not the singular driving force behind Arab sovereignty movements. However, his words offered Arabs an ideological foothold on the international stage that became foundational to these movements. With such sweeping influence, the expectations created by Wilson became pivotal in the Arab World.  In light of the J-Curve, if these new expectations were not met, some form of unrest was likely, if not inevitable.

Arab Hopes and the Israeli State

The elevation of Arab hopes for self-determination presented a dangerous crossroads for the Western powers, particularly the United States. Arab hopes for independence had survived the disappointments of the Paris Peace Conference. The establishment of the state of Israel destroyed those hopes for liberty. Because of its partnership with the European powers, the United States would end up bearing much of the blame in the Arab view for the numerous slights and injuries suffered by Arab nations in the twentieth century, from the war of 1948 to the Oslo II Accords of 1995, souring U.S.-Arab relations for generations.[14]

Immediately following the end of the First World War, the League of Nations granted the British and French mandates in the Middle East. The creation of the Mandate System was a departure from the direct path to independence many Arabs desired. Wilson’s Fourteen Points had set an expectation for nations to have an “absolutely unmolested opportunity for autonomous development.”[15] The British and French mandates hardly left Arab peoples unmolested, however. Although strained by temporary European control, the Arab hope for ultimately unfettered self-determination persisted.[16]

In the two decades following the First World War, Arabs continued to praise the United States, particularly in connection to Wilson’s ideas.  Many Arabs viewed the British and the French as the primary enemies of self-determination due to their continued presence in the region. While opposing European colonial powers, Arabs struggling for statehood revered the United States as their Western advocate on the international stage.[17]

The Arab defeat in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, however, decisively turned much of the Arab world against the United States. Reflecting on the American recognition of the new Jewish state, Ussama Makdisi wrote, “America had drawn first blood.”[18] Central Intelligence Agency reports from 1951 noted the radical shift in Arab perceptions of the United States, going from one of the few nations to be “right and just” to the “most hypocritical” of the Western powers in its support for Israel.[19] The very existence of the state of Israel, with its array of Western supporters, came to stand as a perpetual representation of Western interference in Arab affairs. Arabs hopes, as fueled by Wilson’s Fourteen Points Speech, had been utterly dashed.[20]

Wilson’s Fourteen Points did not doom U.S.-Arab relations. They merely contributed greatly to the severity of their deterioration that began in earnest with American support for the establishment of Israel. The J-Curve Theory described by Davies points to the gap between expectations and reality as the source of unrest and revolution in a given society. Wilson’s Fourteen Points acted as a catalyst for this unrest in the Middle East. The one Western power Arabs had accepted as a benevolent global advocate instead became the object of their abiding resentment.[21]

Conclusion

Though his legacy is disputed, Wilson championed a transformational vision for international affairs and, for a limited time, secured his popular status as the champion of liberty for oppressed peoples. Wilson fashioned the imagining of the United States as a beacon of hope among colonized peoples seeking political autonomy. However, more consequential than Wilson’s perceived promise of freedom was the breaking of that promise. The perceived betrayal of self-determination proved disastrous for U.S.-Arab relations. The risk  of dashed hopes weighed on Wilson’s mind even in 1918. On his way to the Paris Peace Conference, Wilson reflected on the global reaction to his speech and remarked, “What I seem to see—with all my heart I hope that I am wrong—is the tragedy of disappointment.”[22]

Robert E. Schrader, IV, is a U.S. Naval Academy Midshipman. The views expressed in this article are that of the author and do not represent the views of the U.S. Naval Academy, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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Header Image: Woodrow Wilson (Getty)

Notes:

[1] Ussama Makdisi, Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations: 1820-2001 (New York: PublicAffairs, 2010), 125; Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2001), 15, 495; Allen Lynch, "Woodrow Wilson and the Principle of 'National Self-Determination': A Reconsideration," Review of International Studies 28, no. 2 (2002): 419, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20097800 (accessed October 22, 2019).

[2] Makdisi, Faith Misplaced, 125. General Syrian Congress, “Our Objections to Zionism and Western Imperialism (1919),” in The Middle East and Islamic World Reader, ed. Martin Gettleman and Stuart Schaar (New York: Grove Press, 2012), 172-73.

[3] MacMillan, Paris 1919, 495-96.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 19.

[7] Ibid, 59, 60. Ernest Tucker. The Middle East in Modern World History 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2019), 143.

[8] David Lloyd George, The Truth About the Peace Treaties, vol. 1 (London: Victor Gonzalez LTD, 1938), 288-289. MacMillan, Paris 1919, 15, 381-382. Timothy O’Brien, “Woodrow Wilson: A Failure of Leadership — A Broken Middle East,” Faculty Publications and Presentations (2016), 52, http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/gov_fac_pubs/448 (accessed October 20, 2019).

[9] Charles Crane and Henry King, “The King-Crane Report,” The World War I Document Archive, https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_King-Crane_Report (accessed October 23, 2019).

[10] General Syrian Congress, “Our Objections to Zionism and Western Imperialism (1919),” in The Middle East and Islamic World Reader, ed. Martin Gettleman and Stuart Schaar (New York: Grove Press, 2012), 171-73.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Makdisi, Faith Misplaced, 137-138. Ibid.

[13] James Chowning Davies, “The J-Curve and Power Struggle Theories of Collective Violence,” American Sociological Review 39, no. 4 (1974): 607. Abraham Miller, Louis Bolce, and Mark Halligan, "The J-Curve Theory and the Black Urban Riots: An Empirical Test of Progressive Relative Deprivation Theory," The American Political Science Review 71, no. 3 (1977): 964, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1960101?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents (accessed October 22, 2019).

[14] Makdisi, Faith Misplaced, 203.

[15] MacMillan, Paris 1919, 496.

[16] Tucker, The Middle East in Modern World History, 149, 151.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Makdisi, Faith Misplaced, 203.

[19] Ibid., 209.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid.

[22] MacMillan, Paris 1919, 15.