Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points 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. By raising Arab expectations for national sovereignty 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.