A Rhetorical Analysis Of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points

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Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States of America, was a very erudite man. Prior to entering politics, he held the title of president of Princeton University for 8 years, having previously received a PHD in Political Science himself from Johns Hopkins University. Following a stint as the Governor of New Jersey, Wilson entered the White House in 1913, less than a year before World War 1. When the United States did finally declare war on Germany in 1917, they did so as an independent power that was allied to the Allies. Roughly one year prior to the American entrance into World War 1, the British and the French had carved up the holdings of the former Ottoman Empire in the Arab world to add to their overseas colonies in the Sykes-Picot …show more content…

Though the Wilsonian moment encompasses all of Wilson’s rhetoric between 1918 and the 1919 Paris Peace conference , his most important and precise declaration against colonization was in his fourteen points speech. Given on January 8th, 1918, the fourteen points speech was meant by Wilson to set out his goals for the post-war period and sustainable peace. In the fourteen points, Wilson outlined what he felt were the main causes for World War 1 and, therefore, what he felt needed to be fixed to protect enduring peace. Among other issues, namely secret treaties and an excess of armaments, Wilson directly took aim at the legitimacy of colonial claims. Wilson effectively suggested that these claims were being made in the name of colonists, not in the interests of the native peoples and the freedom of the seas . In response to the issue of colonization, Wilson proposed the “removal of economic barriers between nations, the promise of ‘self-determination’ for those oppressed minorities, and a world organization that would provide a system of collective security for all nations.” . Within America, Wilson surprisingly found some opposition to his ideas. Robert Lansing, the Secretary of State at the time, believed that there was a danger in putting the idea of “self-determination” in the minds of certain races. While Wilson obviously stood by his vision for peace in the fourteen points, some of his counterparts in other allied nations were slightly less enthused. When all the allied powers met in Versailles in 1919 to discuss the terms of peace and end World War 1, Wilson quickly realized that not everyone agreed with his opinion. Wilson felt that England, France, and Italy were mostly interested in retrieving property they had lost in the war, and then expanding upon those holdings as a way to punish the

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