THE8 January of the 1918exactly 104 years ago, the president of the United States, Woodrow Wilsonpresented a peace program before the US Congress fourteen points. The goal was to indicate the inspiring principles of the new international order to be built after the First World War, which would end on 11 November of that same year with the Armistice of Compiègne.
In the Fourteen Points - in addition to asking for the abolition of the secret police, the restoration of freedom of navigation, the lowering of customs barriers and the reduction of armaments - Wilson also formulated a series of concrete proposals to redesign Europe: full reintegration of Belgium, Serbia and Romania; evacuation of German-occupied Russian territories, return of Alsace-Lorraine to France; possibility of "autonomous development" for the peoples subject to the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish empires and rectification of the Italian borders on the basis of nationality.
Finally, in the last point, the American President proposed to establish the League of Nations – progenitor of the UN – to ensure respect for peaceful coexistence between countries. The international body was then effectively established (June 1919), but it failed in any way to hinder the drift which, twenty years later, would lead to the outbreak of the Second World War.
The ideology behind the Fourteen Points had been illustrated by Wilson already in April 1917when the United States entered the war. On that occasion, the number one of the White House explained that the USA would not fight in view of territorial claims, but to restore the freedom of the seas of the seas violated by the Germans, defend the rights of nations and establish a new world order based on peace and "on agreement between free peoples".
The purpose was accentuate the ideological nature of the war, presenting it as a crusade of democracy against authoritarianism and thus responding to the challenge posed by Lenin's Revolutionary Russia.
