Woodrow Wilson, ‘Self-Determination’ and the Liberal-Conservative Idea of Freedom

Abstract

This chapter explains how Woodrow Wilson internationalised the language of ‘self-determination’ in 1918 by legitimating it with reference to a liberal-conservative idea of freedom. In a context of world war, where several prominent voices had come to cite ‘self-determination’, Wilson’s main pronouncement came in response to Lenin’s articulations. Like Lenin’s, Wilson’s discourse of self-determination was multifaceted and tension-ridden; this chapter shows that the President’s statements on ‘self-determination’ evidenced a much cooler embrace than what scholarship has asserted thus far. Moreover, Wilson’s real-life policy preference at the end of the First World War seemed to be to realise self-determination through the mandate system. By attaching the liberal-conservative idea of freedom to the international language of ‘self-determination’, Wilson positioned peace and stability as its main legitimising standards and as the core conditions for its realisation. In later moments of self-determination, the same assumptions and standards would appear as the default.