Woodrow Wilson left behind a legacy of would-be idealism most aptly characterized by his Fourteen Points speech he delivered before the United States Congress on January 8th, 1918. The end of World War One would arrive ten months later. The armistice signed on November 11th, 1918 signified the “war to end all wars.” Euphemisms of never again resonated with the war weary peoples of Europe. Nations like Czechoslovakia & Yugoslavia seemingly born out of thin air signaled a new era of self-determination for peoples formerly part of the great empires of Europe. Wilsonian idealism cannot be understood without first having a working understanding of internationalism; what does it mean & how can it be achieved based on what we know about its historic failures? A war to end all war requires an unbreakable peace. Post-1918, this was punctuated by making examples out of Germany’s “Teutonic Warlords” materializing in the Treaty of Versailles laying out punitive reparations for the defeated with Weimar Germany bearing the brunt of its cost.
One of the greatest legacies of World War One culminated in a certain “tumultuous idealism” birthing the League of Nations, the world’s first supranational organization as we understand the post-Westphalian concept today. The framers of the United Nations Charter realized a new supranational organization would need to offer what the League of Nations could not, but has it fared any better? History seems poised to repeat itself when full scale warfare returned to Europe on February 20th, 2022 with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Returning to 1921, when Woodrow Wilson departed the presidency of the United States, he eventually reneged on his idealism & became a realist favoring isolationism. Out of sight, out of mind; the quintessential thinking supporting the dedicated isolationist! This became the new mantra of American diplomatic thinking during the postwar period of the last century. If the Versailles Treaty taught us anything it is peace cannot be achieved let alone shared by starving the vanquished into a state of existential denial. Yet, any student of history cannot resist wondering: is an armistice the same as unconditional surrender?
The squalor of Weimar Germany is suggestive of a greater reality of sociological purgatory permeating Europe. This made ideal breeding grounds possible for fascists like Adolf Hitler to communist revolutionaries that originated the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic. The lesson here is conceptual catechisms like national destiny have the tendency to go horribly wrong when romantically conjugated as ideologies of national salvation. The origins of the United States National Park Service is often overlooked as a minor footnote of world history. Aside from his advocacy of idealism turned internationalism, Woodrow Wilson was also one of the founding fathers of the National Park Service. The stated mission of the agency is to preserve the ecological & historic integrity of places like the Grand Canyon in Arizona & the Albert Einstein House in Princeton New Jersey for maximum accessibility to the public for the benefit of future generations. The National Park Service actively oversees 85 million acres of protected land & historic places made possible with an annual budget of $3.265 billion to fund the mission of the agency. Yet, is there truly a United Nations equivalent to such an agency?
How can movements for ecological peace be applied & ultimately unified under the working jurisdiction of a supranational authority to save & preserve natural & manmade wonders of the world with the stated purpose of maintaining & extenuating man’s common heritage? What if the United Nations developed a similar organization like the National Park Service of the United States, but into a greater supranational project culminating in the first World Ecological & Historic Park Service? The question is, can such a potential area of supranational governance be competently & effectively absorbed & instituted by the United Nations in its current configuration? The work of such a proposed supranational agency would focus on “at risk nations” throughout the Global South rocked with corruption, economic collapse, & deteriorating infrastructure. Will national governments relinquish sovereignty over their wildlife reserves to invest in their sustainable development while protecting against illegal activities?
Perhaps for every national wildlife preserve turned over to the supranational authority of such an agency, an outstanding balance of national debt can be hedged or ideally forgiven concertedly by an issuing body like the World Bank or International Monetary Fund to developing nations in the Global South as a tangible incentive? When taken to task in this area, it becomes all too common to realize we live in a reality where each question turned proposition manifests greater questions on actual implementation. If say one wildlife preserve were secured in a volatile at-risk nation reconciling with the end of a recent civil war, would it be necessary to deploy United Nations Peacekeepers to maintain security?
Can such “benign supranational interventions” serve as havens of socioeconomic stability & renewal to incrementally even the developmental playing field of the Global South using concessions of United Nations aid to build rather than handicap? Such an agency can assist with managing everything from wildfires, protecting our common historic heritage, to replenishing natural resources for the benefit of each nation home to a World Ecological & Historic Park Service site, but where to begin?