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It interpreted war as essentially an atavism associated with authoritarian monarchy, aristocracy, imperialism, and economic nationalism.Such governments still practiced an old diplomacy of secret alliances, militarism, and balance of power politics that bred distrust, suspicion, and conflict.He expected a functioning League of Nations to correct whatever errors and injustices might creep in to the treaties themselves.Liberal internationalism set the tone for the Paris Peace Conference.Ethnic hatreds and rivalries could not be expunged at a stroke, and their persistence hindered the effort to draw or redraw dozens of boundaries, including those of the successor states emerging from the Habsburg empire.In the colonial world the war among the imperial powers gave a strong impetus to nationalist movements.Central and eastern Europe were in a turmoil in the wake of the France, Belgium, and Poland in ruin.
Still, he was a prophet in world politics, both as lawgiver and as seer. Georges Clemenceau also approached peacemaking as a personal quest, stacking the French delegation with loyal supporters and minimizing the influence of the foreign ministry, the army, and parliament.
He had visited Europe only twice before, as a tourist, and now delayed the peace conference in order to make a triumphant tour of European capitals.
Moreover, the Democrats lost their Senate majority in the elections of November 1918, yet Wilson refused to include prominent Republicans in his delegation.
A century before, Europe’s aristocratic rulers had convened in the capital of dynasties, Vienna, to fashion a peace repudiating the nationalist and democratic principles of the French Revolution.
Now, democratic statesmen would convene in the capital of liberty, Paris, to remake a Europe that had overthrown monarchical imperialism once and for all in this “war to end war.” In fact, the immense destruction done to the political and economic landmarks of the prewar world would have made the task of peacemaking daunting even if the victors had shared a united vision, which they did not.
France faced the most massive task of reconstruction, the most direct threat of German revenge, and the most immediate responsibility for executing the armistice and peace treaties by dint of its contiguity with Germany.