Summary
History routinely affords illuminating insights on existential challenges which have confronted humanity. Apprehending that context, clear-headed analysis, direction, intentionality, coupled with the political will to avoid repeating pivotal schisms which facilitated those fundamental problems ab initio, elevate real leadership, to the rarified pantheons of statesmanship.
That assertion is partly evidenced, by President Woodrow Wilsonโs Fourteen Points to the United States Congress on January 8, 1918 which proved vital in negotiations to peacefully end World War 1 (1914-1918) between Allied Powers and Central Powers.
As the 28th President of the United States (1913 to 1921), Wilson, although an outright racist (because he mandated the racial segregation of federal employees in 1913!); nevertheless, helped establish the foundations of a liberal global order which, to a greater or lesser degree, shaped international law and a rules-based global order for generations, albeit resting on extremely shaky anchors in contemporary times.
Ultimately, Wilsonโs liberal ideals, striking as they were, could not reverse the serious conflicts between Allied powers and Axis powers and the decadence which, years later, contributed to the collapse of the League of Nations (1920-1946); World War II (1939-1945). The fundamental question then becomes: what key lessons have been learned from the perspective of international relations and geopolitics, 80 years after the United States atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
The evidence, emanating from global conflicts, de facto unipolarity, Machiavellian political realism, forced annexations, the adverse effects of climate change ditto the securitisation of asylum and mass migration, double-standards, ineffective decision-making on the UN Security Council and the withering capacity of international law, brigaded, suggest that critical lessons have not been learned by global powers.
Discourse
Geopolitically, WWII (1939-1945) pitched Allied powers (U.S., Britain, France, Russia and proxies) versus Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan, and proxies) in divergent military pacts over ideological goals, balance of power, and rivalling strategic interests. Noteworthy, Nigerians, Ghanaians, Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Barbadians, Guyanese, Kenyans, Tanzanians, Indians, Pakistanis, and other โCommonwealthโ nationals fought (and died fighting!) for the โMotherlandโ, Britain, as the de facto and de jure colonial power at the material time.
The root cause however, was the ascendancy of the German dictator, Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Hitler sought European domination and superpower status. Commencing in 1936, Hitler annexed the ethno-Germanic portions of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and France. He advanced by invading Poland in 1939, following Britainโs breach of appeasement under Neville Chamberlain. Shielding Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany, thereby initiating WWII.
The Allied forces were led by Charles de Gaulle (France), Winston Churchill (Britain), Joseph Stalin (Russia), and Franklin D. Roosevelt (USA). Axis forces were led by Adolf Hitler (Germany), Benito Mussolini (Italy), and Hideki Tojo (Japan). The ferocity and gargantuan casualties marked it as one of mankindโs bloodiest wars characterised in the Hobbesian Leviathanโs state of nature as short, nasty and brutish.
WWII caused the deaths of over 70 million people.
The United States, in concert with Britain and Canada, developed the atomic bomb. However, the U.S., for the first time in human history, with Britainโs consent, deployed atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, on August 6 and 9, 1945. The bombardments killed approximately 250,000 people with enduringly adverse health and socio-environmental impacts. Buy vitamins and supplements
According to the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, a collaborative Japan/U.S. entity, within the first few months after the bombing, approximately 90,000 and 166,000 people died in Hiroshima, while another 60,000 to 80,000 died in Nagasaki. The Foundation further estimates that the attributable risk of leukaemia was 46% for bomb victims. The International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) estimates that 38,000 children were killed following the bombings.
Hitherto, Wilsonโs Fourteen Points proposed:
1. Establishment of the League of Nations โ as a compact of nations formed to provide correspondingly beneficial assurances of political sovereignty and territorial integrity; 2. Transparent Diplomacy โ devoid of secret agreements and alliances; 3. Capitalism โ free enterprise, free trade, the elimination of trade tariffs ditto equality of trade conditions among nations; 4. Navigational Freedom โ on the high seas in peacetime and wartime unless shut down by coordinated international action.
- Arms Reduction โ to reasonable limits necessary for domestic safety; 6. Creating an Independent Poland โ vested with full sovereign autonomy, territorial integrity and access to the sea; 7. Adjustment of Colonial Claims โ with equitable adjustments respecting the claims and interests of the affected populations;
- Evacuation of all Russian Territory โ and Russiaโs freedom to determine its own sovereignty consistent with the principles of self-determination and the normative order of international cooperation; 9. Restoration of Belgian Sovereignty; 10. Restoration of French Territory โ encompassing Alsace-Lorraine.
No less important, were the latter salient points namely: Redesignation of Italian Borders: with adjustments aligning with recognisable principles of nationality; Affording Austro-Hungarian peoples opportunities for self-determination and independence; Recasting of Balkan Frontiers โ encompassing the evacuation of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro, coupled with international guarantees of their sovereign autonomy and established legal territoriality; and Restrictions on Turkey โ such that definitive Turkish territories emanating from the Ottoman Empire should remain independent whilst affording protections for minorities and other nationalities with the scope for independence.
However, despite its lofty aspirations, Wilsonโs Fourteen Points failed in a number of respects. First, it lacked the economic and military capabilities, ditto enforcement mechanisms to police its own decisions, which exposed Wilsonโs liberalism ideals as vacuous in certain respects.
Second, the absence of an overarching supreme authority highlighted the anarchic nature of the international system because sovereign nations prioritised national interests which in turn, reinforced the overriding political realism philosophy of classical theorists like Thucydides, Hobbes, and Nicolo Machiavelli โ essentially, advocating the contested principle that might is right! Little wonder that Machiavelli opined in The Prince (1513) that a leader โmust not have any other object nor any other thoughtโฆbut war, its institutions, and its discipline, because that is the only art befitting one who commands.โ
Third, the League of Nations failed to prevent expansionist, fascist, isolationist, and extra-territorial annexation policies of countries like Italy pursuant to Mussoliniโs 1935 invasion of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia); Japanโs invasion of the Manchuria province; and the mandate model where the Britain administered Palestine and Transjordan, wherein Jordan gained independence in 1946, and Israel declared independence in 1948.
The conflict in Israel and Palestine until this day, is rooted in the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 which declared Britainโs support โfor the establishment in Palestine, a national homeland for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of that objectโ.
The Declaration concurrently established that nothing should โprejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities.โ However, the Declaration has come under withering criticisms for its unsubtle bias against Palestinians.
According to the United Nations, the British โMandate did not take into account the wishes of the people of Palestineโ, despite the League of Nationโs Covenantโs requirements that โthe wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory.โ The Anglo-Jewish scholar Arthur Koestler called the Declaration โone the most improbable political documents of all time,โ where โone nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third.โ
Critical analysis of the extant Israeli versus Palestinian Hamas war which began on October 7, 2023, where according to the UK Parliament, Hamas killed approximately 1,189 Israelis and took over 200 hostages; and Israel countered by killing over 58,000 Gazans, destroying Gaza; killing 184 journalists according to AP; and the decades of war between Israel (and, at various times, allies including Britain, France and the United States) versus Palestinian resistance movements (at various times, allies including Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Syria, Yemen et al) are traceable to the lingering complexities of the Balfour Declaration over a century later.
Accepting that the League failed spectacularly given its inability to prevent WWII; coloniality, rapacious extra-territorial land annexation and threats thereof not least on the evidence of Russiaโs annexation of Crime in 2014, and its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022; U.S. President Trumpโs threats to annex Canada; Israelโs destruction and annexation of Gaza; has the United Nations, founded in 1945 to maintain international peace and security, and global cooperation, fared any better? Is the world any safer in 2025, than it was in 1945, or in Wilsonian leadership times? Is the risk of a nuclear confrontation ascending or decreasing between great and rising powers?
Conclusion
Given the failure of the UN Security Council to halt Russiaโs invasion and annexation of Crimea, in 2014; its failure to prevent the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022; its failure to halt the Israeli destruction and de facto annexation of Gaza (supra.), where the International Court of Justice opined in 2024 that: โat least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the (Genocide) Conventionโ; its failure to halt U.S. attacks, in defence of Israel, on Iranโs nuclear facilities in Operation Midnight hammer of June 22, 2025, which the latter claimed were entirely for peaceful purposes, suggest that very few lessons have been learned from Wilsonโs Fourteen Points, the League, ditto, Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
North Koreaโs withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 is telling; just like the U.S. withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, with Russia in 2019. Plus, Russiaโs exit on November 7, 2023, from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), with the US and NATO partners suspending their participating in the treaty highlights real concerns.
Inescapably, the dynamic forces of the liberal order evinced by the Wilsonian Fourteen doctrines and the unipolar muscularity of the Trumpian order, characterised by the display and deployment of raw power, the recasting of the international financial system through the agency of U.S.-initiated global โreciprocalโ tariffs, literal and metaphorical firepower against enemies and perceived rivals are at play. The rules-based order is receding given the subjugation of international law for geopolitical interests. Where will it end?
The prognosis is an increased race for the acquisition and development of nuclear capabilities whether for peaceful purposes, or offensive military or defensive military objectives. Therefore, the ideological inclinations of powerful UNSC P5 and powerful independent states, national interests and overriding sovereignty considerations will determine whether or not they wish to learn any lessons post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Tough? Yes! Because, the international system has oftentimes proven to be anarchic over centuries, and effective diplomacy, useful as it is, will scarcely supplant Machiavellian realism.
Credit:The Guardian