Wilsonian Idealism and Japanese Claims at the Paris Peace Conference

According to Ray Stannard Baker, head of the Press Bureau of the American Committee to Negotiate the Peace, the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 was a battlefield of two ideas: the “Old Diplomacy,” practiced by imperialists of the Old World, and the “New Diplomacy,” advocated by idealistic internationalists under the leadership of President Woodrow Wilson. ¹ This dichotomy, however, does not fully explain the antagonism between Japan and the United States at the end of World War I. This study explores further possible explanations of President Wilson’s failure to fend off the Japanese challenge to the principles of Wilsonian internationalism as set forth in his Fourteen Points. It argues that Japanese-American differences were more than either simple disagreements over diplomatic principles or particular disputes over economic, territorial, or political concessions. Hidden behind the conflict was another dichotomy—between America’s universalism and unilateralism, on the one hand, and, on the other, an incipient particularistic regionalism and pluralism derived from Japanese leaders’ assessment of 298power relations in East Asia and their strong sense of nationalism and racial identity.