US president whose Fourteen Points and League of Nations failed to win the Senate’s ratification
Born in Virginia, he was president of Princeton University and governor of New Jersey before winning the presidency in 1912, and in his first year imposed racial segregation across the federal bureaucracy. In April 1917 he asked Congress to declare war over unrestricted submarine warfare, and in January 1918 set out the Fourteen Points, with a League of Nations and self-determination. At the Paris Peace Conference he presided over the drafting of the League Covenant but conceded much to the other powers to get it. A stroke in October 1919 incapacitated him, and his refusal of a compromise sank the Senate’s ratification of the treaty. The Palmer Raids of the Red Scare came in the same years. He received the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize and died in 1924.
Career timeline
- 1902–1910President of Princeton University
- 1911–1913Governor of New Jersey
- 1913–1921President of the United States
- 1918Announced the Fourteen Points
- 1919Paris Peace Conference; chaired the League Covenant committee
The Cold War's last American president, who genuinely believed in nuclear abolition but would not yield on SDI
On the afternoon of October 12, 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to eliminate every nuclear weapon on earth by the year 2000. Forty minutes later, the talks collapsed when Reagan refused Gorbachev's condition that SDI research be confined to the laboratory.
Ronald Reagan went from Hollywood actor to governor of California to the 40th president of the United States, inaugurating the 1980s with Reaganomics and the largest peacetime military buildup in American history. Early in his first term he denounced the Soviet Union as an 'evil empire,' yet he also held a genuine, long-standing conviction that nuclear weapons should be abolished, a conviction he brought to four summit meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev. At Reykjavik in October 1986 the two leaders came within reach of eliminating all nuclear weapons, only for the talks to collapse when Reagan refused to confine his Strategic Defense Initiative to the laboratory. A year later they signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the first abolition of an entire class of nuclear weapons, and the Cold War ended months after he left office.
Career timeline
- 1911Born into an Irish-American family in Tampico, Illinois
- 1937–1964Hollywood actor in 53 films; served twice as Screen Actors Guild president
- 1967–1975Governor of California; crackdown on campus protests, welfare reform
- 1981–198940th president: Reaganomics, military buildup, 'evil empire' speech
- 1986.10Reykjavik summit: near-total nuclear abolition collapsed over SDI
- 1987.06'Tear down this wall' speech at the Brandenburg Gate
- 1987.12Signed the INF Treaty abolishing all intermediate-range nuclear missiles
- 1994–2004Diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease; died in Los Angeles, 2004
A hawkish Democratic senator who tied Soviet trade status to Jewish emigration
"The American people, above all, are committed to a human détente… to the free movement of men and ideas," he said, "on which a stable and more lasting peace must be based."
The son of Norwegian immigrants, born in Washington state, he served in Congress for over four decades as a Cold War liberal. A champion of civil rights and environmental legislation yet skeptical of détente, he drove the Jackson-Vanik amendment tying Soviet trade status to Jewish emigration. When the informal 1974 bargain with Kissinger and Dobrynin collapsed under Soviet rejection, Jackson effectively sank the 1972 trade agreement. His hawkish aides later formed the core of neoconservatism.
Career timeline
- 1938–1940Prosecuting attorney, Snohomish County
- 1941–1953U.S. Representative (WA)
- 1953–1983U.S. Senator (WA)
- 1963–1981Chair, Interior/Energy & Natural Resources Committee
- 1972Democratic presidential candidate
- 1976Democratic presidential candidate
- 1974Co-sponsored the Jackson-Vanik amendment
