It is fitting, if not tragic, that the centenary of Woodrow Wilson’s death on February 3 should coincide with events that again illustrate the perils of his internationalist agenda. United Nations’ complicity in terror against Israel, threats of economic warfare by the European Union against member states — all point to the illogic of the so-called international order and the virtues of state sovereignty in international affairs.

As a statesman and ideologist, President Wilson was among the architects of the modern era. His vision, aspects of which were realized long after his death, was of a global system rooted in a moralistic liberal consensus upheld by a concert of powers and conducted through such institutions as the United Nations and its International Court of Justice. Mr. Wilson was a determinist for whom the arc of history bent toward peace.

In his thinking, the president was not alone. The Roman emperor, Caracalla, in 212 of the common era attempted to forge a universal order by granting Roman citizenship to all free men. Universality was also attempted by, among others, Charles the Great and Alexander I of Russia. Yet so long as it has been tried, universal or international order has largely failed. Global consensus on first principles is no easy feat — or even desirable.

As realists will note — and current affairs make clear — states behave in their own self-interests. While those interests might at times yield similar outcomes, they seldom proceed from the convergence of first principles or in the name of a Wilsonian notion of a universal community. Consider South Korea and Japan. The recent thaw in their ties is rooted not in a shared goal of advancing towards Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history.”

It is rooted instead in their aim to stymie potential Communist Chinese aggression against their territories and protect the interests of their people. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Wilsonian order-builders — among which Ursula von der Leyen and António Guterres might today be counted as tyros — have sought to channel national interests into a collective lot from which to dictate state behavior.

“The same rules for all, whether big or small,” Ms. Von der Leyen has said. Such chirpiness has accompanied EU dealings with its member states, notably Poland and Hungary. For its reluctance to succumb to Europe’s dictates and mores, Poland has had billions of euros in recovery funds withheld. For its refusal to extend €50 billion in fresh aid to Ukraine, Hungary could now see its economy deliberately pummeled by Brussels.

The Sun has long cautioned against dalliances with universalist projects. Writing in July 1919 in opposition to Wilson’s proposed ratification of the Versailles treaty, incorporating the unconstitutional League of Nations, the Sun warned of compacts that might “shackle” America’s “freedom of action” and tie it to “enterprises” “not our concern.” In democratic states, matters of the national interest are set by their people.

Only then are they are acted upon by elected officials. Such institutions as the EU might profess their democratic authority yet harbor no such thing. Unelected and unaccountable, they govern by decree and impose their values in the name of a shared world order and under the threat of sanction. For nations of the Global South, such attempts at universality have appeared a cover for Western, if not American, ambitions.

China, Russia, Iran, and their allies view any sort of Wilsonian consensus as a threat to their foundational principles and corresponding political arrangements. Encouraged, in part, by American foreign policy weakness under the Biden Administration, they now contest such universality from the Middle East to the South China Sea, and within international institutions. The United Nations has become a bystander.

That its Relief and Works Agency was discovered to have been in “cozy symbiosis” with Hamas is the tip of the mirage, so to speak. Wilsonianism, then, has emerged as a failed enterprise. The notion of a universal order rooted in a moral consensus is not a suitable principle from which to conduct world affairs. It turns out, at the end of a long experiment, that protection of state sovereignty and interests is.

No doubt, to say “sovereignty” and “interests” does not yield solutions to global disputes. Yet it starts to allow for candid assessments of the state of world affairs. For considerations of how current international structures might be broken up and new ones erected. Were it to happen, “Dexit” — the Deutsche Exit — could be just the beginning. It also opens the door to other, non-universal coalitions of states. 

These could, though not united in their values, unite around shared interests. For America, too, such interests and coalitions could yet protect against our entanglement — to use the word used by the surveyor George Washington — in what are being called “forever wars.” It would be by no means perfect, but a likely improvement on Wilsonianism.