Chapter 14 presents a new interpretation of the peacemaking and reordering process that unfolded at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. It argues that it was not only the most complex process of its kind in history but also, at the core, a process that was dominated by the struggle to negotiate the underpinnings and ground-rules of a new Atlantic order – which in turn had far-reaching global repercussions. Taking into account the unprecedented multiplicity of governmental and non-governmental actors who tried to influence this process in and beyond Paris it sheds new light on how the peace negotiations ultimately came to be shaped by the interests, concepts and strategies of those who led and represented the most powerful states after the war: Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau – and their main advisers. And it opens up new perspectives on why the first truly modern peacemaking process remained in crucial respects incomplete. It shows that while the principal “peacemakers” began to learn how to forge complex compromises under the challenging conditions of 1919 what they ultimately managed to negotiate could not lay firm and legitimate foundations for a sustainable Atlantic, and global, peace order.

Chapter 4 examines the emergence of different internationalist aspirations on both sides of the Atlantic to supersede conflict-prone imperialist power politics and to advance towards a more pacific international order in the decades before the First World War. It compares the pursuits of liberal and both centrist and more radical socialist actors, non-governmental associations and newly important transnational networks like the burgeoning pacifist movement, the Second International and, notably, the new phalanx of those who demanded that power politics should be replaced by arbitration and authoritative covenants of international law – and who paved the way for the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. It reassesses not only the guiding ideas of the vanguards of such aspirations but also the actual influence they had on transatlantic and global politics in this crucial phase, seeking to offer a systematic explanation of why these counterforces failed to civilise international politics and why ultimately they could not prevent the escalatory processes that caused the catastrophe of 1914.

Chapter 3 re-examines the “ascent” of the United States within the 19th century’s Eurocentric international order, retracing its special path from a fledgling and vulnerable republic to the status of an exceptional and exceptionalist world power. It focuses on the evolution of American ideas and ideologies in the sphere of international affairs, the rise of distinctive forms of US imperialism and unilateralism, and the emergence of core maxims of US international conduct such as those embodied in the ever more expansively defined Monroe Doctrine and the Open Door Doctrine. It then casts new light on ephemeral aspirations to establish a modern Atlantic order of empires – led by the United States and the British Empire – that were pursued after the Spanish-American war of 1898 and in the era of Theodore Roosevelt.

Chapter 10 reappraises the evolving plans and visions for a League of Nations and a new, progressive international order that were advanced by Woodrow Wilson and those who came to advise the American president and contribute to the American peace agenda that was presented at the Paris Peace Conference. It reinterprets Wilson’s core aspiration as, essentially, the pursuit of a new Atlantic order – rather than a “new world order”. And it not only analyses the underlying assumptions and maxims of the peace programme that he and his core advisers elaborated after the end of the Great War – and the crucial changes they made to this programme and their approaches to peacemaking during the critical phase between the armistice and the peace negotiations at Versailles. It also evaluates how far Wilson and his advisers had drawn deeper lessons from the war – and how far the president’s reorientated ideas and strategies for a “peace to end all wars” actually met essential requirements that had to be fulfilled to create a durable and legitimate postwar order in and beyond the newly vital transatlantic sphere.

Chapter 20 sheds new light on what arguably was the crucial problem of the peacemaking process of 1919 – the fact that ultimately the peace settlement and the terms and rules of the new order were not negotiated between the victors and the vanquished but imposed by the western powers, above all on the fledgling Weimar Republic. It shows that what led to this outcome were not only the unprecedented transatlantic complexities Wilson and the principal British and French “peacemakers” faced when trying to hammer out the fundamental parameters of the peace and postwar order, and to reconcile their often all but irreconcilable interests, aims and ideological priorities. As it underscores, the imposed peace of 1919 was also the outgrowth of underlying hierarchical assumptions the victors shared about their “right” to dictate terms to the defeated German power and to place it on probation. Also analysing the strategies that leading German policymakers like Brockdorff-Rantzau and Matthias Erzberger pursued to open the door to a negotiated peace it finally reappraises the eventual political-cum-ideological battle between the victors and the vanquished that escalated in 1919 and analysis the destructive consequences of the peace settlement’s ultimate imposition.

Chapter 19 focuses on the political and moral stakes of one of the most contentious questions of the peace conference: on what grounds Germany was to pay reparations and how high the reparation claims of the victors were to be. It not only demonstrates how intricately the indemnity problem was linked with the fundamental question of who bore responsibility for the Great War and all the casualties and destruction it had caused, eventually leading to a clash between western claims of Germany’s “war guilt” and German efforts to refute them. Placing this problem in a transatlantic context, it also emphasises that the reparations conundrum was inseparable from the tectonic changes the war brought in the financial and economic spheres, especially America’s ascent to the status of the world’s pre-eminent economic and financial power and the massive indebtedness of Britain and France to the new “world creditor”. It thus casts fresh light on the question of why it proved impossible to negotiate a “rational” and mutually acceptable reparations settlement in 1919. And it reappraises why only limited advances towards a new financial and economic order and effective postwar reconstruction could be made. Finally, it highlights the far-reaching political consequences this had.

Chapter 21 offers a new, Atlantic interpretation of the peace of Versailles and the reconfigured international order that emerged in 1919. In contrast to previous assessments, especially the long dominant view that the settlement represented the best possible outcome, it argues that what the “peacemakers” managed to negotiate could only lay a frail groundwork for lasting peace and a sustainable world order of democratic states. It emphasises that the peace architecture of 1919 remained truncated in crucial respects – particularly because it neither integrated the Weimar Republic nor provided effective mechanisms to come to terms with the German question, the dramatic consequences of the Great War and the broader structural and systemic challenges of the “long” 20th century. It illuminates that this was especially due to the fact that the overburdened key decision-makers of Paris confronted one novel, overriding challenge they could only meet in a very limited manner: to forge sustainable transatlantic compromises that reconciled very disparate aims and conceptions – and to create a robust, integrative and thus also more legitimate transatlantic superstructure of security and stabilisation. Finally, it highlights that the learning processes the war had engendered did not reach far enough to permit more far-reaching advances.

Chapter 13 reappraises the difficult attempts made by those who sought to break with Wilhelminian power politics and develop both a western-orientated peace agenda and a new, progressive foreign policy on behalf of the defeated German state and, eventually, the fledgling Weimar Republic. It argues that while the core aim of the new protagonists, the social democratic leaders Friedrich Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann and the new republic’s first foreign minister Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, was to negotiate a lenient Wilsonian “peace of justice” they also came to develop forward-looking Atlanticist policies designed to integrate a republican Germany into a reconfigured Atlantic order – and the League of Nations. It elucidates the prevalent maxims and assumptions of the new German peace agenda that was elaborated after the armistice. And it examines how far the new German key actors had drawn more far-reaching lessons from the war and Germany’s catastrophic yet only partially acknowledged defeat – and how far the new priorities and conceptions they advanced went beyond tactical considerations and could actually contribute to the creation of a peace-enforcing Atlantic order after the Great War.

Chapter 16 focuses on a comprehensive analysis of how the principal negotiators of the victorious powers sought to come to terms with the two most vital and indeed intricately interconnected questions of the entire peacemaking process: the challenge of establishing a new security architecture to stabilise the Atlantic world and make it “safe for democracy”; and the challenge of agreeing on the fundamental terms of the German settlement and how to deal with the pivotal problem of what shape and what status was to have in the postwar order. It reappraises how the protagonists came to forge a hybrid system of collective security that combined the novel guarantees of the League of Nations, temporary territorial guarantees, far-reaching disarmament of the defeated power and, crucially, specific security agreements under which Britain and the United States pledged to come to France’s aid in the case of unprovoked German aggression. And it offers a new interpretation both of the challenges of fortifying these elements into a new international concert system that could effectively secure the fledgling Atlantic peace and of the challenges of negotiating terms of a German settlement that could gain legitimacy not only among the victors but also on the part of the vanquished.