The Fourteen Points created a vision for international relations that nations are still striving to meet today.

Yup. We're no closer to the "one big happy family" thing than we were back in 1918.

As ideas, the Points were revolutionary. The only problem was that no one went along with them when it mattered most. Most of the concrete provisions in Wilson's speech were eventually rejected in the Treaty of Versailles. German leaders had negotiated a surrender based on the Fourteen Points, but they left the Paris Peace Conference with a much tougher deal. (Source)

The United States also wound up not joining the League of Nations when the Senate rejected the idea. Wilson might have come across as a little pretentious to his colleagues in the legislative branch. (Source)

That doesn't necessarily make the Fourteen Points speech a failure. Wilson set a high standard for the international community to chase. For example, we still don't have total freedom of the seas and open trade, but America has pursued free trade deals in both the Eastern and Western hemispheres. There are now several associations of nations that protect each other through various laws and resolutions, including the European Union, NATO, and the UN.

What made Wilson so idealistic compared to his counterparts in 1918? Most likely, it had to do with his position as an American. It was easy for Americans to pontificate about perpetual world peace with the Atlantic acting as a protective buffer. But Europe had centuries of bad blood going back to medieval times. Even with leaders like Napoleon relegated to the past, each European power still dreamed of dominating the continent.

Wilson started the slow process of ending European power struggles for good. Sure, it took another world war, a Cold War, and a few decades. But historians don't consider the Fourteen Points speech a failure, so much as just being waaay ahead of its time. Just like we'll never quite get to warp speed, we'll probably never get all Wilson's ideas to be reality.

It's sort of like perfection: always a direction, but not an achievable goal.