Who originally used the phrase new world order in diplomatic writings and when?
Executive summary
The earliest diplomatic uses of language closely matching "new world order" trace to the World War I and immediate postwar period, when President Woodrow Wilson used phrases such as "new order of the world" in 1919 and "new international order" in 1918 as part of his League-of-Nations-era rhetoric [1] [2]. Modern diplomatic popularization of the precise phrase is usually credited to the 1990–91 Persian Gulf crisis—most visibly when President George H. W. Bush invoked a "new world order" repeatedly after a diplomatic cable by Ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. framed the Gulf contest as determining the world's future—but historians note the term and variations have a longer archival pedigree dating back to 1917–1919 in State Department records [1] [3] [4].
1. The Wilsonian origins: language in 1918–1919 and the League of Nations context
Woodrow Wilson, in the immediate aftermath of World War I and in the runup to his League of Nations work, used phrases like "new international order" in February 1918 and "new order of the world" in a September 9, 1919 speech, language that links the idea of reorganizing global politics to U.S. diplomatic rhetoric of that era [1] [2]. Library of Congress commentary on Wilson’s League covenant and other contemporary archival evidence place the conceptual currency of "world order" and similar phrases squarely in the 1917–1919 diplomatic vocabulary, reflecting a Wilsonian project to redesign international rules after the Great War [2] [4].
2. State Department archival evidence: “world order” in 1917–1919
Researchers working with State Department archives report that one of the earliest appearances of the phrase "world order" in official U.S. diplomatic files occurs in the 1917–1919 period, with the expression largely disappearing from cables for decades thereafter before reappearing sporadically in later decades [4]. That archival pattern supports the claim that the conceptual phrase—if not a single fixed formula—had roots in the immediate post–World War I diplomatic lexicon and was used by Wilsonian diplomats and some junior officers of the era [4].
3. The late‑20th century revival: Freeman’s cable and Bush’s public usage in 1990–91
Diplomatic sources reveal a direct line from a August 1990 cable by U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Charles W. Freeman Jr., who argued that U.S. conduct in the Persian Gulf crisis would help determine "the nature of the world," to President George H. W. Bush’s repeated public invocation of a "new world order" through the Gulf War period—Bush used the phrase at least 42 times between summer 1990 and March 1991, popularizing the exact wording in modern geopolitics [1]. Contemporary encyclopedias and analyses of 1991 foreign policy also record Bush's appeal to the United Nations and to renewed superpower cooperation under the rubric of a "new world order" during the Gulf crisis [3].
4. Competing claims and historiographical caution: “invented” vs. “revived”
Some commentators and institutional authors have claimed George H. W. Bush "invented" the phrase "new world order" in the modern sense, a shorthand that captures the 1990–91 public moment [5]. Primary-source-based scholarship and archival studies complicate that narrative: while Bush popularized and institutionalized the phrase in late 1990, documentary evidence shows similar locutions—"world order," "new order of the world," and "new international order"—were used by Wilson and appeared in State Department records as early as 1917–1919, so the claim that Bush originated the language overlooks its earlier diplomatic lineage [1] [4].
5. What the sources do not settle and the limits of the record
The assembled sources establish early Wilsonian usages in 1918–1919 and a clear revival and popularization during the 1990–91 Gulf crisis [1] [2] [3] [4], but they do not provide a definitive single first-ever instance of the exact modern phrase "new world order" in diplomatic writings worldwide; the available materials focus on U.S. archives and public speeches and leave open the possibility of similar formulations in other national diplomatic corpuses or earlier unpublished drafts not covered by these specific sources [4]. Given those limits, the most accurate summary from the documents at hand is that Wilson and U.S. State Department files first used close variants in 1918–1919, while Charles W. Freeman’s 1990 cable and George H. W. Bush’s subsequent usage made the precise phrase a dominant part of late‑20th‑century diplomatic rhetoric [2] [1] [3].