"11001001"
this one was from earlier in the semester, for the group project I had to do.
War! The Black Hand has assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. The Serbian plot has managed to drag the rest of the continent into a deadly struggle for power and territorial rights. Slowly the majority of the major powers of the globe have aligned themselves with one side or the other, plunging all people of the earth into a World War.
Declaring neutrality, the United States has opted not to join into the war, but has secretly been supplying munitions to the Allied Powers. After a German U-Boat sinks a British Passenger liner carrying American citizens (and secretly transporting weapons), President Wilson declares war on The Central Powers.
At the close of the war, the Allies come out victorious, due in no small part to the intervention of the United States. Many decisions have to be made on a global scale. The world looks to the United States for financial support, protection from further attacks by an aggressor nation, and for a return to “normalcy” after the Great War...
Woodrow Wilson believes that it is the United States duty to help out the rest of the world to the extent of their power. Due to this generosity the people of Europe see him as their savoir, but the people of America are developing a different feeling. Henry Cabot Lodge, chairman of the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations, ever-challenged Wilson’s ideas of Americas place in a “League of Nations”.
What Wilson saw as an opportunity to protect the world from wrongdoers, Lodge saw as an entanglement in European affairs. If America was to join the League, it was feared that we would ultimately lose control of our own military, and risk our own goals and needs for the Europeans.
The problem with Europe was this; France wanted the blame of the war placed harshly onto Germany. After facing the brunt of the German forces at the beginning of the war in the harsh (but failed) Schlieffen Plan, France wanted a buffer zone between them and Germany. They turned the Rhineland into a DMZ, and took back Alsace and Lorraine from Germany. Also the Danzig corridor was given to Poland, thus splitting up Germany and East Prussia. These acts taken at the Versailles Conference seemed too harsh on the German people to a lot of the world, and Wilson was willing to go along with all of them in order to form the League of Nations. Of course, the United States did not join the League of Nations, which proved to be a powerless institution, like most new government systems of the 1920’s (Weimar Republic, Taisho Democracy).
I believe that the League of Nations was a doomed notion from its conception. The Treaty of Versailles left a bad taste in a lot of mouths, and it was this that sealed he fate of Europe in the following decades. I believe that if we had joined, under the circumstances that Wilson wanted us in, that World War 2 might not have occurred when it did, but would have been just an inevitable. I think the problem would have been the same back then as it is today. If a major country that can stand on its own two feet wanted to do something that did not win support from the League, then they would have done so anyways, free from fear of retribution from the League.
To me it seems that George W. Bush has no respect for the United Nations. When they did not show their support in our special operations in Iraq, he went ahead anyways, guns blazing and declaring freedom from terrorism in the name of the Iraqi people. Because France would not lend aid to a war they saw as unjust, a vast number of Americans (the Republican Party) have turned on our allies of 80 something years. The war on terror is not something that can be won alone by America, but our leaders insistence to go it alone if necessary is dooming us to an unfavorable place amongst the nations of the world. Lodge did not see the need to join the League of Nations, a toothless lion, and now Bush sees no need to respect the United Nations wishes, questioning the effectiveness of the respectable institution.
~Oz
War! The Black Hand has assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. The Serbian plot has managed to drag the rest of the continent into a deadly struggle for power and territorial rights. Slowly the majority of the major powers of the globe have aligned themselves with one side or the other, plunging all people of the earth into a World War.
Declaring neutrality, the United States has opted not to join into the war, but has secretly been supplying munitions to the Allied Powers. After a German U-Boat sinks a British Passenger liner carrying American citizens (and secretly transporting weapons), President Wilson declares war on The Central Powers.
At the close of the war, the Allies come out victorious, due in no small part to the intervention of the United States. Many decisions have to be made on a global scale. The world looks to the United States for financial support, protection from further attacks by an aggressor nation, and for a return to “normalcy” after the Great War...
Woodrow Wilson believes that it is the United States duty to help out the rest of the world to the extent of their power. Due to this generosity the people of Europe see him as their savoir, but the people of America are developing a different feeling. Henry Cabot Lodge, chairman of the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations, ever-challenged Wilson’s ideas of Americas place in a “League of Nations”.
What Wilson saw as an opportunity to protect the world from wrongdoers, Lodge saw as an entanglement in European affairs. If America was to join the League, it was feared that we would ultimately lose control of our own military, and risk our own goals and needs for the Europeans.
The problem with Europe was this; France wanted the blame of the war placed harshly onto Germany. After facing the brunt of the German forces at the beginning of the war in the harsh (but failed) Schlieffen Plan, France wanted a buffer zone between them and Germany. They turned the Rhineland into a DMZ, and took back Alsace and Lorraine from Germany. Also the Danzig corridor was given to Poland, thus splitting up Germany and East Prussia. These acts taken at the Versailles Conference seemed too harsh on the German people to a lot of the world, and Wilson was willing to go along with all of them in order to form the League of Nations. Of course, the United States did not join the League of Nations, which proved to be a powerless institution, like most new government systems of the 1920’s (Weimar Republic, Taisho Democracy).
I believe that the League of Nations was a doomed notion from its conception. The Treaty of Versailles left a bad taste in a lot of mouths, and it was this that sealed he fate of Europe in the following decades. I believe that if we had joined, under the circumstances that Wilson wanted us in, that World War 2 might not have occurred when it did, but would have been just an inevitable. I think the problem would have been the same back then as it is today. If a major country that can stand on its own two feet wanted to do something that did not win support from the League, then they would have done so anyways, free from fear of retribution from the League.
To me it seems that George W. Bush has no respect for the United Nations. When they did not show their support in our special operations in Iraq, he went ahead anyways, guns blazing and declaring freedom from terrorism in the name of the Iraqi people. Because France would not lend aid to a war they saw as unjust, a vast number of Americans (the Republican Party) have turned on our allies of 80 something years. The war on terror is not something that can be won alone by America, but our leaders insistence to go it alone if necessary is dooming us to an unfavorable place amongst the nations of the world. Lodge did not see the need to join the League of Nations, a toothless lion, and now Bush sees no need to respect the United Nations wishes, questioning the effectiveness of the respectable institution.
~Oz
posted by ozporn at 12:24 AM
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