United States Achieve

The United States only briefly achieved the objectives that led it to enter the First World War. With Woodrow Wilson’s demand for his Democratic supporters to reject the Treaty of Versailles with Henry Cabot Lodge’s fourteen “reservations” (a sardonic mock of Wilson’s Fourteen Points), the death warrant was signed for the Treaty to be accepted by the United States. This led to the uselessness of the League of Nations, because of the absence of the United States, thus the breaking of some of the important peace terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The greatest evidence that the objectives were only short lived was the fact that, two decades later, World War II emerged.

Wilson’s Fourteen Points was a big cause and objective for the U.S. to enter the war. It called for, among other things, disarmament, self determination, and, most importantly, the League of Nations. Disarmament worked for several years, as the defeated nations of World War I, mostly Germany, sank deeper into dispair. However, with this German misfortune rose Adolf Hitler, who looked promising to the dispaired German people. So he rose a powerful army, which was against disarmament, however, an American-less League of Nations had no power to stop him. The League also sat idol when Mussolini invaded Ethopia in his quest for victory. Self determination was also difficult to enforce, for the victorious nations of World War I were reluctant to give up the land that they captured during the war, or land they obtained by secret treaties. The League of Nations, created as to keep world peace, was powerless and could do nothing without the United States’ help. Freedom of the seas was also briefly held, until World War II.