League of the Fittest, Essay Example

The end of the First World War marked a turning point in world history. Prior to the war, the imperialistic ambitions of the world’s nations, including America, had brought about conditions that culminated in the bloodiest and most costly war on record. As Tardieu points out in the study, The Truth about the Treaty (1921), there was actually no precedent for how to recover from what essentially was the most massive mobilization the world has ever known. Tardieu writes that “Great and unprecedented in its scope: for the first time in history entire nations had fought. Seventy million men had been mobilized, thirty million had been wounded and nearly ten million had died. Nothing in the past could compare with it.” (Tardieu, 1921, p. 77). This massive backdrop to the post-war settlement between nations is the most significant undercurrent to the Treaty of Versailles. 

As is well known, the Versailles Treaty left post-war Germany in such a condition as to breed the grounds for the rise of Nazism. What is less well-known is the struggle that took place in the U.S. Senate over the ratification of the treaty. The treaty had able critics who argued against it on persuasive grounds, which eventually were successful over President Wilson and those who found the treaty acceptable. The final outcome of the debate was that the treaty was rejected by the U.S. Senate. Wilson’s argument consisted of three major points: that future world peace depended on the League of Nations, that the U.S. needed to take a leadership role in the League of Nations, and that the world’s future hinged on whether or not mutualism among nations overcame the tendency for isolation. 

Those who opposed the ratification of the treaty, led by “Henry Cabot Lodge and Alfred Beveridge strongly denounced the treaty, especially Article Ten which called upon the US to support League actions.” (Anon, 2014, para 2). The opposition to the treaty was based on isolationist principles. The three planks of the counterargument presented against the ratification of the treaty were: the League of Nations would create new global entanglements for the U.S., these relationships would cause deeper involvement in international affairs, and this deeper involvement would ultimately lead to more wars. There was also a suggestion that the involvement of the U.S. in the League of Nations would give up autonomy of the U.S. military to the League.

Essentially the debate over the treaty in the Senate was a debate over American imperialism. Prior to World War One, “the United States had a long-established tradition of expansion [many urged] the country to build an overseas empire emulating the European model” (Goldfield, 2011, p. 610). The expansion of European imperialism was the root cause of the First World War. It also fed the schism that appeared in America before the war between those who wanted to move beyond imperialism, and those who wanted to remain committed to it. These two camps became the two camps after the war who argued for and against the League of Nations. American imperialism, therefore, was the very thing that Wilson hoped to blunt, and through example, defuse world tensions.

There were three underlying reasons for the advocating of American imperialism. They were: a belief is social Darwinism, and corresponding faith is racial inequality, and a strong presence of religious prejudice that fed into widespread attitudes about American exceptionalism. These attitudes are often referred to by historians, collectively, as “Mahanism” which is the sum of foreign policy ideas forwarded by Arthur Thayer Mahan. Similar attitudes, based in Europe, had already created the conditions for a global conflict.  Wilson’s idea was to create a new kind of global politic where all nations had equal power and the chance of violent conflict would be reduced. What Wilson wanted was a “new world order … based on national equality and self-determination, arms reduction, freedom of seas, and an international organization to ensure peace” (Goldfield, 2011, p.641). The plan, obviously, was to undermine the spread of imperialism, in order to prevent the conflagration of a multi-national conflict.

Wilson was as unsuccessful in stopping the pre-war spread of imperialism as he was in pushing the Versailles Treaty through the Senate. When the world erupted into war, there could be little doubt that it stood as both the logical outcome and pragmatic test of the aforementioned ideas of “Mahanism.” The escalation of global tensions proved Wilson’s point that an international body was needed to prevent wars. Unfortunately, it also proved the more cynical point of view that nations were tested in war at some kind of evolutionary level, with the strongest gaining the spoils. What happened in World War One was the natural outgrowth of imperialistic beliefs and ideas about the ruling class of human society. The fact is that “since the 1870’s, the competing imperial ambitions of the European powers had led to economic rivalries, military expansion … and international tensions” (Goldfield, 2011, p. 637). There was simply no other way out of the imperialist vision that had consumed so much of the Western world.

The post-war debate over the Treaty of Versailles must be viewed as a continuation of this same schism in American politics. When the war ended, Wilson took an approach very similar to his pre-war attitudes, with an eye toward establishing conditions that would work as a bulwark against imperialism. He, along with his supporters, obviously saw the First World War as a vindication of the pre-war push for an international “new world order.” At the same time, fierce anti-global concerns persisted in the American Senate. These isolationists were still betting on the competitive ideals of imperialism. They resisted the post-war urge toward an anti-imperialist system of global politics, just as they had rejected these same ideas before the war.    

References

Anonymous.  How did World War One Change the Way America Looked at the World? 3-1-2014; ; accessed 3-2-14. ttp://www.socialstudieshelp.com/lesson_75_notes.htm

Goldfield, David, et al. (2011) The Brief American Journey, Sixth Edition. Prentice Hall.

Tardieu, A. (1921). The Truth about the Treaty. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.