A revolutionary, but flawed man, President Woodrow Wilson blamed Europe’s fragile infrastructure on its dependence on a balance of power, and so he proposed his Fourteen Points at the Paris Peace Conference and with it the groundworks for an effective peace with the creation of a League of Nations. The League would serve as an international parliamentary system responsible for the maintenance of peace through a system of collective security, whereby external aggression against a member nation would be perceived as an act of war against the whole body of nations. A new world order led by the League of Nations, Wilson argued, would see Europe peacefully through the 20th century. However, Wilson’s greatly underestimated the influence of the reactionaries
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Wilson found no more success at home then he did abroad, and committed a series of blunderous errors that all but killed support for the treaty with his decision to break with the popular belief that “politics stops at the water’s edge” (as later defined by the Vandenberg Resolution) and publicly discredit the Republican party to secure support for the Democratic party during the 1918 midterm election, and his blatant exclusion of Republican representatives in his delegation for the Paris Peace talks. Followed by his unwillingness to compromise with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and the Republican party over the contents of Article X of the treaty while under the assumption that his popularity would extend the importance of the ratification issue into a second year and perhaps a third presidential term. In addition, the failure of Wilson’s last ditch attempt to win over the “bully pulpit” with his train campaign in 1919 all but doomed the treaty. In two instances, in 1919 and 1920, Wilson failed to secure the ⅔ votes needed to pass the treaty in …show more content…
Wilson a self-proscribed scholar understand little to nothing about foreign policy, and so when he descended upon Paris in 1918 he came with a unique vision, but one that lacked a plan upon which it could capitalize on. An idealist, he incorrectly assumed that the leaders of the victor Allied nations would be willing put aside their desire for revenge against Germany to achieve the common good, and found himself unable to understand the harsh demands of French Premier Clemenceau, who harbored a deep hatred for the German people after having witnessed a German invasion of his homeland prior to World War I in the Franco-Prussian War as a young boy. The president of a nation that had only entered the war by 1917, one year before its conclusion, Wilson was perceived skeptically by the militarist Clemenceau, who described the American as good intentioned but a man who expected too much, “The fact of the war cannot be forgotten. America did not see this war at a close distance for its first three years; during this time we lost a million and a half men....” Clemenceau aptly described Wilson’s overreaching goals as something ripped straight out of the Bible, “God gave us the 10 commandments and we broke them. Wilson gave us
Wilson found no more success at home then he did abroad, and committed a series of blunderous errors that all but killed support for the treaty with his decision to break with the popular belief that “politics stops at the water’s edge” (as later defined by the Vandenberg Resolution) and publicly discredit the Republican party to secure support for the Democratic party during the 1918 midterm election, and his blatant exclusion of Republican representatives in his delegation for the Paris Peace talks. Followed by his unwillingness to compromise with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and the Republican party over the contents of Article X of the treaty while under the assumption that his popularity would extend the importance of the ratification issue into a second year and perhaps a third presidential term. In addition, the failure of Wilson’s last ditch attempt to win over the “bully pulpit” with his train campaign in 1919 all but doomed the treaty. In two instances, in 1919 and 1920, Wilson failed to secure the ⅔ votes needed to pass the treaty in …show more content…
Wilson a self-proscribed scholar understand little to nothing about foreign policy, and so when he descended upon Paris in 1918 he came with a unique vision, but one that lacked a plan upon which it could capitalize on. An idealist, he incorrectly assumed that the leaders of the victor Allied nations would be willing put aside their desire for revenge against Germany to achieve the common good, and found himself unable to understand the harsh demands of French Premier Clemenceau, who harbored a deep hatred for the German people after having witnessed a German invasion of his homeland prior to World War I in the Franco-Prussian War as a young boy. The president of a nation that had only entered the war by 1917, one year before its conclusion, Wilson was perceived skeptically by the militarist Clemenceau, who described the American as good intentioned but a man who expected too much, “The fact of the war cannot be forgotten. America did not see this war at a close distance for its first three years; during this time we lost a million and a half men....” Clemenceau aptly described Wilson’s overreaching goals as something ripped straight out of the Bible, “God gave us the 10 commandments and we broke them. Wilson gave us