The League of Nations was an international organization, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, created after the First World War to provide a forum for resolving international disputes. It was first proposed by President Woodrow Wilson as part of his Fourteen Points plan for an equitable peace in Europe, but the United States was never a member. Show In front of the U.S. Congress on January 8, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson enumerated the last of his Fourteen Points, calling for a "general association of nations�formed on the basis of covenants designed to create mutual guarantees of the political independence and territorial integrity of States, large and small equally." Many of Wilson's previous points would require regulation or enforcement, and thus he distilled the wartime thinking of many diplomats and intellectuals, on both sides of the Atlantic, into a call for a new type of standing international organization dedicated to fostering international cooperation, providing security for its members, and ensuring a lasting peace. With Europe's population exhausted by four years of total war, and with many in the United States supportive of the idea that a new organization would be able to solve the international disputes that had led to war in 1914, Wilson's articulation of a League of Nations was wildly popular. However, it proved exceptionally difficult to create, and Wilson left office never having convinced the United States to join it.
Wilson used his tremendous influence to attach the Covenant of the League, its charter, to the Treaty of Versailles. An effective League, he believed, would mitigate any inequities in the peace terms. He and the other members of the "Big Three," Georges Clemenceau of France and David Lloyd George of Britain, drafted the Covenant as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles. The League's main organs were an Assembly of all members and a Council, made up of five permanent members and four rotating members, along with an International Court of Justice. Most importantly, for Wilson, the League would guarantee the territorial integrity and political independence of member states, authorize the League to take "any action�to safeguard the peace," establish procedures for arbitration and create the mechanisms for economic and military sanctions. The struggle to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant in the U.S. Congress helped define the most important political division over the role of the United States in the world for a generation. A triumphant Wilson returned to the United States in February 1919 to submit the Treaty and Covenant to Congress for its consent and ratification. Unfortunately for the President, while popular support for the League was still strong, opposition within Congress and the press had begun building even before he had left for Paris. Spearheading the challenge was the Senate majority leader and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Henry Cabot Lodge. Motivated by Republican concerns that the League would commit the United States to an expensive organization that would reduce the United States' ability to defend its own interests, Lodge led the opposition to joining the League. Where Wilson and the League's supporters saw merit in an international body that would work for peace and collective security for its members, Opponents feared the consequences of involvement in Europe's tangled politics, now even more complex because of the 1919 peace settlement. More generally, they adhered to the United States' traditional aversion to commitments outside the Western Hemisphere. Wilson and Lodge's personal dislike of each other poisoned any hopes for a compromise, and in March 1920, the Treaty and Covenant were defeated by a 49-35 Senate vote. Nine months later, Warren Harding was elected President on a platform opposing the League. The United States never joined the League. Most historians consider that the League operated much less effectively without U.S. participation than it would have otherwise. However, even while rejecting membership, the Republican presidents of the period, and their foreign policy architects, agreed with many of its goals. To the extent that Congress allowed, the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover Administrations associated the United States with League efforts on several issues. Constant suspicion in Congress, however, that steady U.S. cooperation with the League would lead to de facto membership prevented a close relationship between Washington and Geneva. Additionally, growing disillusionment with the Treaty of Versailles diminished support for the League in the United States and the international community. Wilson's insistence that the Covenant be linked to the treaty was a blunder; over time, the treaty was discredited as unenforceable, short-sighted, or too extreme in its provisions, and the League's failure either to enforce or revise it only reinforced U.S. Congressional opposition to working with the League under any circumstances. However, the coming of World War II once again demonstrated the need for an effective international organization to mediate disputes, and the United States public and the Roosevelt Administration supported and became founding members of the new United Nations. What was one outcome of the Senate debate over the Treaty of Versailles?The Senate then considered a resolution to approve the treaty without reservations of any kind, which failed on a 38-53 vote. After 55 days of debate, the Senate had rejected the Treaty of Versailles.
What did the Senate do with the Treaty of Versailles?In November Lodge sent to the Senate floor a treaty with 14 reservations, but no amendments. In the face of Wilson's continued unwillingness to negotiate, the Senate on November 19, 1919, for the first time in its history, rejected a peace treaty.
What was the outcome of the Treaty of Versailles lease?The Treaty of Versailles is one of the most controversial armistice treaties in history. The treaty's so-called “war guilt” clause forced Germany and other Central Powers to take all the blame for World War I. This meant a loss of territories, reduction in military forces, and reparation payments to Allied powers.
Why did the Senate turn down the Treaty of Versailles?Some senators who opposed the Treaty of Versailles believed the proposed League of Nations would infringe upon U.S. sovereignty and Congress's power to declare war. Following the Senate's defeat of the treaty, Congress formally declared the end of World War I by joint resolution in 1921.
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