Failure of the League of Nations Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Failure of the League of Nations - Essay ExampleThe research illustrates that Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and later Germany and Russia all(prenominal) great powers in their own right - joined the League of Nations and the United States, on the other hand, was the wholly major power not to join the League in spite of having been instrumental in creating it in the first place. This dichotomy i.e. the failure of the United States to join the League of Nations, in spite of being its staunchest advocate, could indeed be ascribed to its inability to reconcile domestic political compulsions with its external obligations. Was this domestic compulsion a friction between the realists and the idealists? This is the main theme that the research paper will seek to examine. The idealist view of international relations envisaged the creation of, international institutions to replace the anarchical and war-prone balance-of-power system. The realist view,on the other hand, viewed the st ate as the virtually important player, subservient to no other (external) authority. The idealist view was endorsed by president Wilson who in his, far-famed Fourteen Points speech, delivered before congress in 1918, proposed the creation of the League of Nations. Although the League of Nations came into being in 1919, Congress refused to ratify the United States entry into the league. This challenge to President Wilsons worldview was spearheaded by a group of Senators direct by Senators Henry Cabot Lodge, William E. Borah, and Hiram Johnson. Part of the realist view was that the US should revert to its policy of isolation that had been in panache pre-World War I in keeping with the Monroe Doctrine. This was at odds with the Leagues charter, which enjoined that, the international partnership had not only the right but a duty to intervene in international conflicts.