Wilson came up with a plan for long lasting peace at the conclusion of the war called the Fourteen Points. One of these points was the League of Nations which was Wilson’s favorite thing. This part of Wilson’s plan stated, “A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

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However, the United States never signed the Treaty of Versailles and never became a member of the League of Nations. Opposition against Wilson’s plans came from within the country. Massachusetts Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Henry Cabot Lodge led the fight against signing the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations. The American general public shared this sentiment and the country’s foreign policy was independent and isolationistic for the next two decades.

Without committing to any lasting foreign relationships, the United States did involve itself with other countries in three regards: war reparations, disarmament and international finance. The Treaty of Versailles hit Germany hard and they had to pay out huge sums of money as reparations. In 1924 American banker Charles Dawes negotiated an agreement with Germany, France, England and the United States which would be known as the Dawes Plan. With this plan, American banks would give enormous loans to Germany so they could pay their reparations and in return England and France would reduce the amount Germany owed.

The English and French would then be able to pay debts owed to the United States. The Washington Conference was an attempt to prevent harmful arms races among other things. The Five-Power Pact came from this and it set limits for total naval tonnage as well as a ratio of armaments for the signing countries. Also from the Washington Conference came the Nine-Power Pact which pledged a continuation of the Open Door Policy in China and the Four-Power Pact in which the US, Britain, France and Japan agreed to respect each other’s Pacific claims and to cooperate to prevent aggression.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact finished what the Washington Conference started and several countries signed the treaty outlawing war as an instrument of national policy. At the time Congress was predominately Republican and the Fordney-McCumber Tariff was passed. This tariff was very high and made it tremendously hard for foreign countries to export goods to the United States. Following World War II, American foreign policy changed drastically. It went from very isolationistic for the most part to very interventionist.

In fact, something similar to Wilson’s League of Nations after WWI would be created and not only would the US join, but they would host this organization called the United Nations in New York City. Another significant sign of interventionism was the participation in NATO, which was our first peace-time military alliance in history. In many cases the United States intervened with the affairs of other nations. After Japan’s withdrawal from China after WWII, we continued to send almost all aid short of troops to Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalists who were now fighting against communism and Mao Zedong.

In many other cases the United States intervened internationally to fight communism. The US paid for 80% of French war costs in Vietnam and helped stop the communist group Hakbalahaps from taking over in the Philippines. Because of the Domino Effect, we felt we had to try and contain communism because when one country in a region became communist it was likely that others may follow. To stop communism from spreading the Truman Doctrine and Eisenhower Doctrine were issued and they said would aid any free country trying to resist communism. Southeast Asia was not the only place the United States intervened against communism.

Aid was given to both Greece and Turkey and they were able to resist takeover by communists. Another form of intervention in Europe was the Marshall Plan. World War II absolutely crushed the infrastructure of countries in Western Europe and the United States was afraid that this devastation would cause the people there to resort to communism. To prevent this we helped rebuild this region and gave a lot of money to these countries so they could stay afloat and not sink to communism. Perhaps the most remarkable act of interventionism was the Berlin Airlift.

West Berlin was controlled by the USSR and they closed off all trade roads attempting to cause communism. To stop this, the US gave the people of West Berlin everything they could have needed via airlift. For 11 months supplies were dropped into West Berlin with parachutes. This was an extremely amazing feat as planes were taking off approximately every two minutes to fly supplies over to West Berlin. At Christmas time gifts were even dropped into the city with tiny parachutes. Because of the interventionist foreign policy such as the Berlin Airlift, the United States was able to keep many areas from falling to communist governments.

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