AHC: The US enters WWI in 1914

With a POD in 1890, make the US join WWI by the end of 1914. Bonus if the UK remains neutral.

EDIT: FRENCH. They have to be on the FRENCH side.
 
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1890: Bismarcks replacement sees the route to overseas empire in a strong alliance between Spain & Germany. Royal marraiges are contrived, German industry invests in Spain & its empire. When the colonies revolt hits critical mass German efforts to save Spains empire are seen as a threat by the US & the Spanish/German - American War results in 'tensions' between the US & Germany for the next 15 years. When war erupts in 1914 President Wilson is easily able to send US Army regiments racing across the Atlantic to "Save France"
 
No Wilson

The USA has a more belligerent/less anglophile president in 1914. Said president insists on the rights all neutrals have on the high seas, as Britain seizes American ships illegally.

Eventually, a ship refuses to stop, and is fired on, and many Americans are killed. Or, the USA escorts its merchant ships to neutral ports, and the British try to stop the merchants--gunfire ensues.

Under the laws governing neutral's rights in time of war, Neutrals can ship ANYTHING to a neutral power, and belligerent powers can't do anything about it. Likewise, ports of a power at war may be blockaded, but ships carrying non-contraband can not be seized on the high seas, no matter where bound--and if bound for a neutral, can't be seized even if they are laden with explosives, artillery, and more, if the cargo is bound for a neutral port.

Britain was legally IN THE WRONG with its actions in the Great War, in its handling of neutral ships. Unrestricted submarine warfare was a reply to Britain's high handed, illegal near piracy--but since USW was also illegal, and resulted in dead Americans, that got the USA involved.
 
The USA has a more belligerent/less anglophile president in 1914. Said president insists on the rights all neutrals have on the high seas, as Britain seizes American ships illegally.

Eventually, a ship refuses to stop, and is fired on, and many Americans are killed. Or, the USA escorts its merchant ships to neutral ports, and the British try to stop the merchants--gunfire ensues.

Under the laws governing neutral's rights in time of war, Neutrals can ship ANYTHING to a neutral power, and belligerent powers can't do anything about it. Likewise, ports of a power at war may be blockaded, but ships carrying non-contraband can not be seized on the high seas, no matter where bound--and if bound for a neutral, can't be seized even if they are laden with explosives, artillery, and more, if the cargo is bound for a neutral port.

Britain was legally IN THE WRONG with its actions in the Great War, in its handling of neutral ships. Unrestricted submarine warfare was a reply to Britain's high handed, illegal near piracy--but since USW was also illegal, and resulted in dead Americans, that got the USA involved.

The problem is the law of blockade is more aspiration than reality. The London Declaration of 1909 sets the gold standard but is simply a declaration having been recognised not as a convention and most certainly not as a treaty. There was already concern that the advances in technology may have made a blockade according to the 1909 principals impossible, something the United States therefore did not want to see fully instituted into law just in case.

Add to that but the USA's interests meshed more closely with those of the Entente and you have further reluctance to go beyond protests towards them.

Further but while there arguments on both sides about Wilson's philias he is clearly one of the less belligerent Presidents to have led the United States, it is worth noting the other options tended to be more expressly Anglophile and more belligerent. Thus given the odds he was probably Kaiser Bill's best hope.

In other words as soon as Wilhelm sat on his pickelhaube he was stuffed and it was only a question of how long not if.

Basically the solution to the challenge is any president but Wilson with a loaded excuse in the Oval Office, further the almost certain foe is Germany.
 

cpip

Gone Fishin'
With the POD back in 1890, we can just arrange a different war: let's try the Bosnian annexation crisis of 1908 breaking out into a war. Germany and Austria-Hungary go to war with Russia, France, and Italy. Britain, for some handwaved reason, chooses neutrality (given that the POD is in 1890, we can probably arrange something to make the British willing to do so - perhaps Campbell-Bannerman survives a bit longer and Edward Grey doesn't become Foreign Minister, or perhaps a Conservative government still hostile to the Tsar remains in power, and is unwilling to go to war for Russia's interests in the Balkans).

The war drags on -- without the British blockade, the Germans can hold out longer, for instance -- and finally, by 1914, a President elected in 1912 finds himself enmeshed in financial obligations to Paris, and ultimately enters into the war after the loss of American steamers bound for French ports to German submarines.
 
Further but while there arguments on both sides about Wilson's philias he is clearly one of the less belligerent Presidents to have led the United States, it is worth noting the other options tended to be more expressly Anglophile and more belligerent. Thus given the odds he was probably Kaiser Bill's best hope.


How so?

In 1912 the principal alternative to Wilson was Champ Clark, with William Jennings Bryan as a long shot if the Convention deadlocked, and Thomas R Marshall as a possible successor given Wilson's indifferent health. In 1916, of course, Wilson was unopposed for renomination, so unless he died in office the only alternative was Charles Evans Hughes.

I wouldn't have thought that any of these was more Anglophile than Wilson. Hughes was probably about the same, while the Democratic alternatives seem to have been if anything more isolationist than he.
 
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