Should the USA Have Joined the League of Nations?

Should the USA have joined the League of Nations?


  • Total voters
    107

Wolfpaw

Banned
All on the tin.

Do you think that the United States should have joined the League of Nations after World War I?
 
Why not? Despite the scare stories, it turned out to be pretty harmless. Whether American membership makes any noticeable difference is far less clear, but it certainly does no harm.

The more fool Wilson for not seeking a deal with the Republicans. A bit of commonsense on his part and he could have got the extra votes he needed.
 
Leave it to isolationist Republicans to break a promise :p

The League was actually designed to preserve the peace and it's possible, if America had taken the lead in it as was originally thought, we may not have had peace for all time, but certainly, the League might've worked.
 
The League was completely ineffectual without the United States. Had we been in the League, we might not have had a World War II.
 
with USA in the League of Nations had change allot in 20 century

Hitler "Remilitarization" of the Rhineland in 1936 would fail miserably
because US security force, install by the League
A armistice agreements in Spainish civil war
Benito Mussolini will think twice to Invade some African kingdoms...

but like today, the isolationist Republicans and Democrats will screeam:Bring our Boy back !
 
Agreed. Wilson is to blame for things falling apart.

I voted yes, because its hard to see how US involvement could have made anything worse than IRL.

Why not? Despite the scare stories, it turned out to be pretty harmless. Whether American membership makes any noticeable difference is far less clear, but it certainly does no harm.

The more fool Wilson for not seeking a deal with the Republicans. A bit of commonsense on his part and he could have got the extra votes he needed.
 
An isolationist America would have done nothing. Nothing would have changed. The league was essentially an overglorified debate society with no teeth. The Japanese and Germans both withdrew from it with no adverse circumstances.

Even post '32 With FDR in the White House America and he League would not have been confrontational in Europe or Asia. With the Depression and economic climate at home FDR would not have been able to take any large risks.
 
Leave it to isolationist Republicans to break a promise :p.

Two points -

1) The Senate vote (on March 19, 1920) was 49 yea, 35 nay. Of the nays, only 12 were Republicans, the other 23 were Democrats.

I haven't found corresponding figures for the yeas, but that particular Senate was Republican by 49/47, so even supposing that all 24 remaining Democrats voted yea (in reality some probably abstained or were absent), that still leaves 25 Republican yeas. IOW, Republican Senators voted yea by at least 25-12 - more than the required two-thirds majority, so that had Democrats voted yea in the same proportion as Republicans, the Treaty would have passed.

2) What promise? The Senate had never made any promise to join the League of Nations or accept the Treaty of Versailles. Mr Wilson could promise whatever he liked, but if his promises were not made "by and with the advice and consent of the senate" they were only his own personal promises, not America's, and were binding on no one except himself.
 
The League would have had some failures, as such organizations inevitably will, but we could have changed the world, for the better.

I'm of the impression that Wilson, who admittedly was intransigent, had his efforts towards an admittedly wonderful organization destroyed by his stroke, and that had he been healthy, he might have been able to compromise just enough to save the League.

Instead we failed to join, and left another generation to fight another world war.
 
The Senate vote (on March 19, 1920) was 49 yea, 35 nay. Of the nays, only 12 were Republicans, the other 23 were Democrats.

I haven't found corresponding figures for the yeas, but that particular Senate was Republican by 49/47, so even supposing that all 24 remaining Democrats voted yea (in reality some probably abstained or were absent), that still leaves 25 Republican yeas. IOW, Republican Senators voted yea by at least 25-12 - more than the required two-thirds majority, so that had Democrats voted yea in the same proportion as Republicans, the Treaty would have passed.


On further googling, I discover that 21 Democrats voted yea on March 19.

So the Reps voted yea, 28-12, while the Dems voted nay 23-21
 
I'm not sure what this would have accomplished. The US military of 1920 was a joke - a bad joke - compared to those of the other major powers. The USA's moral voice in 1920 was FAR more potent than its military one. If the League stands up to aggression:
1. I'm not sure why a major power like Germany or Japan (or even Italy) would care given the USA's tiny army, and especially given point 2:
2. The US would not have sent a single soldier to fight at the League's behest in 1920s or 1930s. The domestic politics would simply not allow it, unless the Western Hemisphere or USA itself were threatened by an outside power. If that happened, the USA would intervene League or no League.

Even something relatively mild - like a blockade of Italy over Ethiopia - wpuld have engendered a strong pro-business, nativist reaction in the USA, especially if other countries were 'cheating'.

In short, I think the USA would have a seat and a voice, but no power, and no desire for power. I do not see the League as being any more effective than in OTL.

Mike Turcotte
 
Was this unmodified or Lodge Reservations version?

Lodge Reservations version.

That was, of course, the only version that stood an earthly. The original ToV (voted on the previous November) could only muster 38 yeas against 53 nays. It wasn't even close to a simple majority, and any thought of its getting two-thirds is surely ASB.
 
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