Woodrow Wilson's Peace Agreement from WWI

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In 1917, the United States entered World War I on the side of the Allies. Previously angered by such events as the sinking of “Lusitania”, American President Woodrow Wilson led the nation to war after learning of the Zimmermann Telegram and Germany's resumption of UNRESTRICTED SUBMARINE WARFARE! As the war came to a close with an Allies victory, President Woodrow Wilson devised a core list of points which stressed self-determination of people, free trade, and open diplomacy. Wilson believed that it could serve as the basis for a peace agreement between the fighting European nations and the United States. Going before a session of Congress on January 8, 1918, Wilson outlined American intentions and presented his ideas as the Fourteen Points. He believed that international acceptance of the points would lead to a just and lasting peace.
The first of his fourteen points was the restriction of secret agreements between nations. This point was rejected by other leaders at the Paris Peace conference as the British and French made private understandings as the meeting went on. However, I believe that the motivation for making this point stemmed from an important event during WWI. This event is known as the “Zimmerman Telegram”. Infuriating Americans, German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmerman secretly proposed a German-Mexican alliance, tempting Mexico with promises of recovering Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico from the United States. This event nearly catapults the United States into the war against Germany. It’s only logical that Woodrow Wilson would include a point such as this to protect the United States and other nations from secret deals such as this one.
Wilson’s second point was absolute freedom of navigat...

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...nt. Unfortunately, Wilson couldn’t rally enough votes in Senate or the Public to get America into the League at the time, American influence had created a global government that Wilson thought would bring peace to the fighting Europeans. It did for a short time, but it wasn’t until long in the future until this League of Nations (Today known as the United Nations) adopted countries such as the U.S. and started making decisions as one unit instead of a lot of countries.
Even though most of them were not accepted into the Treaty of Versailles, the Fourteen Points were an earnest step in the direction of peace for winners and losers of WW1 after German surrender, even though British and French leaders rejected most of them. However, the points that were accepted were drafted by Americans and obtained as a result of the United States’ decision to enter the war in 1917.

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