Apush Dbq Woodrow Wilson

In President Woodrow Wilson’s speech given on September 25, 1919, he stated that, “I wish that those who oppose this settlement could feel the moral obligation that rests upon us not to turn our backs on the boys who died, but to see the thing through, to see it through to the end and make good their redemption of the world.” As the end of the first world war neared, Wilson was enthusiastic about his Fourteen Points as a plan to establish world peace. His plan was ambitious, as many Americans wanted to avoid such a demanding role in the League of Nations alliance, as joining such an alliance may have made them enter another war. Though the first world war forced the United States to globalize more under the fear that self-determination in

Not unlike Woodrow Wilson, President Roosevelt was willing to risk war to preserve self-determination in developing countries. Roosevelt was unable to react too strongly because he still required support from isolationists. The Great Depression also shifted many Americans’ focus from world affairs to being able to support themselves financially. Isolationists found it easy to prevent the United States from becoming very involved in world affairs because so many Americans were shaken by the events in their own country. The Neutrality Act, passed in 1935 was part of Congress passing isolationist policies in the few times there was a focus on foreign affairs. This tug of war between Roosevelt representing an interventionist minority and the isolationists in Congress resulted in little effective headway made in either direction until the United States was once again forced into a world war. In President Harry Truman’s speech, The Truman Doctrine, given on the twelfth of March, 1947 before a Joint Session of Congress, Truman voiced, “I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” After World War Two, the United States realized that a lack of involvement and aid for war torn countries allowed communism and totalitarianism to spread. The Soviet Union took control of many Eastern European countries, and this was called the Iron Curtain by Winston Churchill. Unlike in World War One and the beginning of World War Two, Truman had support from more well liked figures such as George F. Kennan and George C. Marshall. Kennan’s idea was based around providing economic and financial aid to struggling countries, and this heavily shaped the plan America would use. In the Truman Doctrine, Truman