The success of the United Nations is based on a conglomeration of many political ideologies and precepts. The unshakable liberalism of democratic values, in concert with the idealistic belief in cooperative security brought Woodrow Wilson to the fore of international politics and was the foundation for the League of Nations. The time was not right, there was too many domestic problems in the world for the League to have the power it needed to handle international conflicts. After World War II, with the change in outlook of domestic policy in the United States and in the Soviet Union, in combination with the neorealist philosophy based on balance of power, the time was right for the establishment of an organization based on cooperative security and the United Nations was founded. This 7 page paper examines the forces that brought the League of Nations into being, explores the reasons it was not able to maintain power and looks at the processes used to conceive the United Nations as the force it is today. Bibliography lists 5 sources.
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define the actions of the other. They are irreparably intertwined. Politics is the outward indication of the interaction of these two. In the history of the United
States there have been certain ideologies that have forged foreign policy. To say that the US government acted only from the standpoint of these philosophies in their dealings with
other nations would be simply preposterous. The opinions of the American people, the election of certain officials over others and the economic circumstances of the times all play a
large part in the shaping of foreign policy. Woodrow Wilson may best be categorized as politically progressive and ideologically liberal. In domestic affairs he was pro-labor, establishing the policies
of "New Freedom" by enacting the Adamson Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act. He continued military aggression in the Caribbean and South America. Wilson was, at heart, a
man who believed in peace and wanted the United States to maintain a policy of non-intervention in the Russian Revolution and a stance of neutrality when the hostilities of World
War One broke out. Eventually he was forced by public opinion to enter the War to end all wars (Hunt, 1987). In his Fourteen Points to insure Peace,
Wilson outlined what he believed to be the basic steps to peace. Not all of the points were incorporated into the Paris Peace Conference after the war but American
foreign policy was shaped decisively by the ideology and the international program developed out of his 14 points. He presented the concept of capitalistic internationalism whereby a stable world
order could be constructed as opposed to imperialistic or revolutionary principles (Hunt, 1987). The League of Nations was founded as an alternative to Lenins theories of revolution. The
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