The United States, under the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, remained calm during the entire period of the World War 1, in the year 1914. However, a number of successive actions led to the involvement of the United States in the war. The most notable occurrence happened in May 1915. At this point, a German submarine sunk the British ocean liner Lusitania, taking the lives of 128 US citizens.
Analysts believe that this triggered President Wilson to enter into the First World War, against Germany. This was an attempt to revenge for the killings of the innocent American civilians. Germany had passed a motion to sink all British ships, at a way of starving Britain into surrendering. Coincidentally, the first culprit of the sinking actions was an American cargo ship that the German U-boat sank in 1917. Successive sinking of American boats prompted the US president to appear before congress on April the second, and declare war on Germany (Gordon 155).
Secondly, the US government joined the First World War after the British government intercepted a message, the Zimmerman note, which was asking the Mexican government to attack the US, in the event that war started between Germany and the US. The note also included promises from Germany to help Mexico reclaim territorial areas such as Texas, the New Mexico and Arizona. This note, according to many, was the final push towards the joining of the First World War by the US.
The involvement of the US in the First World War has justification. This is because the government of US, under the presidency of Wilson, was fulfilling its promise of protecting the citizens of US, whom the German government was innocently killing, through the sinking of cargo and passenger ships (Gordon 89).
The participation was also justifiable because Germany had issued threats, and even went on to solicit help from Mexico, in the event that a war broke up between Germany and the US.
Bolshevik Revolution for the US Domestic and Foreign Policy and Its Significance for the World
The Bolshevik revolution had massive impacts on the US domestic and foreign policy. First, after the US government, under the presidency of Wilson, decided to support the allies of the Soviet Union, currently Russia, the relation between the two states worsened. The Soviet Union was a large and rich region in terms of resources, and the revolution could only but have negative impacts. This revolution may not be justifiable in the sense that the respective governments had other alternatives to resolving the crisis, rather than undertaking the cold war.
This revolution had a negative significance to the Russian economy. First, mostly innocent civilians in Russia lost their lives during the revolution period. In addition, the period also witnessed the death of livestock, coupled with the drought that eroded the Russian society massively. This revolution had negative impacts on international trade, especially for nations that traded with the Soviet Union (Smele 56).
The fourteen proposals that President Wilson made towards the signing of the international peace agreement received a negative reception from the domestic population. This was more of a political move than a matter of policy. At the time of the implementation of the fourteen points, President Wilson was campaigning for re election. This made it a matter of the democrats, rather than a national idea. The republicans felt that this was not right, especially considering that the republicans were also supporting the president’s proposals. The republicans went ahead to win the presidency, and had the largest number of members of the house. This frustrated the efforts of Wilson to implement his fourteen-point proposal. At the end, he had to relax some of the points, which weakened and limited the functioning of the first international peace agreement.
