America's intervention in World Wars - Term Paper Example

This is because America considers herself as a perfect nation as far as the ideals are concerned. She propagates democracy which contains freedom of speech and freedom of press and the like, and heavily promotes human rights. America sees herself as a country that can end all the evils in the world, or at least that is how she presents it to the world. Therefore, when America saw in the First and Second World War that democracy was being threatened then she considered it as her duty and responsibility to protect it and thus intervened in the war on the side of Britain and France.

Treaty of Westphalia that laid the foundation of modern state system outlined that no country can intervene in another countries’ issues. This is because any country that is sovereign and that is independent, has right to make laws and implement them in their own way unless that country asks for help from outside. America is a superpower and superpower is not a stand-alone thing. This power comes from her internal competency, which ranges from education to military and to governance. For a superpower to have a say in the world matters, it is important that she builds friendly ties with as many influential countries as possible.

This is exactly what was seen in both the world wars that America intervened because she had stakes in the country she allied with. This is not to say that America did not have stakes in Germany. Germany was a big market and in the beginning America started off with selling arms and ammunition to both the sides in the war. However, the public sentiments turned more towards the Allies and thus US parted with Britain and France in both the World Wars (Hargreaves, p. 17). Balance of Power is an important concept in International relations.

No matter how big and powerful a country is but if it does not have enough allies, then it can prove to be a great threat to that country. This is because even the smallest country in the world can come up and confront a big and powerful country with the help of powerful and influential ally or allies. Therefore, it was seen in both the world wars that the US sided with France and Britain because America saw these countries as great colonial powers and more stable than Germany. This way, America knew that siding with Britain and France would bring the country greater favours in return (Sheehan, p. 1). World War I and World War II – A Background America has always been the greatest supporters of democracy and capitalism.

Not only she has been a supporter, but she has made every effort to fight against every power that comes to compete against democracy. This case was seen in both the world wars. America did not have any direct stakes in the war, but she joined both the wars because not joining them would have been a threat to democracy. In the First World War, this threat to democracy was dictatorship. Similarly, in the Second World War the threat to democracy was Nazism, Fascism and the quickly spreading communism.

America has always shown herself as an isolationist, but she indirectly helped Britain and France in both the wars due to her vestigial interests in those countries (Sheehan, pp. 11-13). First World War started because of the assassination of Austria-Hungary’s crowned Prince Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serb national and Germany got involved in it because of his support to Austria-Hungary. America maintained her policy of isolation from the start of the war in 1914