Sovereignty History and Impact of World War I on Foreign Policy - Essay Example

Sovereignty history Sovereignty which refers to the superlative power in a political society, its contemporary meaning, was introduced by Jean Bodin in the year 1576. The derivation of popular sovereignty, in contrast, goes mainly directly back to what is dubbed the school of social in the mid-1600s-1700s. Popular sovereignty is the concept that no decree or law is legitimate except if it rests openly or obliquely on the sanction of the persons concerned. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), John Locke (1632-1704), and Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) were the most central members of the school of the social contract.

They all proposed that the society's nature, whatsoever its derivations, was a contractual understanding between its affiliates. About states, it codified the necessary principles, including the integrity of territories, inviolability of borders, state supremacy, and the notion that a sovereign is the superlative legislator of power within its jurisdiction (Agnew, 2009). The war that lasted thirty years was put to a stop by the Westphalia Peace which was acknowledged as the peace of exhaustion by generations.

The war did influence the signing of numerous treaties commonly connected by the reality that they did put to an end the thirty years' war. The war resulted in the enforcement of negotiations in abridging the differences between states that had surfaced due to the war. Deliberations did happen among the countries that were involved in the thirty years' war (Agnew, 2009). Peace was the significant outcome that was achieved in the long run through the numerous negotiations that were carried out. Power was stripped from Ferdinand III and consequently taken back to the imperial states' rulers.

Impact of World War I on foreign policy united States At the end of World War I, the U.S. foreign policy was fundamentally isolationist. The U.S. became cautious about entering the League of Nations, a concept that had been championed by the U.S. President. U.S.'s utmost concern about joining the League was that the affiliates would entrust America and probably its troops to conflicts in the European region. World War I was among the numerous wars that occurred in the European region. The U.S. also had an economic policy of barriers to trade (Kagan, 2008) The U.

S committed to defending infant industries using trade constraints and tariffs. A major impact on the foreign policy of the U.S. was that it closed its doors to the rest of the world. Germany Germany developed a foreign policy intended for the integration of ethnic Germans staying outside the borders of Germany. Germany did also carry out a policy of revisionism that was intended to overcome the bans placed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty. Germany developed strong bonds with Japan and Fascist Italy by agreeing to a pact that was designed to fight international communism (Kagan, 2008).

Russia had an agreement with Poland regarding the states of the Baltic, Germany, Scandinavia, and Italy, swapping trade for an assurance not to impede the domestic matters of these states. A drastic change in the line of communism was necessitated by an agreement reached between Stalin and Hitler (Kagan, 2008). Liberals needed to be denounced by the communists as foes. Foreign policy was a serious avenue on the road to the war that did erupt thereafter in the year 1939.