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Why did the United States Congress refuse to ratify the Treaty of Versailles

Serban Brebenel - 3/1/2006

Why did the United States Congress refuse to ratify the Treaty of Versailles?! After all, the US was the power able to turn the table on Germany and its allies and was able to play an essential role in drawing the conditions of the Versailles Peace Treaty. Doesn’t it seem strange that the very country who actively worked in creating the framework for the postwar status should be the very one not to ratify it? While this may seem so, it is important that we have a glance at what lay behind these motivations, especially in terms of national politics.

In my opinion, the main reason for which the United States Congress refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and to join the League of Nation was that it went deeply against the Monroe Doctrine, the policy of isolationism that had led the United States during the 19th century in an era of great economic progress that saw it become the top economic power of the world by the beginning of the 20th century. In its basic form, the Monroe Doctrine aimed at “planned to stay neutral in wars between European powers and in wars between a European power and its colonies”. The reminder left by the Monroe Doctrine pushed the United States back in its isolationist foreign policy in the period between the two world wars, despite President Wilson’s personal desire to include the United States in a global institutional mechanism that would guarantee peace.

There would be a flaw in this type of argument: the United States had just been involved, for the last two years of the war, in World War I and we may thus acknowledge that it had already abandoned its isolationist position. While this is true, the participation of the United States in the First World War was still a unilateral act. Indeed, the United States was not forced into the war by an attack on its own soil (as may be the case with the Second World War, after the attack at Pearl Harbor), but it became a belligerent power at its own will and choice. After the war, the US Congress felt that ratifying the Treaty of Versailles would include the country in a global mechanism that would not permit it to make its own decisions regarding its foreign policy.

There is one more fundamental element that needs to be considered when justifying the non-ratification of the Versailles Treaty by the US Congress. This was Article X of the Treaty, that stated “the Members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled”.

There are two parts that formed one important reason for which Congress refused ratification. First of all, according to this article, had the Treaty been signed, the US was to act upon any aggression against a state member of the League. This meant that it assumed an obligation, which, especially in the agitated period between the wars, could become a reality.

The second part of the article is even more controversial, because it designates the Council as the authority that could “advise” in which ways the obligation could be fulfilled. The problem here is that the Council could point out towards the use of military force to act upon an aggression and this had always been the direct right of the Congress. By ratifying the treaty, the Congress would share its power to deploy US troops with another entity, a foreign entity with foreign members. Not was this a 180 degrees turn on the traditional isolationist policy of the Unites States, it became a source of foreign intervention in US matters, something which could not have been tolerated by Congress.

Finally, there were also moral motivations for not signing the Versailles Treaty. The European powers, most notably Great Britain, France, Italy and even Japan, saw in the peace treaty an opportunity to divide many of the German colonies between themselves, not to mention some of the European German territory. Great Britain took over Tanganyika, Japan enjoyed some of the former island German colonies in Japan and these are just two examples. The US Congress saw that the peace treaty was less than a means for peace, but rather the force to establish a new world order, in which the former German power would have been split among other European powers. “The war had no reformed the world” and, in many ways, peace had not either, proving to be (as Wilson himself had envisaged) only an armistice before the Second World War, more deadly and bloodily than the previous one had been.

In this sense, we may point out towards the fact that the US Congress did not necessarily refuse a positive vote on the ideas comprised in the treaty, but rather gave a negative vote on the treaty in the form presented by Wilson. There were three attempts to push it through Congress and the last one failed by only 7 votes. It is to be assumed that, had Wilson admitted some of the changes proposed by the Congress, the treaty and subsequent participation of the US in the League of Nations may have received a positive vote.

Summarizing, the main problems with ratifying the Treaty of Versailles were that they would have ratified a global order in which the United States did not necessarily believe at that point. Imperialism and colonialism had produced the biggest conflagration the world had so far known and simply create an organization that would supervise this order would have effected in wiping up the causes of war. This became quite clear in the period between the two world wars, when the League of Nations was powerless against visible, imperialist aggressions such as Japan’s in China in 1933 or Germany’s in Austria and Czechoslovakia. Of course, just as important was the consideration that the US would abandon a traditional position of isolationism that had brought it many advantages and would deploy troops upon “advice” from a foreign entity, be it even supranational.