Saturday, August 12, 2017

Write an editorial in which you try to convince readers the Senate should support Article 10.

I assume that you are asking about Article 10 of the League of Nations charter.  This was the article that did the most to cause the US Senate to refuse to join the League of Nations.  We cannot write an editorial for you, but we can suggest points that you can make.

The senators who kept the US from joining the League of Nations mainly felt that Article 10 would force the US to get involved in foreign wars.  They worried that the US would have to come to the defense of foreign countries that were invaded by other foreign countries.  They did not want the US to be dragged in to a war because some country that was not vital to American interests got invaded.  In order to persuade readers that the Senate should support Article 10, you will have to try to allay these fears.


To do this, you should turn to the text of the article.  The whole of Article 10 reads


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.


You should write an editorial in which you argue that this language cannot possible compel the US to go to war.  You should say that the article requires the US “to respect and preserve” countries’ independence but it does not say how this would be done.  It says that the Council would “advise” about what the League should do in such a situation.  First, you can say that the US would surely have a very important voice in the Council.  The Council would have a hard time going against what the US wanted.  Second, you can note that the Council still only gets to “advise” on what to do.  You can say that nothing in Article 10 gives the League the right to force the United States to do anything. 


Once you have done this, you might also try to talk about why the League of Nations would be a good thing in general.  You might talk about how bad WWI was and how important it would be to avoid another war.  You might say that the League is a good way to keep peace in the world and that the US should be a big part of it.


So, there are two things you need to do here.  You should argue that the people who oppose the League are wrong when they say Article 10 can force the US to go to war.  Second, you should argue that the US needs to be in the League of Nations to promote world peace and to make sure we do not have another world war.

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