Argumentative Essay: The First World War

World War One was primarily fought in 1917. Many countries were included, primarily the United States and large European countries.
1. To determine whether innocent life is protected, it should be understood as to how many lives were lost. One must also know how many could have been saved or hurt had the war never happened. Between seven countries that fought in the war, over 6,900,000 humans were killed. Innocent life was protected when the countries resigned from war and ended the fighting. The war started, specifically the United States entering the war, because countries were hurting and killing citizens of another. I do believe that by going to war, we saved more lives in the end. My belief is that more lives would have been lost had we not gone to war.
2. World War One started because of a global threat. The Germans were blowing up ships from other countries

and this could have gotten wildly out of hand. As militaries grew, other countries were threatened. There was global threat in WWI since multiple countries were involved, giving it the name of a World War. It was fought on both land and sea and millions upon millions of people were affected in one-way or another. Germany posed a global threat to many other nations so I believe that WWI is justifiable in this category.
3. The four reasons for starting WWI were militarism, alliances, imperialism and nationalism. With compelling national interests, like alliances, more and more countries were brought into the war. Although countries were trying to obtain more land, territory was not a major reason for the beginning of WWI. The economy was also a major interest of WWI. Many countries were not only unprepared, but relied upon loans to successfully battle. I do not believe that WWI was in the best national interest and that many countries would/could have been spared without war.
4.

The fifth reason to enter into a war is if diplomatic options have been exhausted. This relates to alliances and loans mentioned in #3. When negotiation or a similar action is unable to occur, there are not many more civil options before war will occur. Although countries could try harder, I don’t think war is a good choice. But sadly, most of the time it is necessary. It does not appear that the Germans tried very hard to keep ideas like the Sussex Pledge. I think, had all countries tried harder, war could have been avoided.
5. Voting to go to war is a very controversial topic. It is believed that voting should only be considered if all other options have been exhausted. I believe that voting isn’t necessary to go to war, and that we should go to war if we need to. The human population does not know enough to judge whether war is a viable response or not. I also would not want to be accountable if the outcome does not favor my home country and half of the United States turns on the other half. The Voting on war is not extremely clear in WWI as Wilson ran against war yet sent the United States into

war.
6. A positive outcome for humanity cannot be judged since we know we went to war. The outcome would have been different if we hadn’t gone to war. For the United States, I believe there was a positive outcome. However, for Germany there was not a positive outcome so whether we go to war or not based on positive outcome cant be decided. This is also a very subjective category to base decisions off of as we do not know the outcome.
I do believe that WWI is justifiable and viable war. More innocent loves were protected. Had we not gone to war many more lives could have been lost. Germany and its allies, the Central Powers, posed a threat to many other countries. Had they not been ‘destroyed,’ who knows where our world would be. There were both national interests in this war and diplomatic options had been exhausted. Although all countries could have tried harder to come together, I don’t think there would have been a better outcome.