"The phrase [self-determination] is simply loaded with dynamite. It will raise hopes which can never be realized. It will, I fear, cost thousands of lives. In the end it is bound to be discredited, to be called the dream of an idealist who failed to realize the danger until its mischief was done. What a calamity that the phrase was ever uttered! What misery it will cause!"
— Secretary of State Robert Lansing, private memorandum, December 1918
The concern expressed in the excerpt most directly prefigured which of the following developments in the immediate aftermath of World War I?
- AThe complete withdrawal of the United States from international diplomacy and global trade during the 1920s.
- BThe adoption of a containment strategy to limit the expansion of communism in neighboring regions.
- The rise of nationalist protests and anti-colonial uprisings in European imperial territories and mandates.Cevap
- DThe sudden outbreak of conflict with Spain over territorial acquisitions in the Western Hemisphere.
Cevap
The rise of nationalist protests and anti-colonial uprisings in European imperial territories and mandates.
The correct answer is correct because Secretary of State Robert Lansing's warning that self-determination was 'loaded with dynamite' was borne out in the immediate postwar period. When the Paris Peace Conference restricted the application of self-determination primarily to Europe and instead established the mandate system for former German and Ottoman territories, it sparked intense disillusionment, anti-colonial protests, and nationalist uprisings across the colonized world, including in Egypt, India, China, and Korea.
Adım Adım Çözüm
Anahtar Kavram
Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, the Treaty of Versailles, and the debates over self-determination and the postwar order.