5 Things to Know About the League of Nations (2024)
A century ago Friday, on Jan. 25, 1919, nearly 30 countries approved a proposal to create a commission to establish the League of Nations. Meant to keep the peace in the aftermath of World War I, the League—championed by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson—was approved at the Paris Peace Conference and went into effect a year later. Though it only functioned until April 1946, it is considered a forerunner to the United Nations and its impact can still be seen today.
TIME spoke to Stewart M. Patrick, senior fellow in global governance and director of the International Institutions and Global Governance (IIGG) Program at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), for answers to some basic questions about the League’s legacy:
PATRICK: There had been many plans throughout history, since the days of Immanuel Kant, to come up with a permanent institution to help create perpetual peace or reduce the prospects of war. The League of Nations is significant because, even though it failed, it was the first time a bunch of sovereign nations got together and said, ‘We’re sovereign nations, but we’re going to try to combine our power to try to keep the peace.’ It also had some modest successes particularly dealing with certain territorial disputes. The League was not in vain if you consider that there were lessons learned from its failings.
Why did the League of Nations fail?
There had to be unanimity for decisions that were taken. Unanimity made it really hard for the League to do anything. The League suffered big time from the absence of major powers — Germany, Japan, Italy ultimately left — and the lack of U.S. participation.
Henry Cabot Lodge, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was worried involvement in the League would hamstring the U.S. from determining its own fate and demanded all these reservations to U.S. membership. The biggest issue was Article X, which said League members are committed to protecting the independence and territorial integrity of other countries around the world, and Lodge interpreted that as an automatic decision that if a country was invaded or faced aggression, the U.S. would have to come to [its] aid. The reality was it was more moral than an iron-clad legal commitment. And as a result the Senate rejected U.S. membership in the League of Nations.
What kind of role did the League of Nations play in World War II?
Maybe the U.S. could have helped prevent the Second World War if it hadn’t, in a sense, abdicated its role in the world. During and immediately after the Second World War, there was a recognition that we really blew it and we need to be a part of the United Nations. The U.N. Security Council did have more teeth, its decisions were legally binding and didn’t have to be unanimous.
The League showed the inherent limitations of collective security, which is basically an “all for one and one for all” ethos; countries have to treat the outbreak of war anywhere as worrisome and a threat and we have to respond to it. The reality is [that doctrine] doesn’t take into account countries’ other interests or the context. For instance, when Italy invaded Ethiopia in the mid-1930s, Britain and France who needed Italy as it was cozying up to Nazi Germany, chose to appease. Same thing when Hitler started gobbling up little bits of nearby countries.
What was going on in the rest of the world while the League of Nations was functioning?
It was a period of hyper-nationalism at the end of the First World War. It was a period of extraordinary economic turbulence and turmoil when there was mistrust over whether the global economy could bring prosperity to people. There was quite a lot of populism and authoritarian strongmen coming to the fore, which helped give rise to, on the far right, Nazism and Fascism, and on the left, Marxist-Leninism. The U.S. had entered the First World War decisively to restore the global balance of power, but then it decided, Nah. In a sense, it stood idly by during the 1920s. That was okay when the economy ended up doing pretty well for a while, but then the Great Depression happens and countries start being more territorially aggressive and the old European balance and Asian balance starts to go south.
Do you see any parallels between that world and today’s world?
In many ways, debates going on now are a total throwback to debates over the U.S. role in the world [following World War I]. In some ways, Trump, in my view, has a pre-1941 mindset. He would be quite comfortable going back to that era in which the U.S. didn’t have to exercise these global responsibilities. Contexts are always different, though there’s that saying, history never repeats itself but it often rhymes.
Most important for Wilson, the League would guarantee the territorial integrity and political independence of member states, authorize the League to take “any action…to safeguard the peace,” establish procedures for arbitration, and create the mechanisms for economic and military sanctions.
The Council consisted of four permanent members (Great Britain, France, Japan, and Italy) and four non-permanent members. At its largest, the League of Nations was comprised of 58 member-states. The Soviet Union joined in 1934 but was expelled in 1939 for invading Finland.
The League of Nations (1920 – 1946) was the first intergovernmental organization established “to promote international cooperation and to achieve international peace and security”.
The League had several strengths, such as creating a platform for international dialogue, resolving conflicts among smaller nations, and non-political achievements but had weaknesses like the absence of major powers, reliance on unanimous decisions, lack of a military force, and failure to prevent aggression by major ...
These failures included: Vilna, 1920, Russo-Polish War 1920-21, Greece vs.Turkey 1920-21, Memel 1923, the occupation of Ruhr 1923, Corfu Incident 1923. The League often failed to carry the self-determination policy out.
So, the League of Nations was successful in small ways in the 1920s, stopping small wars and improving lives. But it could not defend the Treaty of Versailles, it failed to get disarmament, and it could not persuade powerful countries to stop fighting.
Other League efforts include the Geneva Protocol, devised in the 1920s to limit what is now understood as chemical and biological weaponry, and the World Disarmament Conference in the 1930s, which was meant to make disarmament a reality but failed after Adolf Hitler broke away from the conference and the League in 1933 ...
The Five Nations was one of the most important instances of representative intertribal governance. Its leaders, chosen by the women of the various tribes and appointed for life, were selected for their wisdom, tolerance, and generosity of spirit. See also Civilized Tribes, Five ; Indian Political Life ; Iroquois .
The failures of the League in the 1930s were not only because of aggressor nations undermining its authority, but also down to its own members. Britain and France, the two most influential members, ignored the League in their efforts to appease Hitler - actions that arguably led to the outbreak of the Second World War.
Does the League of Nations still exist? No, the League of Nations does not still exist. It was formally disbanded on April 19, 1946, and its powers and functions were transferred to the United Nations, which had been established on October 24, 1945.
While the League of Nations did not succeed in its primary goals of collective security, disarmament, or a large worldwide membership, it is important not to overlook or downplay certain achievements and precedents that were set by the League during the quarter century of its life.
However, the League also had three great weaknesses. The USA, Russia and Germany were not members; without these powers, the League was too weak to make a big country do as it wished (for instance, Italy over Corfu in 1923). Also, the League's organisation was a muddle, so when there was a crisis, no-one could agree.
The League quickly proved its value by settling the Swedish-Finnish dispute over the Åland Islands (1920–21), guaranteeing the security of Albania (1921), rescuing Austria from economic disaster, settling the division of Upper Silesia (1922), and preventing the outbreak of war in the Balkans between Greece and Bulgaria ...
In a speech before Congress on January 8, 1918, Wilson laid out his “14 Points,” an ambitious blueprint for ending World War I that emphasized “national self-determination” for both small and large nations, and included the creation of a cooperative League of Nations to peaceably resolve all future disputes.
The fourteenth point proposed what was to become the League of Nations to guarantee the “political independence and territorial integrity [of] great and small states alike.”
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