Just after the World War, in 1919 the League of Nations was formed, at the Paris Peace Conference where all the world`s leading statesmen met to formulate a program aimed at establishing and promoting everlasting international peace and to ensure such world atrocities such as the first World War does not repeat again. Stated in article 10 of the league covenant declares that ‘The members of the league undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and political independence of all members of the league’ (Avalon Project - The Covenant of the League of Nations, n.d.) Many people were skeptical but mostly, the common people were convinced by this organization. As, those who were convinced, visualized the League of Nations as an idea of the prevention of war. However, after twenty years the Second World War began, destroying expectations and hopes that were raised upon the League. In this essay, I will explain why the League of Nations failed and demonstrate the failure by highlighting the reasons and discussing the crisis caused by the failure of the League.
The league failed its ideologies as early as 1921 when 'Vilna was under Polish control' (Milisauskas, 2000). Once again it failed the objectives when Mussolini held German ransom in 1923 when ‘Italy attempted to seize the island of Corfu from Greece’ (Kangan, 2000). However, the Greek-Bulgarian war and the Aland Island`s successes had overpowered the League`s failures at Vilna and Corfu.
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In the 1930s the League part had portrayed two great failures. Firstly, the great depression (Cole, 1999) was caused in 1929 by the Wall Street US stock market crash. The crash of late 1929 to suicides that cause a sense of impossibility (Seikel, 2021) and demonstrated the severity of the crash. Secondly, Japan had invaded Manchuria, the northern province of China. One reason why the League of Nations failed was due to the lack of authority as the USSR did not join the league until 1934 and Germany did not join until 1926 and left in 1933 similarly, Japan left in 1933 and followed up Italy left in 1937. The USA was not a member of the League, which reinforces the failure`s cause showing the lack of participation of significant countries. Moreover, self-interest was another reason for the failure as the league thought Japan would withdraw and obey Manchuria but Japan was already determined (Shepherdson-Scott, 2015) to further invade China and resign from the league. But as Japan was dependent upon the US economy. When the US stock market crashed, trade collapsed giving Japan very little choice but to take Manchuria and survive through expansion. Therefore, the League failed as it was proven ineffective because economic sanctions were not practical due to the Great Depression. Furthermore, The USA was in no condition to help China historically the little brother (Ku, J.H and Lee, 2012) as Japan was economically dependent on the USA. Additionally, Japan went into a further economic crisis as China and USA put tariffs high against them, again giving them no choice other than to invade Manchuria. This failed the League`s objective because its own member Japan had betrayed it and let it down. The league failed further, as Britain and France were hesitant to support it (Kat, Y, 2007) such a venture. France was more concerned about the construction of the Maginot Line whereas, Britain could not provide a strong big army in support of this crisis resulting that only the USA would have resources to resolve the Manchuria invasion but they were not a member of the league. The League had received an appeal from China it took a year for the League`s officials to report back the truth between Japan and China as follows, the European great powers favored Japan over China and the United States did not confront Japanese expansionism (Chang, 2003). All these reasons illustrate how miserably the League has failed.
In Conclusion, there were various reasons why the League of Nations failed. The invasion of China as well as there was an invasion of Abyssinia by Mussolini but Britain and France had very limited troops and could not or possibly do not want to help Abyssinia and China. The league was also very ineffective and delayed in decision-making, for example, to help Abyssinia finally when a decision had been made, it was ignored. Unfortunately, the whole structure of the League of Nations was based upon false assumptions (Paquin, 1943) which led to the failure and dissolution of the league.
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