Why did the league of nations fail in 1931?
- Thread starter amaterasu
- Start date
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
The League of Nations failed in 1919, when the United States Senate failed to ratify it.
ParkCungHee
Deity
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2006
- Messages
- 12,921
The league of nations failed because Britain stacked the assembly, and was willing to throw out anyone they disagreed with. When none of the three most powerful nations on the planet are a member of your league, no one takes note of what it says.
The UN isnt as bad as the league was, the main problem with the UN is the right to veto by the security council, with the league you had japan droping out, america and the USSR not in, and then britain and france going against the league.
I just mean in this particular case, with manchuria, not the greater reasons for the leagues general failiure.
I would of said that the depression was the reason, every country just started to look for their own economies more, so they didnt embargo japan like the league wanted.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Most countries during the Depression adopted protective tariffs anyhow, so an embargo wouldn't have acomplished a whole lot.
Maimonides
Emperor
The League of Nations was Wilson's brainchild. He pushed it very hard at home & abroad as a way to keep another world war from happening. The problem was that it had little support. The U.S. legislature denied it & the other powerful nations either didn't support it or never joined it.
WWII led directly to the U.N. It is basically another attempt to do what the League of Nations tried to do after WWI. Powerful countries like the U.S., China, USSR(then Russia), Great Britain, France, etc. have more sway in the U.N. so they have more motive to support it, as if WWII wasn't motive enough.
We haven't had another world war since the U.N. was founded, but I'm not sure one can say it's because of the U.N. The nuclear age with it's mutually assured destruction makes another world war much more unlikely. Thankfully, the Cold War was fought by proxy in developing countries & by propaganda rather than direct military confrontations between the superpowers. Except for Chinese & U.N. troops fighting each other conventionally in Korea that is.
One of the U.N.'s biggest challenges is stopping famine & genocide like we have seen so much in Africa. Sometimes, the U.N. has been able to help. Sometimes, it's been absent or unneffective.
WWII led directly to the U.N. It is basically another attempt to do what the League of Nations tried to do after WWI. Powerful countries like the U.S., China, USSR(then Russia), Great Britain, France, etc. have more sway in the U.N. so they have more motive to support it, as if WWII wasn't motive enough.
We haven't had another world war since the U.N. was founded, but I'm not sure one can say it's because of the U.N. The nuclear age with it's mutually assured destruction makes another world war much more unlikely. Thankfully, the Cold War was fought by proxy in developing countries & by propaganda rather than direct military confrontations between the superpowers. Except for Chinese & U.N. troops fighting each other conventionally in Korea that is.
One of the U.N.'s biggest challenges is stopping famine & genocide like we have seen so much in Africa. Sometimes, the U.N. has been able to help. Sometimes, it's been absent or unneffective.
Verbose
Deity
I rather think what happened to the LN was what would happen to the UN, if it was somehow turned into some kind of exclusive club for democracies (courtesy of the US).
Not that dictatures have anything going for them, but simply for the fact that a global organisation designed to even out the rough patches in the relationship between states does need to allow everyone, but everyone, representation to work at all.
Lockesdonkey
Liberal Jihadist
There are two reasons that the League failed where the UN (sort of) succeeded:
1. Ironically, it was the Cold War that kept the UN alive for its first forty years. It provided a convenient forum for the two superpowers to battle it out with words (and shoes, if need be) and to posture such that they could excuse their proxy wars around the would without sounding imperialistic. It was also a good way to see how the political division lines between Western Bloc, Eastern Bloc, and Non-Aligned fell, and it was updated year to year. The League of Nations had no such advantage; the world was too multipolar.
2. More importantly, the UN was sustained by integration and cooperation between states (facilitated by the Cold War). In the West, Bretton Woods and NATO started the process, which was then accelerated by the GATT, which finally morphed into the WTO; the process of intra-bloc integration was mirrored among Communist states through the Warsaw Pact and the Communist trading bloc (Comecon). Integration in economic and defense matters necessitated by World War II got nations used to the idea of working together for common interests. The Bomb also helped; because the outbreak of anything larger than a regional war was considered to be The End, nations found it in their rational self-interest to seek alliances with nations that had the Bomb and thus come under their protective umbrellas. The umbrella of the US, for instance, meant that Germany and France, which have every reason to go to war with one another at every opportunity they get, formed the focus of the European Coal and Steel Community, which became the European Economic Community, which became the European Community, which became the European Union. Europe is simply the extreme case of integration that has made multilateralism the dominant theory of conflict resolution and thus made the UN viable. The League faced an isolationist world where individual nations preferred to act bilaterally. It was very laissez-faire.
1. Ironically, it was the Cold War that kept the UN alive for its first forty years. It provided a convenient forum for the two superpowers to battle it out with words (and shoes, if need be) and to posture such that they could excuse their proxy wars around the would without sounding imperialistic. It was also a good way to see how the political division lines between Western Bloc, Eastern Bloc, and Non-Aligned fell, and it was updated year to year. The League of Nations had no such advantage; the world was too multipolar.
2. More importantly, the UN was sustained by integration and cooperation between states (facilitated by the Cold War). In the West, Bretton Woods and NATO started the process, which was then accelerated by the GATT, which finally morphed into the WTO; the process of intra-bloc integration was mirrored among Communist states through the Warsaw Pact and the Communist trading bloc (Comecon). Integration in economic and defense matters necessitated by World War II got nations used to the idea of working together for common interests. The Bomb also helped; because the outbreak of anything larger than a regional war was considered to be The End, nations found it in their rational self-interest to seek alliances with nations that had the Bomb and thus come under their protective umbrellas. The umbrella of the US, for instance, meant that Germany and France, which have every reason to go to war with one another at every opportunity they get, formed the focus of the European Coal and Steel Community, which became the European Economic Community, which became the European Community, which became the European Union. Europe is simply the extreme case of integration that has made multilateralism the dominant theory of conflict resolution and thus made the UN viable. The League faced an isolationist world where individual nations preferred to act bilaterally. It was very laissez-faire.
Similar threads
