The Failure of the League of Nations

The Failure of the League of Nations

The League of Nations was always a rather idealistic idea. The idea

of keeping peace around the world obviously had good intentions but

there would always be conflicting issues between member states of the

League.

When founded on January 10th 1920, The League of Nations was made up

of 24 nations including Britain and France who were the economic haves

from the First World War, this meant they had benefited through

gaining in land and reparations money in the wake of the First World

War. This gave the League strength in numbers and they were seen as

more authoritative as many nations agreed with the idea of the League

and joined, giving it power. Although many of these nations were

based in Europe, notable absentees were USA and Russia, Britain and

France were not happy with Russian for leaving the War before the end

so would not have Russia in the League, this caused tensions around

the world that which League should have been trying to eliminate, it

was not a good start, this also applied to the fact that Germany were

not allowed to join until 1926, by rejecting about some nations, it

created an ‘us vs. them’ mentality which was not good for a peaceful

world.

Woodrow Wilson (US president) devised a fourteen-point plan on the

League’s principles and aims and proposed them to American Congress on

January 8th 1918; this was essentially the first public announcement

of the idea of an international peacekeeping force. However in 1921 a

new President was elected called Harding, Harding was not in favour of

the league so withdrew the USA from any involvement with the league.

This was a bi...

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...d their capabilities. The fact the

League had no army was a big part as it was up to the member states to

deploy troops and if they didn’t the force would be weakened. The

League could put economic sanctions on countries, but by doing that

many member states lost trade with them so the sanctions were not

beneficial to the League so in some cases just disintegrated and were

not upheld, e.g. sanctions on Italy in reaction to invasion of

Ethiopia in 1935.

The League was a good idea and probably did delay major conflicts for

about 10 years as the World was not ready for peace after the

bloodshed of the First World War and many conflicts had not been

resolved which meant the League had very little chance of functioning

properly as it faced a very uphill task which not enough countries

were dedicated too achieving.