Why Did the League of Nations Fail?

By David Niman 10X

By the year 1939, it was clear that the League of Nations had entirely failed in
the task it had been set up for. This task was to make sure that there was never
another war nearly as bad as The Great War. The idea behind this was that to make
sure that no one had any arms to fight with. This was called disarmament and it was
an idea that, along with every other aspect of the League, failed. There are many
reasons that the League of Nations ultimately failed and they should all be taken into
account with the UN because these mistakes should be learned from.

We saw during the Depression that followed the Wall Street Crash in 1929 that
everyone was more interested in the welfare of their own countries than the global
community as a whole. Britain for example, paid much more attention to the rising
unemployment levels in it's own country than the bigger issues on a global scale such
as disarmament and global relations. This self interest meant that while everyone was
too preoccupied with their own well being, they forgot the bigger picture of peace and
disarmament. This self-obsession lead to the alienation of other countries and a
degree of paranoia over what the other countries were doing. This was mainly seen in
the actions of France which was a country in an even higher state of paranoia than
usual. This distrust between countries made the perfect environment for Hitler's rise to
power in 1933. It was the self interest of countries that led to Hitler ruining a lot of
what the League had worked hard to set up.

Another demonstration of the self interest of the countries within the League
was the Abyssinian crisis of 1935. During the 10 months that the League was delaying
over making any action against Italy, France and Britain were busy trying to make
deals with Italy and not anger them so that there could be an alliance between them
against Hitler. It could be seen as naïve to suggest that it would have been a better
idea for them to concentrate on preventing another war because at this point, war was
almost inevitable. However, if all the countries had spent less time worrying about
allies and more time worrying about how to stop a war from happening then the
League may have actually worked. We saw this destructive self interest again when
the British did not close the Suez Canal. This could have immediately crushed the
problem, but instead the British did not close the canal and the problem subsequently
had a catastrophic effect for the League. After this total failure the League was widely
regarded as useless and everyone ignored it to begin rearming for the war which the
League had failed to prevent.

At any one time during the existence of the League, there was one or more
countries absent. Arguably the most powerful country in the world at the time – the
USA – remained absent for the whole time the League existed. This had a very
important effect on the League because it meant that the League had much less
power than it would have done had the USA been part of it. However, it was not just
the USA that was absent from the League. Other very powerful countries such as Italy,
Germany, Japan and the USSR were not part of the League for its entire time of
existence. We could see how things like this would have helped the downfall of the
League along because it meant that disarmament would not work. It would be hard to
get everyone to just throw away their precious sources of protection but it would have
been easier to get people to do this had it been everyone that would do it. However,
with significant countries not being part of the League and so not having to listen to
them, disarmament was never going to happen. If there were countries in the world
that still had arms while others did not, the countries that did not have arms could
have been easily massacred if the countries that did have arms wanted to invade
them.
 Another problem with the absence of the world's largest economy from the
League was that economic sanctions would not work nearly as well. Without America,
the League was almost completely powerless in terms of punishing the wrongdoers of
the community by banning trade with them. We saw that this was immensely
problematic when it came to the Manchurian crisis. The Japanese were blatantly in the
wrong when they invaded China for fictional reasons and the League had to punish
them. The use of force would not work because of how powerful the Japanese were.
This left the option of economic sanctions as a way to punish the Japanese. However,
Japan's main trade link was with the USA and so without them in the League, the
economic sanctions had no effect at all. When the economic sanctions just did not
work, the League was completely powerless.

During the Abyssinian crisis the economic sanctions proved to be useless

without the USA because they saw the self interest of Britain and France as disgusting
and so increased trade with Italy. The fact that the League had very little power when
economic sanctions failed was a big factor in the eventual failure of the League as a
whole.

The League was also shown to be powerless by the fact that it had no troops.
There was no official force of the League and the main powers such as Britain and
France would never commit troops to a cause. This meant that when problems like the
Manchurian and Abyssinian crises arose, the League could do nothing to stop the
countries at all. It was a necessity for the League to have troops of its own. Economic
sanctions were not always the best option in terms of punishing offenders, or in some
case stopping an offense from happening, and so force was absolutely vital for the
League to have any power. For example, during the Manchurian crisis, economic
sanctions would have had no effect whatsoever and so force was necessary to stop
Japan. The League had no troops of its own and so force was not an option. Without
force, the League was almost powerless and without power, there was no point in its
existence. The lack of power was catastrophic in terms of the League continuing to be
around.

The Manchurian crisis was very important in the eventual downfall of the
League. The slowness of the decision over what to do made sure that Japan could go
ahead with what they were doing and be almost completely unchallenged for almost a
year. If the League had acted immediately then maybe the Japanese could have
backed down peacefully. But after the year it took them to produce a response, it was
way to late. The Japanese had settled in to Manchuria, set up a puppet government,
and were not in any position to move out when the League asked them too. This
unnecessary stalling meant that a problem which could have been an easy fix turned
into a crisis which led to Japan leaving the League and the League being exposed as
truly powerless. The slowness of the decisions made by the League proved to greatly
effect how much people respected them. Without the respect they had had, they were
completely without power. And as with all of these weaknesses, the lack of power
meant the ultimate failure of the League.

It was felt by many that the treaties which the League upheld were unfair in
themselves. For example, the Treaty of Versailles was initially seen as unfair by the
people on the receiving end of it, namely Germany, but by the 1930s it was seen by
everyone as very unfair. Why should anyone have respected the League if the very
things that it stood up for were fundamentally wrong. If the League had not supported
unfair treaties such as Versailles then maybe people would have respected it more
and in turn it would have had more power. The other end of this is that the League
had no power because it stood up for things which were unjust. And this meant that
the League was destined for failure.
 In the end, there were so many flaws with the League of Nations that failure
became the inevitable. However, it was not just any one of the weaknesses that was
responsible for this. All the problems were linked together in a way that it meant there
could be no quick fix. People would never respect something that had no power and
was fundamentally wrong. This meant that instead of looking at ways to fix the
League, they should have quit while they were ahead and started again. They did not
do either of these things though and that is why we can clearly see how useless the
League really was. The evidence for the League's failure is in World War 2; if the
League had worked then it would have never happened.

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