The Origin, Structure & Working of the League of Nations - Assignment Example

 Table of Contents 1.0 What is League of Nations? 2 2.0 What Was It? 4 3.0 Why Did It Fail? 6 References 8 1.0 What is League of Nations? League of Nations was founded in 1919 at Paris Peace Conference with an intention to maintain never-ending peace around the world. It was first formed after World War I. The League of Nations is a collaboration of several states in order to sign a treaty with an intention to settle and resolve disputes peacefully as well as cooperate with each other and concern for international matter. For maintaining such pledges, the State Members who are involved in League often assemble and conduct regular conference. The members try to maintain the machineries involved in it which includes Secretariat General, Technical and Advisory Committee (Ellis, H. E., “The Origin, Structure & Working of the League of Nations”). The State Members assign their group members and conduct meeting in every few months in the League Council. Moreover, the League also sets up Permanent Court of International Justice so as to make an agreement related to reasonable aspect of International disputes and disagreements. The members also use technical committees associated with the League with a view to settle the disputes which has taken place in technical conventions. It is also used in setting up of special negotiation along with conciliation commissions as well as to benefit themselves of the ‘Hague Court of Arbitration’ (Ellis, H. E., “The Origin, Structure & Working of the League of Nations”). The League of Nations was first formed with 43 members and then rose to 56 members along with the cooperation of Russia and the US to a greater extent. The League was considered as an essential part of the post-war world. It cannot be uprooted by anything less than war or rebellion (Ellis, H. E., “The Origin, Structure & Working of the League of Nations”). The new forces of League of Nations provide power, forces in history and bring mankind face-to-face in order to deal with challenges (Wells, “The Idea of a League of Nations”). 2.0 What Was It? League of Nations was considered as a supranational organization which was founded with an outcome of Treaty of Versailles in the year 1919 to 1920. The major objectives were disarmament, preventing war by means of joint safety measures, resolving disputes between nations through arbitration, discretion as well as improving quality of life in worldwide basis. The League had shortage of armed forces and thus they were dependent on ‘Great Powers’ to solve their problems (Hughes, “Japan Quits League of Nations”). League of Nations was an attempt to create a short American project by President Wilson. During the period of 1918-1919, people were exhausted due to war and anxiety and there was no specific association to lead the world. Thus, President prepared a scheme to protect the world from various issues (Wells, H. G., “A Short History of the World”). The main purpose of League of Nations was to provide cooperation as well as consultation among various nations in several issues though League was not able to prevent Second World War (Diehl, “Introduction”). President Wilson said that the League would hold entire states in order to connect and guide them to achieve recognition and make agreement of all their racial along with national minorities. The League of Nations performed significant work on slavery and developed a special committee that was responsible for drafting related to Slavery Convention. When Ethiopia again joined League for the second time, it was required to make unique efforts to remove slavery as well as slave trade (Humphrey, “The League Of Nations”). The League had a council and when it was formed, it had four members those were permanent such as Great Britain, Italy, France and Japan along with other non-permanent members. The assembly comprised of each members. However, the members were not always represented in Geneva. The League was involved in various agencies as well. The Permanent Court of International Justice later became International Court of Justice. The League was enabled to solve the minor conflicts but failed to manage if major conflicts took place (Union County College Faculty Web Site, “Structure of the League”). The permanent members possessed veto power to discard decisions with the intention of safeguarding the national interest as well as importance. As a result, agreement was never achieved and the council also assembled rarely (Word Press, “League of Nations: Role and Structure”). 3.0 Why Did It Fail? League of Nations was less powerful right from the beginning and during the Second World War, entire set of expectation of the League failed. The reason of its failure was also that the League possessed a few weapons to use it against certain destructive countries. Several useful weapons such as negotiations and economic sanctions along with building up of an army were never in use. The weakness of economic sanctions was the fact that the three biggest economies which include the USA, Russia and Germany did not join as a member of the League. The biggest economy, the USA after World War I was under policy of isolation so as to be away from European affairs. The other two were Germany, for initiating the war and Russia as it was considered to be a communist nation. In the League of Nations, trade ban gradually became irrelevant. Several countries suffered from Great Depression after the ‘World Street Crash’ (Kliesch, “Why Did the League of Nation Fail and Why Did It Matter?”). League of Nations was much successful previously but the failure of it was when the major power put it to the test in Manchuria in 1931 and Albyssinia in 1935. In May 1936, Italy completed their invasion and in June 1936, the crisis debated at the Assembly of League of Nations. However, in spite of adopting action against Mussolini, League voted in order to end sanctions of trade against Italy. In both the nations, the League failed because the trade sanctions were less used and the trade of non-League Nations which include the United States was not controlled properly by the league. The member nations was not prepared to contribute troops to the League of Nations, as a result the military force became ineffective. Moreover, there was a failure in doctrine of collective security. The League also could not oblige other countries for accepting the decisions. In 1930, League however, failed to characterize the views of four most powerful nations. The United States never joined the members of League. In 1933, Japan left the membership of league, Germany though joined in 1926, left the membership in 1933 and Soviet Union left League in the year 1939 (Sauvin, P., “Key Themes of the Twentieth Century”). There was shortage of commitment and obligation from the members of the League which resulted in loss of integrity. The League tried to get involved with the Japanese forces, but the troops were not under the control of Japan. Later, they left membership of League and invaded China to work on Manchuria. When Italy invaded Ethiopia, League included economic sanctions against Italy. Several countries did not accept the decisions and continued trading to Italy. Diplomacy took place against League among several countries. Britain and France negotiated among themselves with Italy with an intention to develop Hoare-Laval plan. Though the First World War did not show complete failure of League of Nations, the final failure was after the World War II. The members did not think about the protection of League rather they were much involved in their own problems. The weakness was not the League but came from its members. The League was capable of solving the smaller problems but failed when bigger problem emerged (Kliesch, “Why Did the League of Nation Fail and Why Did It Matter?”). References Diehl, Paul. F. “Introduction”. April 26, 2011. The Politics of Global Governance: International Organizations in an Interdependent World, 2005. Ellis, Howard. E. The Origin, Structure & Working of the League of Nations The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 2003. Hughes, Timothy. “Japan Quits League of Nations”. April 26, 2011. Rare and Early Newspaper, 1933. Humphrey, John. “The League Of Nations”. April 26, 2011. The International Law of Human Rights in the Middle Twentieth Century, 1973. Kliesch, Christian. “Why Did The League Of Nation Fail And Why Did It Matter?”. League of Nations, 2005. Sauvin, Philip. Key Themes of the Twentieth Century Nelson Thornes, 1996. Union County College Faculty Web Site. “Structure of the League”. April 26, 2011. League of Nations, No Date. Wells, H. G. A Short History of the World Book Tree, 2000. Wells, H. G. “The Idea of a League of Nations”. April 26, 2011. Atlantic, 2011. Word Press. “League of Nations: Role and Structure”. April 26, 2011. Thoughts that Feed, 2008. Read More