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The Birth of the League of Nations
American President Woodrow Wilson intended the League of Nations to direct a new style of international relations based on the cooperation of all nations of the world. Centered in Geneva, Switzerland, a neutral location, the League asked nations large and small to join, dependent on their acceptance of the Covenant of the League, which stated the goals and philosophy upon which it was founded.
In previous centuries, European diplomacy had been conducted under what was called the Westphalian System (in place since the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648). This system was characterized by secrecy, division, and the relentless pursuit of self-interest. However, in the wake of World War I, the brutality, and to some, apparent needlessness, of the war, as well as a shifting balance of worldwide power, led to new ideas about how international affairs should be managed. Many, including Woodrow Wilson, felt that a more open, all-inclusive system would foster cooperation, international justice, and peace. The League was seen as a way to institutionalize these goals and strive for peace as a collective world community.
Early Days and Operations
The League of Nations first met in November 1920 with 42 nations present. Notably absent were German, Russia, and the United States. Germany, identified as the aggressor in World War I, was barred from admission at first, but later admitted in 1926. Russia, now the Soviet Union, was not initially invited due to the radical policies of the new communist government, and only became a member in 1935. In November 1919, the US Senate voted against accepting membership to the League, and the nation never joined.
The League of Nations operated through three agencies: the Assembly, the Council, and the Secretariat. The Assembly met annually, and consisted of a delegation from each member nation, with each member having one vote. The Council was composed of four permanent members and four nonpermanent members, serving as a sort of cabinet with some executive powers. It was responsible for the prevention of war through disarmament, resolving disputes, and supervising the mandates of the League. The Secretariat was the League's civil service, responsible for various clerical tasks such as preparing the agenda for the Assembly and the Council.
Mediating International Conflict
The League of Nations succeeded in providing assistance to bankrupt nations, supervising its mandates, and resolving conflicts between minor powers. During the early 1920s, the League made two attempts to outline a mechanism by which international conflicts could be contained and resolved. Both methods aimed to identify the aggressor nation and pledge League support to the victim.
The Treaty of Mutual Assistance, the first of these two efforts, was drafted in 1923. It proposed that the Council should declare which side of a conflict was the aggressor within four days of the outbreak of the conflict, at which point the League's members would automatically have to support the victim nation. The treaty failed, due to agreements that deciding on the aggressor was far too difficult to do in just four days without any concrete guidelines. The treaty also mandated military participation on the part of the member nations, a clause distasteful to many.
In 1925, the League tried once again to outline a mechanism for the containment of war. The Geneva Protocol would require arbitration of international disputes by the League, and any nation unwilling to submit to the League's arbitration would be declared the aggressor. This proposal was shot down by the British delegation, whose overseas colonial leaders feared that they would be dragged into European affairs by the Geneva Protocol.
Downfall of the League of Nations
The League of Nations, while well-intentioned, was somewhat doomed from the start. The United States’s early refusal to join, despite its president being the one to propose the idea, did not bode well for its future. The League of Nations was established primarily for the purpose of preventing future wars, a new concept for Europeans who traditionally believed that war was a necessary and inevitable part of international relations. However, it could not come to a decision on how best to do this without infringing on the sovereignty of the member countries, as would have been the case if the Treaty of Mutual Assistance or the Geneva Protocol had been passed.
The failure of these two measures left the League with only the power to place economic sanctions on an aggressor nation, greatly calling into question the League’s authority and ability to mediate conflicts. This limited its powers and led to most nations managing their affairs outside of the League, only rarely deferring to its authority. Despite these shortcomings, the League of Nations did accomplish some of its unification and pacification goals, and perhaps most importantly, set the stage for the United Nations, which would take its place after World War II.
