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The Locarno Pacts
Though the League of Nations failed to pass any broad measures to achieve a lasting peace, the former Allies and Germany reconciled on December 1, 1925 with the signing of the Locarno Pacts. They included guarantees on the French-German and Belgian-German borders, with Britain and Italy promising to provide military assistance to the victim of any border violations. The Locarno Pacts also included treaties between Germany and Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, and France, providing for the settlement of potential territorial disputes. Additionally, French-Polish and French-Czechoslovakian mutual assistance treaties were signed in case of German aggression.
The treaties of the Locarno Pacts were a major part of France's efforts to discourage German aggression. Somewhat to France's dismay, the treaties ended up encouraging good relations between Germany and its neighbors, leading many to believe that a lasting peace was possible. Despite the eventuality of World War II, the Locarno Pacts still outdid the League in its efforts to promote peace, demonstrating definitively that the major European powers would rather manage their affairs through traditional power politics and not the League.
The Washington Naval Conference
The League of Nations, for its part, moved from its focus on settling conflicts to attempting to disarm the European militaries which had been built up during the war, one of its major goals. However, despite this priority, the first major arms treaty was negotiated outside of the League in November 1921 at the Washington Naval Conference. Held by the United States, it was attended by Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, China, Japan, and Portugal. The Conference resulted in several treaties—the Four-Power Treaty, the Five-Power Treaty, and the Nine-Power Treaty—as well as agreements to limit the size and construction of naval vessels.
Disarmament through the League of Nations
In 1925, the League of Nations appointed a commission to prepare a disarmament conference, but despite meeting several times, all were without success due to Britain and France’s refusal to cooperate. The League’s inability to promote disarmament led United States Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand to jointly denounce war in the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, which condemned the use of war in foreign policy. The pact was eventually ratified, often hesitantly, by 65 nations, with some signing while claiming exceptions for self-defense and the like. However, the Kellogg-Briand Pact had no enforcement mechanism, and was simply based on the affirmation of the spirit of peace.
The last major League of Nations-sponsored disarmament conference met from February to July 1932 at Geneva, with 60 nations in attendance, including the United States. However, this conference, like its predecessors, failed to secure any agreement, and organized disarmament remained an unaccomplished goal. Similar to the Locarno Pacts, traditional power politics once again reigned supreme when it came to getting things done. The Washington Conference and the subsequent London Naval Conference of 1930 produced the only successful disarmament agreements of the interwar years, not the League of Nations. One fact that emerged clearly from the two conferences was that the United States, though generally isolationist during this era, commanded far more respect from the economically and politically distressed states of Europe than the League ever did.
