Why the League of Nations Failed
Why did the League of Nations fail? Explain Emery Reves's line of reasoning. If it is valid, why hasn't the UN become a supranational sovereign entity? What structural problems (i.e., the way the institution is set up) plague the UN? How could they be fixed? Under what circumstances can the UN do peacekeeping missions?
1. Why did the League of Nations fail? a. Collective security- agreement by all countries to automatically punish aggressors states i. Difficulty agreeing on what aggression is ii. These countries thought that they were acting defensively 1. Israelis in the 1967 war 2. Americans in Iraq 3. Soviets in South Ossetia 4. Iraqis in Kuwait 5. Manchuria 1931 a. Japanese set off bomb and said that the Chinese did it. b. They conquered Manchuria before the League knew what to do b. Political iii. France and Britain were the head of the League 6. They always looked out for their own interest c. They didn’t want to stop trade with Japan because Japan would attack one of their many colonies in Southeast Asia. d. Didn’t stop Mussolini in taking Abyssinia, In fact gave them 2/3 so that they wouldn’t go to war. Also didn’t stop him in conquering Ethiopia because they didn’t want him to be allied with Hitler. (He later did anyway) c. Isolationism iv. USA never joined the League of Nations 7. Since the US never joined, it was headed by weak countries e. Britain and France were economically and military weak because of WWI 8. US would trade with the countries that the League stopped trading with 2. Explain Emery Reves’s line of reasoning. d. Wars happen between social units because they are sovereign e. If sovereign power is taken away from smaller units by a larger unit then wars cease f. Pretty
1. Why did the League of Nations fail? a. Collective security- agreement by all countries to automatically punish aggressors states i. Difficulty agreeing on what aggression is ii. These countries thought that they were acting defensively 1. Israelis in the 1967 war 2. Americans in Iraq 3. Soviets in South Ossetia 4. Iraqis in Kuwait 5. Manchuria 1931 a. Japanese set off bomb and said that the Chinese did it. b. They conquered Manchuria before the League knew what to do b. Political iii. France and Britain were the head of the League 6. They always looked out for their own interest c. They didn’t want to stop trade with Japan because Japan would attack one of their many colonies in Southeast Asia. d. Didn’t stop Mussolini in taking Abyssinia, In fact gave them 2/3 so that they wouldn’t go to war. Also didn’t stop him in conquering Ethiopia because they didn’t want him to be allied with Hitler. (He later did anyway) c. Isolationism iv. USA never joined the League of Nations 7. Since the US never joined, it was headed by weak countries e. Britain and France were economically and military weak because of WWI 8. US would trade with the countries that the League stopped trading with 2. Explain Emery Reves’s line of reasoning. d. Wars happen between social units because they are sovereign e. If sovereign power is taken away from smaller units by a larger unit then wars cease f. Pretty