If you, like us, ever look at today's headlines,
at the gridlock in the UN Security Council maybe,
or the sheer difficulty of coordinating a global
health response, you realize that multilateral
diplomacy is a tightrope walk. But where did
this whole complicated structure even begin?
Today, we are deep diving into the organization
that first tried to solve the world's biggest
problems. We're talking about the League of Nations.
It really stands as the original blueprint for
modern global governance. Yet it's, you know,
it's famous for one catastrophic failure, its
inability to stop the war that followed. The
League was the first worldwide intergovernmental
organization. And it was explicitly designed
to maintain global peace. It was officially founded
on January 10th, 1920, and then dissolved in
1946. And our mission today is to tackle the
paradox at its heart. It's a huge one. How could
this ambitious project, I mean, a project meant
to end all wars and built on these incredibly
high ideals, fail so utterly in preventing World
War II, yet still leave behind such a foundational,
enduring legacy? A legacy that informs, really,
almost every modern international body we rely
on. And to really understand its failure, you
have to start with the single most critical decision
that crippled it from the moment the doors opened.
The absence of the United States. The absence
of the United States. Exactly. It's the ultimate
historical irony, isn't it? The leading architect,
the man who championed the idea across the globe,
U .S. President Woodrow Wilson. He won the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1919 for his role in creating
it. He did. Yet despite all his efforts, all
his vision, the U .S. Senate. which was driven
by this wave of isolationist sentiment, refused
to ratify the Treaty of Versailles. And that
meant refusing to join the League. And that final
vote, it was March 19th, 1920. Just think about
the signal that sent to the rest of the world.
The league's most important ideological champion
and one of the world's great economic and military
powers decides it wants no part of the very future
it just designed. So as we unpack the league's
complex origins, its organizational structure,
its quiet social successes, and its very, very
public geopolitical failures in the 1930s, you'll
see how that single absence just eroded the league's
moral and material authority. day one. Okay so
let's unpack this. this revolutionary idea of
collective security. Because the push to systematize
peace, it wasn't just a spontaneous reaction
to the horrors of World War I, was it? It had
these incredibly deep intellectual roots stretching
back centuries. Absolutely. The philosophical
desire for a permanent, peaceful community of
nations. I mean, that's been around since the
Enlightenment. If you want to trace the most
direct philosophical predecessor, you've got
to go back to Immanuel Kant's 1795 vision in
perpetual peace. A philosophical sketch. In Kant's
work, it wasn't just abstract theory. It's more
like a blueprint. He argued that peace could
only be secured through a league of free states,
all of them functioning as republics, respecting
their citizens, and welcoming visitors as, you
know, fellow rational beings. Right. He wasn't
advocating for a global super state. No, not
at all. But a peaceful society built on mutual
respect and shared rights. And that's... Well,
it's a beautiful, if maybe a little impossibly
idealistic starting point for what the League
became. It really did provide that essential
intellectual foundation. And then as we move
into the 19th century, we start to see these
more practical diplomatic models emerge. The
most significant one being the Concert of Europe,
which developed after the defeat of Napoleon
in 1815. That was essentially the great powers.
Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, agreeing to
consult each other and to intervene when necessary
just to maintain the geopolitical status quo.
So it was designed to avoid a massive European
war by managing spheres of influence. Precisely.
It was informal. It was driven by mutual self
-interest. And it was all about managing power
imbalances. But, and this is the key, it was
not codified or institutionalized. It was simply
a tool of the powerful. The real shift toward
formal international mechanisms began later in
the 19th century. With things like the Geneva
Conventions, right? Defining humanitarian relief
during wartime. And the Hague Conventions of
1899 and 1907. These were huge steps toward creating
universal rules for conflict and, crucially,
offering methods for the peaceful settlement
of disputes. This was the legal and intellectual
scaffolding that the League would eventually
be built on. And then came the Great War. Which
didn't just test the system, it shattered it
completely. The sheer devastation, the scale
of the mechanized slaughter, it just completely
shifted the diplomatic and public landscape.
World War I was devastating in a way. that no
previous conflict had been. Affecting every social,
political, economic system across Europe. And
it was immediately universally described as the
war to end all wars. So the desire for systemic,
profound change was just massive. People weren't
looking for another temporary fix like the Concert
of Europe. They wanted to address the fundamental
flaws that led to, well, to the abyss. The question
became, why did this happen? And the analysis
was surprisingly uniform across the allied capitals.
The causes were identified as these reckless
arms races fueled by fear and nationalism, the
rigid system of secret diplomacy and alliances
that just pulled everyone into conflict. And
the sovereign right of states to just go to war
whenever they felt their interests were threatened.
Right. So the remedy had to be just as systemic.
Yeah. And that remedy, the very philosophical
mission of the League, was incredibly ambitious.
an international organization that would prevent
future war through three core mechanisms. Open
diplomacy. And a system of collective security
that would impose penalties, whether economic
or military, to make conflict just too costly
and unattractive. And this brings us to the key
architects who turned these theoretical ideas
into the concrete framework of the covenant.
So beyond Wilson, you had Lord Robert Cecil from
the UK, a tireless advocate for international
law, and Jan Smuts, the influential South African
statesman. And the momentum wasn't just top down.
The intellectual push in the U .S. came from
these really powerful domestic groups like the
League to enforce peace, which was led by former
President William Howard Taft. They were advocating
for arbitration and sanctions. It was a genuine
international movement. What's particularly fascinating
is the range of ideas that were ultimately rejected.
Many of the initial proposals were far more radical
than what ended up in the covenant. Like the
French position in 1918. I think that's a crucial.
detail that really tells you where the system
broke down later on. It is. The French drafted
this very far -reaching proposal that called
for annual meetings of a council to settle all
disputes. But crucially, they wanted a standing
international army to enforce those decisions.
They recognized that without teeth, the League
would just be a talking shop. And that concept,
the international army, was definitively rejected
by the British and Americans. They were willing
to have a forum for discussion, absolutely, but
not a permanent supranational military command
that could override their national... sovereignty.
And that rejection, right there at the drafting
table, it fatally undermined the enforcement
capability of the League before it even existed.
The covenant was finalized and signed on June
28, 1919, as part one of the Treaty of Versailles.
The machinery was put in motion pretty quickly.
The first council meeting was on January 16,
1920, in Paris, and the first assembly met in
Geneva that November. But even in those founding
meetings, there was this deep -seated tension
about what the league was actually supposed to
be. Did everyone really agree on Wilson's grand
vision? Not at all. There was a critical mismatch.
On one side, you had Wilson's revolutionary conception
of the league as the solid replacement for the
corrupt secret alliance system. He saw it as
a true guardian of international order, a protector
of small states. He wanted a complete overhaul.
And on the other side, the British and others
seemed far more pragmatic or, I don't know, maybe
cynical. Certainly more pragmatic. David Lloyd
George, the British prime minister, he primarily
wanted a cheap, self -enforcing peace. Which
basically meant updating the old fluid concert
of Europe model. Exactly. He wanted a low cost
mechanism to manage the status quo without requiring
constant British military commitment. So Wilson
saw a total idealistic overhaul while the major
European powers saw a manageable, low risk forum
for diplomacy. That inherent tension meant the
league was immediately compromised on sensitive
issues. And while the U .S. never joined the
formal structure, we shouldn't overlook the indirect
American influence that came later. American
philanthropies, particularly the massive Rockefeller
Foundation, stepped in, especially in the 1930s.
Right. They provided major grants to build up
the league's technical expertise, transforming
its permanent staff from mere bureaucrats into
a real international civil service focused on
impartial analysis. This helped make the League
in some ways less a parliament of nations and
more a precursor to a modern international think
tank. Yeah, it's a great nuance. So even as the
political structure was failing, the professional
technical foundation was being quietly built
with American money. OK, let's move now from
the big ideas to the functional architecture.
How is this revolutionary organization actually
structured in Geneva? And, you know, what were
the key details of that structure that ultimately
became its downfall? Well, the League was built
around three main constitutional organs, the
Assembly, the Council, and the Permanent Secretariat.
These were the political and administrative heart,
all located in Geneva. And then, critically,
it had two autonomous wings essential for international
law and labor rights. The Permanent Court of
International Justice in The Hague. And the International
Labor Organization, or IOLO. So, starting with
the Assembly, that was the grand forum where
everyone, big or small, got a voice, correct?
That's right. The Assembly was made up of representatives
of all member states. Each state was allowed
up to three representatives, but, and this is
the key democratic element, each state received
only one vote. And it met once a year in September.
It did. And while it was huge, its functions
were largely supervisory, controlling the budget,
electing the non -permanent council members,
and acting as a directing force for all the league's
technical activities. Then you had the council,
which was clearly the executive body, designed
to handle crises and high -stakes decisions.
The council was designed as the smaller, more
action -oriented chamber. It started with four
permanent members, the victorious Allied powers,
the UK, France, Italy, and Japan. and four non
-permanent members elected by the Assembly for
three -year terms. And it met far more frequently.
Oh yeah, sometimes five times a year in Geneva
and sometimes in other capitals. So the great
powers made sure they had permanent seats and
therefore permanent control over the League's
most crucial decisions right from the start.
That looks a lot like the structure the UN adopted
later. It does, but with one crucial difference
we'll get to. The composition of the Council
was dynamic. Germany was admitted as a gesture
of reconciliation and became the fifth permanent
member in 1926. Under the Weimar Republic. Right.
And as the League grew, the number of non -permanent
seats was also increased, peaking at 11 by the
end, meaning the Council had a total maximum
membership of 15 before the major powers began
their dramatic exits. And finally, the Permanent
Secretariat, the League's unsung engine. We often
forget the importance of the bureaucracy itself.
The Secretariat was essential. It was the first
truly international civil service, located permanently
in Geneva. By 1931, it housed 707 staff members,
experts recruited internationally, not just delegated
by their home governments. They were responsible
for preparing agendas, publishing the critical
reports that often framed disputes, and handling
all the complex routine administration. And these
staff were divided into sections that really
reveal the scope of the League's ambitions beyond
just preventing war. Indeed. They had sections
dedicated to political issues, financial and
economics, mandates, disarmament, and the humanitarian
side. Health, social issues like the notorious
opium and traffic in women and children's sections,
and transit. This internationalized expertise
laid the foundation for virtually every specialized
agency we know today. Now we arrive at the catastrophic
structural weakness, the fatal flaw embedded
right there in the covenant, the veto problem.
This is where the idealistic philosophy clashed
fatally with the practical mechanics of power.
The rule was that unanimity was required for
almost all major decisions of both the assembly
and the council. Unanimity? Yes. Only procedural
matters and things like admitting new members
could be decided by a majority. So any single
major member? could essentially veto any decisive
action, any serious sanction, or any military
intervention against an aggressor. Precisely.
The core philosophical belief was that the League
sought a solution by consent, not by dictation.
This respected national sovereignty absolutely,
which was a core demand of the time, but the
resulting mechanism was guaranteed to produce
indecision or fatally slow action. It sounds
like the League was designed to work only when
the great powers already agreed. which sort of
renders the system unnecessary for managing conflicts
between those same great powers. That's a very
sharp observation. When the Eagles fell out,
as Mussolini so cynically put it, the League
had no legal mechanism to override the national
interests of even one powerful member. Did the
League have any unifying symbols? Common languages?
The official working languages were French and
English, reflecting the two dominant post -war
powers, though Spanish was also accepted. And,
you know, interestingly, unlike the U .N., The
league never adopted a permanent, universally
recognized official flag for most of its existence.
That kind of highlights it. tentative, experimental
nature. It does. A semi -official emblem did
appear later, two five -pointed stars within
a blue pentagon used at the 1939 New York World's
Fair, symbolizing the Earth's five continents
and five races. Let's talk about the volatility
of its membership, the coming and going that
really defined its political relevance. Well,
the League began with 42 founding members in
1920 and reached its peak with 58 members between
1934 and 1935. But the high -profile exits, particularly
during the critical decade of the 1930s, told
the real story of its decline. The major aggressor
states simply rejected the system when it demanded
accountability. That's the key takeaway. When
the League began to actually function as a moral
and legal check on aggression, the states committing
those aggressive acts simply walked away. Japan
and Germany left in 1933. Italy, a permanent
council member, withdrew in 1937 and Spain followed
in 1939. The Soviet Union is a unique case here,
joining late and then leaving under duress. Yes.
The USSR only joined in September 1934, primarily
because it saw the League as a potential tool
to resist the rising power of Nazi Germany. But
its membership was short lived. The Soviet Union
was formally expelled after its invasion of Finland
on December 14th, 1939. And that expulsion is
a historically significant It's the final dramatic
flourish. The Soviet Union was the only member
ever formally expelled from the League of Nations,
marking one of its very last acts before the
World War consumed its administrative functions.
This constant flux just showed that the League
could hold power over the weak, but it could
not hold the loyalty or compliance of the strong.
When you look back at the League, the failures
of the 1930s just dominate the narrative. But
that focus obscures this massive area where the
League was surprisingly effective, establishing...
This is the critical correction history provides.
The League... catastrophically failed at high
politics preventing war, but it excelled at technical,
social, and administrative cooperation. These
overlooked successes, they are the true enduring
legacy. Let's start with the mandate system.
This was the controversial compromise for dividing
up the colonies of the defeated central powers
after WWI. It was a fascinating concept under
Article 22 of the Covenant. It applied to former
German colonies and the Arabic -speaking provinces
of the Ottoman Empire. The idea, championed by
Wilson, was revolutionary on paper. Rather than
letting the Allies just annex these lands as
war booty, the territories were placed under
a system designed to assist them toward eventual
self -governance, all subject to international
observation. It sounds like an attempt to supervise
empire, to put colonial powers under some degree
of international scrutiny for the very first
time. But wasn't it often just a fig leaf for
continued control? That is the essential contradiction.
The system was managed by the Permanent Mandates
Commission, which reviewed annual reports from
the administering powers. So yes, it introduced
scrutiny, but it ultimately enshrined colonial
control under a new name. The territories were
divided into three classifications, A, B, and
C, based on their perceived ability to stand
alone. Can you break those down for us? What
do they mean for the people living there? Certainly.
A mandate's applied to parts of the old Ottoman
Empire, like Mesopotamia, which is modern Iraq,
and Palestine. These were deemed to have reached
a stage where their independence could be provisionally
recognized, subject only to administrative assistance
from the mandatory power, usually Britain or
France. So the path to independence was theoretically
shortest for them. Exactly. Then you have B mandates,
which were applied to former German colonies
in Central and East Africa, like Tanganyika.
These were considered less developed and the
mandatory power had broader administrative responsibility.
But the covenant explicitly prohibited them from
building fortifications or military bases. And
C mandates sound like the closest thing to outright
annexation. They were. Sea mandates covered territories
like southwest Africa and some Pacific islands.
Due to their small size, sparse population, or
closeness to the mandatory power, they could
be administered as integral portions of that
power's territory. The success rate for immediate
independence was mixed too. Iraq, and an A mandate,
gained independence in 1932 and actually joined
the League. But why did nearly all mandates stay
under control until after World War II if the
goal was self -governance? Because the mandatory
powers, like France and Britain, had very little
incentive to speed up the process, the system
gave them an international justification for
holding the territory. And while the Mandates
Commission was persistent, it just lacked the
power to enforce immediate independence. Still,
the system set a precedent for international
trusteeship that the UN later adopted. And the
League itself had direct administrative roles
in Europe, too, which is an overlooked aspect
of its governance legacy. It did. The League
governed the territory of the Saar Basin. for
15 years until a 1935 plebiscite returned it
to Germany. It also governed the free city of
Danzig -Now -Gasisch, navigating extreme political
tensions between Poland and Germany. Okay, let's
shift to the true surprising wins, the global
social and technical work. This is the foundation
on which so much of the modern UN system is built,
and it's where the League truly succeeded day
to day. You have to start with the International
Labour Organization. ILO. It was established
by the Treaty of Versailles and was deliberately
made autonomous, though its budget was controlled
by the Assembly. This autonomy helped it survive
the League's political death. And the ILO was
securing fundamental worker rights worldwide
well before World War II. That's a massive achievement
in social justice. Its impact was profound and
immediate. The ILO secured the adoption of the
eight -hour workday and the 48 -hour working
week in numerous countries. It campaigned successfully
against child labor, restricted the use of lead
in paint, a major health hazard, and advocated
for women's rights in the workplace. It wasn't
just about labor, though. The League tackled
issues that defined human survival. And nothing
was more critical in that era than global health.
The League's health organization was revolutionary.
Its structure directly influenced the later World
Health Organization, the WHO. It had a massive
job focusing on controlling epidemics like leprosy,
malaria and yellow fever, including launching
international mosquito extermination campaigns.
And they even worked across political boundaries
that were hostile to the League itself, right?
That's a key detail. They worked successfully
with the Soviet government to combat devastating
typhus epidemics. The work of the League's health
experts proved that technical cooperation could
transcend the ideal. ideological and political
barriers that constantly stalled the council.
The League also tackled profound moral issues
like slavery and forced labor. This must have
created incredible political friction. It did.
The Slavery Commission worked globally to eradicate
slavery. When Ethiopia applied for membership
in 1923, for instance, a condition was securing
a firm commitment to end slavery domestically.
They also worked extensively with Liberia to
abolish forced labor. Were there measurable successes
in this difficult area? Absolutely. Or a powerful
example is that the Tanganyika Railway project,
where the death rate for forced laborers was
reduced from a horrific 55 percent to just 4
percent after the League intervened and enforced
better labor practices. Wow. States like Afghanistan,
Iraq and Nepal all abolished slavery or severely
restricted forced labor, partly due to diplomatic
pressure from the League. And the refugee crisis
after World War One was immense. The League had
to literally invent mechanisms to deal with stateless
people. The Commission for Refugees, led by the
renowned Norwegian explorer and diplomat Fridtjof
Nansen, was instrumental. Immediately after the
war, there were millions of ex -prisoners of
war scattered across Russia, often forgotten.
Within just two years, the Commission helped
425 ,000 of them return home. And here is a truly
surprising high -impact takeaway. The Nansen
passport. This is a piece of foundational legal
history. The Nansen passport was a stroke of
genius, a landmark in international law. It was
the first internationally recognized identity
document for stateless people who couldn't return
home. It helped thousands of Russian, Armenian
and Turkish refugees move legally across borders
and settle safely. Manson won the Nobel Peace
Prize for his work, and that passport concept
is the intellectual ancestor of modern refugee
conventions. And beyond the practical and humanitarian,
the League supported intellectual endeavors,
establishing the precursor to UNESCO. They established
the International Commission on Intellectual
Cooperation. This aimed at standardizing everything
from bibliographical work to protecting intellectual
property. Figures like Henri Bergson and Albert
Einstein were involved, cementing the League's
role in promoting scientific and cultural exchange,
again laying the direct groundwork for UNESCO.
Finally, we need to address the economic legacy,
because this is where the League directly influences
modern finance and, well, potentially even our
tax bills today. This is truly a deep dive moment.
The Economic and Financial Organization, established
in 1923, did fundamental technical work. It codified
the most favored nation norm in international
trade. Okay, hold on. Most favored nation norm
sounds a bit like academic jargon. For a listener
who isn't a trade expert, what are we talking
about here? We're talking about fairness and
global trade. a radical idea at the time. The
norm meant that if you granted a special tariff
reduction or trade advantage to one country,
you were obligated to grant that same advantage
to all other members of the agreement. It standardized
trade and prevented the kind of exclusionary
secret economic deals that had fueled pre -war
tensions. That makes perfect sense. Standardizing
global trade to avoid creating hostile economic
blocks. Absolutely. And the biggest, most surprising
takeaway is that its 1923 report provided the
intellectual foundation for the modern international
taxation regime. It established guidelines for
allocating taxable profits across borders to
avoid double taxation and encourage global capital
flow. This detailed complex contribution shapes
global financial treaties and laws today. So
we've established that the League was this powerhouse
of technical and humanitarian achievement. Yet,
when faced with great power aggression, the machinery
just seized up. Let's confront the geopolitical
failures, which started early, long before Hitler.
The first test arrived with the Corfu incident
of 1923, and it immediately exposed the League's
fundamental weakness when facing a determined,
cynical major power like fascist Italy. This
involved Italy and Greece and Mussolini making
a very aggressive power play. Exactly. An Italian
general, Enrico Tellini, who was heading a commission
to mark the border between Albania and Greece,
was assassinated on Greek soil. Benito Mussolini,
the new Italian leader, seized the opportunity.
He demanded immediate massive reparations from
Greece and then, crucially, occupied the Greek
island of Corfu on August 31st, 1923. Occupying
the island was a clear, blatant violation of
the League's covenant. It was, and Greece immediately
appealed to the League for intervention. The
League Council started examining the dispute,
which was the correct protocol, but Mussolini
just refused to accept the League's jurisdiction.
He insisted the decision be handled by the Allied
Conference of Ambassadors, a pre -war body where
Italy had more sway effectively bypassing the
League entirely. And the League tried to stand
firm, but Mussolini's military leverage proved
stronger than its moral authority. Well, the
Conference of Ambassadors eventually accepted
the League's finding that Greece should pay an
indemnity, but they drastically increased the
amount, forcing Greece to pay the 50 million
lire Mussolini had originally demanded, even
though the perpetrators were never found. And
that leads directly to Mussolini's famous cynical
quote, which is almost the epitaph of the League's
political life. It is brutal, but incredibly
insightful. Mussolini stated that The League
is very well when sparrows shout, but no good
at all when eagles fall out. It proved that when
facing a determined major power willing to use
force and defy international opinion, the League
was utterly powerless because its great power
members, Britain and France, just weren't willing
to risk a military confrontation. So if Corfu
was a warning, the Manchuria crisis was the definitive
death blow to the core concept of collective
security. This happened almost a decade later
in the Far East. The Mukden incident in September
1931 was the crisis from which the League never
recovered. The Japanese Kwantung Army, which
was guarding Japanese interests in the South
Manchurian Railway, fabricated an incident. They
lightly damaged a railway section and used this
as a pretext to launch a massive invasion and
occupation of the entire Chinese region of Manchuria.
So Japan, one of the permanent members of the
council, was aggressively invading another member
state. What was the League's response? It was
catastrophically slow. The League immediately
sent observers, but the subsequent investigation,
led by Lord Lytton, took over a year to complete.
The resulting Lytton Report, published in October
1932, condemned Japan's actions, refused to recognize
the new puppet state of Manchukuo, and demanded
the territory be returned to China. That sounds
like a strong moral stand, at least. It was a
strong moral and diplomatic stand. The Assembly
voted 42 to 1 to condemn Japan, a clear international
mandate. But Japan's response was just to reject
the report and announce its withdrawal from the
League in 1933. And this is the moment where
the weakness of the veto and the lack of an enforcement
army become completely obvious. They condemn
Japan. But what military action did the League
powers take? None. The powers, particularly Britain
and France, refused to commit military forces
or enact significant economic sanctions. Japan
was far away, and they were concerned with the
rise of Hitler closer to home. As one historian
observed, this was the definitive moment that
showed collective security was dead. The world
had condemned aggression, but no country was
willing to fight to reverse it. If Manchuria
showed the League's paralysis in the East, the
Abyssinian crisis, starting in 1935, exposed
its fatal contradictions right on Europe's doorstep.
It proved the system was entirely negotiable.
This crisis was devastating because it pitted
Italy, another permanent member of the Council
Against Abyssinia, modern Ethiopia, a fellow
member and the only uncolonized African state
at the time. Mussolini, seeking glory and resources,
invaded Abyssinia in October 1935 using a massive
force of 400 ,000 troops. And Italy was using
horrific modern weapons against Abyssinian forces
and civilians. Precisely. They employed widespread
chemical weapons, specifically mustard gas and
poison. and water supplies, in clear violation
of international law. At Bissinia's Emperor Hail
Selassie, I appealed directly to the League for
help. And this time, the League did act. It imposed
economic sanctions, but they were famously limited.
Fatally limited. Sanctions were imposed in November
1935, covering weapons, loans, and certain raw
materials. But the crucial resources that Italy
needed to continue the war, namely oil, coal,
and steel, were not restricted why were oil and
coal excluded that seems like an enormous deliberate
loophole it was a calculated political loophole
britain and france the two most powerful members
enforcing the sanctions feared that restricting
oil might provoke italy into declaring war on
them furthermore britain refused to close the
suez canal which was the main route for italian
troops and supplies because they feared escalating
the situation so britain and france who were
obligated by the covenant to protect abyssinia
were prioritizing balance Mussolini against the
rising, far more dangerous threat of Hitler.
This leads to the infamous Horleval Pact. The
Hoare -Laval Pact, drafted in secret in December
1935, was a massive public relations disaster
and the clearest possible betrayal of the League's
ideals. Britain's Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare
and French Prime Minister Pierre Laval secretly
agreed to partition Abyssinia, effectively handing
Mussolini the largest and most valuable two -thirds
of the country. And when news of this secret
deal leaked, the public outrage in Britain and
France was so massive that both officials were
forced to resign. The pact exposed the hypocrisy
at the heart of collective security. The major
powers were willing to condemn aggression publicly,
impose half -hearted sanctions, but were simultaneously
willing to sell out a fellow member state behind
closed doors to achieve their own national strategic
goals. And we also have that incredible, almost
tragic detail of Emperor Haile Selassie, and
I'm personally addressing the assembly in Geneva.
It was an unprecedented and heart -wrenching
moment in June 1936. Selassie stood before the
assembly, appealing for protection, urging them
to remember their treaty obligations, and declaring
that if the League failed to help Avicenna, it
would surely fail to help others later. Tragically,
the sanctions were lifted just weeks later, confirming
Italy's conquest. Beyond the reaction to external
aggression, the League's other foundational goal,
universal disarmament, also failed completely,
demonstrating its inability to create a lasting
peace based on trust. Article 8 mandated armament
reduction as essential for peace, but the effort
was just doomed by mutual suspicion. The World
Disarmament Conference ran for two years, from
1932 to 1934, and achieved absolutely nothing
of substance. Why the paralysis? I mean, everyone
was ruined by World War I. Surely they wanted
to spend less on arms. In theory, yes. In practice,
states like France, Poland and Czechoslovakia,
which sat on the border of a potentially resurgent
Germany, adamantly refused to reduce their own
armaments without ironclad security guarantees
from the League, guarantees the League could
not legally or militarily provide. This fear
only intensified exponentially when Adolf Hitler
gained power in January 1933 and Germany withdrew
from the League almost immediately. So the League
was faced with this tragic contradiction. Yeah.
It needed the ability to enforce its guarantees
to achieve disarmament, but it needed disarmament
to reduce the need for enforcement. It was a
vicious cycle. The League was then completely
powerless during the major events that defined
the final march toward the Second World War.
It was silent in the face of Hitler's remilitarization
of the Rhineland in 1936, the Anschluss of Austria
in 1938, and the occupation of the Sudetenland
later that year, all clear violations of the
Treaty of Versailles. By the time the League
expelled the Soviet Union in late 1939, the three
major aggressors, Japan, Germany, and Italy,
had already withdrawn, leaving the organization
hollowed out and completely irrelevant. It was
a ghost. So it's clear that the league suffered
a spectacular failure in its primary goal. Let's
synthesize the root causes and structure them
into the big three takeaways regarding why the
league ultimately collapsed when it mattered
most. First, the inescapable issue of its origins.
The League was just inextricably linked to the
Treaty of Versailles. It was seen across the
globe, especially by the defeated powers and
later by the Soviet Union as a League of Victors,
created by the Allied powers as part of a punitive
peace settlement. This limited its impartiality
from the start. Second, the structural flaw we
spend time on, the unanimous veto. The requirement
for unanimity among council members guaranteed
institutional paralysis and slow action. It was
a structural choice that reflected the fact that
primary members were utterly unwilling to cede
even a fraction of their national sovereignty.
They essentially gave themselves a veto over
any decisive action. And third, the devastating
impact of the U .S. absence. How significant
was the missing American political will, money,
and military potential? It was critically damaging,
though it's complex. As historian Ruth Hainick
suggests, had the U .S. joined, it would have
provided necessary political and economic support
to France and Britain, potentially stabilizing
Europe earlier. The U .S. economy alone could
have backed far more robust sanctions during
the Manchuria or Abyssinia crises. But even if
the U .S. had joined, there's an argument that
its deep -seated reluctance to engage in European
wars, that policy of isolationism, might still
have hampered enforcement, given the veto structure.
That's the subtlety. The U .S. joining might
have stabilized the system politically, but it
doesn't change that fatal unanimity rule. If
the U .S. Senate had ratified the covenant, the
U .S. military still would have been extremely
hesitant to intervene in the Far East or Africa.
Without the U .S., though, Britain and France
were left alone to carry the burden of enforcement,
a burden they swiftly decided was too costly.
Ultimately, all these weaknesses boil down to
the failure of the League's core concept, collective
security. That is the deepest weakness. Collected
security demanded that nations act against states
they might consider friendly or in ways that
genuinely endangered their own immediate national
interests, potentially risking war to defend
states for which they had no natural affinity.
Like Britain fighting Japan over Manchuria. Exactly.
Nations were unwilling to make this enormous
political sacrifice. And Prime Minister Stanley
Baldwin summarized this reality brutally in the
British House of Commons in 1936 in the devastating
wake of the Abyssinia crisis. His statement perfectly
captured the lesson learned. He noted that collective
security failed ultimately because of the reluctance
of nearly all the nations in Europe to proceed
to what I might call military sanctions. He concluded
that if collective action is to be a reality
every country must be ready to go to war at once.
That is a terrible thing but it is an essential
part of collective security. The League demanded
instantaneous self -sacrifice and governments,
prioritizing their own domestic interests, just
refused to pay that price. This also meant that
the two most important members, Britain and France,
ultimately abandoned collective security entirely
for the strategy of appeasement. They needed
teeth, but they were legally and morally bound
to pull those teeth out. So when did the League
actually die? Was it just allowed to fade into
the background? It was largely inactive after
the outbreak of World War II in 1939. The Allied
powers, recognizing its critical political failure,
formally agreed at the 1943 Tehran Conference
to replace it with a new body one that they hoped
would have stronger mechanisms and the permanent
involvement of the U .S. The formal dissolution
was a purely bureaucratic affair on April 18,
1946, in Geneva. No dramatic speeches, just a
transfer of property. A quiet administrative
end. The final session concerned itself with
liquidating the League's assets, worth about
$22 million, and transferring them, including
its extensive archives and its grand headquarters,
the Palais des Nations, to the new United Nations.
Lord Robert Cecil, one of the original architects,
gave a poignant closing address. He did, urging
the delegates to be bold against aggression,
concluding with the famous line, The League is
dead. Long live the United Nations. But the scholarly
consensus today paints a much more complex picture
than simply calling it a failed organization.
Yeah. What is the enduring positive legacy? The
consensus is that while the League failed in
preventing World War, a failure that cost 60
million lives, it was wildly successful in building
new roads toward expanding the rule of law globally.
It took the idea of international cooperation
and moved it from high -level secret diplomacy
to an institutionalized, permanent set of procedures.
And the designers of the UN clearly learned from
the League's crippling structural flaws while
inheriting its successes directly. Most of the
DNA of the modern multilateral system came from
the League. Key organizations that survived and
transitioned directly included the ILO, the Permanent
Court of International Justice, which became
the International Court of Justice, and the Health
Organization, which was restructured into the
World Health Organization. The technical foundations
were invaluable. And the single most important
structural improvement the UN made was modifying
the voting rules in the Security Council, right?
Absolutely. The UN learned from the League's
rigidity. Decisions in the UN Security Council
are binding and, unlike the League Council, do
not require the unanimity of all members. However,
the five permanent members retained the crucial
power of the veto, protecting their vital interests,
a compromise that acknowledged the League's lesson
that great powers will not submit to collective
will if their core sovereignty is threatened.
It was a pragmatic step back from the impossible
idealism of the League. So. The League of Nations'
failure to prevent the Second World War solidified
a terrible necessary lesson for the world. That
ambitious international cooperation without credible
enforcement power, which requires national sacrifice,
is ultimately brittle. It collapses the moment
a major power decides to act purely selfishly.
At its foundational humanitarian, social, and
technical work, from establishing the ILO to
creating the Nansen passport and laying the groundwork
for modern taxation and public health structures,
lay the unavoidable groundwork for nearly every
multilateral organization that exists today.
It taught the world how to cooperate, even if
it couldn't ultimately force it to cooperate.
So here's the final thought for you to chew on.
The League struggled because its members were
constantly asked to sacrifice immediate national
interest like keeping the Suez Canal open for
oil or fighting Japan over a far -flung region
for the greater long -term goal of global collective
stability. Considering that modern bodies like
the UN Security Council still face gridlock and
vetoes when permanent members' interests conflict,
how fundamentally solvable is this tension? Is
it possible for a system built on national self
-interest to truly uphold global collective security?
Or is perpetual gridlock, in the face of major
conflict, simply a feature of the modern world
order? Welcome to the debate. Today, we're digging
into one of the most ambitious and, well, maybe
one of the most tragic political experiments
of the 20th century, the League of Nations. It
was founded in 1920, right after the hoarders
of the Great War, with this single overriding
mission. to establish a system of collective
security that would maintain world peace permanently.
And yet, by 1946, it was dissolved, completely
sidelined by the Second World War. And that history
presents us with a really profound disagreement.
Should the League be judged as fundamentally
a catastrophic failure because it didn't prevent
the aggression of the 1930s? Or was it actually
a consequential success? that forged the vital
institutional foundations that modern global
governance is now built on. Exactly. And I'll
be arguing that the League's structural paralysis,
compounded by its total inability to halt great
power regression, means its history really has
to be written as a fundamental political failure.
And I'll present the necessary counterpoint.
Because while its political failures in the 1930s
are of course undeniable, their most prominent
part of the narrative, the League's true historical
legacy, I think, resides in the profound institutional
innovations it pioneered. It built a scaffolding,
if you will, that the United Nations would later
refine and adopt. We just can't judge a decades
-long endeavor solely by the outbreak of the
one war it was designed to prevent. But the outbreak
of that war. is it's the only metric that truly
matters when you're assessing the League's mandate.
The Covenant's central purpose was non -negotiable.
Prevent another world war. The fact that a global
conflict began just two decades after its founding,
a conflict with unprecedented devastation, that
defines its historical legacy. And the reason
it failed is because the very system it championed,
collective security, was fatally flawed. It was
theoretically unsound. Tell me how. Well, the
concept itself, asking nations to view an attack
on any member as an attack on themselves, that
required a radical sacrifice of immediate national
self -interest for a theoretical, long -term
global stability. And that demand was just too
radical for the post -World War I era. Institutionally,
the League was, I would argue, doomed by two
crippling weaknesses. First, it lacked its own
armed force. It could only recommend sanctions,
relying entirely on major powers like Britain
and France to enforce anything. But even more
critically, its decision -making structure was
paralyzed. The requirement for unanimity among
council members meant that any primary member
could veto decisive action against an aggressor.
I mean, imagine a police force where every single
officer has to unanimously agree before arresting
a thief. That was the League's counsel. It was
just designed to fail. Okay. I'm willing to grant
you the profound political difficulty of achieving
that, but I think you're confusing the institutional
tool with the political will of the nations using
it. Current scholarly consensus really confirms
that even as it struggled politically, the League
built new roads for global governments. And this
work was critical. The high -profile political
failures completely overshadowed its very substantial,
often ignored, successes in technical, economic,
and humanitarian areas. These weren't secondary
achievements. They were foundational. For instance,
we see its competence shine in disputes that
didn't involve the great powers. The League successfully
resolved the Åland Islands dispute in 1921 between
Sweden and Finland. Later, in 1926, it settled
the highly sensitive Musil question, successfully
brokering a border between Turkey and British
-mandated Iraq. So the League showed its arbitration
mechanisms could work. And more than that, the
institutional structure itself proved enduring.
I mean, just look at the UN. It inherited several
key agencies directly, including the International
Labor Organization, the Permanent Court of International
Justice, and the Health Organization. Its structure
was the blueprint for everything that followed.
You speak of early successes, but those were
what Mussolini famously dismissed as sparrow
fights. He argued the league was, and I quote,
very well when sparrows shout, but no good at
all when eagles fall out. The structural weakness
meant that when a great power truly defied the
League, the entire diplomatic mechanism just
dissolved. Take the Corfu incident in 1923. Italian
forces occupied the Greek island and Greece appealed
to the League. But Mussolini, applying pure coercion,
immediately threatened to withdraw. And under
that threat, the Allied powers stepped in and
transferred the matter to the Conference of Ambassadors.
Right, which was outside the League's direct
authority. Exactly. And the conference, under
direct Italian pressure, forced Greece to pay
Italy reparations, even though the perpetrators
of the initial crime were never found. This wasn't
just a procedural failure. It was a profound
declaration that if a major power refused to
respect the covenant, the League machinery was
useless. The aggressor, Italy, was effectively
rewarded. It proved that high diplomacy was subservient
to great power self -interest from the very start.
I just don't think that's the right framing.
Corfu demonstrates the political cowardice of
the Allies, not an intrinsic flaw in the League's
mechanism itself. The institutions existed to
solve the problem, but the Allied powers chose
to undermine the body to appease a rogue state.
We can't let those moments of great power betrayal
erase the efficacy the League showed where commitment
actually existed. Let's consider the Upper Silesia
dispute in 1921. Now, this was a critical flashpoint
between Germany and Poland. When the Allies failed
to resolve it, the League stepped in. Its commission
brokered a settlement that divided the territory,
but, and this is key, it simultaneously established
a convention ensuring economic interaction and
minority rights. The League provided the legitimate
infrastructure needed for sovereign nations to
de -escalate. That was a profound political success.
But those successes were just minor skirmishes
compared to the defining challenges of the 1930s.
The League's credibility collapsed irreversibly
when that great power willingness vanished. We
have to discuss the failures in Manchuria and
Abyssinia. They destroyed any remaining faith
in collective security and signaled to every
aspiring dictator that the system was hollow.
In 1931, Japan manufactures a crisis, the Mukden
Incident, occupies Manchuria and sets up the
puppet state of Manchukuo. The League took an
entire year to dispatch the Lytton Commission,
which finally condemned Japan's aggression. And
what happened next? Japan simply slammed the
door on the report and walked away from the League
in 1933. It exposed the ultimate vulnerability.
The League had zero enforcement mechanism against
a major power choosing to leave. The covenant
just dissolved into an academic exercise. What
good is a rulebook if the most powerful players
can simply tear out the pages they don't like?
You're right that Manchuria was devastating.
But the Abyssinia crisis is, I think, an even
more tragic illustration of how external political
calculation actively destroyed the system, rather
than the institution failing on its own terms.
In 1935, when Italy invaded Abyssinia, the League
did respond swiftly. It condemned Italy and imposed
sanctions, the most robust action it had ever
taken against a major power. But they were ineffective
sanctions. They were deliberately ineffective.
They were neutered. Coal and oil, Italy's key
strategic needs, were explicitly left off the
list. This wasn't a flaw in the covenant. It
was a cynical political choice by Britain and
France, who were terrified that effective sanctions
would drive Mussolini right into an alliance
with Hitler. It was a tragic pantomime. It signaled
to every dictator watching that the covenant
was negotiable if the interests of London and
Paris were on the line. But the result is what
matters. The sanctions failed. They were lifted
in 1936. Italy annexed Abyssinia and withdrew
in 1937. The system was exposed as theoretical,
unable to survive reality. And let's not overlook
the giant hole in the room. The permanent absence
of the United States. Its non -participation
just crippled the organization's credibility
from the very beginning. That is certainly a
heavy weight around the league's neck. I'll grant
you that. However, even as it was dying, the
league maintained its commitment to principle
over appeasement. Consider one of its last significant
acts in December 1939, the expulsion of the Soviet
Union for invading Finland. At that point, the
leak was practically irrelevant, yet it was still
willing to enforce its covenant against the permanent
council member. This underscores that the framework
held its moral authority. It was the geopolitical
calculus of the great powers that failed. As
Stanley Baldwin said in 1936, the failure of
collective security lay not in the structure,
but in the nation's reluctance to commit the
military force required to back the covenant.
That's a failure of statecraft, not of design.
But can we really separate the two? Well, let's
shift our gaze entirely away. from military deterrence
and focus on the institutional work, because
that's where the long term success story really
is. The foundational work of the League's commissions
was extraordinary. Take the Slavery Commission.
It achieved measurable, concrete victories. It
secured Ethiopia's commitment to end slavery
in 1923, and it worked to curb forced labor in
Liberia. More strikingly, the commission's efforts
dramatically reduced the death rate on the Tanganyika
Railway from 55 percent down to 4 percent by
combating forced labor. I mean, this isn't just
a historical footnote. This shows the league's
commissions had a concrete, practical reach.
I acknowledge the positive influence of bodies
like the ILO, which push for things like the
eight -hour workday, but we have to question
the deep impact of these decentralized reforms
when they're in the shadow of a total political
catastrophe. Humanitarian achievements, while
laudable, were ultimately marginalized. If the
purpose of the whole mechanism was stability
and the high political function failed, can we
truly elevate the technical function above that
existential failure? Furthermore, the whole structure
suffered from a permanent bias. It was widely
seen as a league of victors, designed by the
Allies. The initial exclusion of Germany in the
Soviet Union and the absence of the U .S. severely
curtailed its legitimacy from the outset. The
representation issue is a valid historical constraint,
but the organizational innovations it introduced
transcended that initial bias. I mean, consider
the mandate system under Article 22. While it
was rooted in partitioning former empires, it
created a radical new concept, the principle
of international observation. Colonial powers
were placed under the supervision of the Permanent
Mandates Commission. They had to submit annual
reports and administer territories as a sacred
trust of civilization. Now, this was a profound
revolutionary shift from outright annexation
to national responsibility under international
scrutiny. It created a critical new standard
of accountability and acted as a catalyst for
future decolonization movements. But even the
mandates often served as thinly -veiled instruments
for the Allies to advance their own interests.
The fundamental problem remains. The structure
that allowed the League to function was the same
structure that permitted those great powers to
ignore resolutions when it mattered most. The
entire architecture was dependent on a goodwill
that just evaporated when it was tested. At the
end of the day, the League of Nations was designed
with one overriding mission, to prevent global
war. Its structural flaws, its failure to enforce
disarmament, its inability to retain universal
membership, and, most critically, its failure
to halt aggression in the 1930s meant it failed
in its primary purpose. History cannot classify
a mechanism created for peace that results in
a world war as anything other than a political
failure of the First Order. I will concede that
the League failed to prevent the war, but I would
ask that we define success not solely by what
it failed to deter, but by what it successfully
created. The League institutionalized international
affairs. It pioneered technical and humanitarian
work. It codified international law in ways that
persist today. It provided the exact blueprint,
the structure, and the intellectual foundations,
like collective security, that the United Nations
would later adopt and refine. As Robert Cecil
noted at its dissolution in 1946, the machinery
was sufficient. The enduring challenge then and
now is the willingness of states to actually
use that machinery. Its legacy isn't just the
tragedy of 1939, but the entire architecture
of global cooperation we rely on today.