Which factor contributed more to the weakness of the League of Nations, its membership or its organisation and peacekeeping powers?

Authors Avatar by perlie (student)

Which factor contributed more to the weakness of the League of Nations, its membership or its organisation and peacekeeping powers?

Both factors contributed to the weakness of the League of Nations. Firstly, membership was one of the major weakness of the League, as the two most powerful nations, America and USSR did not join the League. This forced Britain and France to lead the League when they did not want to join in the first place. Because of the lack of committment, it was foreseeable that they would not put the interest of the League before their self interest in times of crisis. Therefore it was not surprising to see that they did not try hard (i.e. economic sanction was not imposed) to stop Japan from taking Manchuria from China as they were struggling in the Depression at that time and they had no interest in Manchuria, especially when France was playing close attention to the rise of Hitler in Germany. The reactions were similar when Italy invaded Abyssinia (i.e. Britain and France did not closethe Suez Canal and stop Italy from transporting weapons to Africa ) as they wanted Mussolini to be on their side against Hitler, which could be seen from the Hoare-Laval Pact which Britain and France secretly gave Abyssinia to Italy. The fact that America and USSR did not join the League also meant that the only powerful nation in the East was Japan and therefore when Japan decided to go against the League and take Manchuria, it was very difficult for the League to look into the issue and use military forces, as the Europeans had to travel half the world to China, and the supply chain would be very long. World peace was hard to achieve when a part of the world could hardly be reached. Moreover, since America and USSR were not in the League, even economic sanctions became less effective as the aggressor could still trade with them. Because of this fear, it took six weeks for the League to imposean economic sanction against Italy when it invaded Abyssinia and oil was not included in the sanction as the members of the League knew that Italy could get oil from America easily, especially when America was still struggling from the Depression at that time.

Join now!

But the organisation and peacekeeping powers of the League of Nations was also an important reason for the weakness of the League. First of all, the League did not have an army of its own and had to rely on members to donate troops in times of crisis. This undermined its power against aggression as potential aggressors were less afraid of the military sanction of the League, since individual countries might not be willing to donate troops. If no country donate troops, then military force could not be carried out at all, for example, even leading members like Britain and ...

This is a preview of the whole essay