Was the League of Nations doomed to fail?

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Was the League of Nations doomed to fail?

Established in the aftermath of the First World War, the League of Nations, ‘a potentially revolutionary new concept in international affairs’ was based upon American President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. With the intent of aiding international communication to avoid further conflict, an intent that the vast majority of countries supported, the League had nevertheless disbanded by 1946 and the debate as to whether it was doomed from the start has been a contentious one ever since. After being drastically weakened by a lack of support from the USA, a collective failure to disarm across Europe, an overly complicated structure and the effects of the Great Depression, as well as the fact that the League had neither man nor materiel with which to enforce its decrees, the little chance of survival the League did have at the dawn of the 1930s was quashed through a combination of changing social attitudes and no spirit of compromise in and between Nations.

The fact that from its creation, the League of Nations failed to adequately represent powers from across the world contributed to its demise. The power within the organisation appeared to be concentrated to Britain, France, Japan and Italy as the ‘Big Four’, and moreover the representation amongst smaller Nations was not proportional, with Bolivia being granted an equal amount of representation as Brazil, a country several times its size and with considerably more political power in South America. Further to this, the League did not fully represent the power balance of the world as the USSR and Germany were prohibited from its membership, and the USA, the most powerful post-war country, declined membership altogether. This, plus the fact that it was dominated by Allied powers, resulted in the League of Nations appearing like a ‘Winners’ Club’ intent on imposing vindictive sanctions rather than a force for international peace from the very offset.

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The refusal to join the League of Nations by the USA was a catastrophic blow to the fledgling organisation. The USA was one of the strongest countries to emerge from the war, especially in terms of ‘military muscle’ and financial support. However it was for these reasons precisely that the USA continued to pursue an isolationist policy; some of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge’s objections to the League of Nations were outlined in his manifesto from 1920; that ‘the United States shall not be obligated to contribute to any expenses of the League of Nations’ and also show the USA’s rejection ...

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