The most important reason why the league was weak was because it made decisions slowly?

QUESTION: The most important reason why the league was weak was because it made decisions slowly?

Introduction: The League of Nations formally came into existence on January 10, 1920, the same day as the Treaty of Versailles. It had its headquarters in Geneva. One of its main aims was to settle international disputes and so prevent war from ever breaking out again. The League seemed to function successfully during the 1920's even without the participation of the United States. It solved a number of minor international disputes and excelled at economic and social work, such as helping thousands of refugees and former prisoners of war to find their way home again. During the 1930's the authority of the League was challenged several times. First with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and then by the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935. After December 1939 it did not meet again and was dissolved in 1946. It was a total failure at least as far as preventing war was concerned.

Aims of the League of Nations - The League was the work of Woodrow Wilson of the United States. It was written into the Treaty of Versailles and its ideas were optimistic and noble. Its aims were :

to deal with disputes among nations
to prevent war
to protect the independence of countries and safeguard their borders
to encourage each country to reduce its armaments

Membership of the Great Powers

Britain 1919 - 1945

France 1919 - 1945

Italy 1919 - 1935

Japan 1919 - 1933

Germany 1926 - 1933

USSR 1934 - 1939

USA never joined

Firstly there are many reasons why the league was weak and inevitably led to the failure of the league. The League met infrequently and the votes had to be unanimous creating the downfall of the league but the league also had many other flaws but it did have successes as well. Political disputes in the early 1920s were solved quite convincingly as in the early 1920's all the Leagues decisions were accepted except two. It is significant to note that none of the settled disputes went against a major power, which may have challenged the League's decision. Also the league settled a quarrel between Sweden and Finland over the Aaland Islands in 1920 when deciding in favour of Finland. Another strength in the league occurred in 1921 when Germany and Poland quarreled over the industrial area of the Upper Silesia when the League decided to partition the area between the two countries to solve the dispute. The league again showed its strength in 1925 when Greek troops invaded Bulgaria after some shooting incidents on the frontier. The League swiftly intervened and Greek troops were withdrawn and damages paid to Bulgaria. Among these the Leagues agencies worked effectively, example – re-settling refugees after the First World War and finally the League settled other Disputes this time between Bolivia and Paraguay and lastly disputes between Peru and Columbia were resolved.

From these points it seems like the league of nations didn’t have a weakness, BUT although the idea of the League was an excellent and noble idea, it was fatally flawed from the non participation by the United States of America and the way in which the handled decision making which was very slow indeed.

This is a preview of the whole essay

The League, although in some cases showed its strength had many flaws and so contained many weakness too. The Disarmament commission and its committee made no progress in persuading the countries that were members of the league to reduce armaments. Though all had agreed to do so when they agreed to the Creation of the League of Nations. The League also had to deal with many political disputes. Firstly the dispute between Poland and Lithuania aroused the suggestions of the league showing its true colors, a sign of weakness. As these two countries had rival claims to Vilna but the League of Nations was over ruled by the conference of Ambassadors in Paris. The Conference of Ambassadors was formed to deal with problems arising out of the treaty of Versailles but even still why did the league not do something instead of being over ruled and FAILING to stop Poland seizing Vilna from Lithuania in 1920. This surely was the first sign of people starting to ignore the League. Next was the Corfu incident when a group of ambassadors was working on a boundary dispute between Greece and Albania. An Italian General was sent to investigate and he was shot in Greece. The reasons for the shooting were never clear, but Mussolini immediately ordered the shelling of Corfu, a Greek island and demanded heavy compensation. The League offered a solution, but the Conference of Ambassadors rejected it and rewrote one in favour of Italy upon heavy pressure from Italy and Mussolini. This too added to the heavy suspicions that the league was starting to lose its strength.

Then in 1931 Japan controlled most of the economy of Manchuria. It owned the important mines, railroads, factories and ports. It kept a large army in the port city of Kwantung to protect these assets. The worldwide depression had hit Japan hard and many people within Japan saw conquering new territory as a way out of the depression. During the night of September 18, Japanese soldiers blew up a section of the Japanese railroad and blamed the explosion on the Chinese and so had an excuse to occupied the city of Shenyang. China asked for the Leagues help. The League ordered the troops to withdraw. Japan agreed to order the withdrawal of the troops, but the Japanese government did not have control over their troops. The Japanese army continued to advance into Manchuria. By the end of 1931 the Japanese troops had control of the entire province of Manchuria which they renamed Manchukuo.

The League of Nations was meant to keep the peace through 'collective security'. If persuasion did not work, the League could use economic sanctions (a ban on trade with the attacker) or military sanctions (a League army) against the attacker. Although these were options, none of the members of the League of Nations wanted to use sanctions against Japan. First, because the Depression had damaged the world’s economy no nation wanted to worsen the damage. Second, the powerful members of the League, Britain and France did not think that they could enforce the sanctions. They believed that if they tried to enforce them that Japan would seize Hong Kong and Singapore.

The solution that was reached was to set up a commission. In October of 1932 the Lytton Commission recommended that the Japanese should leave Manchuria and it should continue as a semi-independent country instead of returning to China. The League approved the Commissions recommendation, but by 1933 Japan left the League and went on to occupy the Chinese province of Jehol. The Japanese justified the invasion of this mountainous province because it was vital to the defense of Manchuria.

The Manchuria affair damaged the reputation of the League. One of its leading members had gone to war with another member and the League had failed to stop it. By the end of the affair in 1933, even the League's strongest supporters had doubts about its ability to maintain world peace.

The most serious failure of the League of Nations was the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. Italy wanted to expand its overseas colonies and in October 1935 invaded Abyssinia. The League condemned Italy and introduced economic sanctions, which however did not include a ban on exports of coal, oil and steel to Italy. (These are vital to modern warfare.) So half-hearted were the sanctions that Italy was able to complete the conquest of Abyssina by May 1936. A few weeks later sanctions were abandoned and Mussolini had flouted the League. Britain and France had not wanted to antagonise Mussolini and had even tried to form a secret deal with him during the invasion to give him two thirds of Abyssinia. They did not want to push him into an alliance with Hitler. Mussolini was annoyed by the sanctions anyway and began to draw closer to Hitler; small states lost faith in the League; and Hitler himself was encouraged to break the Versailles Treaty. After 1935, the League was not taken seriously again.

The League was only as strong as the determination of its leading members to stand up against aggression; unfortunately determination of that sort was sadly lacking during the 1930's.

From these points we can see that with the good, successes comes the bad, failures we can take into account these points and put them into sub – Categories to define how weak the league actually was:

Why was the League of Nations weak and a failure?

The main reasons why the League of Nations failed overall:

French and British self interest wouldn't abandon these to support league.
Absent powers include USA and Russia. Lacked authority and sanctions inefficient.
Inefficient sanctions. Sanctions were meant to be the League's biggest weapon but without USA they didn't work. Broken easily
Lack of armed forces. The League of Nations had no armed forces of its own. Britain and France never fought for the league
unfair treaties. Too harsh so the league had trouble imposing them
Reached decisions too slowly. Sanctions didn't work because they
were too slow and met too infrequently.

The Weakness of the League

All of the victorious great powers had joined after the war except America, only France and the United Kingdom had been with the League from start to finish. The league could not really act on the big nations who could ignore the league. The leagues ‘collective security’ which was their act on aggressors instead of deploying an army. So it could not enforce its decisions

In 1923 the Corfu incident demonstrated to the world that the League could not deal at all with acts of aggression. In 1931 when Japan invaded Manchuria, all the league could do was condemn Japan who left the league and continued the aggression against China.

When Italy attacked Ethiopia all the league could do was condemn Italy and place sanctions on it, but they didn’t put sanctions on the oil, which would have been an effective option. Britain and France didn’t give the league proper support. The league could not prevent Italy from completing the invasion of Ethiopia.

Conclusion

The League was Weak but that was not JUST because it made decisions slowly because as we know there were a number of reasons why the league was weak. But the league did in some cases show that it wasn’t always weak and showed signs of strength and organization. However the League soon started to be ignored and was no match for aggressive countries like Japan as they wouldn’t listen to anyone or let anyone stand in their way.

As the League had no armed forces of its own it lacked muscle to enforce rulings. Also the League was dominated by powerful European countries, it appeared as if it was a “EUROPEAN CLUB”. Finally this question was - THE MOST IMPORTANT REASON WHY THE LEAGUE WAS WEAK WAS BECAUSE IT MADE DECISIONS SLOWLY?

Has many answers but from my Knowledge I can see quite clearly that the League of Nations had more Weaknesses than strengths.