Editing League of Nations (section)

==General weaknesses==
[[File:Refusing to give the lady a seat - Rollin Kirby Trim.jpg|thumb|right|Senators [[William Borah]], [[Henry Cabot Lodge]], and California's [[Hiram Johnson]] refuse to yield their seats to Peace.]]
[[File:The Gap in the Bridge.png|thumb|'''The Gap in the Bridge'''; the sign reads "This League of Nations Bridge was designed by the President of the U.S.A." Cartoon from ''[[Punch (magazine)|Punch]]'' magazine, 10 December 1920, satirising the gap left by the US not joining the League]]
[[File:Rollin Kirby - The Accuser.jpg|thumb|The US Senate stands accused by Humanity for killing the Versailles Treaty]]
The onset of the Second World War demonstrated that the League had failed in its primary purpose, the prevention of another world war. There were a variety of reasons for this failure, many connected to general weaknesses within the organisation. Additionally, the power of the League was limited by the United States' refusal to join.{{sfn|Northedge|1986|pp=276–278}}

===Origins and structure===
The origins of the League as an organisation created by the Allied powers as part of the peace settlement to end the First World War led to it being viewed as a "League of Victors".{{sfn|Gorodetsky|1994|p=26}}{{sfn|Raffo|1974|p=1}} The League's neutrality tended to manifest itself as indecision. It required a unanimous vote of nine, later fifteen, Council members to enact a resolution; hence, conclusive and effective action was difficult, if not impossible. It was also slow in coming to its decisions, as certain ones required the unanimous consent of the entire Assembly. This problem mainly stemmed from the fact that the primary members of the League of Nations were not willing to accept the possibility of their fate being decided by other countries and (by enforcing unanimous voting) had effectively given themselves [[veto]] power.<ref>{{cite book|pages=226–227|author=Birn, Donald S|publisher=Clarendon Press|year=1981|title=The League of Nations Union|isbn=978-0-19-822650-5}}</ref>{{sfn|Northedge|1986|pp=279–282, 288–292}}

===Global representation===
Representation at the League was often a problem. Though it was intended to encompass all nations, many never joined, or their period of membership was short. The most conspicuous absentee was the United States. President Woodrow Wilson had been a driving force behind the League's formation and strongly influenced the form it took, but the US Senate voted not to join on 19 November 1919.{{sfn|Knock|1995|p=263}} [[Ruth Henig, Baroness Henig|Ruth Henig]] has suggested that, had the United States become a member, it would have also provided support to France and Britain, possibly making France feel more secure, and so encouraging France and Britain to co-operate more fully regarding Germany, thus making the rise to power of the [[Nazi Party]] less likely.{{sfn|Henig|1973|p=175}} Conversely, Henig acknowledges that if the US had been a member, its reluctance to engage in war with European states or to enact economic sanctions might have hampered the ability of the League to deal with [[international incident]]s.{{sfn|Henig|1973|p=175}} The structure of the [[Federal government of the United States|US federal government]] might also have made its membership problematic, as its representatives at the League would only be able to answer on behalf of the [[Executive (government)|executive branch]], certain League decisions such as to go to war, would always require prior approval of the [[United States Congress|legislative branch]] regardless of the outcome of any floor vote even.{{sfn|Henig|1973|p=176}}

In January 1920, when the League was born, Germany was not permitted to join because it was seen as having been the aggressor in the First World War. [[Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic|Soviet Russia]] was also initially excluded because Communist regimes were not welcomed and membership would have been initially dubious due to the ongoing [[Russian Civil War]] in which both sides claimed to be the legitimate government of the country. The League was further weakened when major powers left in the 1930s. Japan began as a permanent member of the Council since the country was an Allied Power in the First World War but withdrew in 1933 after the League voiced opposition to its occupation of Manchuria.{{sfn|McDonough|1997|p=62}} Italy also began as a permanent member of the council. However the League staunchly opposed [[Second Italo-Ethiopian War|Italy's invasion of Ethiopia]] in 1934. When the war ended in an Italian conquest, the League refused to recognise Italian sovereignty over Ethiopia, prompting the Italian-Fascist government to withdraw from the organisation altogether in 1937. Though neutral during World War I, Spain (then still a kingdom) also began as a permanent member of the council, but withdrew in 1939 after the [[Spanish Civil War]] ended in a victory for the Nationalists. Though world opinion was much more divided over the Spanish Civil War than the conflicts involving Japan and Italy, the general perception leaned in favour of the Republican cause. The League had accepted Germany, also as a permanent member of the council, in 1926, deeming it to have become a "peace-loving country" under the [[Weimar Republic]]. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler withdrew Germany almost immediately.{{sfn|McDonough|1997|p=69}}

===Collective security===
Another important weakness grew from the contradiction between the idea of [[collective security]] that formed the basis of the League and [[international relations]] between individual states.{{sfn|Northedge|1986|p=253}} The League's collective security system required nations to act, if necessary, against states they considered friendly, and in a way that might endanger their [[national interest]]s, to support states for which they had no normal affinity.{{sfn|Northedge|1986|p=253}} This weakness was exposed during the [[Abyssinia Crisis]], when Britain and France had to balance maintaining the security they had attempted to create for themselves in Europe "to defend against the enemies of internal order",{{sfn|Northedge|1986|p=254}} in which Italy's support played a pivotal role, with their obligations to Abyssinia as a member of the League.{{sfn|Northedge|1986|pp=253–254}}

On 23 June 1936, in the wake of the collapse of League efforts to restrain Italy's war against Abyssinia, the British Prime Minister, [[Stanley Baldwin]], told the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]] that collective security had {{blockquote|failed ultimately because of the reluctance of nearly all the nations in Europe to proceed to what I might call military sanctions ... The real reason, or the main reason, was that we discovered in the process of weeks that there was no country except the aggressor country which was ready for war ... [I]f collective action is to be a reality and not merely a thing to be talked about, it means not only that every country is to be ready for war; but must be ready to go to war at once. That is a terrible thing, but it is an essential part of collective security.<ref name = "events" />}}

Ultimately, Britain and France both abandoned the concept of collective security in favour of [[appeasement]] in the face of growing German militarism under Hitler.{{sfn|McDonough|1997|p=74}}
In this context, the League of Nations was also the institution where the first international debate on [[terrorism]] took place following the 1934 assassination of [[King Alexander I of Yugoslavia]] in [[Marseille]], [[France]]. This debate established precedents regarding [[global surveillance]] (in the form of routine international sharing of surveillance data), the punishment of terrorists as an international (rather than national) matter, and the right of a nation to conduct military attacks within another nation as a response to international terrorism. Many of these concepts are detectable in the discourse of terrorism among states after [[9/11]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ditrych |first=Ondrej |year=2013 |title='International Terrorism' as Conspiracy: Debating Terrorism in the League of Nations |journal=[[Historical Social Research]] |volume=38 |issue=1 }}</ref>

American diplomatic historian [[Samuel Flagg Bemis]] originally supported the League, but after two decades changed his mind:

<blockquote>The League of Nations has been a disappointing failure.... It has been a failure, not because the United States did not join it; but because the great powers have been unwilling to apply sanctions except where it suited their individual national interests to do so, and because Democracy, on which the original concepts of the League rested for support, has collapsed over half the world.<ref>Quoted in Jerald A. Combs, 'American diplomatic history: two centuries of changing interpretations (1983) p 158.</ref></blockquote>

===Pacifism, disarmament and radio===
The League of Nations lacked an armed force of its own and depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, which they were very unwilling to do.{{sfn|McDonough|1997|pp=54–5}} Its two most important members, Britain and France, were reluctant to use sanctions and even more reluctant to resort to military action on behalf of the League.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mulder |first=Nicholas |title=The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War |year=2022|publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-25936-0 }}</ref> Immediately after the First World War, [[pacifism]] became a strong force among both the people and governments of the two countries. The [[Conservative Party (UK)|British Conservatives]] were especially tepid to the League and preferred, when in government, to negotiate treaties without the involvement of that organisation.{{sfn|Northedge|1986|pp=238–240}} Moreover, the League's advocacy of disarmament for Britain, France, and its other members, while at the same time advocating collective security, meant that the League was depriving itself of the only forceful means by which it could uphold its authority.{{sfn|Northedge|1986|pp=134–135}}

David Goodman argues that the 1936 League of Nations Convention on the Use of Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace tried to create the standards for a liberal international public sphere. The Convention encouraged friendly radio broadcasts to other nations. It called for League prohibitions on international broadcasts containing hostile speech and false claims. It tried to draw the line between liberal and illiberal policies in communications, and emphasised the dangers of nationalist chauvinism. With Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia active on the radio, its liberal goals were ignored, while liberals warned that the code represented restraints on free speech.<ref>{{Cite journal |doi=10.1353/jwh.2020.0006|title=Liberal and Illiberal Internationalism in the Making of the League of Nations Convention on Broadcasting in the Cause of Peace |year=2020 |last1=Goodman |first1=David |journal=Journal of World History |volume=31 |pages=165–193 |s2cid=212950904 }}</ref>