The League of Nations

A conflict of such level of importance had never happened before. This is, World War I. After this disastrous event, many leaders of that time thought it was necessary to have an international organization that would have the task of preventing this type of catastrophe by maintaining peace and resolving international conflicts when these occurred. Woodrow Wilson claimed his Fourteen Points should serve as the basis for this organization. So the League of Nations was formed in Geneva, Switzerland, since this country hadn’t fought in the War; consequently, it was neutral.

Its constitution contemplated collective security and arbitration as a way of resolving dispute peacefully. If any country opted for war, the League had three ways of controlling its behavior:
- Call on the states in the League’s Assembly to discuss the problem in order and peace and reach a decision.
- Warn the attacker nation that she would need to leave another nation’s territory or face the consequences.
- If the states in argument didn’t listen to the Assembly’s decision, the League could begin economic sanctions, so the aggressor would have to do as the League said (angry people in the aggressor state would force the government to accept the League’s decision). If this didn’t work, physical sanctions could be used. The League could use military force, although it had actually no armed forces available in its disposal, and no member of the League had to provide them in order to join. Plus, most of the countries were devastated after World War I. As a result, it could not threaten anybody and any country would be aware of this limitation.
Some negative aspects of the League of Nations:
- The United States, the most powerful nation, did not join the League, so this blew its reputation.
- Germany was not allowed to the League because one of the punishments in the Treaty of Versailles was not to be considered as a member of any international organization. This was negative in the sense that the League could not apply any of its sanctions to Germany.
- Russia was not allowed either, given that its communist government scared Western Europe
Three of the world’s greatest nations did not support the League. Britain and France, the two most powerful members, were suffering financially and militarily after the War and neither of them wanted to get in any fights that did not involve Western Europe.
Failures and successes of this League can be considered when the League could or could not avoid wars. So while it was valid, the League of Nations managed to avoid some wars and others it couldn’t. The League of Nations succeeded noticing wars in the border disputes between Bulgaria-Greece (1925), Iraq-Turkey (1925-26) and Poland-Lithuania (1927).
In a social level, teams were sent to the Third World to dig fresh water wells, the Health Organization started a campaign to eradicate leprosy; women’s status, refugee work and child slave labor were improved, drugs were controlled, famine was relieved, but most important, problems were being informed, so people knew they existed and should do something about it.

This was just the start for an organization as the United Nations to be created and try ti bring to the world peace.