IB History The End of Collective Security Notes

The League of Nations and Collective Security

1. The League of Nations was established in January 1920 as part of the Paris Peace Settlement. Its Covenant (Articles 10-16) embodied collective security: if one member was attacked, all others would act together to protect it.
2. The League had critical structural weaknesses: decisions required unanimous votes, permanent Council members held veto power, and the League had no army of its own. It relied entirely on member states voluntarily enforcing its decisions.
3. The United States never joined despite President Wilson championing the League. Germany joined in 1926 (left 1933); the USSR joined in 1934 (expelled 1939). Key great powers were absent for much of the interwar period.
4. In the 1920s, the League achieved some successes resolving disputes between small states (Upper Silesia 1921, Aaland Islands 1921, Greece-Bulgaria 1925). However, it had never been tested against a great power aggressor.

The Manchurian Crisis: The First Test (1931-1933)

1. Japan invaded Manchuria (September 1931) after staging the Mukden Incident. The League sent the Lytton Commission to investigate, which took over a year to report. Japan simply rejected the findings and left the League (March 1933) without consequences.
2. The Manchurian Crisis set a devastating precedent for Italian expansion. As historian Stephen Goode argued, Mussolini "noted the failure of the League of Nations to say 'no' to Japan" and concluded he could act with similar impunity in Abyssinia.
3. No sanctions were imposed, no military action was taken. The crisis proved that a great power could defy the League and walk away. Britain and France were unwilling to act because of their economic interests in Asia and fear of antagonising Japan.

The Abyssinian Crisis: The Death Blow (1935-1936)

1. Italy's invasion of Abyssinia (October 1935) was the League's final and most damaging failure. Unlike Manchuria (a distant region), this involved a European great power attacking a fellow League member in a clear act of unprovoked aggression.
2. The League imposed economic sanctions but deliberately excluded oil, coal, and steel. An oil embargo "would have brought the Italian economy to a halt, and quickly" but Britain feared it might provoke war in the Mediterranean.
3. The Suez Canal remained open to Italian shipping, providing the main supply route to East Africa. Non-League members (USA, Germany) continued trading with Italy, further undermining sanctions.
4. The Hoare-Laval Pact (December 1935) secretly offered Italy two-thirds of Abyssinia. When leaked, the scandal forced both Hoare and Laval to resign and exposed the gap between public rhetoric and private appeasement.
5. As A.J.P. Taylor wrote: "This was the deathblow to the League as well as to Abyssinia. Fifty-two nations had combined to resist aggression; all they accomplished was that Haile Selassie lost all his country instead of only half."
6. Sanctions were lifted in July 1936 after Italy completed its conquest. Italy signed the Rome-Berlin Axis (October 1936) and withdrew from the League (December 1937). The very outcome collective security was designed to prevent had occurred.

The Great Depression and the Collapse of Cooperation

1. The Great Depression (1929) destroyed the fragile international cooperation of the 1920s. World trade fell by 70%, nations raised trade barriers, and governments focused on domestic recovery rather than enforcing international law.
2. US isolationism deepened: the Smoot-Hawley Tariff (1930) raised trade barriers, and the Neutrality Acts (1935-1937) ensured America would not intervene in foreign conflicts. Without US support, the League lacked the economic and military weight to enforce its decisions.
3. Britain and France, the League's two strongest members, were financially and militarily weakened. Neither was willing to spend money on military enforcement when their own populations faced mass unemployment. Britain's Ten Year Rule (1919-1932) had kept military spending minimal.
4. The Depression fuelled the rise of aggressive nationalism in Germany, Italy, and Japan. These regimes rejected international cooperation and pursued expansion to secure resources and distract from domestic problems.

Why Collective Security Failed: The Italian Dimension

1. Collective security failed regarding Italy because Britain and France faced an impossible dilemma: confront Italy and lose a potential ally against Hitler, or appease Italy and destroy the League. They chose appeasement, and got the worst of both outcomes.
2. The Stresa Front (April 1935) had briefly united Britain, France, and Italy against German rearmament. The Abyssinian Crisis destroyed this alignment and pushed Italy toward Germany, forming the Rome-Berlin Axis.
3. The crisis also emboldened Hitler. Seeing that the League could not even impose an oil embargo on Italy, he remilitarised the Rhineland (March 1936) just months later, confident the democracies would not fight.
4. The League was revealed to be "simply an extension of the foreign ministries of Britain and France." Smaller nations concluded that the great powers "would not oppose each other's dealings with smaller states" and that collective security existed only in theory.
5. By 1937, collective security was dead. The League was irrelevant, the Disarmament Conference had failed, Italy had joined Germany, and the international order established at Versailles had been systematically destroyed.

Historiography, Source Analysis, and Exam Preparation

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