FOUNDATION CRASH: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

Elena García Benlloch

When the foundation of a building fails, the entire construction is at risk of structural collapse. The

design of the foundations must therefore depend not only on the characteristics of the edifice but also

on the conditions of the ground. The same is true for international organizations. The dysfunction of

the League of Nations was due, according to historian Edward Hallett Carr, to its being built on an

unstable foundation. That foundation, an attempted internationalization of liberal ideology, would

cause the entire organizational structure to collapse.

Carr acknowledges in his book The Twenty Years Crisis that liberal democracy had experienced,

throughout the 19th century, a "brilliant success"1 in a limited number of countries. However, the

standardization of this doctrine through the League of Nations, without a prior analysis of the

structural conditions of each of the 57 member countries, caused, according to the author, the

progressive crumbling of the incipient democracies that emerged from the Paris agreements. This was

utopian thinking. It assumed that the theoretical principles of liberalism "had only to be applied in

other contexts to produce similar results"2.

American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt defended this utopian perspective originally supported

by his predecessor Woodrow Wilson. Wilson’s vision of international relations came out of the

convulsive geopolitical context of 1937. The Second World War was beginning only twenty years

after the end of the First one. President Wilson declared in Chicago, after being informed of the

escalating conflict between Japan and China with the Lugou Bridge Incident, that "there can be no

stability or peace either within nations or between nations except under laws and moral standards

1
Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939; An Introduction To The Study Of International
Relations. (Mcmillan, 1956), 27.
2
Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939; An Introduction To The Study Of International
Relations. (Mcmillan, 1956), 27.
adhered to by all"3. That philosophy sounded nice but it was built on a problematic structure: these

moral principles were based solely on American-tinged liberalism and the laws designed in Geneva on

the basis of those principles. They had almost no influence or effects on a conflict between Asian

neighbors.

Carr's analysis of the League of Nations continues with a critique of a "divorce between theory and

practice"4 within the organization. The assumption of international treaties as the basis for global

coexistence represented an unrealistic view of the turmoil of the interwar years. In Carr's words, "the

metaphysicians of Geneva found it difficult to believe that an accumulation of ingenious texts

prohibiting war was not a barrier against war itself"5. An example was Roosevelt’s insistence, from

his immovable position of neutrality, on the need to adhere to such ‘ingenious texts’ as treaties despite

the real failures of such as the utopian Kellogg Briand Pact and the principles of the League Covenant.

Japan, Italy and Germany had been flagrantly violating both without any consequences. Roosevelt

tried to appeal to morality, saying that "some fifteen years ago the hopes of mankind for a continuing

era of international peace were raised to great heights when more than sixty nations solemnly pledged

themselves nor to resort to arms in furtherance of their national aims and policies [...] There must be a

return to belief in the pledged word, in the value of a signed treaty."6

When punishment did take place, they were sanctions applied ineffectively by both the League and

the United States. The reliance on public pressure to lead countries back into "collective action"7

3
Dennis Merrill and Thomas G. Paterson, Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, Vol II: Since 1914,
7th ed. (Wadsworth, 2010), 118.
4
Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939; An Introduction To The Study Of International
Relations. (Mcmillan, 1956), 30.
5
Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939; An Introduction To The Study Of International
Relations. (Mcmillan, 1956), 30.
6
Dennis Merrill and Thomas G. Paterson, Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, Vol II: Since 1914,
7th ed. (Wadsworth, 2010), 117.
7
Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939; An Introduction To The Study Of International
Relations. (Mcmillan, 1956), 35.
(strongly advocated in the Washington agreements of 1921) would be considered excessive. In 1932,

the year after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the American Secretary of State still maintained

that "the sanction of public opinion can be made one of the most potent sanctions of the world"8.

Carr argues that recognizing the need to take more forceful action meant for the Allies the "derogation

from the Utopian doctrine of the efficacy of rational public opinion.9" The material of international

utopia was like dry sand – or weak plastic – unable to hold up League expectations…. This idea is

reflected in the policy of appeasement towards Germany led by France and Great Britain.

Appeasement failed to measure up to the dangers that Germany posed: its violation of the Versailles

Treaty, its rearmament, its remilitarization of the Rhineland, and the subsequent annexation of Austria.

Even more surprisingly, the response to the Hitler’s bellicosity toward Czechoslovakia was the

recognition of German sovereignty over the Sudetenland at the Munich Conference in September

193810. The position of the United States can be summarized by the brief telegram that President

Franklin D. Roosevelt sent to Neville Chamberlain the day before the beginning of the conference:

"Good man".11

Both the League and the United States also failed to react to Japan’s continuing imperialist actions.

The Roosevelt administration’s first public response to Japan’s 1937 invasion of Manchuria attacks

was merely a "pious statement by Secretary of State Cordell Hull that condemned the use of force and

neglected even to mention Japan". Roosevelt later responded to the invasion with a range of actions,

but "few of them effective" and some of them, in the words of historian Walter Lafeber, directly

8
Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939; An Introduction To The Study Of International
Relations. (Mcmillan, 1956), 37.
9
Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939; An Introduction To The Study Of International
Relations. (Mcmillan, 1956), 34.
10
Dennis Merrill and Thomas G. Paterson, Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, Vol II: Since 1914,
7th ed. (Wadsworth, 2010), 111.
11
Dana Adams Schmidt, “Munich message from U.S bared; Roosvelt sent encouraging “Good Man” to
Chamberlain day before Conference”, The New York Times (1955): 11
"embarrassing"12. Diplomat Stanley K. Hornebeck urged the imposition of economic sanctions and

the "formulation and adoption of a diplomatic war plan toward advertising an armed conflict between

the United States and Japan"13. The Allies' failed conciliation policies, including Roosevelt's illusory

proposal to lead a Conference on Disarmament in 193914, continued beyond the German invasion of

Poland until the summer of 1940, a period known as the Phoney War. No meaningful deterring actions

from the Western Allied side were taken, except for vague economic sanctions.

Carr finds in the analysis of the cracks and fissures in the foundations of the League of Nations much

more than individual responsibilities. The collapse of the world order involved "the bankruptcy of the

postulates on which it was based''15. The problem, then, lies not in who built them, but in the materials

used in its construction.

12
Dennis Merrill and Thomas G. Paterson, Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, Vol II: Since 1914,
7th ed. (Wadsworth, 2010), 145.
13
Dennis Merrill and Thomas G. Paterson, Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, Vol II: Since 1914,
7th ed. (Wadsworth, 2010), 121.
14
Erez Manela, “The Road to World War II”, Harvard Extension School, October 4th, 2022. Video:
https://matterhorn.dce.harvard.edu/engage/player/watch.html?id=8d72dc86-1282-4c58-b4c4-8a7709f9fadc
15
Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939; An Introduction To The Study Of International
Relations. (Mcmillan, 1956), 40.