Unit 4: Historical Background: Early Development and the League of Nations

Introduction

As there is no overarching central authority in the world, the modern international system is characterized with its anarchic nature. Anarchy here refers to the absence of a central power to impose and enforce authority on states. Kenneth Waltz, the father of neorealism, sees anarchy as a constant state of or the threat of war in the international system (Waltz, 1979: 102-103). It is assumed that states act rationally to survive in such an anarchical international environment to maximize their power and interests and prevent other agents to be a threat to their existence (March and Olsen, 1998: 944).

The Historical Origins of International Organizations

The discipline of International Relations refers to the Peace of Westphalia that ended the 30 Years’ War in 1648 as “the dawn of the modern international system.” The treaties signed in Münster and Osnabrück in 1648 indicate the political and diplomatic development that paved the way to the establishment of international institutions. The Peace of Westphalia ended the feudal system based on the primacy of the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire and led to the emergence of new political entities called “sovereign states.” Thus, it indeed marked the beginning of an international milieu that would facilitate the emergence of nation-states.

The Peace of Westphalia

Consequences of the Peace of Westphalia may be summarized as follows:

• First, the peace treaties were negotiated and signed by the states dominated by the rulers that were commonly accepted as sovereigns of their realms.
• Second, the physical borders of each state were recognized and commonly accepted. Therefore, each of these units represented a political entity.
• Third, each sovereign who represented a state was accepted as equal, regardless of the size of lands they ruled or the nobility o which they belonged.
• Fourth, though no international organization emerged as a body until the late 19th century, the way in which these peace accords were made initialized a method that enabled states to communicate collectively through diplomatic instruments. Thus, it is possible to assert that the Peace of Westphalia laid the foundations of collective diplomacy and established the basis of the Congress System that would help institutionalize the international environment in the following centuries.

The Congress of Vienna

Throughout the 18th century, the European system underwent a stratification in which relatively more powerful states struggled for dominance. However, as stated earlier, no one state was strong enough to dominate the others. On the contrary, a balance of power emerged that rested on counterbalancing coalitions in which almost all states took part, regardless of their power capabilities (Kaplan, 1957: 685-687).

The French Revolution and the French Revolutionary Wars utterly ended the European balance of power mechanism by destroying the dynastic kinship. The Revolution also distorted the Congress System replacing multilateral diplomacy with bilateral treaties made during the Revolutionary Wars. Since France was a republican regime, the previous dynamics of diplomacy that was depended on dynastic kinships had no longer significance. Therefore, for other major European powers, the war was the only way of interaction with France.

The Nineteenth-Century International System and the Development of Institutionalization

The Concert of Europe R. B. Mowat (1922: 4-5) indicates that the Congress of Vienna reinstituted the status of the European powers that had deteriorated during the French Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic Wars. In this respect, its goal was far from creating a new European system but to restore the older system. Thus, the Congress of Vienna acted as a linkage between the 18th and 19th centuries in the evolution of international institutionalization. Even though the Congress did not lead to the birth of any international organization, the characteristics of the new European order paved the way for future institutions.

According to John Ikenberry, the Concert of Europe had three major mechanisms:

1. The Quadruple Alliance (later Quintuple) that was extended to the peacetime and formed the great power ensemble.
2. The periodical congress system that served as an institutional consultation mechanism among great powers to maintain the status quo.
3. The diffusion of “promulgation of norms and rules of European public law” that gave “the institutional, territorial, and great-power arrangements in Europe a certain sense of legalbased legitimacy and authority” (Ikenberry, 2001: 98).

The Decline of the Concert of Europe

Both domestic and international developments in European politics weakened the cohesion among the great powers in taking collective action for the maintenance of peace. Still, holding conferences as a diplomatic channel facilitated the endurance of the Concert among the great powers. Nevertheless, calling for an international congress became a seldom choice of states, and this was observed only when they did not have the capacity to end the disputes through bilateral negotiation.

Two major meetings, namely the Paris Congress in 1856 and the Berlin Congress in 1878, were significant examples of the Concert System in the second half of the 19th century. Although both were convened after the wars between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, they had broader outcomes that contributed to the rise of international institutionalization by providing legal instruments.

The Rise of the Modern International Organizations and The Hague Conferences

Until 1898, therewas not any attempt to establish wsophisticated international political institutions. However, growing commercial relations in the 19th century created a sound environment where trade transformed the world into a global market. Thus, shared economic interests that required regulations gained more prominence over individual state interests. The development of transportation and communication also shortened distances and intensified inter-societal relations. Growing demands for faster and more quality services worldwide required the creation of international organizations to manage economic relations. The Metric Union (1875), the International Copyright Union (1886), and the International Sugar Union (1902) were the most telling examples of international organizations that were established for regulating the international market.

The First Hague Conference

As non-European powers such as the United States and Japan increased their influencein world politics, the power distribution in the international system began to change by the 1890s. This demonstrated that the international system underwent a transformation and became more global, despite the fact that European states still kept their supremacy. Due to the challenge of non-European actors, the capacities of European great powers began to decline. For this reason, the Concert System failed when nonEuropean powers were involved in international affairs and global political-military rivalry.

The Second Hague Conference

Although US Secretary of State John Hay called for a second conference in October 1904, it was not held at that time due to the Russo-Japanese War (Choate, 1913: 50). The Russo-Japanese War itself was a major test for the first conference. On the one hand, belligerents respected the principles adopted at the Hague Conference to limit violence in warfare to some extent. On the other hand, the war showed that arbitration was not the preferred method of resolving inter-state disputes.

The Second Hague Conference was held from June to October 1907, ending with the declaration of the final act. Similar to the former conference, the Second Conference fell short of producing an agreement on the limitation of armaments, but there was a progress on arbitration. The most controversial debate was over an agreement to arbitrate contract debts.

A New Beginning: The League of Nations

The Hague Conferences were a promising start of the international cooperation among states. Nevertheless, the international society was still at its formative stage. The dynamics of the international system were more effective. States tried to strengthen their power through arms races or building alliances. The great powers preferred the Concert System as a mechanism for conflict management, relying on the fact that there was no all-out European war since the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The balance of power among the great powers gradually became dysfunctional and rival alliances were created soon after the Congress. By the early 1900’s the great powers followed a relatively confrontational foreign policy. Therefore, despite the efforts at The Hague Conferences, the outbreak of a major war became more likely in the international system.

The Impact of the First World War

World War I had destructive consequences for the nineteenthcentury international system. First, the European dominance over the internationalsystemended,sincethemajorEuropean powerslosttheir power capabilities after the war. Furthermore, the existing mechanisms and instruments of European diplomacy lost their effectiveness and failed to bring the fighting to an end. The US emerged as a world power. In this environment, US President Woodrow Wilson declared his Fourteen Points as the main principles for a general peace. Wilson’s Fourteen Points heralded the end of the hegemonic position of Europe in international politics.

The Establishment of the League of Nations

According to Wilson’s proposal, the League of Nations was supposed to be a community of democratic regimes which would accept the resolution of disputes through diplomacy and arbitration. The League would act as an assembly of states that would contribute to the development of international law. However, it was designed to be an intergovernmental organization rather than a supranational institution. It was considered a transition from the ‘old diplomacy’ to the ‘new diplomacy’ that would rely on a higher degree of compulsory jurisdiction. It was accepted that the great powers would still act as the core of the post-war system but “power balancing would be replaced by more legal and rule-based mechanisms of power management and dispute resolution” (Ikenberry, 2001: 117).

After extensive work, the final draft of the League’s Covenant was presented to the peace conference on 28 April 1919 and it was adopted unanimously (Miller, 1921: 398-424). It was decided to locate the headquarters of the League in Geneva, Switzerland and to appoint Sir Eric James Drummond as its first Secretary General. While Britain, France, Japan, and Italy became the initial nonpermanent members of the Council of the League, a  number of countries were invited to sign the Covenant to become its original members.

The Organizational Structure of the League of Nations

Including the victorious allies and neutral countries, 44 states initially became the original members of the League. The number of the League’s member states rapidly increased, and 63 countries became member states of the League by 1939. Although the idea of a permanent international organization for maintaining peace was championed by US President Wilson, the US officially never joined the organization, because the US Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations. The states that were later admitted to the League included Bulgaria and Austria in 1920, Hungary and Romania in 1922, Germany in 1926, Turkey in 1932, and the USSR in 1934. However, some states withdrew from the League’s membership such as Brazil in 1926, Japan in 1933, Germany in 1933, and Italy in 1937.

The main organs of the League of Nations were the Assembly, the Council, and the Secretariat. This structure clearly shows that the League was designed as a global parliament where states would socialize and collectively manage the peace, which was hardly won after four years of total war.

The Assembly: The Assembly was one of the principal bodies of the League. It was composed of one to three representatives from each member state, and therefore reflected the universal characteristic of the League.

The Council: The Council was designed to be the other central body of the League of Nations. It was primarily responsible for the maintenance of peace. The Council held regular meetings every three months and, if necessary, could hold extraordinary sessions. The Council had four permanent members- namely, England, France, Japan, and Italy- and three non-permanent members who were selected by the Assembly for a three-year term.

The Secretariat: The Secretariat consisted of a SecretaryGeneral and staff who were responsible for the administrative affairs of the organization. This body represented the organizational structure of the League and contributed to the cooperation and collaboration among its various departments. The staff included members from all parts of the world. The staff members of the Secretariat were responsible to the SecretaryGeneral and to the organization as a whole. They were expected to serve independently of their own governments (Bennett, 2010: 33).

The strengths of the League of Nations may be summarized as follows:

• The main strength of the League of Nations was the ideology of peace upon which it was built. However, this was also its main weakness. The League was founded on a hope of world peace. It was expected to offer cooperation and a sense of collectiveness among states by creating universal standards that would equally apply to all members and pave the way for international society (MacMillan, 2001: 93).
• Despite the fact that war was still an option, it was believed that the League would both offer and promote other political and diplomatic choices for states such as mediation and arbitration. After the four-year fighting, it was thought that states would prefer diplomatic rather than military options. In this regard, the League was considered a platform where multilateral diplomacy could function.
• The post-war wave of republicanism and democratization gave the League a great impulse, as both governments and civil societies demanded visible institutions that would guarantee the maintenance of peace. In this regard, the League of Nations was considered a revolutionary attempt in terms of “civilization” of international relations (MacMillan, 2001: 94).
• The League showed great interest in global and trans-national issues such as labor, health, and refugees. Even though they were regarded by states as secondary over political issues, the work of the League demonstrated that these issues were closely related to the maintenance of peace. These issues proved to be significant challenges in the post-war world.

The weaknesses of the League of Nations may be summarized as follows:

• The primary problem of the League was the assumed equality among its members. As it was a design of the victorious states of World War I, the US, Britain, France, Japan, and Italy were given permanent membership in the Council. After the US rejection of the League of Nations, the Council was dominated by European powers. Although it was one of the permanent members, Japan became quickly disillusioned when the principle of racial equality was not accepted (Burkman, 2008: 80-86).
• Due to the absence of the US as well as the reluctance of Japan and Italy, the Council was dominated by Britain and France. Each member had a different expectation from the post-war organization. Britain perceived the League as an instrument to guarantee its primacy in world affairs and a safety valve for the status quo.
• The League did not fairly represent the political and geographical structure of the world. Apart from the US absence, the defeated countries and the Soviet Union were not invited to the membership.
• Another problem was the voting procedure. The Assembly and the Council could make a decision only by a unanimous vote. In theory, it seemed that every state had a veto, reinforcing the image of equal representation. However, in practice, the unanimous voting rule enabled the great powers to prevent smaller states, who comprised the majority in the League, from taking decisions against their interests.
• Probably the most significant weakness of the League was the lack of credible instruments at its disposal to enforce its own decisions. Although the Covenant provided with the League an important degree of power and authority over its members and defined several instruments such as condemnation, arbitration, and sanctions, the effective deployment of these instruments predominantly relied on the collective action on the part of the members.

The Performance of the League of Nations

Since its inception, the League of Nations, however, became a hope for world peace. It was built upon the prewar efforts of peace movements both at the international and national levels. The League was based on the experience of The Hague Conferences. They had created an idea of a genuinely international organization that would not only act as an intergovernmental but also as a transnational institution. The historical development of the League of Nations can be divided into three main stages:

1. The Heyday of the League of Nations
2. The Decline of the League of Nations
3. The Demise of the League of Nations