Failure of the League of Nations in the Inter-War Period

Essay by moonboy1988High School, 12th gradeA+, December 2004

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After the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, which brought an end to the First World War, the League of Nations was established by the President of the United States of America, Woodrow Wilson. Wilson's intention on establishing the League of Nations was to stop all conflicts and wars around the world from ever happening again using the idea of Collective Security as the solution. Collective Security protected every country by mutual assistance and termination of alliance system. Originally, the League "offered to the world as much world-government as the world can stand." Nevertheless, from the beginning, the formation of the League was foreshadowing another war, because it had many flaws that made the League fail in its duty. Some of the reasons why it failed are the absence of the U.S.A., the negligence of Britain and France, and the failure to keep Collective Security in effect.

U.S. President, Woodrow Wilson, stated in the fourteenth point of his famous Fourteen Points that "A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike," which meant that there must be an organization that has the ability to control all the members and maintain a peaceful state.

However, the irony to this was that the founder, the U.S.A., was not interested in joining the League. Along with two major powers, Russia and Germany, U.S.A. did not join the League, because the U.S.A. did not want to actually be involved in the war physically, but they wanted to earn money by financially aiding other countries with arms and weapons if another war was to break out. Also, the U.S. citizens did not want their country to help European countries using their army and money,