Reasons for the Weakness of the League of Nations (I)

1. Structural Weaknesses.

Structural weaknesses in the League include the lack of authority & limited membership.

Various parts of the League did not work together & it was hard to take effective action.

• The Secretariat was understaffed and disorganised.
• The Conference of Ambassadors often made decisions that should have been made by the League itself.
• The working relationship between the General Assembly and the Council was not clearly defined.

Authorisation for any action required a unanimous vote or complete agreement by the Council, & a two-third majority vote in the Assembly. This presented two major problems:

1. The need for a unanimous decision could not work as permanent members of the Council had the power of veto, which is the right to refuse to give official permission. This meant that once a permanent member vetoed a decision, the proposed action could not be carried out. This made decision making difficult especially when a dispute involved one of the permanent members.
2. Some decisions required the consent of the entire Assembly. With so many nations represented in the League, it was extremely difficult to obtain unanimous consent for any decision.

A. Lack of authority and credibility

• The League was too closely associated with the Treaty of Versailles. The League was established by the Treaty of Versailles, and soon, it came to be seen as a league for the victorious nations. Of the 40-odd nations that joined the League, 31 had taken part in the war on the side of the Allies.
• As the Treaty of Versailles was unpopular, the League was. inadvertently affected by this unpopularity. Thus, the League lost credibility when it proved ineffective in stopping nations such as Germany, Italy and Japan from their expansionist ambitions in the 1930s.
• Several peacekeeping measures were ineffective due to certain reasons:

B. Limited membership of the League

Initially, 42 countries joined the League, with Britain, France, Italy and Japan as permanent members.

• However, many of the European countries were facing economic problems and were militarily weak after WW1.
• Thus, these countries did not want to get involved in conflicts that did not involve them as each sought to rebuild its own strength.
• This is especially so for the permanent member nations.

Despite being the world’s largest economy at the time and having her status as a military power confirmed in WW1, the US did not join the League.

• The US government refused to ratify the Versailles Treaty, instead following a policy of isolationism. They preferred to engage in foreign affairs on their own terms at their own pace, rather than commit themselves to the League.
• The absence of the US meant that the League was deprived of a powerful member whose presence would have been of great psychological and financial benefit.
• The League did not have the necessary economic and military backup of the US to enforce its will.

Furthermore, there were also countries which were not allowed to join the League as they were seen as threats.

• Germany was not allowed to join the League until 1926 because of its role in causing WW1.
• The Soviet Union was also not allowed to join until 1934 because it was seen as a threat due to its communist ideology, large population & size.

This meant that three major world powers were not in the League. This weakened the League greatly because it needed strong nations as members in order to enforce sanctions effectively.