Collective Security For Europe Country By League Of Nations

Collective security has many meanings and different people interpret it in many ways. When it comes to International Collective security, it means “One for all and all for One” when different counties come together and have the best intentions for each of the other nations. Collective security means a lot to the wellbeing of a collection of nations and it also means security for individual nations. After World War I, in the 1920s, many countries were tired of fighting and losing millions of lives. Especially if technology kept on advancing which lead to more deaths,” The new technologies not only had not made the wars faster, but they generated more destruction and a greater number of victims”(CE Noticias Financieras) and were in the search for worldwide peace. The idea of a Collective Security system was an idea that had been there for a while but there were many reasons why something had to be formed at that time. 

The League of Nations was founded in the 1920s and made up of 58 countries from all over the world joining together in an effort to promote peace. Even though President of The United States of America, Woodrow Wilson, was the engineer of the League of Nations, the United States never joined the League of Nations due to the fact that Congress did not agree on it. There were many things that this organization planned to do. For one, the League aimed to resolve territorial disagreements between members by “requiring nations to respect integrity and sovereignty of all other nation-states” (Khan Academy). There were sanctions put on countries to stop the abusive powers that countries could use. Sanctions against violators included trade embargos, arms embargos, as well as the use of armed force against those countries violating the League of Nations principles. For this to be enforced, the great powers had to work together to eliminate international aggression. As World War I was seen as the “war to end all wars” the main objective of the League of Nations was to prevent armed aggressions between different world powers.With all the different regulations and restrictions imposed, the League of Nations failed to accomplish what it was striving for, collective security and international peace. From the start, there were many issues regarding the legitimacy of the league. 

First of all, one of the main players that strived for the formation of the league was not part of the league. The United States having pulled away from joining, caused the league to not have a strong “voice” with international diplomacy. If the United States was part of the league, then it would have had more powers to enforce regulations and rules. One main problem that the league faced was that it would not take sufficient action on countries that violated the principles of the league. The league of nations failed to stop invasions that included “Japan invading Manchuria in 1931, Italy invading Ethiopia in 1939, and failed to oppose Hitler’s territorial incursions that eventually lead to World War II”(Osita Slide 8), as discussed in the class lecture, International Actors. With all of these events happening, the League of Nations had too many vulnerabilities and failed due to the fact that great powers were not doing enough to deter aggressors. As the League of Nations failed to establish themselves as an elite formation of different countries gathering together for collective security, it allowed countries like Germany, under the guidance of Hitler to rise in power. Major powers of the world failed to realize the intentions of Nazi Germany due to the fact that it was not in their best interest to stop their agenda. Having just got out of a major war, many world powers were adopting non-aggression policies in order to combat violators and that was simply not enough. The major world powers were not backing the league and using powers to stop aggressors from invading other countries, by only using embargos and non-aggression policies this allowed for events leading up to World War II to develop.The League of Nations was not able to fulfill its duty of collective security due to the fact that the league did not enforce its principles. Not enforcing principles and allowing other nations to invade other countries led to the failure of the League of Nations. By failing to establish itself as the premier global security governance institution from the beginning and not punishing nations that disobeyed, it allowed countries to easily go against league principles.