Questions: League of Nations and International Collective Security

Question 1

When Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, the League imposed economic sanctions but excluded oil. What does this reveal about the fundamental problem with the League's collective security system?

• A. The League lacked legal authority to sanction a European power attacking an African state
• B. Britain and France calculated that effective sanctions risked alienating Mussolini at a moment when Hitler was rearming Germany — individual national interests overrode collective enforcement
• C. Oil was not yet a strategically significant commodity and its exclusion was technically irrelevant
• D. The League's charter required unanimity for sanctions, and Italy's allies blocked oil inclusion

Answer: (B)

This is the defining example of rational self-interest defeating collective security. Britain and France were unwilling to risk antagonizing Mussolini because they feared the more immediate threat of Nazi Germany. Their national calculations took priority over League enforcement — which destroyed the League's deterrent credibility. Once states learned the League would not impose effective costs on aggressors, deterrence collapsed entirely. Option A is wrong — the League had no such jurisdictional limitation. Option C is historically incorrect. Option D misdescribes the voting rules.

Question 2

The UN Security Council, unlike the League, gave the great powers permanent membership and veto rights. What specific failure of the League was this designed to address?

• A. To prevent small states from outvoting powerful nations on security decisions
• B. To ensure that states with the actual capacity to enforce decisions had ownership of them, so they couldn't be outvoted into commitments they wouldn't fulfill
• C. To reward the victorious powers of World War II with formal institutional status
• D. To avoid the League's mistake of admitting too many member states

Answer: (B)

The UN architects drew a specific lesson: an enforcement organization fails when capable states can be outvoted or simply choose not to act. The Security Council design acknowledges a hard reality — if the great powers are against you, enforcement is impossible anyway. Giving them a veto ensures any resolution has backing from states that could actually carry it out. The cost is that great powers can block action against themselves or allies — a different problem, but it directly addressed the League's failure of nominal commitments without enforcement will.

Question 3

Despite its ultimate failure to prevent World War II, the League of Nations successfully mediated several territorial disputes and created international institutions that were forerunners of organizations like the WHO.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

The League's record was genuinely mixed, not uniformly catastrophic. In the 1920s it successfully resolved disputes over the Åland Islands, between Greece and Bulgaria, and others. The Permanent Court of International Justice adjudicated real legal cases. The League's health organization gathered international epidemiological data and coordinated disease responses — directly preceding the WHO. These were real institutional achievements. The League failed specifically where it mattered most: confronting great-power military aggression. Treating it as a total failure misrepresents the historical record.

Question 4

The League of Nations' failure to prevent World War II was primarily caused by the United States seldom joining — with U.S. membership, collective security would have functioned effectively.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

U.S. absence was a major structural weakness but not a sufficient explanation. The Soviet Union was excluded until 1934. Germany and Japan joined, then withdrew when confronted over expansionism. Britain and France — present throughout and still significant powers — chose not to enforce collective security even when they had capacity for meaningful action (oil sanctions against Italy). The deeper problem was that member states were unwilling to bear enforcement costs. Even with U.S. membership, the same political dynamics might have produced similar outcomes: national leaders calculating that confronting one aggressor risked triggering a war they weren't ready to fight.

Question 5

What does the League of Nations' failure reveal about the conditions necessary for collective security to function as a deterrent?

Model answer: Collective security requires that the most powerful member states be willing to bear enforcement costs — military, economic, or political — against aggressors, even when doing so is against their narrow short-term interest. The League failed because Britain and France consistently calculated that enforcement was more costly than appeasement. Once this became apparent to potential aggressors, the deterrent collapsed entirely. Collective security is not a self-executing legal mechanism but a political commitment that must be visibly and credibly maintained.

The League case illustrates a general collective action problem: each state's individual incentive to avoid enforcement costs undermines the collective good that the threat of enforcement provides. When states defect from their obligations for rational short-term reasons, they destroy the long-term deterrent that benefits everyone. The UN Security Council design partly addresses this by giving enforcement capability (veto + permanent membership) to the states most likely to defect — accepting that they can block action against themselves in exchange for ensuring they participate when they do act.