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Cliometrica (2011) 5:2752
DOI 10.1007/s11698-010-0049-9
ORIGINAL PAPER
Jari Eloranta
Received: 27 May 2009 / Accepted: 1 March 2010 / Published online: 16 March 2010 Springer-Verlag 2010
Abstract Why did the League of Nations ultimately fail to achieve widespread disarmament, its most fundamental goal? This article shows that the failure of the League of Nations had two important dimensions: (1) the failure to provide adequate security guarantees for its members (like an alliance); (2) the failure of this organization to achieve the disarmament goals it set out in the 1920s and 1930s. Thus, it was doomed from the outset to fail, due to built-in institutional contradictions. It can also be modeled and analyzed as a potential military alliance. The results are fairly conclusive: The League of Nations did not function as a pure public-good alliance, which encouraged an arms race in the 1930s.
Keywords League of Nations Disarmament Military spending
Alliance Arms race
JEL Classication F51 F53 H41 H56 N40
1 Introduction
The economic and political instability of the interwar period and the rise of authoritarian regimes are often seen as extensions of the First World War and the Great Depression. The League of Nations, in turn, is usually seen as an organization that failed to act adequately and/or decisively during the various political crises of the period, beginning with the Japanese aggression in Manchuria. But, I argue in this article that its failure has to be seen in the larger context of the failed collective security arrangements of the interwar period.
J. Eloranta (&)
Department of History, Appalachian State University,224 Joyce Lawrence Lane, Anne Belk Hall, Boone, NC 28608, USA e-mail: [email protected]
Why did the League of Nations fail?
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28 J. Eloranta
Why did the League of Nations fail to widespread disarmament and collective security arrangements in the period? Maurice Vasse (1993) has provided a succinct summary: (1) it failed because it was an imperfect instrument for achieving disarmament; (2) it failed because the League was not universal; (3) it failed because of the confrontation between Great Britain and France; (4) it failed because there were domestic forces inside the countries hostile to disarmament; (5) it failed because the Disarmament Conference was convened too late, under hostile conditions; (6) it failed because of...