Between ‘Coercive League’ and ‘Consultative League’: a reappraisal of debates surrounding the ‘Reform’ of the League of Nations

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shunsuke Obiya
Keyword(s):  
League Of Nations ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Collective Security ◽  
Small Power ◽  
Pros And Cons ◽  
Small Powers

Abstract This article addresses debates surrounding the reform of the League of Nations from the viewpoint of Britain and China. They focused on the pros and cons of collective security because the failure of the League to stop Japanese invasion of Manchuria and Italian invasion of Abyssinia threatened the collapse of the League. There were two contrasting visions in debates, the ‘Coercive League’ and the ‘Consultative League’. The ‘Coercive League’ was the course to reinforce collective security to prevent further aggression. Conversely, the ‘Consultative League’ argument was to weaken collective security and induce Germany, Italy, and Japan to cooperate with the League. Deliberations took place in both the Council, in which great powers exerted a strong presence, and the Assembly, in which small powers made their voices heard. Therefore, this article deals with Britain as an example of a great power and China as one of a small power.

Australia and Seato

1960 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Modelski
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Small Power ◽  
Territorial Integrity ◽  
Independent Source

Australia is a nation small and vulnerable enough to need great power guarantees of territorial integrity, yet at the same time strong and stable enough to constitute an asset in any joint undertaking. The quality of being a small power dependent on the support of the great powers Australia shares with the countries of Southeast Asia, and in particular with the Southeast Asian states linked up with the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO). But it is less exposed to immediate dangers, is more modern and industrialized than its near-northern neighbors, and hence is also capable of serving as an independent source of strength and of assuming a role somewhat akin to that of the great powers in SEATO. Australia's membership role in SEATO is, in effect, defined by these two basic conditions.

Intervention: The Responsibility of Power

Worldview ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 4-8
Author(s):  
Robert G. K. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Small Countries ◽  
Small Powers

I will not here discuss whether it is right or wrong for a country to intervene in the affairs of other states. I will assume that great powers will interfere with small powers and consider, rather, how the great power should exercise its responsibilities.We must begin by recognizing two major difficulties that face a great power. The first is that many of the problems—in fact most of the problems—which it faces in dealing with small countries are immune to power. This applies particularly to a Communist insurgency, which is designed to be immune to the application of power. It also applies, of course, to intervention which is perfectly respectable and normal, such as the giving of aid. In the case of aid, many of the problems are impervious to power in its broadest sense, that is, to resources, material, money, and so on.

United Nations Peace Forces and the Changing United Nations: An Institutional Perspective

1963 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 338-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian E. Urquhart
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Power Struggle ◽  
Institutional Perspective ◽  
The Military ◽  
East West

At its founding one of the UN's most publicized advantages over its predecessor, the League of Nations, was the fact that it was a peace organization “with teeth.” This somewhat unattractive phrase referred to Chapter VII of the Charter and the possibility of military force being put at the disposal of the Security Council. In fact this provision of the Charter was one of the first victims of East-West disagreement, and, although the Military Staff Committee met regularly for many years and in the early years held voluminous discussions, the actual military arrangements foreseen in Chapter VII never became a reality. The assumption of the continuing unanimity of the great powers, which particularly affected this part of the Charter, proved to be illusory almost at once, while the idea that the Organization could not and should not take collective action against one of the great powers has continued, with the partial exception of Korea, to be respected. Thus it has become increasingly clear that the United Nations can neither deal with an aggression arising from a great-power conflict nor use the military resources of the great powers directly in dealing with other breaches of the peace, since such a use might all too easily project the great-power struggle onto the situation being dealt with. The development of new forms of peace-keeping machinery have in part been the response of the Organization to this dilemma.

Counterterrorism Between the Wars

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary S. Barton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Common Interests ◽  
Independence Movements ◽  
Second World ◽  
The U.S

This is a book about terrorism, weapons, and diplomacy in the interwar years between the First and Second World Wars. It charts the convergence of the manufacture and trade of arms; diplomacy among the Great Powers and the domestic politics within them; the rise of national liberation and independence movements; and the burgeoning concept and early institutions of international counterterrorism. Key themes include: a transformation in meaning and practice of terrorism; the inability of Great Powers—namely, Great Britain, the United States, France—to harmonize perceptions of interest and the pursuit of common interests; the establishment of the tools and infrastructure of modern intelligence—including the U.S.-U.K. cooperation that would evolve into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance; and the nature of peacetime in the absence of major wars. Particular emphasis is given to British attempts to quell revolutionary nationalist movements in India and elsewhere in its empire, and to the Great Powers’ combined efforts to counter the activities of the Communist International. The facilitating roles of the Paris Peace Conference and League of Nations are explored here, in the context of the Arms Traffic Convention of 1919, the Arms Traffic Conference of 1925, and the 1937 Terrorism Convention.

Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard V. Smith
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Great Power ◽  
World War ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
The World ◽  
Paris Peace Conference

We have long known that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 “failed” in the sense that it did not prevent the outbreak of World War II. This book investigates not whether the conference succeeded or failed, but the historically specific international system it created. It explores the rules under which that system operated, and the kinds of states and empires that inhabited it. Deepening the dialogue between history and international relations theory makes it possible to think about sovereignty at the conference in new ways. Sovereignty in 1919 was about remaking “the world”—not just determining of answers demarcating the international system, but also the questions. Most histories of the Paris Peace Conference stop with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on June 28, 1919. This book considers all five treaties produced by the conference as well as the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey in 1923. It is organized not chronologically or geographically, but according to specific problems of sovereignty. A peace based on “justice” produced a criminalized Great Power in Germany, and a template problematically applied in the other treaties. The conference as sovereign sought to “unmix” lands and peoples in the defeated multinational empires by drawing boundaries and defining ethnicities. It sought less to oppose revolution than to instrumentalize it. The League of Nations, so often taken as the supreme symbol of the conference’s failure, is better considered as a continuation of the laboratory of sovereignty established in Paris.

The Publication of the diplomatic papers of Other Governments

1947 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-377
Author(s):  
E. Wilder Spaulding
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
Good Will ◽  
The Right ◽  
Small Powers

An expert on foreign affairs has summarized the limitation upon the right of a government to make public the diplomatic papers which it has received from another government as follows: “ … one party to a negotiation cannot, in honor and in courtesy, publish the negotiation without the consent of the other party, on pain of forfeiting that good-will upon which … ‘the peace of the world ultimately depends.’ ” This principle of consent to publication is accepted, with some reservations and exceptions, by American practice. But American practice in this matter is not generally accepted by all foreign offices and it is not precisely and definitely written into international law. It has been generally observed in normal times by the Great Powers, which have had most to gain by its application, and it has frequently been disregarded by small powers and by Great Powers in times of stress. It rests upon comity and reciprocity, not upon international legislation.

Immoderate greatness: Is great power restraint a practical grand strategy?

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tudor Onea
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Scaling Down ◽  
Splendid Isolation ◽  
Self Defence

AbstractThe article examines when and how often great powers are likely to follow a grand strategy of restraint and whether there is any evidence that they have ever done so. The question has considerable implications for the ongoing US grand strategy debate. Restraint refers to the practice of self-discipline in the use of force for self-defence or for addressing massive power imbalances; and in extending security commitments to foreign political actors. The first part of the article examines statistics in the last two hundred years on great power involvement in wars and disputes as well as on their commitments to alliances and dependencies. The second part considers whether two seeming cases of the dominant power scaling down its international involvement – Ming China withdrawal from naval mastery in the fifteenth century and Victorian Britain splendid isolation – represent instances of genuine restraint.

The Responsibility Not to Veto

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Morris ◽  
Nicholas Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Security Council ◽  
International Society ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Pros And Cons

The responsibility to protect (R2P) and the question of UN Security Council veto constraint are intimately linked, but whilst the R2P has become increasingly embedded in diplomatic discourse and practice, the idea that in relation to it the Council’s five permanent members should recognize a ‘responsibility not to veto’ (RN2V) has fared less well. This chapter examines why this should be so. In its assessment of the prospects for, and pros and cons of, veto-restriction, the chapter argues that opposition amongst the P5 to the idea of a RN2V is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future, and it charges advocates of the idea with a failure to recognize that it is ill-conceived to believe that R2P can transcend great power cleavages in international society, whether these stem from principles of prudence, conflicting value systems, or the play of self-interest and great power jockeying for position.

An analysis of stagnation in multilateral law-making – and why the law of the sea has transcended the stagnation trend

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Andreas Motzfeldt Kravik
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Current Trend ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Law Of The Sea ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Making ◽  
Multilateral Treaties

Abstract The article explores the current stagnation in multilateral law-making based on an analysis of recent treaty attempts across various subfields of international law. It further examines why the law of the sea has continued to evolve despite this trend. The article demonstrates that states still regularly seek multilateral treaties to address new challenges. While there is some evidence of general treaty saturation, it is the current inability of traditional great powers to negotiate new binding norms which is the most constraining factor on multilateral law-making. This in turn is related to deeper geopolitical shifts by which traditional great powers, notably the United States and its allies, have seen their relative influence decline. Until the current great power competition ends or settles into a new mode of international co-operation, new multilateral treaties with actual regulatory effect will rarely emerge. The law of the sea has avoided the current trend of stagnation for primarily three reasons (i) a global commitment to the basic tenets of the law of the sea; (ii) a legal framework that affords rights and obligations somewhat evenly disbursed, allowing less powerful states to use their collective leverage to advance multilateral negotiations, despite intermittent great power opposition; and (iii) the avoidance of entrenched multilateral forums where decisions are reached by consensus only.

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