Mastering Revolution
Revolution in various forms had been endemic to the Great War. The Paris Peace Conference sought not so much to oppose revolution as to master it in the formation of a new international system. It created the International Labour Organization to institutionalize a transnational approach to labor relations, and thus head off worker unrest as a source of revolution. The Mandate Principle put all mandates at least theoretically on the path to independence, however indefinite the period of tutelage. The Mandate Principle, at least discursively, provided a means of pre-empting anti-colonialism as a source of international instability. The conference also sought to master revolution in successor states. Recognizing Czechoslovakia as a model liberal democracy provided a template ill-suited to recognizing the other successor states. The war between Romania and Hungary in 1919–20 left the Supreme Council with recognition as its only means to control the behavior of successor states.