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Basic Course 2: How did the United
Nations Develop?
[Otfried Höffe described Kant's paper on "Eternal Peace" as the
decisive philosophical text in the modern debate on peace"] |
The
history of the United Nations began long before the foundation of the world
organisation on 26th June 1945 in San Francisco. The history of the
conceptual roots reaches back at least to the theories of important thinkers
like Hugo Grotius (the founder of modern public international law,
1584-1645), Abbé de Saint-Pierre (1658-1743) or the publication of Immanuel
Kant's treatise on "Perpetual Peace" in 1795.
We have
no room here to make a more extensive study of these roots, but you can find
more information on this topic on a separate page on D@dalos within the
framework of the Main Subject Group Peace Education as a whole:
Within
the framework of this basic course on the development of the United Nations,
we will be limiting ourselves to the immediate prehistory, i.e. the League
of Nations, as the precursor organisation to the United Nations. The following
text
summarises
the most important information on the League of Nations. |
Further
sections in this basic course sketch out the development of the United Nations,
from its foundation to the present day:
The
League of Nations as Precursor to the United Nations
In a
short introductory text to a publication on the United Nations Charter, Hartmut
Krüger states:
"The
foundation of the United Nations was not the first attempt to create a worldwide
peace organisation. Due to the effects of the massive loss of human life und
material loss during the course of the First World War, politicians... had
pressed for a union of nations to prevent wars. In his now famous 14 Points
speech of 8th January 1918, American President Woodrow Wilson called amongst
other things for a 'general association of nations with the mutual guarantee of
political independency and territorial integrity for large and small states
alike'.
The
revolutionary magnamity of a collective responsibility for peace and security
becomes particularly clear when we reflects upon the fact that, according to
public international law, up until the end of the First World War, waging war,
and even a war of aggression - if a formal declaration had been made - was not
see as immoral or criminal, but as a final political means.
The
League of Nations Covenant of 1919/20 obliged its members to observe the
intactness of the territories and the existing political independence of all its
members. If infringements took place against this commitment, the League of
Nations could take 'suitable measures'. Members were meant to settle issues of
conflict in international courts and tribunals. They agreed to resort to warlike
measures at the earliest three months after the court verdict. The Briand-Kellog
Pact of 1928, which all major states signed, brought about the absolute
proscription of war."
[taken from: Hartmut Krüger, Einleitung; in:
Charta der Vereinten Nationen, Reclam Stuttgart 1982, P. 3]
The
League of Nations is prescribed such great significance with a view to the
United Nations, because it brought about many developments which the architects
of the United Nations could link into. This applies both to the organs and the
basic principle of a system of collective security alike, which the following
text excerpts from Sven Gareis and Johannes Varwick demonstrate:
The
Organs of the League of Nations
"The
intentions and standards upon which the understanding of the collective system
of the United Nations is based remain incomplete without at least a outline
presentation of the League of Nations. Both organizations have frequently been
linked to one another in such a way that the United Nations appears to be seen
as wanting to correct the normative and structural weaknesses and deficits of
its predecessor.
While
being correct in some ways, it is often frequently overseen that developments of
wide-ranging significance were instituted and organisational requirements
created by the League of Nations which the United Nations could link into. This
applies in particular to the principal approach of the League of Nations of
creating a war prevention regime based on international legal standards and
transferring the responsibility for peace to an international organisation (...).
The
principal organs of the League of Nations were made up of ... the Assembly, the
Council and the Secretariat. (...) All member states were represented in the
Assembly by delegations, who disposed of one vote (...). The Assembly was
assigned comprehensive powers concerning all League of Nations tasks or
questions affecting world peace, so that it could deal with all the
circumstances at hand and make recommendations.
The Council was made up of permanent and non-permanent members (...). In 1920,
the year the Covenant came into force, the peace treaties of the five permanent
((France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, USA) and four non-permanent Council
members were provided for by the "Representatives of the Allied and
Associated Great Powers", which were to be determined according to the
Council's own discretion. However, the USA's permanent seat remained free due to
their failure join the League (...).
As a rule, the Council made its resolutions and recommendation unanimously
(...). If Council members were involved in a dispute, these were excluded from
voting, making a veto on their own part impossible. The Council ... was
empowered with the same comprehensive powers as the Assembly (...).
The Permanent Secretary under both Secretary-Generals Sir James Eric Drummond
(until
1933) and Francois Joseph Avenol made up the League of Nations' administrative
authority. The Secretary-General ... was subordinate to an international
authority, which was structured into specialist sections, and mainly recruited
its personnel from the member states’ civil service organisations."
[taken from: Sven
Gareis/Johannes Varwick, Die Vereinten Nationen. Aufgaben, Instrumente und Reformen;
Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung Schriftenreihe Band 403, Bonn 2003, P.
92-95]
The
Collective Security System of the League of Nations
"A dual system of collective security was created through the Covenant of
the League of Nations to ensure world peace and international security, which,
on the one hand, was oriented towards preventing war via procedures for peaceful
conflict settlement, but, on the other, prescribed a mechanism of sanctions to
end wars which had already been begun.
The partial ban on war written into the League of Nations Covenant committed all
member states to participating in a cooling-off process in all cases of
conflict where war may result. The aim of this procedure was to place the matter
of conflict in front of either a court of arbitration, the International Court
of Justice or the Council.
The Council was deemed to investigate the matter and write a report within six
months (...). During this period and a subsequent period of three months, none
of the parties were permitted to enter into a war. In the case of one of the
conflicting parties accepting a judgement or arbitrator's award, or unanimously
accepting a recommendation made by the Council, a ban on war was spoken
out."
[taken from: Sven Gareis/Johannes Varwick, Die
Vereinten Nationen. Aufgaben, Instrumente und Reformen; Bundeszentrale für
politische Bildung Schriftenreihe Band 403, Bonn 2003, P. 95-96]
Weaknesses
of the System
"One of the gravest weaknesses of these set of rules was that all measures
of force below the threshold of war were not included within the framework of
the ban. The question as to at what point the admissible use of force became a
banned war therefore remained open.
This blurredness was of immense significance to the effectiveness of collective
security measures. Indeed, the League of Nations Covenant provided the chance of
imposing sanctions on a state if it chose to start a war despite the ruling.
These collective measures, the spectrum of which ranged from economic and
political boycotts to military force, were to be carried out by all members of
the League (...).
However, due to the lack of a clear definition of aggression ... massive general
insecurity reigned concerning the requirements for imposing measures of
constraint, and the range of military subscription obligations in particular
(...). The practice of imposing sanctions by the League of Nations remained
limited to just one case. The Council imposed an embargo on Italy during the
Abyssinian War in 1937. However this step failed in its purpose of ending the
Italian aggressions.
The League of Nations had already remained inactive against the Japanese
invasion of North China at the beginning of the Thirties, and was unable to
prevent the outbreak of the war between Japan and China in 1935, all the more so
because Japan had left the organisation in 1933. The Soviet aggression against
Finland may have led to the exclusion of the USSR from the organisation in
December 1939, but in the face of the Second World War, which had already begun
in September 1939, the League of Nations had already failed as a collective
security system at this time."
[taken from: Sven Gareis/Johannes Varwick, Die
Vereinten Nationen. Aufgaben, Instrumente und Reformen; Bundeszentrale für
politische Bildung Schriftenreihe Band 403, Bonn 2003, P. 96-97]
Hartmut
Krüger sums up the work of the League of Nations in its main task of securing
peace in the following way: "The League of Nations failed to accomplish its
main task of preventing wars. All efforts to limit armament or even disarmament
remained without success. The stipulations of the League of Nations Covenant
which were to prevent the secret diplomacy seen to be the reason for the
outbreak of the First World War remained ineffective: international contracts
were supposed to be made public as a part of this, and to be automatically made
invalid if infringements against the League of Nations Covenant occurred."
[taken from: Hartmut Krüger, Einleitung; in:
Charta der Vereinten Nationen, Reclam Stuttgart 1982, P. 4]
Reasons
for the Failure of the League of Nations
"General and pertinent deficits and blurredness in the standards laid down
in the Covenant such as the ... inappropriate limitation to a partial ban on war
were made responsible for the failure of this first attempt at establishing a
global security system. However, structural weaknesses in the organisation
itself also need to be mentioned as reasons (...). What the League of Nations
failed to bring about more than anything else in its history was to include all
the major powers that existed at that time (...). The League of Nations would
never have been capable of becoming a universal organisation in this manner. Its
dissolution took place on 18th April 1946 at the 21st Assembly."
[taken from: Sven Gareis/Johannes Varwick, Die
Vereinten Nationen. Aufgaben, Instrumente und Reformen; Bundeszentrale für
politische Bildung Schriftenreihe Band 403, Bonn 2003, P. 97]
The
Significance of the League of Nations
Despite its failure, the balance regarding this new type of organisation in
international politics is in no way just negative, as the following text excerpt
from Sven Gareis and Johannes Varwick points out:
"The League of Nations stands for a conceptually historical turnaround in
international relations, even when the states at the time were still not
prepared to furnish this revolutionary new basic construct for preventing war
and securing peace via a global system with a real chance of implementation, and
at least allow it to develop into a clearing house for questions of
global security.
Its ultimate collapse during the catastrophe of the Second World War has not
principally led to a conviction that the ideas and standards upon which the
League of Nations was founded were utopian or superfluous. On the contrary,
because of the outbreak of the Second World War, the importance of an effective,
collective security system was underlined in a dramatic way. With the United
Nations Charter, the world made a second attempt at establishing a global
organisation for securing peace."
[taken from: Sven Gareis/Johannes Varwick, Die
Vereinten Nationen. Aufgaben, Instrumente und Reformen; Bundeszentrale für
politische Bildung Schriftenreihe Band 403, Bonn 2003, P. 97-98]
[Author: Ragnar Müller]
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