Dreams Born and Shattered 393ful rebuttal of Chamberlain’s statement on the nonobligatory character of
sanctions.Experimenting
Th e soul- searching over the nature of the League’s role— and, by extension,
of the nature of international law itself— did not, by any means, put a stop to
new thinking. One legal innovation resulted from Japan’s invasion of Man-
churia in 1931. In January 1932, American Secretary of State Henry Stimson
(who was also a prominent lawyer) announced that his country would not
recognize as lawful any situation that was created by a use of armed force.
What was especially interesting about this initiative from the legal stand-
point was that it invoked the Pact of Paris as a justifi cation— thereby suggest-
ing the possibility of, so to speak, “graft ing” sanctions onto the pact that had
not been envisaged at the time of draft ing. Th e eff ect was that Manchukuo—
the Japanese- backed state that emerged as a result of the intervention— would
not be treated as an in de pen dent country but instead as a mere puppet gov-
ernment. Shortly aft erward, the Assembly and Council of the League of Na-
tions echoed this “Stimson Doctrine,” as it soon became known. Th e fol-
lowing year, the Western Hemi sphere states followed suit.
Th e Stimson Doctrine also won the support of the International Law As-
sociation in 1934, by way of interpretation of the Pact of Paris. But the
association went beyond nonrecognition to suggest the addition of another
sanction: the dispensing of neutral states from their normal duty of impar-
tiality in cases of aggressive war. On the association’s interpretation, third
states were entitled— by implicit interpretation of the Pact of Paris— to show
partiality toward victim states. Th ere were misgivings about an attempt to
tamper with the law of neutrality in this way. Lauterpacht, for example, con-
tended that this was no mere matter of interpretation of the pact, but an at-
tempt to add to it a sanction that simply was not there.
It was not long before this upgraded interpretation of the pact was put to
practical use. Th e United States employed it on a massive scale in favor of
the Allied side in 1939– 41, aft er the outbreak of the Second World War. In-
stead of a policy of traditional neutrality, the American government opted
instead for what came to be called, somewhat euphemistically, “non-
belligerency.” Th at meant the open and large- scale provision of arms and