Stalinistperiod when one-man leadership was the order of the day. In many
countries—especially newly independent countries with a recent history of
nationalist struggle—the leader is seen as the embodiment of the people and
the nation, as with Dr Hastings Banda of Malawi. However, leadership in
Third Worldcountries is often difficult to sustain over a long period of time in
the absence of durable political institutions and economic progress.
League of Nations
In January 1918, nine months after the USA had entered the First World War,
its president, Woodrow Wilson, made it clear, in his ‘Fourteen Points’, that he
wanted a new order to world politics, the abandonment of thebalance-of-
powersystem and the introduction of some form of international association
to provide collective security. The League of Nations, ratified by the signa-
tories to the Versailles Peace Treaty in 1919 and instituted in 1920, was this
new association. Ironically the main reason it failed was that the USA’s
membership was blocked by the Senate. With the USA thus entering an
isolationistperiod the hope that the League would be able to enforce its
decisions on aggressive member states depended on the European powers,
which effectively meant on the United Kingdom and France, because the
primary problems were caused by the other two powers, Germany and Italy.
Germany in fact withdrew from the League in 1933 as soon asHitlercame to
power and Italy withdrew in 1937 two years after the League had declared it
the aggressor in its invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia); the Soviet Union was
expelled in 1939 after its invasion of Finland.
Because the League had no military force it attempted to wield power by
economic sanctions, although these were never effectively applied. Had France
and the UK seriously wished to support the League’s peacemaking efforts they
could probably have done so. But during the 1930s the UK was preoccupied
with its policy of appeasement towards thedictatorships, andThird Repub-
licFrance was internally too divided and weak to engage in a forceful foreign
policy. Nevertheless, the League had some successes: its judicial branch, the
Permanent Court of International Justice, was rather more effective and
respected than its successor, theUnited Nations’International Court of
Justice, and its International Labour Organization was surprisingly effective in
improving working conditions throughout the League’s membership, and
survived the transition from League of Nations to United Nations. The League
was formally dissolved in 1946 to make way for its successor, the UN, which
until relatively recently was no more successful, despite not suffering from US
refusal to participate.
League of Nations