Transcript The Promise of Collective Security A general

GO131:
International Relations
Professor Walter Hatch
Colby College
World War II
The Promise of Collective Security
A general association of nations must be
formed under specific covenants for the
purpose of affording mutual guarantees
of political independence and territorial
integrity to great and small states alike.
Woodrow Wilson
The Fourteen Points, 8 January, 1918
The Failure of Collective Security
World War Two: Basic Facts
Up to 50 million killed
Two wars
Europe
The Pacific
“Total War” (industry, military, media)
State-sponsored terrorism
Led to new, American-dominated order
Treaty of Versailles (1919)
Lloyd George, Orlando, Clemenceau, Wilson
Germany’s War Bill
$33 billion in reparations
Lost its overseas colonies
Lost territory to Poland
Lost its air force
Lost all but 100,000 of its army troops
The New Shape of Europe
The View from Germany
The View from Germany
Background
Wilson’s liberal vision
Replace “balance of power” politics with
“Collective Security”
Basic Principles re: aggression
Outlaw it
Deter it by forming a coalition of nonaggressive states
Punish it collectively
The League of Nations
Was not a “world government”
Relied on voluntary compliance with
“international law”
Operated without the participation of its
creator
League Successes
Brokered agreement between Greece and
Bulgaria, avoiding war
Supervised peace and disarmament
negotiations
1921 Washington Treaty Conference
1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact
League Failures
France continues to balance against Germany
Alliances with reconfigured states of Poland and
Romania
Alliances with new states of Yugoslavia and
Czechoslovakia
Germany claims a “soft” border on its east
Japan insists on its claim in Manchuria
Italy invades Ethiopia
The 1930s
Global Depression
Rise of militarism in Japan
Rise of fascism in Europe
Mussolini already in power in 1922
Hitler followed in 1933
Building to War in Europe
1920s: hyperinflation under Weimar
Republic
1930s: economic crisis deepens
1933: Adolph Hitler and his National
Socialist Party win election
Ultra-nationalism
Sequence of Events
October 1933: Germany leaves League of Nations
March 1935: Hitler renounces Treaty of Versailles,
announces military build-up
March 1938: Germany invades Austria
September 1938: Hitler and Chamberlain agree to
partition of Czechoslovakia
March 1939: Germany rolls across the rest of
Czechoslovakia
“The Campaign of Lies”
“The democracies have called on their most loyal troops to
encircle Germany.” (Simplicissimus, 9 April 1939)
Sequence of Events (cont.)
August 1939: Hitler signs non-aggression pact with Stalin
September 1939: Germany invades Poland
April 1940: Germany invades Norway
May 1940: Hitlers launches blitzkrieg into Holland,
Belgium, France.
July 1940: German bombers turned away by RAF aviators
in “Battle of Britain”
September 1940: Germany, Italy and Japan ally as “Axis
Powers”
June 1941: Germany invades its “ally,” the Soviet Union
1942: A World Divided
Building to War in the Pacific
1920s: Chafing under new rules of
international system
1930s: Economic crisis deepens
1932: “Government by assassination” (and
by the military) begins in Tokyo
Ultra-nationalism
Sequence of Events
1931: Japan establishes puppet state of “Manchukuo” in
northeast China
1933: Japan leaves League of Nations in protest over
Lytton Committee report
1937: Japan declares all-out war on China
1940: U.S. imposes embargo on oil and steel exports to
Japan
1940: Japan seized French colonies in Indochina
1941: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, bringing U.S. into war
1942: Japan grabs Singapore, Malaysian Peninsula,
Philippines, Indonesia
“The Greater East Asia CoProsperity Sphere”
1944: The Beginning of the End
1945: The End
Realism
Collective Security doesn’t work
Power vacuum
U.S. remained isolationist
Soviet Union was isolationist
U.K. used appeasement
Liberalism
Fascism, militarism and land
Class divisions in Europe
French conservatives: “Better Hitler than
Blum”
British Tories and negotiations with Soviet
Union
Economic collapse
Constructivism
Perverse Nationalism
Constructing “The Other” as subhuman
And then killing it
“Let the punishment fit the crime”