The Chequered History of the Beleaguered League of Nations

Posted on May 22, 2023August 5, 2023 by E Curb Nottus

ARISING from the ashes of the catastrophic Great War the League of Nations was founded in 1919 on high Liberal ideals but with the most challenging of tasks – “to promote international cooperation and achieve peace and security “. Ultimately, the League failed to live up to its mission statement, in the end floundering badly in its efforts to stop aggressive acts by rogue states and prevent the outbreak of a second world war.

Fear of failure?
The interwar years were marked by numerous incidences of disputes between states over territories and borders. One of the most apparent shortcomings of the League (LoN) was its choosiness in deciding which conflicts to intervene in and which not to…under the League’s foundation secretary-general Eric Drummond, the approach was a cautious and selective one, prompted by the fear that failure might undermine the body’s authority in the international arena (‘League of Nations’, History, Upd. 23-Mar-2023, www.history.com).

The LoN’s reluctance to involve itself in every international dispute also came down to the inherent weakness of its position. Where one of the discordant parties was not a member of the LoN and especially a larger power, the capacity of the organisation to effect a viable resolution was severely curtailed. The LoN declined to intervene when Soviet Russia attacked a port in Persia in 1920 in the belief that non-member Russia would disregard its authority. The LoN’s dispute resolution capacity was similarly neutralised in the 1923 Corfu incident…Mussolini’s Italy had bombed and invaded the Greek island leading to Greece asking the LoN to intervene but Mussolini, though a member, simply ignored the LoN’s attempts to mediate in the conflict.

Structural and functional weakness, the power of single veto
The League’s organisational structure proved a further impediment to the realisation of LoN’s primary purpose of maintaining inter-governmental peace. Unlike its successor world body the UN, all LoN members, whether powerful or minor players on the world stage, had equal voting rights in the assembly with the making of decisions requiring unanimity from the members, the necessity of universal consent a recipe for perpetual indecision and impasse (‘Why Did the League of Nations Fail?’, Luke Tomes, History Hit, 27-Oct-2020, www.historyhit.com).

“League of Victors”, minus the US
Critically, several of the more internationally significant nations were excluded from the new world body. The United States by choice excluded itself from membership, a massive setback to a world body’s claim to inclusiveness. In the aftermath of WWI and the Russian Revolution the vanquished Germans and the USSR🅐, were prevented from joining. At LoN’s point of peak membership (1935) there were 58 League nations, at its dissolution (1946) this had dwindled to only 23 members.

League idealism trumped by real politik
Viewed through rose-coloured glasses the LoN’s proponents assumed the organisation’s creation would herald in an era of internationalism. Their naïveté between the wars was exposed by the rise of ultra-nationalism especially when it coalesced in a totalitarian regime (acerbated by the Great Depression): for individual nations, League of Nations or no League of Nations, fundamental self-interest remained paramount (Tomes).

Expansionism by far-right regimes unchecked
In the 1930s, in a deteriorating international climate, the eruption of serious crises demonstrated the LoN’s impotence vis-a-vís aggressively inclined renegade states. When the imperial Japanese army invaded Manchuria (Northeast China)—a clear breach of Article 10 of the League’s Covenant (disrespecting another member’s sovereignty)—the LoN took no action against the offending nation. When the Commission eventually ruled that Manchuria should be returned to China, Tokyo responded by simply relinquishing its League membership and staying put🅑. When Fascist Italy’s provoked a colonial expansionist war against a much weaker state Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935, the LoN’s condemnation and subsequent economic sanctions on the Italian aggressors were undermined by the great powers Britain and France who in a secret deal green-lighted Italy’s action in East Africa. The British and French concession to Italy was meant to help lure Mussolini away from allying with Germany and Hitler. Once again particular countries put self-interest ahead of the collective security goals of the LoN. Rome’s response to the League’s threats, like Japan and Germany before it, was to to pull Italy out of the LoN. The Ethiopian crisis damaged the League’s reputation further and reinforced the paucity of its peacekeeping role.

The LoN failed miserably in its stated objective of bringing about international disarmament, on the contrary under its watch rearmament and military buildup in Germany, Italy, Japan and the USSR greatly expanded in the 1930s. Without armed forces of its own the LoN was reliant on the great powers to enforce its authority which they were generally unwilling to do. The League in time of state conflicts thus fell back on negotiation and arbitration and the threat of sanctions (never fully implemented), in which it had a sorry track record (‘The League is Dead. Long Live the United Nations’, The National WWII Museum, 19-Apr-2022, www.nationalww2museum.org).

Footnote: The League’s legacy
While the League of Nations was unable to realise its raison d’être, a workable system of international cooperation and security, there was a positive side to its existence. Where smaller nations were involved the LoN did have some success in settling disputes of neighbouring countries peacefully, eg, between Finland and Sweden in 1921 over the Aland Islands. The organisation’s activities embraced many issues of concern and urgency in its day, including efforts to curb the opium traffic; tackling the scourge of tropical diseases like malaria and leprosy; post-WWI refugee crisis and POW repatriation; recognising the rights of ethnic minorities; regulation of workers’ wages and conditions; curtailing the arms trade. While not always successful in these projects the pioneering LoN can be credited for providing a framework for its successor the UN to carry out its humanitarian work.

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🅐 Germany was eventually allowed to join in 1926 and Soviet Russia in 1934
🅑 Nazi Germany likewise relinquished League membership in 1933 when challenged by the League, freeing it to embark on a massive military buildup and pursue its territorial expansion goals in Europe. The Soviet Union was another significant withdrawal from the LoN family, expelled in 1939 for invading Finland

The Corfu Channel Incident: International Law Delayed and a Nazi Loot of Monetary Gold

Posted on November 28, 2021February 14, 2022 by E Curb Nottus

International Relations, Law and society,, Regional History

Albania emerged from the Second World War with a communist government led by Enver Hoxha striving to free itself from the clutches of Yugoslavia whose leader Tito was intent on making its smaller neighbour part of the Yugoslav federation, a particularly tricky scenario as Albania, economically stricken after the war, was dependant on Yugoslav for urgently needed aid.

Into this already tense situation in the first half of 1946, a rift developed in UK/Albanian relations. First, in March-April London refused to exchange diplomats with Tirana, citing the latter’s unfriendly and “uncooperative attitude” towards British personnel🅰. In May two Royal Navy cruisers Orion and Superb were navigating through the Corfu Straits (a narrow passageway separating that Greek island from Albania) when fired at by an Albanian land gunnery. The British warships sustained no damage but matters escalating from there…two British destroyers entered the straits in October and hit hitherto undetected land mines, HMS Saumarez in particular was badly damaged and later written off. More importantly there were British crew casualties (44 dead and a similar number injured). The following month the Royal Navy undertook a sweeping operation of the straits and found 22 mines {’Albanian-American Relations in the Fall of 1946: A Stormy End’, (Edward J. Sheehy), Tirana Observatory, 9-Apr-2009, www.tiranaobservatory.com}.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland v. the People’s Republic of Albania
The UK’s response to the incident was to take Albania to the International Court of Justice in The Hague (the inaugural case brought before the new Court). The protracted case, not concluded until 1949, was a landmark case for the inter-country disputation, helping to lay the foundations for the development of what would eventually become the UN International Law of the Sea (ratified in 1982) {‘Summary of Relevant Aspects of the Corfu Channel Case (Merits)’, www.iilj.org}. The eventual judgements handed down were mixed, the Court found that Great Britain (GB) in entering Albania’s territorial waters did not violate its sovereignty (having a right of “innocent passage”), however it adjudged that GB’s mine-sweeping operation (codenamed “Operation Retail”) was a sovereign violation of Albanian waters, nor did it have permission from the international mining clearance organisations to conduct the operation. Lawyers for the British had argued that it took the action to secure evidence of the minefield’s existence, but the Court threw out GB’s argument of acting in self-protection or self-help {‘The Corfu Channel Case, The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland v. the People’s Republic of Albania‘, UN Environment Program, www.leap.unep.org}.

The British legal argument that the mines had been laid by Yugoslavia, acting on a request from Tirana, was denied by Hoxha’s government which blamed Greece for the mines – at the time Albania had involved itself in the civil war in Greece on the side of the Greek communists. The Court determined that collusion between Albania and Yugoslavia in mining the straits could not be proven (www.iilj.org). In a subsequent judgement The Hague ruled that Albania had failed in its responsibility to warn GB of the minefield danger, consequently Albania was ordered to pay GB damages of £843,947 for the material loses of the warships (equivalent to £24.4 million in 2019){‘Corfu Channel Case’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org}. Hoxha rejected the verdict—though in 1950 the regime offered GB a token amount of £40,000 as payment for compensation—making no serious effort to meet its liability.

Monetary gold stolen from Rome
In 1946 the victorious allies (GB, US and France) established the “Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold” to recover gold stolen by Nazi Germany and return it to the rightful owners. Included in the Nazi loot was 2,338 kg of gold seized in 1943 from the Bank of Rome by the Nazis, a treasure claimed by both Italy and Albania (and indirectly and partly by GB who identified in this a remedy for its still outstanding damages verdict). The Commission was unable to resolve the monetary gold issue so an independent arbiter appointed by The Hague determined that the gold belonged to Albania. Italy contested the matter—it’s claim resting largely on Italians having been the majority shareholders in the National Bank of Albania (which had been seized by fascist Italy)—taking the dispute to the ICJ, Italy v France, United Kingdom and Northern Ireland and United States of America (1954). The ICJ however held that it had no jurisdiction to adjudicate the case.

A post-Hoxha resolution
Albania refusal to accept the compensation judgement against it and GB’s blocking the transfer of the gold to Albania occurred as Albania entered a long phase of self-isolation🅱. The recovered Nazi gold sat in the vaults of the Bank of England for over four decades and the diplomatic impasse between London and Tirana was not broken until the eclipse of the communism in Albania. When democracy was established in 1991, diplomatic negotiations began and a deal was done, the new government in Albania agreed to pay GB’s compensation bill from the Corfu episode and in return the British agreed to release 1674 kg, providing the funds that economically weak post-communist Albania needed before it could pay GB the amount owing.

𝑀𝒶𝑜 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝐻𝑜𝓍𝒽𝒶

Footnote: The Tripartite Gold Commission did not deliver the gold to Albania until 1996 (the lengthy process required the cooperation of the GB, US and French governments) and the amount ultimately paid by the Albanian government to GB in “full and final settlement” was US$2,000,000.

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🅰 in relation to war graves identification and limitations on movement with the country, a charge denied by Tirana

🅱 Albania severed its relationships not just with the UK and US (Sheehy), but even within the socialist Second World. Stalinist ideologue Hoxha broke off ties with both USSR (1961) and China (1978) for being too ‘revisionist’

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Just blogging away … doing the hard blog

Continuing the search for signs of Intelligent Life in the University.

Corfu Channel incident

The Chequered History of the Beleaguered League of Nations

The Corfu Channel Incident: International Law Delayed and a Nazi Loot of Monetary Gold