Conclusion

Extending the American CenturyRevisiting the Social Contract Jahara Matisek (bio), Travis Robison (bio), and Buddhika Jayamaha (bio) As the guns fell silent at the end of World War I, the US could no longer deny its great power status. Though abdicating the responsibilities inherent to this status during the interwar years, the US eventually fought on a global scale again during World War II. The conclusion of this conflict ushered the beginning of the Cold War and what came to be called the "American Century." The United States' efforts during the Cold War focused on protecting itself and its allies without compromising America's democratic system, values, and ideals.1 The US was generally successful at achieving these ends.2 Following the Cold War, the US enjoyed a brief period of primacy. The US was the sole global hegemon and exerted its ideological, political, economic, and military might to expand the world order it created after World War II. Three decades after the Cold War ended, American primacy is eroding and its influence is contested by revisionist powers. America's combat credibility is not in question, and rising powers could only threaten US leadership if American power is weakened on an absolute basis. The true challenge to continuing 21st-century American leadership therefore comes from within. Americans today resent seemingly endless military deployments across the globe with no discernible security benefits, feel abandoned by the supposed economic benefits of globalization that have not accrued to a majority, and are suspicious of laissez-faire capitalism. A vocal minority of Americans actively oppose US foreign engagements [End Page 5] and aim to tear down the global economic and military architecture their forbearers sacrificed to create.3 Americans are also electing representatives that espouse once fringe views that fundamentally undermine American economic and military global leadership. It would be erroneous and selfserving to interpret this shift as a "populist anomaly." Instead, a more accurate perspective is that the shift is a democratic response to failed foreign and domestic policies and an indictment of policy elites.4 This article reflects on the history of US primacy and projects its uncertain future. We argue that the US role in world affairs is fundamentally shaped by its democratic system of governance. US foreign engagements historically depended on the government's ability to maintain an implicit and explicit social contract with the American public that guaranteed domestic prosperity in exchange for supporting foreign policy goals. The social contract remained legitimate to the extent that the government fulfilled its obligation to pursue foreign goals that contributed to the public interest. When the government failed to do so, the public withdrew its support by demanding new policies and electing new leadership to act in accordance with the public's will.5 We see this happening in America today. This indictment of America's foreign policy elites is the result of a fundamental breakdown of the social contract that undergirded the domestic legitimacy of American global engagement during the 20th century. The following sections highlight the nature of the social contract and explain how it frayed through decades of political neglect. We conclude by highlighting the need to reassess the social contract by suggesting that strategic retrenchment may provide an opportunity for reevaluation that will contribute to the strategic solvency necessary for maintaining American leadership in the 21st century. Reluctant Great Power Though the United States had become a leading economic power by the 1890s, few realized that it was taking the first steps toward defining the American Century. When American military forces landed in France in 1917, the American public did not seem to realize the United States' great power status and was eager to "bring the boys home" after the war.6 When the Allied Powers emerged victorious, America's economic and military power was comparable to Europe's on a global scale. However, the US was not the preeminent European power—it played a decisive but not the defining role in the war.7 This became clear during the Paris Peace Conference when the war's victors debated over key provisions of the postwar settlement. President Wilson misread the situation and attempted to negotiate a settlement...

The attitude of the British and German governments towards the work of the League of Nations, an organisation that was the very embodiment of the commitment of many of the world’s nations to the pursuit of peace at the end of the First World War, illustrates many of the differences between the two countries towards international diplomacy. To the British government, the League was a worthwhile cause but one which, potentially, threatened to embroil Britain in diplomatic conflicts where her interests were not at stake. This was the price of a permanent seat on the League’s governing body, the Council, but one that was thought to be worth paying in the same way that the burdensome task of administering the empire offered Britain enormous influence in international diplomacy. At the same time, a balance needed to be struck between the work of the League and the requirements of British foreign policy, particularly regarding European security. It was this debate that the British government was engaged in throughout D’Abernon’s embassy and for much of the remainder of the interwar period. In contrast, the German governments that held office between 1920 and 1926 viewed membership of the League as a means to an end as an opportunity to deal with the Allies on equal terms to secure concessions relating to the security of Germany’s frontiers and potential revisions of the Treaty of Versailles.

The British parliament took a keen interest in the international protection of minorities during the interwar era. Minority treaties addressing the rights of minorities in east central Europe had been concluded and placed under the guarantee of the League of Nations after the First World War. The main focus here is not on the situation of individual minority groups but rather on the general operation of minority protection and the attempts to improve it during the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the principles and procedures of minority protection were widely discussed. As a key member of the League, Britain had a strong interest in the smooth functioning of the system. This article shows that parliamentary questions constituted an important form of parliamentary pressure on the government's conduct of foreign affairs during the interwar era, and that the questions were, in some instances, co‐ordinated with the efforts of voluntary associations and publicity in the media. In order to present the viewpoint of the government as well, the preparation of the answers and other responses to the questions by the foreign office is also examined. The source material reveals that there was complex interaction between parliament, the government, and voluntary associations in defining British policy vis‐à‐vis the League of Nations.

The League of Nations - pre-cursor to the United Nations - was founded in 1919 as a response to the First World War to ensure collective security and prevent the outbreak of future wars. It was set up to facilitate diplomacy in the face of future international conflict, but also to work towards eradicating the very causes of war by promoting social and economic justice. The philosophy behind much of the League's fascinating and varied roles was to help create satisfied populations who would reject future threats to the peace of their world. In this new volume for Seminar Studies, Martyn Housden sets out to balance the League's work in settling disputes, international security and disarmament with an analysis of its achievements in social and economic fields. He explores the individual contributions of founding members of the League, such as Fridtjof Nansen, Ludwik Rajchman, Rachel Crowdy, Robert Cecil and Jan Smuts, whose humanitarian work laid the foundations for the later successes of the United Nations in such areas as: the welfare of vulnerable people, especially prisoners of war and refugees dealing with epidemic diseases and promoting good health anti-drugs campaigns Supported by previously unpublished documents and photographs, this book illustrates how an understanding of the League of Nations, its achievements and its ultimate failure to stop the Second World War, is central to our understanding of diplomacy and international relations in the Inter-War period.

Many historians have underestimated the significance of interwar internationalism, treating the League of Nations and the efforts of internationalists as idealistic failures in an age that was characterised by international tensions and aggressive nationalism. This edited volume challenges such narratives by assessing transnational projects that were launched or transformed after World War One. In the face of national antagonisms, it proved challenging to re-establish international norms or organisations. Yet the League of Nations offered a new framework for activists, experts and policymakers. Consequently, and in spite of the legacy of war and the emergence of new conflicts, the years between 1919 and 1939 saw a great variety of transnational endeavours, shaped by a belief in the feasibility of a new global order. The chapters in this book offer an in-depth discussion of specific transnational movements and organisations. They explore how the League of Nations system engaged with governments or non-state actors, and shed light on the contrasting rationales for transnational cooperation. As a whole, the volume highlights both the extent and the boundaries of interwar internationalism. It also reveals the contrasting motivations that informed internationalist action. With fresh research from several European countries, the book makes an original contribution to the transnational history of the interwar years.

Neutrality went through a period of convulsion after the First World War. During the inter-war years a number of commentators argued that the League of Nations and the Kellogg–Briand Pact combined had fundamentally changed the law of the use of force to such a degree that neutrality was no longer viable as a doctrine. Ireland as a newly independent state during this period exemplified these debates and as such is a useful prism to aid in the understanding of how other states reacted to the new multilateralism established in the League of Nations. Ireland, similar to other states such as Switzerland, recognized this new multilateralism by joining the League and signing the Kellogg–Briand Pact; yet these states always strived to maintain the capability to declare neutrality. The Second World War brought neutrality to the fore as a core aspect of war-time law. It also required states such as Ireland and Switzerland to utilize neutrality to maintain their sovereignty. Ultimately this influenced how neutrality would be viewed under the UN Charter.

In connection with the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, an urgent problem is the search for the necessary changes in the legal sphere to ensure international peace and security both in international institutions and in the national legislation of individual states. This primarily concerns Ukraine as a state suffering from aggression. Therefore, it is appropriate to refer to historical analogies regarding the creation of organizations that were intended to oppose the outbreak of full-scale wars. The purpose of the work is to research on the example of historical analogies the factors of the activities of international organizations of collective security, first of all the League of Nations and the United Nations, which did not allow to prevent large-scale military conflicts – the Second World War and the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, as well as ascertaining and proving the need for appropriate reform in the legal sphere in the direction of collective security, which requires persistent multifaceted law-making activity, including in Ukraine, which suffers from aggression. The following historical analogies are considered, related to the events that were the origins of significant changes in the legal sphere: the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years’ War in Europe; the League of Nations is the first international organization created with the aim of achieving peace and security among nations, the impetus for its establishment was the consequences of the First World War; the UN is the legal successor of the League of Nations, formed in 1945 after the Second World War, which took into account the gains and miscalculations of the League of Nations. The founders of the UN are 51 states, including Ukraine. The example of historical analogies showed that international organizations of collective security, primarily the League of Nations and the UN, were unable to fulfill their main task – to prevent large-scale military conflicts – the Second World War and the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. The weakness of the League of Nations as a peacekeeping tool was determined to some extent by its Organization’s Charter, the need for the consent of all members of the organization to take measures against the aggressor. It is noted that the UN, although it took into account the achievements and miscalculations of its predecessor – the League of Nations, was unable to ensure international peace to the required extent. This was manifested, in particular, in the activities of the UN Security Council as a body that bears the main responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. The weakness of the Security Council is that each of its permanent members has the right of veto. This was especially shamefully manifested during Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Issues of aggression, acts of genocide, and war crimes are constantly brought up for discussion by the Security Council, but this body cannot make a single decision due to the imposition of a veto by the aggressor country – Russia. It was concluded that after the victory of Ukraine, we can expect a significant improvement in the legal sphere in the direction of changes in the activity, representation and decision-making rules of the reformed collective security organizations. It was emphasized that, despite the state of war, Ukraine should pay attention to the law-making work to create conditions to prevent existing terrible events in the future. Key words: Aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, League of Nations, United Nations, reforming the collective security system, law-making activity.

The Mutability of Uniform

One of the most important assumptions in the study of U.S. foreign policy and multilateralism is that of the 'turn-around.' Most accounts of U.S. foreign policy assume 'the events of the Second World War brought about a revolution in American attitudes.' Political scientists, economists, and historians generally agree that the United States failed to shape international politics in the interwar period because of its rejection of membership in the League of Nations, but that the United States fundamentally changed with World War II, discarding its earlier tradition of “aloofness” in favor of multilateral internationalism. This 'turn-around' thesis is based on several assumptions about the nature of U.S. foreign policy. The first of these is that it took the shock of Pearl Harbor for the United States to finally turn away from an earlier foreign policy tradition of 'aloofness' (previously called 'isolationism'). Second, the institutional order building that took place under U.S. auspices in the 1940s signaled a profound U.S. foreign policy turn-around towards a new tradition of multilateral internationalism. In this paper, I question these assumptions and argue that the turn-around thesis should be significantly modified. Specifically, I argue: (1) that it did not take Pearl Harbor to change the path the United States was on because the United States was not isolationist following the rejection of the League of Nations; (2) that the international order the United States created after the war was compatible with its historic foreign policy tradition – best described as unilateral internationalism - because it constructed a system based on hegemony, not multilateralism. This argument entails appreciating the extent to which the United States has always had an internationalist foreign policy (including the early years of the Republic and the interwar period); and the extent to which it in the 1940s was the hegemon presiding over a multilateral structure, as opposed to a country joining a multilateral framework (which would mean subjecting itself to the same rules as all other members). Whereas the United States created numerous international institutions during the Second World War, subsequent U.S. administrations were not constrained by these institutional rules and procedures to the same extent that other member states were. In other words, the U.S.-sponsored institutional order was designed to bind the behavior of other states, but not that of the United States itself.My argument also necessitates a discussion of what is meant by 'multilateral.' The debate over the legitimacy of a 'turn-around' thesis of U.S. foreign policy hinges not on whether the United States turned from isolationism to internationalism – as the term isolationism itself is now regarded as outdated in the field of U.S. foreign relations history - but rather on whether the United States turned from unilateral internationalism to multilateral internationalism. As this article will show, there is good reason to question the fundamental U.S. commitment to multilateralism and the turn-around thesis that underlies it. In the end, this also helps shed light on the post-Cold War debates on unilateralism in U.S. foreign policy.

The author conducts a comparative analysis of international institutions that emerged as a result of two world wars in the twentieth century — the League of Nations and the United Nations, and shows their fundamental diff erence. The author rightly believes that the League of Nations was unable to prevent the Second World War due to the imperfection of its Charter and the lack of universal principles embodied in it. These shortcomings, according to the author, were due to the instability of the Versailles-Washington system, which failed to overcome the contradictions that later led to a new world war. Unlike the League of Nations, the United Nations, established after the Second World War, was able to take into account the systemic shortcomings that were originally embedded in the statutory principles of the former organization. The author focuses on the "veto" rule, which is the fundamental principle of the UN Charter, and shows its fundamental diff erence from the principle of "liberum veto" of the Statute of the League of Nations, which allowed any dissenting state to block a decision regarding the defi nition of a threat to peace and condone aggressor countries to freely exercise their expansionist plans. The author takes into account that the UN is an organization of the “nuclear age”, since the Yalta system determined the status of permanent members of the Security Council as victors in World War II and leading nuclear powers in the UN Charter. The author argues that complex international confl ict situations can only be resolved through the joint eff orts of the world community. With the help of various international mechanisms, regional confl icts must be resolved by political and diplomatic methods, and they must not be allowed to develop into a global confl ict, since a new world confl ict in the context of globalization can only be at the nuclear level. The UN Charter lays down the principles for resolving international regional problems and their settlement by political means. The author comes to the conclusion, that the United Nations is a stable international institution to prevent a new world war and maintain international security. Unlike the League of Nations, which failed to prevent the Second World War, the UN is an institution for actually preventing world crises and building a new post-war world order, which has been ensuring the sustainable development of mankind without global wars for more than 75 years.

The history of colonialism, decolonization, and postcolonial development is a global cross-cutting trend in world history, spanning several centuries. The research interest in the legacy of the League of Nations in the field of internationalization of mandate territories has been intensifing in recent years. In the last third of the 21st century, the term "imperialism" began to be applied to the active European colonization and division of the world. The First World War brought significant changes to the processes of colonialism and imperialism. The League of Nations, the first international organization, was shaped. The mandate system was developed in the League of Nations as a compromise option for transferring the former German colonies and possessions of the Ottoman Empire. However, the mandate system of the League of Nations was more than a cover for the colonial division of territories. The principle of international trusteeship and the internationalization of management has appeared in the mandate system. Open imperialism became a thing of the past. In the interwar period, the mandate system marked the beginning of the crisis of colonial empires. The Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) the League of Nations created a new network of political influence for change in the mandate territories. The mother countries was subject to these rules under the threat of being accused of non-compliance with international law and the terms of their respective mandates. The completely new practice of petitioning Geneva provided some political opportunities for residents and various groups in mandate territories to change the practices of mandate governments. The internationalization of economic and cultural life was also fruitful. Education and health services were developed in the mandate territories due to the practice of discussing these issues in the Permanent Mandates Commission . Despite the fact that at the time of decolonization, the result of the development of mandate territories was not very different from that of colonial countries, the League of Nations managed to change a lot in the world over a short period of time.

This chapter focuses on the international system following World War 1 and efforts to create peace and stability through the League of Nations’ collective security, outlawing war, and various disarmament conferences. It covers the crises of diplomacy related to the expansionist Hitler regime that culminated in the rise of fascism in Italy, the Munich Conference, and the eventual outbreak of World War II.

The urgency of the problem under study is caused by the fact that in 2014 it had been 100 years from the moment of the beginning of the World War I, the war of an absolutely new type which put mankind on the edge of total disappearance on scales of victims and destructions. At the same time this war forced to change the character of international relations completely, having made them more open and directed to establishment of a settled dialogue. The article is directed to studying the role of the League of Nations in the processes of universalization of the international relations during the interwar period, its attempts to create the international political tools which would allow to remove completely or essentially the threat of a new war. The leading approach of the research of this problem is a system approach, as this approach allows when studying the evolution of the international organizations (including the Leagues of Nations) to use various scientific methods and techniques in complete, mutually supplementing and combining them. The main results of the research testify that World War I, being one of the greatest tragedies in the history, became at the same time the catalyst of the progressive political processes which put the foundation of a new world system, based on understanding of mutual dependence and aspiration to general safety. The most important instrument of providing the lasting post-war peace was urged to become the League of Nations. The materials of the article can be useful for preparation of educational, methodical and scientific literature and used also in the educational process as it contains theoretical information and set of empirical data on the problem of creation and functioning of the universal regulating international organizations on an example of the League of Nations.

This article examines the role played by the League of Nations’ Financial and Economic Organization (FEO) as a vector of development of a new expert network in the interwar years. By examining its origins during the First World War and its early years of operation, we will show how, through its activities and the issues they raised, the FEO engendered an expert network that was both internal and external to the LON. The creation of this network and its institutionalization were responses to international and transnational dynamics as well as to a much broader need for regulation, the counterpart to growing interdependence and economic internationalization since the second half of the nineteenth-century. While this study to some degree resembles other recent research on international organizations, it departs from this research by virtue of its structural component, which links the organization to deep movements in economic development and global finance.

The interwar years marked the completion of attempts to establish a system of preferential trade within the British Empire, and the newly formed Imperial Economic Committee sought to present a modern vision of empire, in cooperation with the League of Nations. However, while Britannic sentiment remained strong in the Dominions, there was a new sense of scepticism regarding the British World’s cohesion and its future economic prospects. The League of Nations also provided new opportunities to challenge Britain’s economic leadership. Understandings of preferential trade were reshaped during the First World War and its aftermath, with increased attention focused on imperial modernization through ‘scientific’ management and the value of grading tariffs to aid relations with ‘friendly’ nations. During the 1930s it became increasingly clear that imperial cooperation could do little to solve key economic problems connected to production and food supplies, which needed to be tackled through broader international agreements.