Both USA’s absence and Britain and France’s self interest were important factors of the Leagues failure in 1930’s. In this essay I will tell you the problems caused by each of these reasons and why.
USA was the most powerful country at the time and without it, it meant that the League didn’t have any troops, money, equipment and weapons. Without all of these items it meant that the League couldn’t send troops to the countries that were being attacked and didn’t have as many weapons as they could have had with America. Due to the USA being as powerful and wealthy as it was it had a huge trading business, so without America it would have been more difficult for the League to impose economic sanctions as if they said ‘we can’t trade with you till you stop the attack’. With America in the League they would have no other country to trade with, but with America not being in the League the country could just ignore the Leagues sanctions and still trade with America so no damage would have been done to their economic business. In Addition, what also had an effect on the failure was the psychological impact, the League of Nations knowing that they didn’t have the wealthiest and most powerful country on their side got them worried and made them feel weaker towards attacking countries. Furthermore, the founder of the League of Nations, Woodrow Wilson, wasn’t a member as he was the president of USA and they never joined. This meant that no one was there to keep the sanctions in place and they had no one to refer to with their problems.
However, Britain and France’s self interest also had an impact on the failure of the League as they refused to send their own troops to the countries being attacked. This was because in World War 1 both countries together lost 9 million men during battle, they thought that they had lost too many men defending their countries and they didn’t want