The Story of International Relations, Part Two

From 29 May to 2 June 1933, the ISC met in London, just two weeks before the World Economic Conference was scheduled to open there. Discussion of the Open Door and Imperial Preference saw Italian and German speakers raise the issues of emigration and access to markets and raw materials. An Italian speaker championed the Open Door, observing that it mitigated the disadvantages of an uneven distribution of colonies. The conference heard that due to the national revolution in Germany, the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik, the host of the ISC’s founding conference, had been transferred to the new ministry of propaganda. A French plan for the international organisation of force inspired the ISC’s choice of collective security as the topic for its 1933–1935 study cycle. Between 14 and 26 August, the IPR’s Fifth Biennial Conference was held at Banff under the heading of Economic Conflict and Control in the Pacific. In addition to economic matters, the conference discussed such concerns as the need to fill in the lacunae in the world’s peace machinery as it pertained to the Pacific given Japan’s pending withdrawal from the LON and the continuing absence of the United States and the USSR from it.

Germany’s withdrawal from Geneva refocused attention on the question of mutual guarantees. From 24 to 26 May 1934, the ISC’s preliminary conference on collective security met at the Sorbonne. Germany is not represented. Certain continental European participants insist that collective security should be approached from the angle of supporting remedies against aggression and not that of sovereignty. Certain Britons argue that any discussion of sanctions and international police must be preceded by a critical examination of collective security and an account of the political aspirations expressed by the terms sovereignty and independence. Italian representatives maintained that collective security is anti-historical and anti-human: it is a futile attempt to freeze the course of history and stifle the pursuit of essential interests and vital needs. The conference discussed the importance of defining aggression given the use of the potentially restrictive term war in the Covenant and Pact of Paris. In addition to a debate concerning the question of peace enforcement such as in the form of an air police, the discussion of collective security lead to a debate concerning treaty revision. Some championed revisionism as a means of war-prevention whereas others insisted that it is destructive of international law.

In June 1935, the ISC’s second conference on collective security heard the following from Italian, American and German delegates respectively: that the post-war settlement could not withstand the forces of history calling for change; that a strong reason why the United States wished to isolate itself from European affairs was because they did not want to help maintain a particular status quo; that there must be a discussion of the grievances of dissatisfied states before there could be a discussion of the problem of collective security. The ISC then decided that the topic of its next study-cycle would be peaceful change. On 3 October, Italy announced that its forces in Eritrea had been ordered to mobilise so as to take the necessary measures for ‘self-defence’ against Ethiopia. On 7 October, the LON Council found that a ‘state of war’ existed between Ethiopia and Italy and it had been resorted to by Italy. A patchwork of economic and financial sanctions followed. On 9 May 1936, four days after Italy’s occupation of Addis Ababa, Mussolini boasted of the creation of a Fascist empire. On 4 July, the LON Assembly announced the termination of sanctions: the LON was completely humiliated.