How would a League of Nations/UN founded before WW1 look like? What changes could it bring?

[Jonah Carter]

It sounded as if

I said that in the same way a person might say that an engine isn’t "meant" to die at 50,000 miles. Obviously you can point to cases where it's happened, but that's hardly what you expect or want when you buy a new car. Sorry if my wording caused any confusion.

That’s interesting, because although a wider war in Europe probably can’t be avoided completely, the existence of such organisation could change the way the war develops by maybe making it a more localised conflict with less consequences or delaying it a few years. If it did prevented total war I’d see it surviving in some way.

I buy that the immediate crisis over Serbia in 1914 could've been avoided through more open communication (though whether an alt-UN could've made that happen is debatable), but I think some sort of pan-European conflict was coming sooner or later. Too many intractable disputes in Europe and too little land for imperial expansion made that inevitable IMO.

 

[extraterrestris]

I said that in the same way a person might say that an engine isn’t "meant" to die at 50,000 miles. Obviously you can point to cases where it's happened, but that's hardly what you expect or want when you buy a new car. Sorry if my wording caused any confusion.

The cases that aren't meant to happen are not necessarily insignificant in how things work normally. For example: the cold war was principally defined by the potentiality of a nuclear exchange that never actually happened.

I think we agree that the UN as an institution meant to facilitate peace has at least two dimensions: as a forum of multilateral diplomacy, and as a means to settle disputes via the security council.
Whether the latter function can be fulfilled depends on the balance of national power. The UN per se is indeed "impotent", and "toothless" here.

In the original post I described the UN as a paper tiger because it falls short of maintaining peace (its intended primary purpose). This may not be "fair", because the UN is built in a way that it never was up to the task, but this is immaterial I would say. The UN is a paper tiger, and I do not misunderstand it in calling it such.

 

[wiltedpleasure]

Hey! I just made this map quickly showing what I think would be this organisation’s membership if it came to be. The non coloured territories are either colonies of members or independent non members. What do you think?

 

[Beatriz]

Hey! I just made this map quickly showing what I think would be this organisation’s membership if it came to be. The non coloured territories are either colonies of members or independent non members. What do you think?

That makes sense

 

[Helmuth48]

An interesting thought, however, a UN-like organization pre-ww1 is very unlikely. It would require member states to respect each other's territorial integrity. That goes against the imperialist interests of Britain, France and Russia in particular. But suppose such an organization is set up at the 1899 Hague Peace Conference.... What could it achieve?

What could it do, for example, with regard to....

• South Africa, where Britain wanted to annex the independent republics during the Second Boer War, committing war crimes against the civilian population (including concentration camps).
• The growing Russian influence in northern China with the Russo-Japanese War as a result.
• Morocco, which the French claim as a protectorate.
• The Ottoman Empire, against which Italy begins an unprovoked war (with the approval of Britain and France).
• The Balkans, where the Balkan states also begin a war against the Ottoman Empire (with Russia's approval).

All in all, I think such a UN-like organization will indeed be a paper tiger....

However, I think that such an organization could have played a role during the July crisis of 1914 and thus possibly prevented WW1. If this organization had the authority to send a mission to Serbia to oversee the investigation of the terrorist network that committed the killings in Sarajevo, there would have been no need for Austria-Hungary to issue an ultimatum. But it is likely that Russia will veto such a mission. Russia (and France) preferred war rather than recognize that Austria-Hungary was entitled to justice.