AHC: How might the League of Nations have been more effective?

Most casual historical discussion involving the LoN simply begins and ends with it being called 'too weak' to effectively stand up to the threats of Fascism and the drift towards another world war. I'm interested to know the actual structural weaknesses of the League, and what changes might've been made to make it a stronger organization concerning the avoidance of extremism and war. At the very least, what were the weaknesses identified during the creation of the UN?
 
Peacekeeping forces.

I guess this is a given, "The only real power comes out of a long rifle", after all. It would need a large and reliable source of income to finance it, of course. I think something along the lines of having control over canal zones like Suez and Kiel, using the duty to fund the force.

Also an affective international court system.

What was the basis of the courts IOTL? I know (or think) the UN's courts have the UDHR as the bedrock of a law code, would the League need a similar declaration of human rights?
 
If the Entente powers - under the banner of the LoN - had shown any backbone over the invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 then the LoN might have stood more of a chance. That was really the last straw -- the non-existence of any kind of effective resistance to Mussolini was the death knell of the LoN.
 
The trouble was that Britain believed Mussolini could be brought into an anti German coalition. This was known as the stresa front. Despite being Facist he was not anti Semitic and sought the support of anti Ethiopian Africans.
 
I guess this is a given, "The only real power comes out of a long rifle", after all. It would need a large and reliable source of income to finance it, of course. I think something along the lines of having control over canal zones like Suez and Kiel, using the duty to fund the force.

I can see Kiel being forced on the Germans at Versailles but why would the British ever let anyone else have control over the canal. They didn't give it up until forced by the Suez Crisis.
 
I can see Kiel being forced on the Germans at Versailles but why would the British ever let anyone else have control over the canal. They didn't give it up until forced by the Suez Crisis.

It could be transformed into a British-led concession, being Britain's main financial contribution to the League in exchange for influence on the organization and the assurance of international support in the event that the Canal is threatened. Panama might also have a similar set-up for an alternate US that had an interest in being in the League.
 
It could be transformed into a British-led concession, being Britain's main financial contribution to the League in exchange for influence on the organization and the assurance of international support in the event that the Canal is threatened. Panama might also have a similar set-up for an alternate US that had an interest in being in the League.

The Senate would never have ratified a treaty that included transfer of American territory to some international body that they were very reluctant to engage in even if it the big push was led by the President as shown in OTL when they rejected the treaty.
 
The Senate would never have ratified a treaty that included transfer of American territory to some international body that they were very reluctant to engage in even if it the big push was led by the President as shown in OTL when they rejected the treaty.

I did say it would require an alternate US, one at the very least convinced it could defend its own sphere of hegemony while inside this more powerful League than inside. Well, the US being outside the League has often been cited as a key reason for its lack of authority anyway, so it goes without saying a different US would likely make the League stronger.
 
For the purposes of preventing war, I think the differences between LoN and UN are not particularly significant. The failure of the LoN is primarily a failure of its member states, not a matter of structural weakness, because any such organisation will only be as powerful as its great powers allow it to be. Thus, its only significant war-preventative power is providing a forum for discussion. This is not unimportant, but there is a continuity between the structure and practices LoN and the UN that the UN has vested interested in not acknowledging. Overall, blaming the structure of the LoN is an indirect way for the member states to absolve themselves of their own failures.

It is also not the case that the UN is strictly stronger than the League in terms of de jure powers and obligations. For example, the legal basis of sanctioning Italy in 1935, Article XVI of the Covenant, posits obligations to act in specific ways against a war aggressor. There are no such provisions in the UN. But even here, the UN is a continuation of League policies: Article XVI was first weakened in 1921, and 1935 showed it could be ignored entirely anyway.

The trouble was that Britain believed Mussolini could be brought into an anti German coalition. This was known as the stresa front. Despite being Facist he was not anti Semitic and sought the support of anti Ethiopian Africans.
Additionally, the Britain and France also preferred for Germany and USSR to fight by themselves. Hence they repudiated Molotov and the Soviet attempts to form an anti-Germany alliance with them. Feeling quite pressured about the active Japanese forces in their eastern flank, the Soviets signed Ribbentrop–Molotov instead. A PoD in which the West is more receptive to an alliance with USSR would have had much higher chances of avoiding WWII in Europe than any purely structurally changed alt!LoN.

There's a whole bunch of differences, including of course the US staying out of it. But one aspect is that a non-toothless idealistic League is incompatible with the existence of the British Empire and colonialism in general. During and immediately after WWII, the US dismantled the British Empire, as Roosevelt had a strong anti-British boner and a keen eye for advancing the US's economic interests.

One can point to Abyssinia in 1935, but at that point it's past moot, since in terms of international peace and eroding League authority it's another iteration of Manchuria. The League has already shown its irrelevance in 1931, and to some extent also regarding the Chaco War and the 1932 disarmament conference, so Italy was not surprising. With Germany out and the US not in the League, any substantive disagreement with Italy makes the League de facto a UK-France project, but with UK and France not really sharing a common vision. Even if they had, those two powers can't hold the world, or even Europe, together.

I don't think any legalistic change in the structure of the League is going to overcome the geopolitics of the times. Without another strong power in the League that is keen on peace but also not at all chummy with the British imperial interests, you're not going to effectively check extremism. Without such a power, a much stronger League will be perceived as just an extension of Anglo–Frankish interests, which will just erode its authority and inflame resentment in nations with opposing interests.

Immediately following the Great War, the only plausible power this could be is USA. It'd be a major divergence but also also not completely implausible, as in 1919 some US military and political figures were criticial of the recurring tendency of economic rivals to the British Empire to find themselves in a losing war and likened the Anglo-American relations as analogous to that between Britain and Germany before the Great War. In the coming decade, four separate conferences and two treaties occurred to limit a naval arms race between them.

I guess this is a given, "The only real power comes out of a long rifle", after all. It would need a large and reliable source of income to finance it, of course. I think something along the lines of having control over canal zones like Suez and Kiel, using the duty to fund the force.
While not useless, an international peacekeeping force will always be crippled creature, because the constituent members will never give it sufficient authority to act independently of their own immediate interests.

What was the basis of the courts IOTL? I know (or think) the UN's courts have the UDHR as the bedrock of a law code, would the League need a similar declaration of human rights?
When driven by its major constituents, the League was about two things: a platform for the winners of the Great War to impose their interests on the losers, and relatedly a system to perpetuate colonialism under a new internationalist flavour—and even that was a concession to the pressure from the Americans. Since the League stipulated neither obligations nor enforcement mechanisms for their mandates, it's hard to see this as anything except a continuation of colonialism.

For vision of sovereign powers and their mutual relationships, a more important political precursor was the Atlantic Charter in 1941, in which Roosevelt forced Churchill to commit to dismantling the British Empire in exchange for American help—although not a treaty, the writing was already on the wall, and in a sense the primary thing Roosevelt did was to hasten its demise. ... However, at its core the Great War was about imperialism, and the powers that won it were not going to go without their their slice of the pie. How does one commit to high-minded principles of sovereignty, international defence of territorial integrity, and self-determination while also legitimising colonialism?

I don't think one can effectively ameliorate grassroots social and intellectual movements that were on the rise since the 1880s by a post-WWI international organisation. (If you ever use this in your story, a cute aside is that the Fasci Siciliani movement ca. 1893 was officially characterised by the Italian government as a Russian plot. Trololo.)

I'm interested to know the actual structural weaknesses of the League, and what changes might've been made to make it a stronger organization concerning the avoidance of extremism and war. At the very least, what were the weaknesses identified during the creation of the UN?
It can't really prevent either extremism nor a war involving a great power. Like the UN, at best it could only be generally effective at preventing war between minors if the great powers agree there shouldn't be a war. One shouldn't overestimate the significance of the differences between LoN and UN.

Still, a few differences:
— The Charter had Chapter XI and UN Trusteeship Council (Ch XIII), which effectively put some obligations and enforcement powers compared to LoN's mandates system. Critically, the UN also has the power to periodically visit such territories and investigate itself, which is something the League could not do.
— The UN Charter is disconnected from the peace treaties, unlike the LoN. This effectively made a LoN an organisation to execute the peace treaties. However, starting LoN separately would still entangle it with the peace treaties anyway, so the relevance of this may be exaggerated, but may still have some effect in its perceived moral authority. Similarly, the Covenant was drawn up by a few powers, whereas the Character had direct input from 50 nations, which is not just a matter of what the results were, but also of perceived legitimacy.
— The Charter had three main Councils, with specific roles for each, rather than the very broad powers of the League Council. In particular, the UN Security Council, though most analogous to League Council, became very specialised. ... This was roughly in line with the recommendations of the 1939 Bruce Committee to reform the League, which recommended a splitting of powers to a Central Committee for Economic and Social Questions (UN incarnation: Economic and Social Council).

The UN has a poor track record on cooperation between General Assembly and ECOSOC, or even defining clearly what to what extent their purviews are distinct, or who has any responsibility for actions taken. Or between other Specialised Agencies, for that matter, but the schizophrenic situation between GenAss and ECOSOC is in part ECOSOC was first conceived a subsidiary of GenAss in the 1944 Dumbarton Oaks Conference, but expanded into a principal organ at the 1945 St Francisco Conference, erroneously without changing its subordination in another part of the Charter.
 
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