Understanding the intrigues of an international system is as complex as understanding the factors that have influenced its evolution over time. However, it is clear that the international system underwent its most profound changes in the periods of the First and Second World Wars. The stack difference in international relations between the post war period and before the war can only be illustrated by having a detailed overview of the situation after the First World War; which set the stage for the Second World War, and the ensuing international system afterwards.
In fact, it would not be an overstatement to state that the two world wars were the single most influential factors for the international system in the period following the wars whose effects continue to be felt to this day (Markwell, 145). It is perhaps as a result of the level of destruction and despair that the wars brought about to the extent that its place in history and international relations will continue to be a part of humanity for a longtime to come. In determining the position of the state within the international system, it would be critical to have a look at the situation before the war.
It is important to understand that before the WW II, the European imperial nations; Germany, Britain, Spain and the Netherlands, controlled huge parts of other continents with the exception of Northern America. As such, international relations at the time which were European centric did not only affect Europe but the entire world (Andelman, 99).
Following WW II, there was a need to establish an international system that would not only ensure the peace that had been found was preserved but also prevent the emergence of further across the globe. As a result, the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 1919. The treaty not only ended the war between Germany and the Allied powers but also led to the formation of the League of Nations in January 1920. The international body was formed with the primary objective of preventing wars and ensuring world peace. It sought to achieve this through negotiations and arbitration (Markwell, 151).
The League of Nations represented the premier global effort to create an international system; never before had such an initiative bore fruit. The body was therefore successful to the extent that it boasted of fifty eight member states at its peak in 1935. It is especially important that a majority of those founding nations comprised of Europe’s imperial nations which therefore implicitly meant that the entire world was represented in the body due to their control of colonies and protectorates in Africa, Asia and South America. While the Treaty of Versailles which established the League of Nations was signed between Germany and the Allied nations, other central powers such as Italy signed separate treaties. These separate treaties were also geared towards achieving the objectives of the League of Nations.
However, the Treaty of Versailles and the ensuing League of Nations bore inherent weaknesses that ultimately led to some of the states breaking away from the agreements of the treaty and the international body. Some of the states that pulled away included Germany, Japan, Italy and Spain which believed that they would be better off without such an international system which they opined served to limit their ambitions.
One of the causative factors for such nations to pull away especially Germany was the provision of the treaty that required the country to take responsibility for all the damage that occurred during the WW I on behalf of her allies and herself.
The provision was anchored in Article 231 popularly christened the War Guilt Clause. Over and above mandating Germany to pay for the war reparations, the treaty also made the country concede land to the Allied powers as well as disarming. Such concessions were a price too high for Germany to pay even for the sake of a peaceful international system. It was there only a matter of time before Germany broke away from the treaty.
The land Germany was to lose meant that also a part of its population found itself as a part of foreign nations. It is estimated that the country lost over 20, 000 square miles of land. The concessions were not only limited to European territories Germany had acquired but also its overseas colonies and protectorates especially in Africa. It was forced to hand over Cameroon and Togo to the French while Tanganyika (modern day Tanzania) was handed over to the British.
Germany was also prohibited from taking part in the trading of arms while restrictions were placed on the manufacturing of the same. The war reparations the country was expected to pay which the Allied nations contended was the price of international peace was too high for the country. It was almost impossible for the country to shoulder the entire costs single handedly especially because the country had itself experienced massive destruction and turmoil in the final days of the war hence its economy had been tattered. The consequences were even harsher on Germany considering that the Allied nations had to occupy had to occupy part of German territories as a guarantee that the country would indeed repay the reparations.
For the sake of international peace, Germany had been powerless, moneyless and without a sense of sovereignty. Consequently, the ensuing perception in the country was that the costs of being part of an international system far outweighed the benefits of being in one. It is especially the case considering that in the periods before and after the WW I, there had been an exponential rise in the level of nationalism; the principle that each nation has the inherent right to control its own state.
For some of the countries, being part of an international system was tantamount to losing the sources for their resources and markets. It was certainly the case for Japan which had an interest on having control of China and the entire Asia. The League of Nations through its institutions would certainly have mandated nations such as Japan to allow other entrants into its key markets. Furthermore, Japan also competed for these markets together with the U.S and Europe; with the latter being a primary backer of the League of Nations. As such, joining the League of Nations would have been more or less conceding territorial and trade control to other nations.
The other inherent weakness on the part of the League of Nations was that the U.S which had become a major player in the global politics did not join the organization. It is despite its President Wilson Woodrow being at the fore front of the calls for a well-choreographed international system to guard international peace. At the time, a majority of the senators in the U.S Congress openly refused to support the international body. The main argument was centered on self-interest since the Congress held that by joining the League of Nations it would be akin to the U.S losing its sovereignty. As such, the U.S Congress viewed such a move as costly when compared to the benefits that would be brought about by international peace.
The League of Nations also lacked its own military to enforce peace treaties and prevent the outbreak of wars. As a result, it more than not had to rely on the great powers; Britain, Germany, France and Italy, to provide the requisite military assistance. However, more often than not, the objectives of such peace missions were not consistent with the national interests of the great powers. As such, preserving national interest was of a greater priority and benefit than agreeing to maintain international peace through the League of Nations. Ultimately, the need to preserve national interest and benefits led to the emergence of the Second World War.
The motion for the Second World War was set in pace in 1933 when Hitler and the Nazi party took control of Germany. They implemented fascist principles that were meant to spite the Treaty of Versailles and the foreign proponents of the same more so the Allied nations and their partners. Once more, the League of Nations failed to stop the ensuing war which began with Germany’s annexation of Poland. The WW II had considerable effects on not only Europe but the entire world (Andelman, 73). However, perhaps the most important outcome was the decline of the hitherto great powers of France, Britain, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands. It was followed by the rise of the USSR and the U.S as the defacto superpowers of the world.
For the old great powers, they had experienced huge losses to their respective economies. Roads and other critical infrastructure had been decimated. Industrial and agricultural production had effectively ground to a halt. The situation was even worse considering that there was need to ration not only essentials such as food and medical supplies but also non-essentials such as clothing. It seems to illustrate the huge impact that the war had had on the region. Japan had experienced had experienced huge territorial losses especially in the Koreas and Manchuria. Thousands of people had been displaced from their homes and there was a massive decrease in the standards of living in Europe (Markwell, 178).
This was especially the case for Germany and Japan which were forced to implement de-industrialization schemes with the objective being to prevent any subsequent rise in aggression from the two states that were considered the major antagonists. Perhaps the most important aspect was the change in attitude when compared to the aftermath of the First World War. Following the end WW I, the Allied powers conspicuously celebrated their victory while to the vanquished countries such as Germany and Italy, there was anger and resentment to the extent that revenge became the main motivation for rebuilding their countries.
However, things were remarkably different after the Second World War. The European people had become psychologically exhausted of war. The idea of nationalism that they had held on so dearly in the years during and after the First World War was decimated. To them, the co-relation between nationalism and success no longer existed. Thus, following the WW II the only preoccupation was reconstruction. Europeans were willing to accept peace at any cost even if it meant having to integrate with their enemies.
There was therefore a growing realization that interdependence was integral for the survival of any nation. Consequently, international relations acquired a well defined global character. It ultimately led to the formation of peaceful and coordinated international relations. Perhaps the most important causative effect of the birth of an international system was the Marshall Plan of the U.S in 1948. Christened the Economic Recovery Program, the plan was an initiative of the United States to provide reconstruction aid to Europe in order to restore the levels of the standards of living that the continent had experienced prior to the war.
The most important aspect of the plan in relation to the formation of an international system was the removal of trade barriers among the European nations. The approach of the plan was neutral as it extended its assistance to even countries in Eastern Europe that had been aligned to the Soviet Union though they rejected the same (Andelman, 78).
The conditional aid that required the European nations to drop trade barriers was the first step towards European integration. It created the foundation for the formation of the Organization for European and Economic co-operation (OEEC) in 1948. The organization was formed with the intention of helping to administer the programs initiated the Marshall Plan. It later formed the basis for the formation of the European Free Trade Area. All these efforts were geared towards the reconstruction of Europe. However, by the turn of the 1960s, the reconstruction phase had effectively come to an end as Europe’s economy had experienced a rebound once more. There was therefore a need to ensure that such organizations metamorphose into international bodies that would ensure continued international peace.
The European Union (E.U) which covers huge parts of continental Europe is one such organization fashioned along the lines of an international system. The European Union has over the years experienced exponential growth from the initial six founding member states to twenty eight as of 2016. The motivation behind the formation of the organization was to make the idea of war in Europe unattractive and to champion integration and democracy as the alternative to war.
It followed the 1941 Europe Declaration that led to the signing of the Treaty of Paris and subsequently the Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Community (EEC). The European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC) was perhaps the biggest indicator of the decline in nationalism and the subsequent rise in the level of interdependence. It was following the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks by the U.S on Japan and the subsequent rise of the U.S and the Soviet Union as the global powers. It established the possibility of an all out nuclear war. Therefore, Europe viewed integration through the EAEC as the alternative to shield itself from such an eventuality (Andelman, 61).
The attitude is in stark contrast to the pre-war period where national sentiment would have overridden the integration sentiment. The distinct organizations of continental Europe coalesced to form a stronger European Union that has over the years grown from merely a European economic area to a single currency market with a European parliament and commission to oversee the administration of the same as of 2016. In light of the above, it is evident that the European Union would not have come to fruition were it not for the Second World War.
The United Nations (UN) came into being following the evolution of the League of Nations. The placement of the UN as an international system was cemented with the signing of declarations during wartime Allied conferences in Moscow, USSR and Tehran in Iran in 1943. The importance of the international body is grounded on the fact that the world’s major powers of the time; the U.S and the USSR took part in the initiative (Andelman, 66). It was in recognition of the fact that despite harboring ideological differences, there was need to foster unity as points of convergence far outweighed the rationale for divergence.
As opposed to the League of Nations, the UN acted as a better embodiment of the international system as it was not viewed as being elitist which since many countries joined the organization. However, the fact that there were several nations joining the UN can be attributed to the weakening of the European imperial powers that led to a rise in the clamor for independence among their colonies and protectorates especially in Asia, Africa and South America.
However, perhaps the greatest push towards the idea of an international system after the Second World War was the ensuing Cold War. The Cold War was a state of relations between the western hemisphere led by the U.S and the eastern hemisphere led by the USSR. Te Cold War led to the evolution of international relations from being governed by a balance of power to one in which the balance of domination became the primary factor. As such, the U.S pushed for the formation of international organizations to be part of the international system such as the IMF, World Bank and GATT the predecessor of the World Trade Organization (WTO). To that extent, there have been arguments that the world has moved from a bipolar system established after the Second World War to one that is exclusively unipolar in favor of the United States due to its military and economic strength coupled with its perceived control of most of these international organizations.
The moral and physical burdens of the First and Second World Wars were placed on Germany. It was mostly due to the need for the country to distinguish itself from the rest of the European nations. However, the E.U and to some extent the UN and other international organizations provided a context for the country to return to the realm of the international community. As an illustration of the shift away from the national and military might, Germany today is the least contributor in relative terms to E.U’s military affairs despite being the union’s largest economy.
As such, the years following the WW II led to the integration of the idea of sovereignty and nationalism. One of the major issues that arise thereon is whether greater integration is akin to a country losing its sovereignty (Markwell, 155). However, it has become increasingly evident that the survival of both sovereign states and the international system is positively co-related with the extension and pursuit of national interest. Therefore, sovereignty and an international system rather than being conflicting courses for national interest are actually interdependent. The international system has led to the emergence of other schools of ideology such as non-alignment and neutrality. However, which the ideology, it is clear that an international system rather than stifle the benefits of a state actually benefits states more.
An illustration of such benefits is that more than six decades following the Second World War, a majority of the major international conflicts have been contained preventing them from growing to the extent of the First and Second World Wars. The understanding of the status of a country within an international system is mainly divided in the period following the First World War and the following the Second World War. In period of the WW I, the idea of nationalism was the primary motivation for international relations.
Nationalism in its inherent nature forces countries to be inward looking in terms of their policies. Consequently, there are forced to isolate themselves more from the rest of the international community. It was certainly the case for Germany. The change in perceptions in the idea of nationalism following the Second World War was brought about more by the psychological exhaustion suffered by the Europeans as a result of war rather than any concrete shift in ideology (Markwell, 161). However, it is clear that irrespective of the cause of the change in ideology, the ground had been laid for the push towards increased integration of Europe which eventually culminated in the formation of an international system to oversee the world’s affairs as represented by international organizations such as the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN).
Works Cited
Andelman, David A. A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today. London:
J. Wiley, 2008
Markwell, Donald. John Maynard Keynes and International Relations. Oxford: Oxford
