CYIL vol. 11 (2020)

CYIL 11 (2020) THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS TO THE DEVELOPMENT… Labour Organization, and also the Disarmament Conference. Germany began to arm which was the violation of the Treaty of Versailles, and its provisions restricting armaments ceased to apply in 1936. Therefore, at the beginning of 1936, the Council of the League of Nations decided to suspend the Disarmament Conference and it was not reconvened. Despite the failure of the Disarmament Conference , its certain contribution to future developments in the field of disarmament could be seen. The records of the proceedings included thorough examination of the political, technical, economic, legal, and moral aspects of disarmament. 39 Many of these ideas were revived in the post-World War II period, and many points are still fundamental today. 4. The importance of the League of Nations The importance of the League of Nations lies in the fact that it was the first international organization that represented a system of collective security . However, the development between the world wars showed the weaknesses of its system. The weakest element of the League of Nations system was Article 16. According to the Covenant, aid to the invaded state depended on the will of each member . 40 Military aid was fully dependant on the will of each member. In the case of economic sanctions, which, according to the Covenant, were to take effect automatically, the manner in which they were implemented was left entirely to individual States without any intervention by the League, which undermined its effectiveness. Another problem is the fact that Article 16 of the Covenant of the League of Nations did not specify who’s expression of a violation of the Covenant was binding. It could be concluded that this was a matter for each individual state. In connection to above said, I. Brownlie was very critical of the League of Nations. According to this author: the nineteenth-century practice was relevant to understanding the approach adopted by the League of Nations drawn up in 1919, the provisions of which essentially reflected nineteenth-century thinking. There were innovations, of course, and these novelties took the form of procedural constraints to war. But provided the procedures foreseen in Articles 11 to 17 were exhausted, resort to war was permissible. 41 Similarly, M. Dixon wrote: under the Covenant, war was lawful only if the procedural safeguards laid down in Articles 10 to 16 were observed, although if this was done, a state remained perfectly entitled to achieve its objectives through formal war. Moreover, the Covenant did not place any conditions on the use of ´force short of war´ and since the categorisation of any particular forceful acts as war (or not) was for the acting state alone, the Covenant was not effective in prohibiting to resort to violence to any great degree. 42 As for “short of war” A. Cassese alleged: 39 GOLDBLAT, J. Arms Control . London: Prio SIPRI, Sage Publications, 2002, p. 28. 40 OUTRATA,V. Mezinárodní ochrana bezpečnosti státu, Studie z mezinárodního práva I . [ International Protection of State Security, Studies in International Law I.] Praha 1955, p. 39. 41 BROWNLIE, I. Principles of Public International Law. Seventh Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 729. 42 DIXON, M. Textbook on International Law. 7 th Edition . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 323.

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