The League of Nations ultimately failed because of a lack of enforcement. The United States, the most powerful nation after WWI, never joined due to fears of potentially losing its ability to negotiate internationally. Without some kind of way to punish countries for breaches in international agreements or someone to be the leader of the group, the League really had no power. No country spoke up when Germany militarized or when Japan simply left the League when the League criticized its invasion of Manchuria. The League of Nations was a good idea, but Wilson did not have realistic ideas as to how it should be implemented.
The UN has a security council to serve as its leadership. Another reason that the world has not been plunged into war is the destructive nature of modern warfare. The creation of the atomic bomb has led to nations avoiding large-scale conflicts. There are...
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also close economic ties between nations that would be harmed by war. While pre-WWI Europe had these as well, modern geopolitics is not influenced by international alliances like the world before WWI. Though there are still wars, most developed nations prefer to fight them by proxy—arming one side or the other in a conflict in order to ensure that their interests are met.
We cannot know the answer to this question with certainty. When it comes to historical questions like this, we cannot run experiments to determine exactly what factor causes a particular historical outcome. Instead, we can only speculate. I would argue that the United Nations succeeded where the League of Nations failed because the major countries of the world had more incentive to keep the peace after WWII than they did after WWI.
Groups like the UN can only succeed if their members want them to succeed. They have no real powers of their own to force their members to comply with their wishes. Therefore, they have to hope that their members are really committed to their survival. This was much more true after WWII than after WWI. I will lay out two reasons why this is so.
First, WWI left a number of countries relatively strong and relatively unhappy. Germany was defeated in WWI but was not devastated. It was angry about its treatment in the Treaty of Versailles and it had the ability to easily rebuild its military power. Italy and Japan were on the winning side in WWI, but did not get as much as they wanted in the peace treaties. All of these countries were upset with the status quo and potentially able to do something about their anger. After WWII, these countries (particularly Germany and Japan) were so thoroughly defeated that their people had no desire to try to go to war again. Thus, there were not really any major powers after WWII that were strongly dissatisfied with the status quo.
Second, the potential costs of a Third World War were so high that no one was willing to risk setting off such a war. Both the Soviets and the Americans knew that a war between them could easily become a nuclear war that would threaten the very existence of both countries. They were therefore highly motivated to avoid going to war.
These two factors meant that, after WWII, no major powers were strongly motivated to break up the status quo by starting another large-scale war. Therefore, it was much easier for the UN to exist since its mission was to maintain the status quo.
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