ULUSLARARASI İLİŞKİLER TARİHİ - Deneme Sınavı - 8

From early 1920s onwards, there had been a series of attempts at disarmament. The Washington Naval Conference between 1921 and 1922 was one of the first organized efforts to do so.

The world economic crisis of October 1929, also known as the Great Depression, brought an abrupt end to efforts for world peace. Instead, it augured a decade full of agony, uncertainty, distrust and, eventually, conflict.

It carries a nationalist and populist agenda to liberate “brothers and sisters suffering under a foreign dominance” and claims the recovery of ethnic frontier groups lying outside the territory of the nation-state.

A policy Britain and France applied to both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. It was first applied to fascist Italian leader Benito Mussolini, who invaded Abyssinia/Ethiopia in 1935.

Nazi regime is related to Second World War

The Triple Entente was an “association between Great Britain, France, and Russia, the nucleus of the Allied Powers in World War I. It developed from the Franco- Russian alliance that gradually developed and was formalized in 1894, the Anglo- French Entente Cordiale of 1904, and an Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907, which brought the Triple Entente into existence”.

The Balkan wars occurred 1912-1913.

Some of the main causes of The First World War were militarism and armaments, nationalism, and imperialism.

Bolsheviks were formed in Russia.

The League of Nations was founded to guide the post-war world order.

Fourteen Points

Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.

Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.

The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.

Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.

The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike,”

Germany

The League had three principal organs: the Assembly, the Council, and the Permanent Secretariat. The correct answer is D.

The Treaty of Versailles was the most important post-World War I treaty since it determined the fate of Germany. Signed on June 28, 1919, the Versailles Treaty created a new international order, a large goal of which was to keep Germany incapacitated. The correct answer is B.

Due to the Great Depression, economic liberalism lost its influence, and the gold standard system that had long maintained a stable international currency exchange system was abandoned by the US, Britain, France, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia. Britain, the heart of trade liberalization in Europe, abandoned free trade in 1931, while both Britain and France sought economic recovery through a “domestic-oriented and inward-looking” economic policy. Similarly, the US went into a deep isolationism under the President Franklin Roosevelt by minimizing its international transactions (Taylor, 1961: 90). In the wake of economic liberalism’s destruction, protectionism and the command economy gained popularity. The correct answer is A.

Irredentism is a territorial claim by one sovereign state against another, aimed at equalizing the boundaries of its ‘nation’ (or ethnicity) with the borders of the state. It carries a nationalist and populist agenda to liberate “brothers and sisters suffering under a foreign dominance” and claims the recovery of ethnic frontier groups lying outside the territory of the nation-state. It is a version of revisionism whose aim of expanding its territory comes under the pretext of liberating and reuniting with long-lost relatives. The correct answer is D.

Italian Fascism was similar to Nazism in terms of its anti-liberalism, anti-capitalism, antiMarxism, and ultra-nationalism. It was not, however, necessarily anti-Semitic or racist. In fact, Mussolini only adopted anti-Semitism in 1938 after his alliance with Hitler had grown stronger. The correct answer is E.

Japan also called for Asian unification against Western imperialism that would lead to Asian self-sufficiency and prosperity. In reality, it meant Japanese imperial domination in the Far East. According to Hobsbawm, the gates to World War II were opened first in 1931 with the Japanese military take-over and the invasion of Manchuria. The correct answer is E.

Overall, the interwar period is defined by these political and economic factors clearing the path for World War II: • the failure of the Treaty of Versailles, which was seen as unjust and humiliating by the Germans; • the Great Depression, which challenged the world economic order and pushed nation states to self-sufficiency and protectionism; • the rise of Hitler and his revisionist policies; • the unsuccessful French and British appeasement policy towards aggressors; and • the failure of the League of Nations and the concept of collective security. The correct answer is D.