ULUSLARARASI İLİŞKİLER TARİHİ

The Fourteen Points include references to open diplomacy, freedom of the seas, the reduction of national armaments, the removal of trade barriers between nations, impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, the readjustment of territorial borders based on the right to self-determination - especially within the former German, Ottoman, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian empires-, the rights of minorities in those states, and the creation of “a general associations of nations” known as the League of Nations.

The principal actors, known as the “Big Four”, were Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States.

The committee on the Covenant of the League of Nations was set up under the chairmanship of US President Wilson whose top priority was to create a permanent international organization for the postwar world order.

The League was exposed to infinite complications since it aimed to bring a universal standard to the relations of more than sixty member states “differing widely in size, in power, and in political, economic and cultural development” (Carr, 1946: 28).

There was no common enemy to necessitate a common military strategy.

The Locarno Pact refers to “[t]he series of treaties concluded at Locarno in Switzerland in October 1925. The most important was the Rhineland Pact, signed by France, Germany and Belgium and guaranteed by Britain and Italy.

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.

The Soviet Union, who remained just beyond the capitalist world, were mostly immune to the effects of the Great Depression.

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.

US foreign policy in the 1930s relied on isolationism.

The Interwar period is between 1919 and 1939.

"Big Four”, were Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States.

While 44 countries became the original members of the League, the number increased in the interwar years and 63 states became its members by 1939.

The Weimar Republic was the unofficial name to describe the German government from 1918 to 1933.

The Locarno Pact refers to “[t]he series of treaties concluded at Locarno in Switzerland in October 1925

Appeasement is the policy of buying off a potential aggressor through negotiation and compromise in order to prevent an armed conflict, a policy Britain and France applied to both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

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.

The Nazi Party, was founded in 1920.

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.

Spanish Civil war started in 1936 and lasted 3 years, ended in 1939.