ABSTRACT
After the traumatic brutality and tragedy of the Great War, it was inevitable that the victorious powers would need to assess closely the circumstances that allowed such an event to occur. Woodrow Wilson’s vision gained traction in the post-war era due in no small part to the emergence of the United States as a world power. The disconnect between the idealism of Article 10 and the limited practical machinery laid down by the articles that followed, and the subsequent weak enforcement of rules created by these articles, meant that, in reality, it did not abolish the right of states to go to war. During the lifetime of the League, states who resorted to war did not seek to rely on an inherent legal right to wage war, rather they made no mention of law at all, denied the existence of war in the formal sense or used self-defence as a justification.
