It is collective security: it is the very existence of the League of Nations. It is the confidence that each State is to place in international treaties. It is the value of promises made to small States that their integrity and their independence shall be respected and ensured. It is the principle of the equality of States on the one hand, or otherwise the obligation laid upon small Powers to accept the bonds of vassalship. In a word, it is international morality that is at stake. Have the signatures appended to a Treaty value only in so far as the signatory Powers have a personal, direct and immediate interest involved?
No subtlety can change the problem or shift the grounds of the discussion. It is in all sincerity that I submit these considerations to the Assembly. At a time when my people are threatened with extermination, when the support of the League may ward off the final blow, may I be allowed to speak with complete frankness, without reticence, in all directness such as is demanded by the rule of equality as between all States Members of the League?
Apart from the Kingdom of the Lord there is not on this earth any nation that is superior to any other. Should it happen that a strong Government finds it may with impunity destroy a weak people, then the hour strikes for that weak people to appeal to the League of Nations to give its judgment in all freedom. God and history will remember your judgment.
-Haile Selassie, addressing the League of Nations in 1936
As Mark Twain observed, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes." Listening to President Zelensky's speech to Congress yesterday, a multi-media masterwork of tugging at heartstrings and moral imperatives, I couldn't help but think back to Halie Selassie's unfruitful trip to the League of Nations in 1936. Selassie came to Geneva that year as the King of Ethiopia, seeking assistance in repelling an invasion by the Italian fascists that bordered on genocide. Mussolini's troops fared poorly in the early going, and soon began to resort to targeting civilians, including with chemical weapons. Ethiopia's military had performed surprisingly well, but they could not hold out indefinitely without the help of their global neighbors, us.
Selassie supposedly concluded his speech by proclaiming, "It is us today, it will be you tomorrow..."
Selassie's appearance before the League was a public relations triumph, a dignified head of state reminding the world that our continued peace and prosperity lies in collective security, and that the failure to take a stand against fascist aggression there in the Ethiopian desert would pave the way for more troubles, more war as the evildoers become emboldened.
Then, nothing happened. Ethiopia fell, Selassie fled in exile. The Italians captured and executed his two sons-in-law. The feckless response of the League became its downfall, and with the collapse of any sense of international order, of treaty obligations that kept the demon of fascism in its cage, war engulfed the countries of all those flaccid diplomats who sat there listening to Selassie but failed to act.
And here we are again. I cringed at the fawning, misty-eyed reception Zelensky received from Pelosi and McConnell and the whole lot of them, standing ovations greeting a very weary looking head of state there onscreen in a military olive t-shirt. He quoted King. He described just a Selassie did nearly ninety years ago the terrorizing of his citizens from the air. Unlike Selassie, Zelensky was able to show them what was happening, present images of dead children being clawed out of the rubble, of Ukrainian communities at peace juxtaposed with those same spaces afire and filled with ordinary people fleeing in terror.
This is our moment, as Russia plays the role of Italy to China's Germany. One fascist power being allowed to bungle through butchering a neighbor in the name of conquest and settling old scores, while the other, the truly dangerous actor, watches and learns the lesson that the most we're willing to do is drop a check in the collection plate, and not bloody the aggressor's nose while there's still time.
I hope I'm wrong.
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