Dealing With Iraq

While I am in entire agreement with the historical arguments for resisting aggression and threats to peace set forth by Ivan Berend (Opinion, March 1), I believe that Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria provides an equally and perhaps more compelling lesson for the international community in dealing with Iraq. Germany had some basis for claiming to have been unfairly treated in the Treaty of Versailles, which Hitler quickly and unilaterally violated. Japan, one of the victors of World War I and a member of the Council of the League of Nations, could make no such claim.

When the League of Nations found that the Japanese were not acting in self-defense, it did not order them out of Manchuria; it merely recommended that its conquest not be recognized and that Japanese military pressure on China cease. There was no threat of sanctions, much less of military action. The league failed its first major test, and by its failure, and that of the United States (not then a member), to act, the great powers signaled to the Japanese militarists and other expansionists that the structure of collective security represented by the league and international treaties need not be taken seriously.

HANS ROGGER

History Professor Emeritus

UCLA