Politics & Power Quote by Hjalmar Branting

Branting is doing the statesman’s tightrope walk: defending a fragile new institution without pretending it’s already strong. The sentence is built around a refusal of fatalism. “Not inevitably bound” is careful, lawyerly language meant to pry open political space. If decline isn’t destiny, then member states - especially smaller ones - can be shamed, pressured, and organized into making the League more than a decorative talking shop.

The subtext is aimed at two audiences at once. To skeptics who saw the League as a fig leaf for victors, Branting concedes the danger: the League could become “an impotent appendage,” a vivid image of a body part that moves only when attached to someone else’s muscle. To member states tempted to free-ride, he signals accountability: degeneration happens “from time to time” because governments choose expediency over collective rules. This isn’t a prophecy; it’s a warning delivered in a calm voice.

Context matters. Branting, a Swedish Social Democrat and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, spoke from the perspective of a small, neutral country watching Europe’s post-WWI settlement harden into rival blocs. The League’s credibility was already shadowed by great-power vetoes, uneven enforcement, and the conspicuous absence or ambivalence of key players. His phrasing anticipates what would become the central critique of interwar internationalism: institutions don’t fail only because they’re badly designed; they fail because powerful states treat them as instruments, and weaker states resign themselves to that reality.

Branting’s intent is essentially political theater with stakes: keep the idea of collective security alive long enough to make it real.