The Twenty Years' Crisis

The Twenty Years' Crisis: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations was written by E. H. Carr in 1939, with the second edition (ISBN: 0333069137) following it in 1946.

Chapter 1 is an exploration of epistemology of political science. The author's position is that a political science is necessarily a study of both what is and what ought to be. Persuading others about how to think about politics is itself a political act, and in turn influences politics. Still, the author differentiates "infantile", "utopian" theories that describe how things ought to be without regard for how things are, and scientific theories that describe how things are and infer how to make things more like they ought to be.

Political Philosophy in a Historic Context

Author argues that there was no interest in international relations until WW1. At most there was an awareness of/anxiety towards war, and the best remedy to that was professional (not popular) diplomacy.

• Secret treaties were accepted/acceptable.

  • Franco-Russian treaty was secret, and Radicals in 1898 unsuccessfully argued for disclosure.

• Some politicians, esp. Labour, took idealistic stances against war in general.

The WW1 regime was designed according to utopian ideals of:

• equation of economic product and virtue
  • utilitarianism
  • If economic product per capita is up, then the population is better off, and this is a virtuous good thing.
• Long-run equilibria in international markets for goods and capital flows. Furthermore, that these long-run equilibria reflect a mutually beneficial division of labor according to comparative advantages.
  • With the above, free trade is virtuous.
  • Nationalism movements and protectionist politics are either greedy and self-defeating (in the moment) or localized expressions of a wider, mutually beneficial market shift that could have been better planned and coordinated (if they have rendered benefits).

    • The evidence: UK thrived for free trade policies.

    • The contrary evidence: U.S. and Germany thrived for protectionist policies.

      • Free trade proponents explain this away as a need for infant industry policies that can be phased out, which utopian proponents gladly accept as further evidence that planning and coordination are needed.
• equation of economic product and popular opinion
  • 'vote your interest'

  • In a Westphalian regime, wherein all of the land powers are monarchial, it can seem like the few democracies are less likely to wage war.

• popular opinion as a binding power, nationally and internationally

For example:

• Wilson designed the League of Nations with no coercive element. Conflict resolution was handled though condemnation and appeals to public opinion.

• The new constitution of Weimar Germany, and the created constitutions/constitutional monarchies propped up in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, etc., could not deter authoritarianism.

• Failures of these systems is not a purely retrospective exercise; contemporaries noticed the problems but viewed them through a similarly utopian lens.

  • Zimmern pointed to "muddled thinking" (irrationality?)

  • Toynbee pointed to wickedness/sin

Altogether, the theory was that free trade, democracy, and world peace are eventualities when the public is informed.

This is contrary to the contemporary evidence. Namely, Polish and Czechoslovaks owed the existence of their states to war. The idea seems to come from Western bias.

The author also explores several realist critiques of utopian theories. The common element is that coercive government is virtuous, as opposed to characterizing conflict as a coordination problem.

• Machivelli and Bacon were both bureaucrats and therefore applied the inherently empirical lens of bureaucracy to their studies of politics. See above: professional (not popular) diplomacy.

• Bodin, Hobbes, and Spinoza all came to the conclusion that government is based on coercive force.

• Several structural theories of history emerged:

  • Hegel had a geographic model of history

  • Hughes had a national interest model

  • Hegel had a geist model

  • Marx, Lenin had a class model

  • In more plain terms, Croce argued that history must be analyzed philosophically, because an objective/scientific history isn't possible. Failures are always obvious in retrospect; successes always justify the means.

  • In any case, the historic mission is virtuous and a government is virtuous by being a coercive force for that mission.

• UK and U.S. imperialism are founded is self-assurance that they are virtuous, and that the world can be made more virtuous by being a coercive force over more of it.

• Utopian theory is instead a manifestation of a dominant social class justifying the status quo.
  • laissez faire
  • World peace and internationalism must be understood in the context of who is the hegemon.

    • Hitler and Mussolini adopted the language of peacekeeping in the Anti-Comintern Pact, First and Second Vienna Awards, etc.

    • Japan and pan-Asianism

To be clear, author is not advocating for these theories. He argues that determinism is the trap of realism.

• Positive analysis too easily slips into justifying the way things are.
• The supposition of a historic eventuality or equilibrium of interests is a direct violation of the empirical framework.
• A model based in history/class/whatever lacks causative variance, i.e. is predicting government policies from static parameters.

Carr's Political Philosophy

Politics is about power, and war is an intrinsic part of international relations.

The first factor of power is military strength.

Wars are fought to forestall fighting a war with worse odds later.

• The Westphalian system and the shifting defense alliances that emerged after the War of Spanish Succession may seem to be opposite world orders, but a commonality is that states were motivated by self-defense.

• British imperialism was, in part, just a scheme to claim land before France could.

• The arbitrary division of German colonies in the Treaty of Versaillles was largely just a scheme to forfeit German land claims.

Economic strength is a factor of power, if only for the production of armaments. The policies to consider for increasing power are (1) autarky and (2) economic influence over other states.

The ability to persuade is a factor of power. Men must be convinced to go to war.

• On the surface, democratic governments conform to public opinion rather than persuading anyone, while autocratic governments coerce the public to conform.

Public opinion is in fact dynamic, and any government's ability to coerce is limited, so really persuasion is everywhere. Propaganda is the policy for increasing power.

Law is merely the reflection of politics. The only meaningful international laws are the ones that carry the interest of international powers.

Author predicts that if the League of Nations had sanctioned Italy for the invasion of Abyssinia and removed troops by force, the necessary next step would be occupation of all Italian foreign holdings, which certainly would lead to formal war.

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