The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939: Reissued with a new preface from Michael Cox

346 Pages·2.312 MB·English

by  E.H. Carr (auth.), Michael Cox (eds.)

E . H . C A RR
Reissued with a new preface
from
MICHAEL COX
Endorsements for This Book
‘In the twentieth century, E.H. Carr was one of the most original and interesting
thinkers about International Relations. Carr’s insights into the nature of interna-
tional affairs warrant attention. Everyone interested in international politics should
read this book.’
—Robert Gilpin, Eisenhower Professor Emeritus of Public and
International Affairs, Princeton University
‘The Twenty Years’ Crisis is one of those books that somehow never goes out of date.
It brings into sharp focus a lot of core questions that anyone grappling with the com-
plexities of International Relations needs to confront, and it sets a standard of clarity
and vigour of prose that has few competitors in the contemporary IR literature.’
—Barry Buzan, Professor Emeritus of International Relations,
The London School of Economics and Political Science
‘Apparently overtaken by events in the very days of its first publication, Carr’s The
Twenty Years Crisis has never been more pertinent to the discussion of International
Relations relations than it is today: in a world beset by the twin extremes which
he excoriated, a craven and short-sighted realism on the one hand, and an unan-
chored and irresponsible idealism on the other, Carr’s astute arguments should be
central to our analysis of, and response to, the world of the twenty-first century.’
—Fred Halliday
Now is the time to relaunch The Twenty Years’ Crisis as a basis for rethinking the
problem of world order in a time of greater complexity and uncertainty. [Carr’s]
exposure of the power relations underlying doctrines of the harmony of interests
is especially pertinent to a serious understanding of the ideology of globalization
today, while his careful discussion of the need to balance power and morality warns
against the hypocrisy of contemporary great-power crusading.’
—Professor Robert Cox, Emeritus Professor,
York University, Canada
‘The net influence of the book…is mischievous.’
—Norman Angell
‘Brilliantly reasoned.’
—R.W. Seton-Watson
‘A brilliant, provocative and unsatisfying book.’
—Martin Wight
‘Carr is the consummate debunker who was debunked by the war itself.’
—Arnold Toynbee
‘Professor Carr has shown the entire inadequacy of Professors Zimmern and
Toynbee: who will demonstrate the entire inadequacy of Professor Carr?’
—Richard Crossman
The Twenty Years’
Crisis, 1919–1939
E.H. Carr
Reissued with a new preface from Michael Cox
ISBN 978-1-349-95075-1 ISBN 978-1-349-95076-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95076-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958910
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exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
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Author Biographies
E. H. Carr was born in 1892, joined the Foreign Office in 1916 and resigned 20
years later to become the fourth Woodrow Wilson Professor in the Department of
International Politics at the University College of Wales Aberystwyth. There he
published seven books including The Twenty Years’ Crisis in 1939. The following
year he joined the Ministry of Information before moving on to become the
Assistant Editor of The Times. In 1945 he began work on his massive History of
Soviet Russia. He was elected a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1995.
The author of the bestselling What Is History? in 1961, Carr died in 1982 at the
age of 90.
Michael Cox is Professor Emeritus of International Relations at the London
School of Economics and Director of LSE IDEAS, the world ranked Think Tank.
Author and editor of over 25 books and a leading specialist on the life and work of
E.H Carr, he is editor of Palgrave’s flagship journal of IR, International Politics, as
well as its successful book series, Rethinking World Politics. He is completing a
history of the LSE.
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A New Preface from Michael
Cox, 2016
A Carr for the Twenty-First Century
For a generation which never really experienced the Cold War, or who came to
intellectual maturity long after it had become but a distant memory, it is dif-
ficult, if not impossible, to convey what an extraordinary shock it was to nearly
all of us to see the certainties of nearly 40 years simply evaporate before our very
eyes between 1989 and 1991. Of course, for those who had always preached
that there was no rational alternative to the market, the collapse of an old order
underpinned as it was by what Ronald Reagan had earlier called an ‘evil empire’
could only be welcomed. Yet others were not so certain. Indeed, one of the more
famous doyens of academic International Relations (IR) warned both liberals and
triumphalists that the world might soon be missing the Cold War or at least
should not be welcoming its passing with such gusto.1 He was right to sound a
note of warning. Indeed, when the demise of Soviet power was followed in turn
by the tragic collapse of former Yugoslavia, genocide in Rwanda, economic catas-
trophe in ‘reforming’ Russia itself, a horrifying but successful attack on the USA
in 9 September 2001, the Iraq war, the great financial crash of 2008, and then,
to cap it all, a revolt in North Africa which began with such high expectations
but very soon threatened to destroy the state system in the Middle East, then
it was palpably obvious that, that much heralded ‘new world order’ announced
back in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush was not about to be realized any
time soon.
Meanwhile, the discipline of IR, having first tried to come to terms with the
end of a bipolar order it had for decades assumed to be stable, has been strug-
gling ever since to make sense of an international system which in one sense has
never been so peaceful—great power war we are told is a thing of the past—but at
another so full of so many risks. The world today may be richer, more democratic,
more middle class and just a little less scarred by the kinds of poverty once assumed
to be normal in the ‘Third World’. Globalization has delivered something as
economists constantly remind us. But never has this same world been so unequal,
or, its future prospects apparently so uncertain. Indeed, it is difficult to know
1 John J. Mearsheimer, ‘Why We Will Soon Miss The Cold War’. The Atlantic Monthly,
266(2), 35–50, August 1990.
ix
x A New Preface from Michael Cox, 2016
where to start, with all manner of danger arising—or so we have been warned—
from either the long-term decline of the West, a ‘new’ Cold War between Russia
and the West, and of course by the apparently irresistible rise of China which
according to some pundits at least (including some in China itself) can only end
in tragedy.2 Add to this the threat caused by the failure of several states close to
Europe and the possible collapse of the European project itself, then it is fairly self-
evident why many are now insisting that we are living through seriously dangerous
and uncertain times with possibly much worse to come.3
Amidst all this change it is perhaps reassuring that a number of more historically
minded scholars have returned to look in a more systematic way at some of the
early classics of the discipline. Whether this is because they are finding it impossible
to make sense of the real world with all the new theories that have been served up
on the academic menu over the past two decades, or simply because they believe
that the past (and an older) generation of writers has something to tell us, does not
really matter much. The fact of the matter is that since the early 1990s, and amidst
all the turmoil, there has been a veritable flood of significant work on some of the
founding fathers of IR.4
One of these ‘fathers’ of course is Hans J. Morgenthau. Born into a ‘morbid
age’ in which civilization itself seemed to be on the brink of collapse,5 Morgenthau
later tried to draw upon his own experiences as a German Jew, an émigré, and a
representative of a generation of European thinkers who had experienced fascism
first-hand, to help explain the harsh character of the ‘real’ world to an America
which he felt had neither the wisdom nor the experience to run the international
system effectively. Erudite, ambitious and immensely well connected—a would-be
‘Prince’ to those who wielded power—Morgenthau was IR for a generation of
students in the West after the war. Yet influential though he may well have been—
even critics still talk of his work as having been ‘path breaking’6—by the time
of his death in 1980, his intellectual star had faded amongst an up-and-coming
generation who regarded him as something of a pre-theoretical ‘has been’ who
had little interest in morality, even less in peace, and whose realism had either led
to an uncritical defence of power politics (untrue) to a justification for US expan-
sionism (even less true) or refusing to think about any possible alternative to the
2 See the early warning by John Mearsheimer, ‘China’s Unpeaceful Rise’. Current History,
105, 160–162, April 2006.
3 See Ken Booth, Theory of World Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007,
especially pp. 396–426.
4 See Duncan Bell, ‘International Relations: The Dawn of a Historiographical Turn’.
British Journal of Politics and International Relations 2001, 3(1), 115–126.
5 See Richard Overy, The Morbid Age: Britain and the Crisis of Civilization, 1919–1939.
London, Penguin Books, 2010.
6 See Robert Kaufman, ‘Morgenthau’s Unrealistic Realism’. Yale Journal of International
Affairs, 1(2), 24–38, Spring 2006. http://www.yale.edu/yjia/articles/Vol_1_Iss_2_
Spring2006/kaufman217.pdf