25/11/2010 The Twenty Years' Crisis - Wikipedia, th…

The Twenty Years' Crisis

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The Twenty Years' Crisis': 1919-1939 is a book on international relations written

by Edward Hallett Carr (usually known as E. H. Carr). The book was written in the
1930s shortly before the outbreak of World War Two in Europe and the first edition
was published in September 1939, shortly after the war' s outbreak.[1] Carr published
a second edition in 1945. In the revised edition, Carr did not "re-write every passage
which had been in someway modified by the subsequent course of events", but
rather decided "to modify a few sentences" and undertake other small efforts to
improve the clarity of the work.[2] The book is considered a classic in International
Relations theory, and is often seen as one of the first modern realist texts, following
in the tradition of Thucydides and Machiavelli. Carr's analysis begins with post-Great
War optimism, as embodied in the League of Nations declarations and various
international treaties aimed at the permanent prevention of military conflict. He
proceeds to demonstrate how rational, well-conceived ideas of peace and
cooperation among states were undermined in short order by the realities of chaos
and insecurity in the international realm. By assessing the military, economic,
ideological and juridical facets and applications of power, Carr brings harsh criticism
to bear on utopian theorists and others inclined to imagine that lofty rhetoric

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conditions state behavior more forcefully than the exigencies of survival and
competition.

Carr does not, however, consider the prospect of human improvement a lost cause.
At the end of "The Twenty Years' Crisis" he actually advocates for the role of morality
in international politics, and suggests that unmitigated realism amounts to a dismal
defeatism which we can ill afford. The sine qua non of his analysis is simply that in the
conduct of international affairs, the relative balance of power must be acknowledged
as a starting point.

He concludes his discussion by suggesting that "'elegant superstructures’ such as

the League of Nations ‘must wait until some progress has been made in digging the
foundations’, perhaps a reference to the Marxist base and superstructure model.

Responses to Carr
Since its publication, The Twenty Years' Crisis has been an essential book in the
study of international relations. It is still commonly read in undergraduate courses,
and the book is considered "one of the founding texts of classical realism" [3] . The
book has served as the inspiration for numerous other works, such as The Eighty
Years' Crisis, a book written by the International Studies Association as a survey of
trends in the discipline, edited by Michael Cox, Tim Dunne and Ken Booth. In the
introduction to that work, the authors write that "many of the arguments and
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dilemmas in Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis are relevant to the theory and practice
of international politics today".[4] In that same volume, the authors go on to say that
the book "is one of the few books in the 80 years of the discipline which leave us
nowhere to hide." [5]

The response to Carr has not been, however, entirely positive. Caitlin Blaxton
criticized Carr's moral stance in the work as "disturbing".[6] Scholars have also
criticized Carr for his presentation of the so-called realist-idealist conflict. According
to Peter Wilson, "Carr's concept of utopia .. is not so much a carefully designed
scientific concept, as a highly convenient rhetorical device." [7]

The complexities of the text have recently been better understood with a growing
literature on Carr including books by Jonathan Haslam, Michael Cox and Charles
Jones.

References
1. ^ Carr, Edward. The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939. New York: Perennial, 2001.
2. ^ Carr, p. vii (Preface to the Second Edition)
3. ^ [1] (http://www.webasa.org/Pubblicazioni/Tortola_2005_1.pdf)
4. ^ Tim Dunne, Michael Cox and Ken Booth. "Introduction the Eighty Years Crisis". The Eighty
Years' Crisis . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. p. xiii
5. ^ Ibid., p. xiv
6. ^ Wilson, Peter. "The Myth of the 'First Great Debate'". The Eighty Years' Crisis . Cambridge:
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Cambridge University Press, 1998. p. 3
7. ^ Ibid., p. 11
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twenty_Years%27_Crisis"
Categories: 1939 books | History books | Books about international relations |
Political realism | Works by E.H. Carr

This page was last modified on 2 November 2010 at 15:39.

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