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The Twenty Year Crisis

The purpose of E. H. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ War is to demonstrate the flawed thinking regarding politics in English-speaking countries during the twenty years between 1919-1939. According to Carr, in such thinking was demonstrated “the almost total neglect of the factor of power” (Carr vii). Carr’s book explains some of the failure of the liberal thinking of individuals like President Wilson and his Fourteen Points. Wilson’s idea that an international organization could maintain a global peace and order through dialogue is an illusion in light of realistic international relations according to Carr. In fact, Carr’s book is very timely in our modern era because of its contention that an international order can never arise from an international body representing numerous, independent nation-states “The small independent nation-state is obsolete or obsolescent and that no workable international organization can be built on a membership of a multiplicity of nation-states” (Carr viii).

The opening section of the book is dedicated to the emerging science of international relations or politics. Carr examines the ideologies that are behind political views in order to demonstrate that any political science ideology must be a combination of theory and practice, of utopia and reality. Carr argues that the utopian puts sole and primary emphasis on purpose as the only significant fact. The realist, on the other hand, denies any a priori aspect of political theory. Theory is insignificant to the realist. The realist views the facts espoused by the utopian as sheer aspiration in that they are quite different than the reality, i.e. all men are created equal. The realist often becomes rooted in determinism in insisting all human aspiration and will is mechanical. Therefore, Carr argues that both the utopian and the realist must find a happy middle in order to sustain a workable international politics “The political ...

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The Twenty Year Crisis. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 09:56, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1686483.html