The Twenty Year Crisis
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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arise from an international body representing numerous, independent nation-states “The small independent nation-state is obsolete or obsolescent and that no workable international organization can be built on a membership of a multiplicity of nation-states” (Carr viii).The opening section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 pr
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ented by the League were rejected by many of the governments among its members. Instead of treating the situation empirically where they dealt with each nation based on its own specifics, the League resorted to rationalism and tried to distill a series of general principals that were to ideally work for all. As Carr notes “Any social order implies a large measure of standardisation, and therefore of abstraction; there cannot be a different rule for every member of the community. Such standardisation is comparatively easy in a community of several million anonymous individuals conforming more or less closely to recognised types. But it presents infinite complications when applied to sixty known states differing widely in size, in power, and in political, economic and cultural development” (Carr 28).
When it comes to his critique of realist thinking as part of the contributory factor to the failure of international politics between 1919-1939, Carr begins with the concepts offered by Niccolo Machiavelli in reaction to the political views of his own era. Might makes right and ethics to Machiavelli who is considered by Carr to be author of the foundations of realist thinking. We can see the realist’s tendency toward determinism
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Approximate Word count = 1228
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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