The American phrase ‘manifest destiny’ was used to encapsulate the culmination of the process of the expansion of the early American nation into Florida, California and Texas; the Japanese harnessed this philosophy voicing their ‘biological necessity’ to expand. The strong states will insist on the validity of treaties that concur with their national interests, whilst emerging powers, like Japan, will renounce those treaties when they feel the climate allows them to do so. It was a revolt of workers, sparked off by the atrocity of ‘Bloody Sunday’, and leading to the election of the first Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. Article 10 of the League, for example, was established to preserve the status quo, whilst Article 19 was concerned with review of the status quo. Context: Edward Hallett Carr (28 June 1892 – 5 November 1982) was a British historian, international relations theorist, and historiography expert (the process by which historical knowledge is obtained and transmitted). He was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School in London, and Trinity College, Cambridge. In summary, through examining both the Locarno Era as a whole and the League of Nations, it can be said that E.H Carr’s theory of realism is valid to a certain extent when examining the past considering the circumstances at which point these institutions failed. Before you download your free e-book, please consider donating to [lxvi] James Barros, Betrayal from Within: Joseph Avenol, Secretary-General of the League of Nations, 1933-1940, (New Haven, 1969), p. 27. One writer, E.H Carr, would certainly adopt such a stance. Carr’s book occupies a special place in the field of IR for two reasons. His book The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939 argues that the fundamental cause of World War II was weight placed on international institutions -- most notably, the League of Nations and international law -- for maintaining order. [xxxv] The final nail in the coffin was the withdrawal and/or non-involvement of crucial global players such as Germany and America. The League of Nations, which the United States never joined, and from which Japan and Germany withdrew, could not prevent the outbreak of the Second World War. * This essay is based on the eleventh E. H. Carr Memorial Lecture, delivered at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, on 16 February 1995. It contains 179,175 words in 288 pages and was updated on October 10th 2020. 527-528. Carr and the Crisis of Twentieth-Century Liberalism', pp. [lxvii] Barros, Betrayal from Within, p. 27. This I took philosophically. Through such events, from the departure of Germany and Japan from the League in 1933 to the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 the League was tested, and failed to rise to the challenge. It is intriguing that this was only seen clearly with the benefit of hindsight (with the exception of Carr). The strength of realism lies in exposing the weakness of utopian thought. 41 Michael Cox, 'E.H. He was later assistant adviser for League of Nations affairs. 42 Accordingly, the fact that his foreign policy ultimately failed to win widespread approval According to Carr, ‘international politics are always power politics; for it is impossible to eliminate power from them.’. [xxxiii] Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919-1939, p. 12. Henig asserts that far from the League being doomed from day one, the entire philosophy of the post-war settlement encapsulated in the Versailles Treaty was misplaced and the contributing factor to the outbreak of World War Two. 1 E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis 1919-1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1939), p. 19. ‘The pursuit of disarmament was central to the work of the League of Nations throughout its existence’, but it ‘was never able to overcome the more powerful imperatives of national self-interest.’[lxi] It is a bitter post mortem for an institution set up to promote disarmament, as expressed in Article 8 of the League Covenant to instead oversee an eventual escalation in arms build up culminating in another world war. [lii] Wilson, Pro Western Intellectuals and the Manchurian Crisis of 1931-1933, p. 24. The ideals it espoused were simply unmatched to the world in which it existed. 66-67. [v] Edward A. Harriman, ‘The League of Nations a Rudimentary Superstate’, The American Political Science    Review, 21, 1 (1927), p. 138. [lvii] Christopher Thorne, The Limits of Foreign Policy: The West, the League and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1931-1933, (London, 1972), p. 408. [xxvii] Stone, The Irreconcilables: The Fight Against the League of Nations, p. 41. The United Nations, Self-Determination, State Failure and Secession, The Doctrine of Residual Power in Canadian Diplomacy, Balancing in Central Europe: Great Britain and Hungary in the 1920s, Revisiting the United Nations and the Micro-State Problem. Idealistic, valued utopian League of Nations to provide security for the world. It would not be until near the outbreak of The Second World War that E.H. Carr would break the mould and publish his frustration and determination at this utopian optimism dispelling it as ‘hollow and without substance.’ In The Twenty Years Crisis Carr outlined that all attempts to place optimism in the League of Nations are fundamentally flawed. A good illustration of Carr's mainstream image appears in the E. H. Carr Memorial Lecture delivered by John Mearsheimer at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, in 2004. Certain American idealists adopted this philosophy, principally Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 proclaiming ‘the great powers had the force necessary to prevent war as well as make it’[i] and ‘certain immortality awaited the statesman who could inaugurate a League of Peace’. [xvii] Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919-1939, p.69. [lx] Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919-1939, p. 264. ... Mr. Carr entered journalism in 1941 as assistant editor of The Times. This ‘highly dubious’[xxv] proposal from Wilson and his utopian backers aroused furious debates in the Senate and elsewhere as the propaganda campaigns raged across the country. In fact, President Woodrow Wilson’s pet project was controversial from nearly the minute it was conceived. It was blatantly obvious to Carr, and to the historians looking back on the events, predominantly of the 1930’s, that the League was failing and the march to a serious conflict was underway. He immediately addresses the point of the League being more a ‘League of victors’ collectivising to protect the status quo than one of equal nations. All future aspiration centres squarely around the new international system. George Orwell, for example, once identified Carr as a potential Soviet sympathiser. Perhaps the optimism for the League in the interwar years was itself a symptom of the very idealism that Carr bemoaned – an optimism that maintained faith in the League despite its deep flaws and continued inept performance – as the alternative to its failure was too desperate to contemplate. Authors: Jennifer Llewellyn, Steve Thompson On the other hand, as the analysis of the  inner workings of the League develops a different perspective emerges: ‘it is true that the Court does not have compulsory jurisdiction over all the members of the League, and that the great powers have refused to submit to such compulsory jurisdiction.’[vi] This is a major indicator of trouble for the League, there is an acute lack of central authority and ‘the duty of enforcing the laws of the League is left to the individual members.’[vii] Despite this early indicator of institutional weakness and contradiction, Harriman concludes that the League is ‘one of the most important events in all history.’[viii] He fully expects that the League will naturally evolve into a rudimentary superstate and will iron out its problems as the goal of an international utopian world united in peace is too great to let fail. 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