The Twenty Years' Crisis

The Twenty Years' Crisis

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 II in Europe and the first edition was published in September 1939, shortly after the war's outbreak. 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. The text is considered a classic in International Relations theory, and is often dubbed one of the first modern Realist texts, following in the fashion 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 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.