The Twenty Years' Crisis - Responses To Carr

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". 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 dilemmas in Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis are relevant to the theory and practice of international politics today". 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."

The response to Carr has not been, however, entirely positive. Caitlin Blaxton criticized Carr's moral stance in the work as "disturbing". 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.". Conversely, rather than attempt to critique Carr with the benefit of hindsight, Stephen McGlinchey states that Carr's analysis of events in The Twenty Years Crisis was significant and timely within its context, particularly in its critique of the League of Nations.

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.