Carr's the Twenty Years Crisis

Edward Carr is seen to this day one of the most important theoreticians of the study of international relations. Despite the fact that his work has been written before the start of the Second World War, he was among the first scholars and analysts to take into account the theory of international relations as a paradigm and afterwards as a science.

One of his most important works in this area and perhaps the one that provided the backbone of the research conducted in international relations in modern times is Carr's "The Twenty Years' Crisis" first published in 1939 with a second issue in 1946. The subject of the book cannot be presented as a chapter-by-chapter presentation especially given the nature of the work that includes a significant role of analysis and interpretation.

More precisely, the book in itself represents the first and most eloquent attempt to argue on the role of politics and utopian belief in the period between the two world wars and how this utopian approach eventually contributed significantly to the outbreak of the Second World War. In order to consider the full contribution Carr had to the study of international relations between the two world wars and for the studies and approaches during the Cold War, it is important to point out the background of Carr's beliefs and considerations.

Carr was one of the most erudite students of the Cambridge University at the time of the First World War and this experience has enabled him the access to a severe yet worthy education that in turn connected him to the realities of the British political life.

It must be pointed out that at the time the British Empire had a rather distant approach to European politics in the sense that after the end of the First World War Britain encouraged more the relations with the United States and chose to have limited if any contact with that of the European powers, among which France and Germany. However, the implication Britain had in European affairs was more in the sense of an utopian approach rather than a realistic one (Kissinger, 1995).

Given the background both as a scholar and as a fine observer of internal and external affairs, Carr became an astute critic of the indulgent political approach Britain and France had towards the newly revived Germany.

More precisely, the book in itself represents a critic to the way in which the winning powers of the First World War decided to approach international relations with a sense of idealism rather than realism, without consideration to the eventual threat that Germany in due time would regroup and reorganize a new army force and, given the conditions imposed in the Treaty of Versailles, would retaliate against the European powers, which it did in 1939.

Carr also points out that this failure to take into account clear revisionist claims from Germany was also due to the idealistic construction of the League of Nations that was built on the grounds of the Fourteen Points of President Wilson of the U.S., a country that would not even adhere to that political construction.

Carr considered this failure as being inevitable largely due to the fact that the European countries, in particular Britain and France, did not envisage a long-term plan, but rather long-term ideals that would not provide resolution to immediate threats. This was an issue however that would have been foreseeable should the European countries allowed themselves more information on the socialist means of planning and organization.

Finally another major critic provided by Carr in his masterpiece is related to the way the European countries, in their attempt to observe the peace established after the First World War, were not able to consider that.