392 Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1914– )Further attacks on collective security were launched by a new school of
thought in the fi eld of international relations known as realism. Th e realists
were in conscious opposition to earlier international-relations writers who
had been strong supporters of collective security in general and the League
in par tic u lar. Th ey insisted on states as the fundamental units of interna-
tional life, and on competition for power as the principal dynamic of inter-
state relations. A general skepticism about the rule of law in interstate aff airs
pervaded their writing. In the spirit of Austin, they tended to regard interna-
tional law as a dreamy, utopian system having little impact on real life. Th eir
outlook was summed up by the British historian E. H. Carr, with character-
istic crispness. “[U]topians,” Carr pronounced (referring to liberals), “think
in terms of ethics, and realists... think in terms of power.”
A close affi nity is discernible between realism and the empirical version
of positivism. Both were strongly state- centered, resolutely non- (and even
anti-) utopian, and fi rmly insistent on state practice as the basis of sound
knowledge and analysis. Th e closeness of the connection between the two
was most strongly evident in the writing of a German émigré named Georg
Schwarzenberger. In the Nazi period, his status as a Jew and his activism in
Social Demo cratic politics combined to bring an early end to a promising
academic career. He moved to Britain in 1934 and, four years later, obtained
a teaching post in the law faculty of University College, London. Like
Quincy Wright, Schwarzenberger worked in both international law and in-
ternational relations. As an international-relations scholar, he was a realist,
condemning what he termed the “radical incompatibilities between the
[League] Covenant and po liti cal reality.” As a lawyer, he was a stalwart
positivist of the empirical stripe. He insisted that international law must be
rooted in the actual practices of states, and not in idealistic notions about
how states should behave.
Th e liberal camp did its best to repel these various attacks. In the United
States, Wright led the defense of collective security, chiefl y in a series of de-
bates over neutrality policy that took place in the early 1930s in the Ameri-
can Society of International Law. In Britain, Lauterpacht and McNair did
the same, in the face of Schwarzenberger’s positivist and realist stance. At
the League itself, Wellington Koo, representing China, was a tireless advo-
cate of eff ective international sanctions against aggressor states (with his
country having an all too obvious stake in the debate). Th is included a force-