update and reinforce the pacifist point of view initially defined by
Rousseau and Kant. First, the progress of trade led many to believe, in
Britain in particular, that commercial exchanges and prosperity would
make war irrelevant and bring about international cooperation and
peace. “Free Trade,” emphasized Richard Cobden MP in the 1840s,
“is God’s diplomacy, and there is no other certain way of uniting
people in bonds of peace.”^38 Second, liberal and national principles
made the primacy granted to power in international affairs increas-
ingly dubious. Such principles were actively promoted by peace
societies and the international peace movement that emerged in the
first half of the nineteenth century.^39 These early social movements
insisted that princes and autocrats, not peoples, were the ones who
launched wars; that democratic choice, not secret arrangements
among the great powers, should determine the destiny of nations; and
that a world ruled by public opinion would most certainly be a
peaceful world.^40 Third, if reason and freedom could bring about new
regimes on a national scale, they could probably work the same way
on a world scale. International law and institutions, in particular,
should make a lasting peace possible. The creation of the League of
Nations in 1919 was premised on this belief in rationality, law, and
democracy.^41 The First World War cast doubt on the idea that citizens
and workers would be reluctant to go to war against other citizens
and workers, but the left’s internationalist perspective nonetheless
remained influential.
The left, wrote E. H. Carr, a man of liberal orientation who ended
up writing a realist book during the inter-war period, believes in
“reason.” Unlike the right, Carr also contended, it is optimistic about
human nature, the power of ideas, and the possibilities of inter-
national cooperation.^42 For the left, then, military power appeared
much less appealing and necessary than it did for the right. First, from
a democratic perspective, free citizens, not armies, should decide the
fate of nations. Second, a just world should not grant privileges on the
basis of force. If men were equal, then nations should also be equal,
(^38) Richard Cobden quoted in Haslam,No Virtue Like Necessity, p. 147.
(^39) Howard,War and the Liberal Conscience, pp. 40–41.
(^40) E. H. Carr,The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the
Study of International Relations, New York, Palgrave, 2001 (first edition
1939), p. 27.
(^41) Ibid., p. 29. (^42) Ibid., p. 18.
The rise of the modern state system (1776–1945) 93