The view that 19th century liberal democracy was based, not on a balance of forces peculiar to the economic development of the period and to countries concerned, but on certain a priori rational principles which had only to be applied in other contexts to produce similar results, was essentially utopian; and it was this view which, under Wilson’s inspiration, dominated the world after the first world war.
The characteristic feature of the crisis of the twenty years between 1919 and 1939 was the abrupt descent from the visionary hopes of the first decade to the grim despair of the second, from a utopia which took little account of the reality to a reality from which every element of utopia was rigorously excluded.
It is utopian to ignore the element of power; it is an unreal kind of realisms which ignores the element of morality in any world order.
A new international order and a new international harmony can be built up only on the basis of an ascendancy which is generally accepted as tolerant and unoppressive or at any rate, as preferable to any practicable alternative.
The Twenty Years’ Crisis
by E.H Carr
Edward Hallett Carr
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