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The Twenty Years' Crisis - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclope
The Twenty Years' Crisis - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclope
The Twenty Years' Crisis - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclope
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25/11/2010 The Twenty Years' Crisis - Wikipedia, th…
conditions state behavior more forcefully than the exigencies of survival and
competition.
Carr does not, however, consider the prospect of human improvement a lost cause.
At the end of "The Twenty Years' Crisis" he actually advocates for the role of morality
in international politics, and suggests that unmitigated realism amounts to a dismal
defeatism which we can ill afford. The sine qua non of his analysis is simply that in the
conduct of international affairs, the relative balance of power must be acknowledged
as a starting point.
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" [3] . 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
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dilemmas in Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis are relevant to the theory and practice
of international politics today".[4] 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." [5]
The response to Carr has not been, however, entirely positive. Caitlin Blaxton
criticized Carr's moral stance in the work as "disturbing".[6] 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." [7]
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.
References
1. ^ Carr, Edward. The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939. New York: Perennial, 2001.
2. ^ Carr, p. vii (Preface to the Second Edition)
3. ^ [1] (http://www.webasa.org/Pubblicazioni/Tortola_2005_1.pdf)
4. ^ Tim Dunne, Michael Cox and Ken Booth. "Introduction the Eighty Years Crisis". The Eighty
Years' Crisis . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. p. xiii
5. ^ Ibid., p. xiv
6. ^ Wilson, Peter. "The Myth of the 'First Great Debate'". The Eighty Years' Crisis . Cambridge:
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Cambridge University Press, 1998. p. 3
7. ^ Ibid., p. 11
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twenty_Years%27_Crisis"
Categories: 1939 books | History books | Books about international relations |
Political realism | Works by E.H. Carr
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