Week 1 - Interwar Period

Question 1

Definition of Utopianism

Answer 1

‘System of values which places harmony at the centre of individual and social life’

Kumar, 1987

Question 2

E.H Carr quote on the universal principles of Utopianism

Answer 2

all ‘but the unconscious réflexions of national policy based on a particular interpretation of national interest at a particular time’

Carr, 1939

Question 3

Examples of these national interests?

Answer 3

Collective security, free trade, disarmament

Question 4

They were…

Answer 4

‘They were not universal interets, but the ideology of a satisfied class’

Carr, 1939

Question 5

Argument 1 - Realist understanding of WW2

Answer 5

P - Power imbalances in an international system dominated by realist practises.
E - Great Depression and newly formed politically unstable states.
E - Therefore created a power vacuum for Germany to become a regional hegemon. who felt betrayed by the Treaty of Versailles to expand territorially.

Question 6

Argument 2 - Liberal Understanding

Answer 6

P - Liberal’s would understand the cause of the Second World War to the failure of the League of Nations to effectively mitigate the international core drive for power.
E- Italy invading Abyssinia
E- Aim was collective security and compromise but failed as political project

Question 7

What is the underlying theme in both the realist and illiberal understanding?

Answer 7

P- Realist doctrines were the dominate force at the time, therefore cannot apply utopian principes to an un-utopian world
E- Utopian principes are all ‘but the unconscious reflexions of natural policy based on a particular interpretation of national interest at a particular time’.
E - Therefore ‘not universal interests but the ideology of a satisfied class’.

Question 8

Conclusions

Answer 8

Many different causes of WW2 due to the overall complexity of the war. The international realist context of the time however, is in my view one of the key contributors to the outbreak of WW2.