The Great Illusion is a book by Norman Angell, first published in Britain

in 1909 under the title Europe's Optical Illusion and republished in 1910
and subsequently in various enlarged and revised editions under the title
The Great Illusion.
Angell was one of the principal founders of the Union of Democratic
Control. He served on the Council of the Royal Institute of International
Affairs, was an executive for the World Committee against War and
Fascism, a member of the executive committee of the League of Nations
Union, and the president of the Abyssinia Association. He was knighted
in 1931 and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933.
However, the book was updated and a new edition was published in
1933. In this version, Angell changed his initial argument slightly, he no
longer proposed that economics would stop a war, or prevent its
happening, but instead challenged that waging a war for economic
reasons was a futile struggle, that a nation cannot enrich itself by a
conquest of its neighbors. This new thesis earned him the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1933, and the economic state of Europe in the interwar era, as
well as the Post War era, seemed to bring a new validity to his work


What are the fundamental motives that explain the present rivalry of armaments in Europe,
notably the Anglo-German ? Each nation pleads the need for defence; but this implies that
someone is likely to attack, and has therefore a presumed interest in so doing. What are the
motives which each State thus fears its neighbors may obey?


They are based on the universal assumption that a nation, in order to find outlets for
expanding population and increasing industry, or simply to ensure the best conditions possible
for its people, is necessarily pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force
against others.... It is assumed that a nation's relative prosperity is broadly determined by its
political power; that nations being competing units, advantage in the last resort goes to the
possessor of preponderant military force, the weaker goes to the wall, as in the other forms of
the struggle for life.


The author challenges this whole doctrine. He attempts to show that it belongs to a stage of
development out of which we have passed that the commerce and industry of a people no
longer depend upon the expansion of its political frontiers; that a nation's political and
economic frontiers do not now necessarily coincide; that military power is socially and
economically futile, and can have no relation to the prosperity of the people exercising it; that
it is impossible for one nation to seize by force the wealth or trade of another -- to enrich
itself by subjugating, or imposing its will by force on another; that in short, war, even when
victorious, can no longer achieve those aims for which people strive....


Wealth in economic World is founded upon credit
and commercial contract (these being the
outgrowth of an economic interdependence due
to the increasing division of labor and greatly
developed communication). If credit and
commercial contract are tampered with in an
attempt at confiscation, the credit-dependent
wealth is undermined and its collapse involves
that of the conqueror; so that if conquest is not
so be self-injurious it must respect the enemys
property in which case it becomes economically
futile.
Conquest in the modern world is a process of multiplying by x, and then obtaining
the original figure by dividing by x. For a modern nation to add to its territory no
more adds to the wealth of the people of such nation than it would add to the
wealth of Londoners if the City of London were to annex the county of Hertford.


The fight for ideals can no longer take the form of fight between nations, because
the lines of division on moral questions are within the nations themselves and
intersect the political frontiers. There is no modern State which is completely
Catholic or Protestant, or liberal or autocratic, or aristocratic or democratic, or
socialist or individualist; the moral and spiritual struggles of the modern world go
on between citizens of the same State in unconscious intellectual cooperation with
corresponding groups in other states, not between the public powers of rival
States.


War has no longer the justification that it makes for the survival of the fittest; it
involves the survival of the less fit. The idea that the struggle between nations is a
part of the evolutionary law of man's advance involves a profound misreading of
the biological analogy.



The warlike nations do not inherit the earth; they represent the
decaying human element. The diminishing role of physical force
in all spheres of human activity carries with it profound
psychological modifications.
These tendencies, mainly the outcome of purely modern
conditions (e.g. rapidity of communication) have rendered the
problems of modern international politics profoundly and
essentially different from the ancient; yet our ideas still
dominated by the principles and axioms, images and
terminology of the bygone days.
The author urges that these little-recognized facts may be
utilized for the solution of the armament difficulty on at present
untried lines by such a modification of opinion in Europe that
much of the present motive to aggression will cease to be
operative, and by thus diminishing the risk of attack, diminishing
to the same extent the need for defense. He shows how such a
political reformation is within the scope of practical politics, and
the methods which should be employed to bring it about.


Are we, in blind obedience to primitive instincts and old
prejudices, enslaved by the old catchwords and that
curious indolence which makes the revision of old ideas
unpleasant, to duplicate indefinitely on the political and
economic side a condition from which we have liberated
ourselves on the religious side?
Are we to continue to struggle, as so many good men
struggled in the first dozen centuries of Christendom --
spilling oceans of blood, wasting mountains of treasure --
to achieve what is at bottom a logical absurdity, to
accomplish something which, when accomplished, can
avail us nothing, and which, if it could avail us anything,
would condemn the nations of the world to never-ending
bloodshed a nd the constant defeat of all those aims which
men, in their sober hours, know to be alone worthy of
sustained endeavor?

Geoffrey Blainey
The mystery of why the nineteenth century enjoyed
unusually long eras of peace did not puzzle some
powerful minds. They believed that the intellectual
and commercial progress were soothing those human
misunderstandings and grievances with which had
caused many earlier wars.The followers of this theory
were usually democrats with an optimistic view of
human nature. Thought they had emerged earlier in
France than in England they become most influential
in the English-speaking World and their spiritual
home was perhaps the industrial city of Manchester
which exported cotton goods and the philosophy of
free trade to the every corner of the globe.


Manchesters disciples believed that paradise was an
international bazaar.
They favored the international flow of goods and ideas
and the creation of institutions that channeled that flow
and the abolition of institutions that blocked it. Nations,
they argued now grew richer through commerce than
through conquest. Their welfare was now enhanced by
rational discussion rather than by threats. The
fortresses of Peace were those institutions and
inventions which promoted the exchange of ideas and
commodities: parliaments, international conferences,
the popular press, compulsory education, the public
reading room, the penny postage stamp, railways,
submarine telegraphs, three funnelled ocean liners, and
the Manchester cotton exchange.



The Long Peace that followed the Battle of
Waterloo was increasingly explained as the result
of the international flow of commodities and
ideas.
Richard Cobden, Robert Peel, William Gladstone,
John Stuart Mill, England with support of
Englands Prince Consort, Albert the Good.
His sponsorship of the Great Exhibition in the
new Crystal Palace in London in 1851
popularised the idea that a festival of peace abd
trade fair were synonymous. The Crystal Palace
was perhaps the worlds first peace festival.

The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally
erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great
Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the
world gathered in the Palace's 990,000 square feet (92,000 m
2
) of
exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology
developed in the Industrial Revolution. Designed by Joseph Paxton,
the Great Exhibition building was 1,851 feet (564 m) long, with an
interior height of 128 feet (39 m).
After the exhibition, the building was moved to a new park in a high,
healthy and wealthy area of London called Sydenham Hill, an area
not much changed today from the well-heeled suburb full of large
villas that it was during its Victorian heyday. The Crystal Palace was
enlarged and stood in the area from 1854 to 1936, when it was
destroyed by fire. It attracted many thousands of visitors from all
levels of society. The name Crystal Palace (the satirical magazine
Punch usually gets the credit for coining the phrase) was later used
to denote this area of south London and the park that surrounds the
site, home of the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre.

In that Palace of glass and iron the locomotives
and telegraphic equipment were admired not
only as mechanical wonders: they were also
messengers of peace and instruments of unity.
The telegraph cable laid across the English
Channel in 1850 had been welcomed as an
underwater cord of friendship. The splicing of
the cable that snaked beneath the Atlantic in
1858 was another celebration of brotherhood,
and the first message tapped across the seabed
was a proclamation of peace: Europe and America
are united by telegraphic communication. Glory
to God in the Highest, on Earth peace, Goodwill
towards men.

an English historian,
author of a History of
Civilization.

One of the many influential prophets of the
idea that telegraphs and railways and
steamships were powerfully promoting peace.
The first volume of the History of Civilisation
in England appeared in 1857, the second
volume in 1861 and they were devoured by
thousands of English readers, published in
French, Spanish, German, Hungarian and
Hebrew editions and translated four timesd
into Russian.
One of Buckles themes was the decline of
warlike spirit in western Europe. As a
freethinker he attributed that decline not to
moral influences but to the progress of
knowledge and intellectual activity.
Just as commerce now linked nations, so the
steamship and railway now linked peoples:
the greater the contact, the greater the
respect.

Buckle thought foreign travel was the greatest
of all educations as well as a spur of peace.
He believed that the enlightened public
opinion was coming mainly from the
expansion of free commerce, the railways and
steamship, an the study of modern
languages. Henry Thomas Buckle would have
sympathized with the emphasis on modern
languages: he spoke nineteen.
Meunarodni odnosi: gledita liberala
Ne verujem da e nacije na zemlji imati mogunost moralnog
napredovanja u svojim unutranjim poslovima do najvieg
stupnja do kojega bismo mi eleli, sve dok su meunarodni
odosi u svetu postavljeni na drugaiju osnovu. Postojei sistem
kvari drutvo, iscrpljuje njegovo bogatstvo, uzdie lane bogove
kroz oboavanje heroja i postavlja pred nove generacije
podsticajne i blistave standarde slave. Zbog toga to verujem da
je princip Slobodne trgovine stvoren da bi promenio odnose u
svetu na bolje, u moralnom smislu, zahvaljujem Bogu to mi je
bilo doputeno da znaajno uestvujem u njegovom
zagovaranju. Pa ipak, nemojmo biti potiteni. Ako moemo
saluvati svet od rata, a ja verujem da e to Trgovina uiniti, veliki
impuls e odsad biti dat drutveni reformama. Javno mnjenje je
praktino raspoloeno, i sad e se svim silama baciti na
Obrazovanje, Umerenost, Reformu kriminala, Zdravstvenu zatitu
i tako dalje s veim arom nego ikada.
Doyle faults liberal regimes for imprudent vehemence (a term
borrowed from Hume) in foreign policy, which is characterized by
confusion, costly crusades, spasmodic imperialism resulting in a
failure to negotiate with the powerful and create stable clients among
the weak (324). This failure is caused by the fact that the very
constitutional restraint and concern for individual rights that works so
well within liberal societies can exacerbate conflicts in relations
between liberal and non-liberal regimes (325). This is because
according to liberal principles, non-liberal regimeswhich do not
respect the individual rights of their citizensare illegitimate. This leads
to an extreme lack of public respect and trust on the part of liberal
regimes towards non-liberal states.
In addition liberal regimes assume that non-liberal regimes (particularly
communist regimes) do not respect the political independence and
territorial integrity of other states. This lack of trust in turn leads to less
than optimal rational, realist behavior. For instance, as a result of
mistrust liberal regimes will refuse to cooperate with non-liberal
(communist) regimes even when it would be in their best interest (e.g.
arms reduction treaties).
Declining or less powerful liberal states (think,
Britain, Japan, Netherlands) on the other hand,
are reluctant to fund the military establishment
necessary to play a role in global politics. And
more worrying from a Realist perspective, liberal
regimes fail to sufficiently support their strategic
allies who happen to be authoritarian or
oppressive (South Africa, Somozas Nicaragua)
out of concern for human rights abuses; or to
engage in dtente with potential allies (Cuba,
Angola) who are non-liberal.
According to liberal principles [or really utilitarian
principles], rich countries have an obligation to
ameliorate the suffering of those less well off. But
liberal regimes have not acted in accordance with this
principle, and have not instituted any serious
mechanism for the transfer of wealth to poorer
nations and peoples. Difficulty arises particularly over
the issue of whether the money should be
redistributed directly to the citizens of poor nations
or to their governments.
Doyle recognizes that public acceptance of the
obligation of rich countries to transfer wealth to
poorer countries is unlikely, but argues that it
remains an obligation of liberal states nonetheless.
Kant argued in 795 that the natural evolution of
world politics and economics would drive
mankind inexorably toward peace by means of a
widening of the pacific union of liberal republican
states. This would occur through two
mechanisms.
One, societies would be driven into forming
liberal republics from the pressures of external
and internal war.
And two, republics would create commercial ties
of mutual advantage that would cause them to be
pacific towards each other. Eventually, once the
entire world consisted of such pacific, liberal
regimes, mankind would attain perpetual peace.
Doyle takes the two different scenarios for
the growth of liberal regimes (transnational
ties of commercialism;
international:pressures of war creating more
liberal regimes) and extrapolates from
historical data to predict when we will attain
perpetual peace. For the transnational model
he predicts the year 2101. For the
international model, 2113.
Michael C. Desch
Why has the United States, with its long-standing
Liberal tradition, come to embrace the illiberal
policies it has in recent years? Abroad, the United
States has pursued a strategy of hegemony,
verging on empire, and almost unilaterally
launched a preventive war in Iraq in a fashion
inconsistent with its Liberal values. At home,
policies such as those flowing from the USA
Patriot Act, including even the rendition and
torture of terror suspects, have called into
question the U.S. commitment to other important
tenets of Liberalism, such as respect for
individual rights and civil liberties
I argue that it is precisely American Liberalism that makes
the United States so illiberal today. Under certain
circumstances, Liberalism impels Americans to spread
their values around the world and leads them to see the
war on terrorism as a particularly deadly type of conflict
that can be won only by employing illiberal tactics. What
makes the war on terrorism so dangerous, in this view, is
not so much the physical threat to the United States, but
rather the existential threat to the American way of life
and the uncivilized means adversaries employ in seeking
to destroy it. Were it not for this Liberal tradition, the
United States would view the threat from global terrorism
in a less alarmist light (more akin to a chronic crime
problem than to World War IV) and would adopt more
restrained policies in response (i.e., containment rather
than global transformation).
Because the Liberal tradition is a constant feature
of politics in the United States, it cannot, by
itself, explain changes in U.S. policy, particularly
why Liberalism has not consistently affected all
aspects of U.S. foreign or domestic policies. The
two best applications of Louis Hartzs argument
that American Liberalism contains the seeds of
illiberal behaviorSamuel Huntingtons Htheory
of U.S. civil-military relations and Robert
Packenhams account of the politics of the United
States development strategy in the third world
concede that the effect of the Liberal tradition is
mediated by other variables.
Kants objective was to establish a system of
perpetual peace that ended war without the need for
an overarching world government. For such a system
to function effectively, all countries would need the
same republican domestic political
order. Kants first definitive article of perpetual
peace states that the civil constitution of every
nation should be republican. He reasoned that
political systems in which individuals who are likely to
bear the direct costs of
wars also have a say in whether it is waged are less
likely to engage in them. KennethWaltz describes
Kants solution as the power to enforce law [,
which] is . . . derived not from external sanction but
from internal perfection.
Subsequent Liberals, according to Leo
Strauss, learned from Kant that the
prosperous, free, and just society in a single
country or in only a few countries is not
possible in the long run: to make the world
safe for Western democracies, one must make
the whole globe democratic, each country in
itself as well as the society of nations. Good
order in one country presupposes good order
in all countries and among all countries.
Kants imperative to remake the world order
is evident in the work of Liberalisms greatest
twentieth-century exponentJohn Rawls
who justifies the spread of Liberalism not
only for defensive reasons, but also because
of the politically obligatory nature of Liberal
tenets. Building on Kant, Rawls posits that
Liberal states are obliged to leave the state
of nature and to submit [them]selves along
with others to the rule of a reasonable and a
just law.
Liberal societies
may even employ
military force to
achieve this end.
Melvin Small and J. David Singer calculate that
Liberal states waged 65 percent of non-major
power wars (which almost always are against
weaker states) between 1871 and 1965. Steve
Chans more comprehensive data set shows a
similar pattern, with Liberal states starting
100 percent of these wars of choice
Historically, the international behavior of the
United States has been shaped by Liberalism.
In Tony Smiths words, The most consistent
tradition in American foreign policy . . . has
been the belief that the nations security is
best protected by the expansion of
democracy worldwide.