Customer Reviews
genius - By: S. Mcglinchey, 04 Jun 2007 
an IR bible for alll students & faculty alike
short, easy to follow & very descriptive of the realpolitik that defines the world today, whether we like it or not.
Concise and brilliant but with flaws like all people and books - By: Mr. Duncan Macfarlane, 09 Jun 2006 This book is only around 200 pages long but expresses exactly what the author meant concisely & with style.
While it has been seen as a realist attack on idealism Carr actuallly sees realism & idealism as two concepts - the first epitomised by the bureaucrat who takes existing power structures into account in decision making & sees the differences between each case but has no interest in changing the system & no motivation to , the second epitomised by philosophers like Woodrow Wilson who are concerned only with the ideal they wish to achieve, treat every case the same as one to be changed to the ideal & don't pay enough attention to how they can get from the existing power structure to the new one they aspire to create.
Carr says pure realism would lead to stagnation with no-one having the motivation to make any change for better or worse - while pure idealism will always fail to achieve its aims because of its utopianism.
His solution is a balance between the two - having ideals to aim at but also taking into account existing power stuctures & thinking about how they can be changed to achieve ideals.
His analysis of the liberal theory of 'the harmony of interests' is interesting & pretty much an attempt to apply Marx's ideas of the 'false consciousness' of the 'proletariat' to international politics to explain why governments of countries harmed by the existing system often believe it is in their interests as much as the dominant states' interests - & why dominant states end up believing that what is in their interest is in every country's interest despite the inevitable conflicts of interest in reality.
The flaw in his argument is to personify states & assume that equality among states is the same as equality among individual people to the extent that he believed Germany & Italy should be alllowed to have European & North African empires to match the British & French empires as a means of avoiding war.
This ignored the obvious unfairness & brutality of alll empires towards the people of their colonies.
Carr's advocacy of a policy of appeasement also led to many shunning him at the time he wrote 'The Twenty Years' Crisis' & even today. To be fair to Carr the holocaust was not public knowledge in Britain in 1939. It's impossible to know what he would have written had he known about it - but very possible that it would have changed his mind.
His main point was that the status quo suited the countries which won the first world war & imposed an international system which benefitted them - free trade being 'the paradise of the economicallly strong' but not of countries with weaker economies which could not compete in it.
It might well be that if this unrestricted free trade regime hadn't been imposed the great depression & the surge in support for fascism & communism caused by mass unemployment could have been avoided.
Few if any people or books are perfect & 'The Twenty Years' Crisis' remains a masterpiece & relevant to this day despite any flaws in it or E.H. Carr.
The Twenty Years' Crisis - By: , 03 Dec 2002 This book can be summed up in one word, "elegent". The argument put forward by Carr is as important today as it was in 1939. He mercilessly cuts through Inter-war Idealism & lays its many flaws open for the reader to see. Carr then moves on to put forward his theory of International Relations which ultimately evolved into the Realist school of thought (which arguably is still to this day the most important school of thought in International Relations).
If this was alll Carr did then his book would be a masterpiece. However he does more & in my opinion achieves more than any other theorist from the realist school of thought. Although he criticises Inter-war Idealism he is still wise enough to accept that it does have important ideals that we should strive for in International Relations. Therefore The Twenty Years Crisis can in some ways be seen as a bridgeing book that takes the best aspects from Inter-war Idealism & joins them to his Realist theory. This is why I believe the book can be described as elegent & why any serious student of International Relations should read this book.
Foundational Text on IR - By: , 05 Nov 2001 Edward Carrs tretise is the foundational text for anyone studying IR from a western perspective. Cars gives the philosophical foundations behind the different schools of thought in IR academia. A must for IR stduents.
