The Greatest Illusion

Trade Specialization Does Not Make War Less Likely And Cannot Be Undone Quickly

Hello All

A more academic piece on one of the most important “illusions” that has bedevilled international relations for the past 125 years, and still is very much in existence. It was motivated by some discussions I have had with policy makers and advisers in Europe in particular. While there is an understanding that certain power relationships are different now (the idea that the US is a trustworthy ally for instance) there is still a great deal of hope that the world-wide trading system which the US enforced since 1990 can continue. Unfortunately, I believe that this is unlikely, and it means that all states need to rethink their strategic vulnerabilities or their autonomy will be severely restricted going forward.

In November 1909, one of the most important and widely read books of its time, was released. It was entitled The Great Illusion, and was written by the journalist , author and politician, Norman Angell. A member of the UK’s Labour Party, Angell was a passionate believer in peace and amity between nations. This led him to make an extraordinarily popular argument at the time, and this was that world-wide trade and increasingly economic specialization, was increasing interdependence and making war obsolete.

Btw, if you want to read the whole book, here is a link to an online version through Project Gutenberg.

In Angell’s world, the diverse, modern, increasingly democratic states of the world were moving into an entirely new era of international relations. He railed against those in the UK, for instance, who saw Germany as a threat to British independence, and ridiculed the idea that the Germans would, or even could, try to take over British colonies. Military power in his world was ultimately “futile”.

The forces which have brought about the economic futility of military power have also rendered it futile as a means of enforcing a nation’s moral ideals or imposing social institutions upon a conquered people. Germany could not turn Canada or Australia into German colonies—i.e., stamp out[Pg xii] their language, law, literature, traditions, etc.—by “capturing” them. The necessary security in their material possessions enjoyed by the inhabitants of such conquered provinces, quick inter-communication by a cheap press, widely-read literature, enable even small communities to become articulate and effectively to defend their special social or moral possessions, even when military conquest has been complete. 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 co-operation with corresponding groups in other States, not between the public powers of rival States.

Of course, fewer than five years after the Great Illusion was published, the most destructive war in human history broke out and the idea that commerce would lead to peace and friendship, was shown to be somewhat flawed.

And yet in many ways we have lived in Norman Angell’s world since 1990, and the illusion’s of his books have reasserted themselves.