Did Angell's opinion change when nukes entered the picture? The main argument for America/EU holding back is risking escalation. But I imagine it's a similar argument… why risk nuclear war over a non-NATO country like Ukraine?
Wait wait wait. Isn't the logic of Angell's argument (in particular his mention of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and China) that the West - Poland, Germany, France, Britain, the United States, Canada - should be fighting Russia for Ukraine's independence right now? Isn't this the fallacy of the harmony of interests taken from a different angle, not just that it'd be irrational and immoral for a country to attack another, but that it'd be rational for all countries to respond by going to war with the aggressor? (See E. H. Carr, "The Twenty Years' Crisis 1919-1939.")
The actual Western response is to (1) raise the costs to Russia, through strong sanctions and through military aid to Ukraine, and (2) humanitarian assistance to the millions of refugees who have fled. But we're not following Angell's view.
Certainly it makes sense that countries seek alliances to defend against threats, but that's different from what Angell is saying, which is (if I understand correctly) that a threat to any one country is a threat to all other countries, and thus that there's a natural alliance between them. This is the mistaken reasoning on which the League of Nations was founded. NATO was set up with different assumptions and more limited objectives.
Angell was writing before the development of nuclear weapons. I would suggest we are doing essentially everything we can short of those actions that risk nuclear war, which is to say, we are indeed following Angell's advice -- but adjusted for current circumstances.
I'd also go further and suggest we shouldn't treat only direct military action as coming to the defence of attacked countries. As we are seeing, crippling sanctions can be as devastating as heavily armed divisions. Even more so.
Just think of the early tests of the League of Nations (attacks on Manchuria and Ethiopia). If the nations of the world had not gone to war but had supplied a major flow of weapons and resources to those who were attacked, and imposed sanctions as powerful as those we have imposed on Russia, would we say they had meaningfully come to the defence of those attacked? I would. More importantly, it would have been damned effective. And may well have taken history in a much less destructive direction.
Sorry, let me try to clarify, with some links to short quotes. I suppose the summary is, I'd describe Angell's thinking about world peace and an inclusive system of collective security as seriously flawed. (To be fair, he did support NATO when it was established - it was obviously more limited than his preferred system of collective security, but he recognized that the Soviet Union could not be included in such a system, and that NATO would be a deterrent against Soviet expansion.)
The League of Nations was based on a fallacy. (We understand it now as a collective action problem.) When one country breaks the peace and attacks another, its willingness to do so makes it a threat to all other countries. Thus if all other countries were to join forces to punish the aggressor (whether through war or through strong measures short of war), they'd all be better off. Therefore, recognizing this shared interest, they will do so. This sounds plausible, but is in fact a fallacy, as E. H. Carr explains. https://russilwvong.com/blog/peace/
Carr argues that the fundamental divide in international politics is between those countries which seek to maintain the status quo, and those which oppose it and seek to overthrow it. When the latter are stronger than the former, which was the case during the period before WWII, we can expect trouble. Germany, the Soviet Union, and Japan outweighed Britain and France (the US having demilitarized). Thus it seems unrealistic to think that a more robust response by Britain and France (and their allies) to Japan and Italy would have kept Germany and/or the Soviet Union from attempting to overthrow the status quo.
In the wake of the failure of the League of Nations, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact against war, people realized this mistake. https://russilwvong.com/blog/norms/
NATO was set up with more limited aims: as an alliance between the US (and Canada), Britain, and the Western European countries to defend Western Europe against a Soviet attack. Someone commented that "the surest basis for friendship between countries is a common interest" (I'm afraid I don't remember the source). In this case, the security of both Britain and the US depends on maintaining the balance of power in Europe, so that one country (whether France under Napoleon, Germany under Wilhelm II or Hitler, or the Soviet Union) doesn't conquer the rest and then expand overseas. https://russilwvong.com/blog/american-security-and-the-balance-of-power/
The argument from Carr, Hans Morgenthau, George F. Kennan, and other writers during the early Cold War is that earlier thinking about international politics (including Angell's) failed to pay sufficient attention to national self-interest and to power. (A powerful country may easily disregard norms, compared to a weaker one.)
Western solidarity since Russia's attack on Ukraine has been impressive, but if we take a look beyond the US and its allies, we see that each country's response to the war has been primarily driven by its own national interests, as we would expect. For example, see the responses of China, India, and Pakistan. https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/eastern-europe/ukraine/ukraine-war-global-crisis
A well written post, it is always enjoyable to read you Dan. The basis of NATO is an alliance against Russia. Russia is big and at right angles to most of the objectives of Europe. That small nations might be protected in its enclosure does not mitigate the fact it has a reason to be and purpose. If it was there to merely protect small nations all over the globe, no matter who they are otherwise allied to, or whatever its competing interests to Europe, it is unlikely to have achieved or ever to achieve that purpose.
One is reminded of the eventual PM Lloyd Georges' appeal to justify Britain's entry into WWI. It was not in the interest of the British Empire but to merely protect small nations. "God has chosen little nations as the vessels by which He carries the choicest wines to the lips of humanity, to rejoice their hearts, to exalt their vision, to stimulate and to strengthen their faith; and if we had stood by when two little nations were being crushed and broken by the brutal hands of barbarism our shame would have rung down the everlasting ages." (Sept 19, 1914) Somehow the claim rings a little false with the evidence, nice though to the ears of those with Welsh ancestry these sentiments are.
Perhaps it is Lloyd George who needed to explain what he was thinking. Did he think the wine was coming from Belgium or was he suggesting France is really just a small nation?
He was suggesting that the entry into the war was due to the invasion of neutral Belgium rather than to protect the commercial and imperial interests of the British Empire. He linked his own homeland, the little nation of Wales, as part of that community of interests the British military alliance would protect, in defending the people of Belgium.
We tend to look harshly on Lloyd George in hindsight, but its best to say that he was a man very much past his time by 1914. He had no idea how catastrophic the war would be nor that its effect would reshape the world in ways he would not have liked. Examined before this period we find Lloyd George was an intelligent and impressive politician who tried to solve problems before they occurred.
Yes - although their beer is exceptional - and beyond compare for variety and pairing. Belgium has sadly never been known, in its thousand years plus history, as having great wine growing regions. Although, to be fair, their whites, with chardonnay grapes, for export are excellent. Really an unknown area for most consumers, but well worth trying.
Did Angell's opinion change when nukes entered the picture? The main argument for America/EU holding back is risking escalation. But I imagine it's a similar argument… why risk nuclear war over a non-NATO country like Ukraine?
Wait wait wait. Isn't the logic of Angell's argument (in particular his mention of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and China) that the West - Poland, Germany, France, Britain, the United States, Canada - should be fighting Russia for Ukraine's independence right now? Isn't this the fallacy of the harmony of interests taken from a different angle, not just that it'd be irrational and immoral for a country to attack another, but that it'd be rational for all countries to respond by going to war with the aggressor? (See E. H. Carr, "The Twenty Years' Crisis 1919-1939.")
The actual Western response is to (1) raise the costs to Russia, through strong sanctions and through military aid to Ukraine, and (2) humanitarian assistance to the millions of refugees who have fled. But we're not following Angell's view.
Certainly it makes sense that countries seek alliances to defend against threats, but that's different from what Angell is saying, which is (if I understand correctly) that a threat to any one country is a threat to all other countries, and thus that there's a natural alliance between them. This is the mistaken reasoning on which the League of Nations was founded. NATO was set up with different assumptions and more limited objectives.
Angell was writing before the development of nuclear weapons. I would suggest we are doing essentially everything we can short of those actions that risk nuclear war, which is to say, we are indeed following Angell's advice -- but adjusted for current circumstances.
I'd also go further and suggest we shouldn't treat only direct military action as coming to the defence of attacked countries. As we are seeing, crippling sanctions can be as devastating as heavily armed divisions. Even more so.
Just think of the early tests of the League of Nations (attacks on Manchuria and Ethiopia). If the nations of the world had not gone to war but had supplied a major flow of weapons and resources to those who were attacked, and imposed sanctions as powerful as those we have imposed on Russia, would we say they had meaningfully come to the defence of those attacked? I would. More importantly, it would have been damned effective. And may well have taken history in a much less destructive direction.
I should add I don't understand your last paragraph.
Sorry, let me try to clarify, with some links to short quotes. I suppose the summary is, I'd describe Angell's thinking about world peace and an inclusive system of collective security as seriously flawed. (To be fair, he did support NATO when it was established - it was obviously more limited than his preferred system of collective security, but he recognized that the Soviet Union could not be included in such a system, and that NATO would be a deterrent against Soviet expansion.)
The League of Nations was based on a fallacy. (We understand it now as a collective action problem.) When one country breaks the peace and attacks another, its willingness to do so makes it a threat to all other countries. Thus if all other countries were to join forces to punish the aggressor (whether through war or through strong measures short of war), they'd all be better off. Therefore, recognizing this shared interest, they will do so. This sounds plausible, but is in fact a fallacy, as E. H. Carr explains. https://russilwvong.com/blog/peace/
Carr argues that the fundamental divide in international politics is between those countries which seek to maintain the status quo, and those which oppose it and seek to overthrow it. When the latter are stronger than the former, which was the case during the period before WWII, we can expect trouble. Germany, the Soviet Union, and Japan outweighed Britain and France (the US having demilitarized). Thus it seems unrealistic to think that a more robust response by Britain and France (and their allies) to Japan and Italy would have kept Germany and/or the Soviet Union from attempting to overthrow the status quo.
In the wake of the failure of the League of Nations, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact against war, people realized this mistake. https://russilwvong.com/blog/norms/
NATO was set up with more limited aims: as an alliance between the US (and Canada), Britain, and the Western European countries to defend Western Europe against a Soviet attack. Someone commented that "the surest basis for friendship between countries is a common interest" (I'm afraid I don't remember the source). In this case, the security of both Britain and the US depends on maintaining the balance of power in Europe, so that one country (whether France under Napoleon, Germany under Wilhelm II or Hitler, or the Soviet Union) doesn't conquer the rest and then expand overseas. https://russilwvong.com/blog/american-security-and-the-balance-of-power/
The argument from Carr, Hans Morgenthau, George F. Kennan, and other writers during the early Cold War is that earlier thinking about international politics (including Angell's) failed to pay sufficient attention to national self-interest and to power. (A powerful country may easily disregard norms, compared to a weaker one.)
Western solidarity since Russia's attack on Ukraine has been impressive, but if we take a look beyond the US and its allies, we see that each country's response to the war has been primarily driven by its own national interests, as we would expect. For example, see the responses of China, India, and Pakistan. https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/eastern-europe/ukraine/ukraine-war-global-crisis
Latest recommendations from the International Crisis Group: https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/eastern-europe/ukraine/avoiding-even-worse-catastrophe-ukraine
A well written post, it is always enjoyable to read you Dan. The basis of NATO is an alliance against Russia. Russia is big and at right angles to most of the objectives of Europe. That small nations might be protected in its enclosure does not mitigate the fact it has a reason to be and purpose. If it was there to merely protect small nations all over the globe, no matter who they are otherwise allied to, or whatever its competing interests to Europe, it is unlikely to have achieved or ever to achieve that purpose.
One is reminded of the eventual PM Lloyd Georges' appeal to justify Britain's entry into WWI. It was not in the interest of the British Empire but to merely protect small nations. "God has chosen little nations as the vessels by which He carries the choicest wines to the lips of humanity, to rejoice their hearts, to exalt their vision, to stimulate and to strengthen their faith; and if we had stood by when two little nations were being crushed and broken by the brutal hands of barbarism our shame would have rung down the everlasting ages." (Sept 19, 1914) Somehow the claim rings a little false with the evidence, nice though to the ears of those with Welsh ancestry these sentiments are.
Are you disparaging Belgian wine?
Belgium makes wine?
I say this as the world's biggest booster of Belgian beer. Get me going and even Belgian brewers would say, "dude, tone it down."
Surely, we can never say enough about Belgian beer? I recommend everyone take home Duchesse de Bourgogne at some point or other.
Perhaps it is Lloyd George who needed to explain what he was thinking. Did he think the wine was coming from Belgium or was he suggesting France is really just a small nation?
He was suggesting that the entry into the war was due to the invasion of neutral Belgium rather than to protect the commercial and imperial interests of the British Empire. He linked his own homeland, the little nation of Wales, as part of that community of interests the British military alliance would protect, in defending the people of Belgium.
We tend to look harshly on Lloyd George in hindsight, but its best to say that he was a man very much past his time by 1914. He had no idea how catastrophic the war would be nor that its effect would reshape the world in ways he would not have liked. Examined before this period we find Lloyd George was an intelligent and impressive politician who tried to solve problems before they occurred.
Yes - although their beer is exceptional - and beyond compare for variety and pairing. Belgium has sadly never been known, in its thousand years plus history, as having great wine growing regions. Although, to be fair, their whites, with chardonnay grapes, for export are excellent. Really an unknown area for most consumers, but well worth trying.
Another excellent post. May I add this for your perusal?https://zacharydcarter.substack.com/p/lessons-from-keynes-for-the-crisis?s=r