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A review by anthofer
The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World by Scott J. Shapiro, Oona A. Hathaway
4.0
There's a lot of interesting history in this book! I basically buy their thesis that there is less interstate war after WWII, and I also buy the idea that the outlawing of war as a norm of international law through Kellogg-Briand made some impact on that change. However, I found their list of other possible reasons for that change, which they say don't line up to the end of wars as well as Kellogg-Briand, more convincing. I can't find the quote at the moment, but here's my list, some of which are probably theirs: nuclear weapons, free trade, multinational corporations, new visual technology to publicize atrocities. I would add on the general lack of interest in war from European countries and the U.S., who were the ones who did 95% of the wars before WWII.
This is ultimately a book where they say "the internationalists" and "the world" really often when they actually mean "Europe," and to some degree "Russia and the U.S." When kings or any leaders in general could never be punished for warring, when peasants were utterly dispensable, when weapons were good at maiming but not that great at killing, when capitalism was basically a local matter, then Europeans as represented by Grotius thought war was a legitimate way to conduct foreign policy. After WWII, none of those conditions seemed particularly true any more.
Even before WWII, consider the instance of Native Americans. When guns were ineffective and the U.S. national government was weak, the best it could often do is banish Native Americans west of the Mississippi. Once they got there, Native Americans were fairly good at resisting further conquest. After the Civil War (and during the epocal 2nd Industrial Revolution in Europe and the U.S.), machine guns and railroads and a much larger and better-organized national government that was basically entirely subservient to big corporations absolutely destroyed that resistance. And when they did it, many Americans argued that doing it was evil. There were pictures. There was evidence that it was horrible. There were progressives who went west and tried to redeem the U.S. by teaching Native Americans how to be civilized and integrated into our culture (this was not a great look). However, the old paradigm that wars were just because there wasn't any other way of resolving disputes between nations still held a kind of nostalgic sway. Ultimately the U.S. got away with it, just like Plenty Horses got away with killing a general who was actually sympathetic to Native Americans. War is hell.
I do think that norms matter, that international coalitions are critical to avoiding nuclear war, that the Russian invasion of Crimea and China's encroachments on the South China Sea are a big deal, and that Grotius' system, which accommodated both liberal ideas of the individual and the justness of wars for conquest, still has a lot of appeal to some people (namely, the current dangerous supreme idiot of the U.S.). I also think that the internationalists kind of misses the boat on alternatives to both Grotius and Kellogg-Briand, namely, most of the people outside of Europe who thought all of the conquest in the 16th-20th centuries was illegitimate and crazy and part of a system (mercantilist or "free-trade" capitalist liberal humanism) that made no sense to them and would ultimately burn itself out. This is what the Japanese were saying before the U.S. forced them to open up: we don't want to be a part of this. Then the U.S. opened them up, and millions of people in the Pacific died because of a nationalist, racist cult of personality. This whole multinational corporate capitalist extractive political and economic hasn't burned out yet, but it's on its way.
This is ultimately a book where they say "the internationalists" and "the world" really often when they actually mean "Europe," and to some degree "Russia and the U.S." When kings or any leaders in general could never be punished for warring, when peasants were utterly dispensable, when weapons were good at maiming but not that great at killing, when capitalism was basically a local matter, then Europeans as represented by Grotius thought war was a legitimate way to conduct foreign policy. After WWII, none of those conditions seemed particularly true any more.
Even before WWII, consider the instance of Native Americans. When guns were ineffective and the U.S. national government was weak, the best it could often do is banish Native Americans west of the Mississippi. Once they got there, Native Americans were fairly good at resisting further conquest. After the Civil War (and during the epocal 2nd Industrial Revolution in Europe and the U.S.), machine guns and railroads and a much larger and better-organized national government that was basically entirely subservient to big corporations absolutely destroyed that resistance. And when they did it, many Americans argued that doing it was evil. There were pictures. There was evidence that it was horrible. There were progressives who went west and tried to redeem the U.S. by teaching Native Americans how to be civilized and integrated into our culture (this was not a great look). However, the old paradigm that wars were just because there wasn't any other way of resolving disputes between nations still held a kind of nostalgic sway. Ultimately the U.S. got away with it, just like Plenty Horses got away with killing a general who was actually sympathetic to Native Americans. War is hell.
I do think that norms matter, that international coalitions are critical to avoiding nuclear war, that the Russian invasion of Crimea and China's encroachments on the South China Sea are a big deal, and that Grotius' system, which accommodated both liberal ideas of the individual and the justness of wars for conquest, still has a lot of appeal to some people (namely, the current dangerous supreme idiot of the U.S.). I also think that the internationalists kind of misses the boat on alternatives to both Grotius and Kellogg-Briand, namely, most of the people outside of Europe who thought all of the conquest in the 16th-20th centuries was illegitimate and crazy and part of a system (mercantilist or "free-trade" capitalist liberal humanism) that made no sense to them and would ultimately burn itself out. This is what the Japanese were saying before the U.S. forced them to open up: we don't want to be a part of this. Then the U.S. opened them up, and millions of people in the Pacific died because of a nationalist, racist cult of personality. This whole multinational corporate capitalist extractive political and economic hasn't burned out yet, but it's on its way.