The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World

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NCSS.D2.His.5.9-12. Analyze how historical contexts shaped and continue to shape people’s perspectives.

One seat at the main table, where the Council’s permanent members sat underneath a statue symbolizing France, had been left empty for Woodrow Wilson. The President of the United States had done more than any to promote the League’s cause. His wartime call for “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at” became the standard by which the organization was and is measured. liberal internationalism, cluster of ideas derived from the belief that international progress is possible, where progress is defined as movement toward increasing levels of harmonious cooperation between political communities.

Finnemore, Melody. "Oregon State Bar Bulletin June 2008 – Planting the Seeds: An Early Interest in the Law Takes Root in Classroom Law Project's Programs". Oregon State Bar. The key term in that sentence is “idealism.” In international relations, an idealist is someone who believes that foreign policy should be based on universal principles, and that nations will agree to things like the outlawry of war because they perceive themselves as sharing a harmony of interests. War is bad for every nation; therefore, it is in the interests of all nations to renounce it. Senators William Borah and Hiram Johnson c. 1921-1922 ( left); Senator Henry Cabot Lodge in 1924 ( right).

So the future of liberal internationalism hinges on two questions. First, can the United States and other liberal democracies recapture their progressive political orientation? America's ‘brand’—as seen in parts of the non-western world—is perceived to be neo-liberal, that is, single-minded in its commitment to capital and markets. It is absolutely essential that the United States shatter this idea. Outside the West—and indeed in most parts of Europe—this is not the core of the liberal democratic vision of modern society. If there is an ideological ‘centre of gravity’ in the wider world of democracies, it is more social democratic and solidarist than neo-liberal. Or, to put it simply: it looks more like the vision of liberal democracy that was articulated by the United States during the New Deal and early postwar decades. This was a period when economic growth was more inclusive and was built around efforts to promote economic stability and social protections. If liberal internationalism is to thrive, it will need to be built again on these sorts of progressive foundations. But such examples are rare. And nationalism, even when allied with a progressive internationalism, so often spirals towards reactionary politics. The Second International collapsed because most of its member parties embraced the patriotic fervour of the First World War. The 1978-89 wars in southeast Asia, which started when Vietnam invaded and occupied Cambodia, showed that a blind adherence to national interest could even corrupt those who professed South-to-South solidarity. On November 19, 1919, there were actually two votes, rather than one, in the Senate. The first was on a resolution to ratify the Treaty and Covenant unamended. The second included fourteen reservations proposed by Lodge, in close consultation with the Republican caucus. Neither passed. Closing Speaker (no more than one student): Responsible for preparing a five-minute closing speech.The Elephant & Castle shopping centre hovers above a busy London thoroughfare like a spaceship – a dilapidated spaceship covered in flaking blue paint. When opened in 1965 it was one of the first American-style malls in Europe. Today it has fallen into disrepair – the escalators break down and the wallpaper peels – but it has emerged as a centre of working-class cosmopolitanism, the focal point of London’s 113,000-strong Latin American community. Allied Record Company pressing. For the Specialty Records Corporation pressing, see Internationalists.

Both President Donald Trump’s supporters and opponents advocate competing forms of internationalism— free-trading and Christian in the case of Mike Pence, for example; pacific and juridical in the case of the recently founded, Trump-skeptical Quincy Institute. The sooner we recognize this, the sooner a more open, intelligent and productive debate on the U.S.’s place in the world will be possible. Racism in this way undermines the only way to successfully resist the daily impositions of the system — class solidarity. In spite of the internationalisation of capitalism, the bourgeoisie exercises its rule in the form of national states. In opposition to this, the proletariat is an international class, a class of migrants. Every split weakens its struggle and tightens the screws of exploitation. For this reason, it is an urgent task for communists to struggle without compromise against racist ideas. Our resistance against racism has nothing to do with the patronising reform projects of the so-called multiculturalist propagandists, who peddle all sorts of culturalist recipes and, in the framework of their own positive racism, only accept those “cultural differences” which they consider that the local public can digest. The division in the working class cannot be overcome by the “foreign” minority conforming to the prevailing “dominant culture”. We reject every positive evaluation of “integration” or “assimilation”. These kind of concepts are always based on the bourgeois prejudice of the higher worth of some sort of “national culture” and language. To overcome racist divisions, a conscious minority politics for the most oppressed sectors of the class is necessary. Action without compromise against all racist shenanigans, discrimination, exceptional laws and administrative practices is an essential basic condition for the production of class unity. The working class has neither countries nor national cultures to defend. The only way out of the treadmill of exploitation consists in the overcoming of the capitalist system, which gives birth to racism and reproduces it on a daily basis." [3]

Note that each event has at least one primary source document associated with it. These are included to provide students with a deeper understanding of the events, but they are not absolutely necessary to the lesson. Teachers should decide whether or not to require their students to read these, depending on the skill level of their students and the amount of time available for this subject. Internationalist Communist Tendency English· Italiano· Français· Deutsch· Español· Русский· Polski· Svenska· Čeština· हिन्दी· 简体中文· Esperanto Although it can trace its history to 18th-century precursors, liberal internationalism emerged as a powerful ideology during the 19th century, primarily (though not exclusively) in Britain. Among its main proponents were politicians, including John Bright and Richard Cobden, and philosophers, including John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. Critical of the violence and hypocrisy of the international system, those proponents proposed a variety of ways to transform the system. They started by challenging what they identified as the root of the problem: the interests and actions of the ruling aristocracies. The transition from mercantilism to free trade and the domestic move toward democracy presented an opportunity to overthrow that feudal legacy. Liberal internationalism has always been conjoined with a domestic reform agenda. Like The Clash of Civilizations and The End of History, this brilliant book lays out a vision that makes sense of the world today in the context of centuries of history. Hathaway and Shapiro tell their story with literary flair, analytical depth, and historical meticulousness. It will change the way you remember the 20th century and read the news in the 21st.”