PREFACE

Krushchev caused to be placed on Cuba installations for the discharge of nuclear weapons, he was not thinking of a possible gain or loss of markets. The deterfil.in~Qn 5 PREFACE TO TI-IE 1968 EDITION of the government of the United States to prevent the extension of communism is not based on fear of im poverishmen t. Nevertheless, I venture to submit that the type of analysis here presented has still a place in the rational discussion of the possible causes of war. It fits very well the period of history in regard to which the Marxian theories here discussed were originally elaborated. And although conditions today make these theories even less plausible than they were then, yet they are still believed by many. Millions of people in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in Communist countries believe that the major wars of the modern age have been the result of the machi nations of profit-seeking capitalists. The quotation from Mr. E. M. Forster in the first chapter of this essay is still characteristic of the attitude of many sensitive and in telligent persons in western countries who have not made an independent examination of the evidence. Moreover, al though the danger of war in the present age springs chiefly from causes which are not to be described as eco nomic, it is still true, or so it seems to me, that the powers of independent sovereign states to pursue economic and financial policies inimical to the prosperity of others are an important factor tending to international disunity and hence to situations which may be exploited by power poli tics actuated by non-economic motives.

This brings me to the second point on which I have to comment, which relates to conceptions of political re organisations designed to minimize such frictions. The essay here reproduced ends with a section written in the first weeks of war, pleading passionately for the creation of a United States of Europe within which German creativeness and energy might serve the common weal rather than periodically disrupting it. It also contains a 6 PREFACE TO THE 1968 EDITION footnote referring to plans for a wider Atlantic Union put forward by Mr. Clarence Streit and others, in which I express cordial appreciation of the idea but considerable scepticism concerning its practicability. At that time, I did not conceive the possibility of an isolationist United States allowing itself once more to be involved in the in ternecine quarrels of Europe. A great deal has happened since then. Japanese and Nazi aggression destroyed isolationism during the war; and since then, fortunately for the rest of us, the hostility of the Soviet Union and later of China - whether based on fear or on expansionist ambition we need not enquire - has prevented any serious recrudescence thereof.

With its massive armaments and its incomparable eco nomic power, the United States is today the active leader and defender of the civilisation of the West. Such gigantic changes of circumstance could not but affect the perspective of thought regarding the possi bilities of the future. In the years immediately following the end of the war, despairing of the stability and political reliability of some of the states of Western Eu rope and revolted by the anti-Americanism current among influential continental politicians and thinkers whose very existence had been saved by American inter vention, I abandoned my earlier position and argued against British entry into a purely European Union, set ting Iny hopes on a larger structure developing gradually froin the North Atlantic Alliance. In this I now think I was wrong, not in my conviction of the fundamental necessity of preserving the link with the United States and Canada, but in Iny failure to realise the potentialities both of the creation, in these circumstances, of a United Western Europe and of the part which could be played in it by Great Britain. I underestimated the inability of 7 PREFACE TO THE 1968 EDITION those responsible for British policy to see where their true interest lay - in a vigorous developrnent of something like Atlantic Union - and I failed to foresee the colossal folly of the Suez episode which deprived us of our stand ing as a first-class power with freedom to take influential initiatives. At the present time, therefore, I once more support an approach to the more limited union with Western Europe. So I am back in a frame of mind in which the peroration of this essay is not something which I wish to repudiate.

But after all that has happened, and having regard to the perilous equilibrium of the world, I must emphasize that I continue to regard the more limited association as a pis aller, a preliminary, perhaps an inescapable pre liminary, to a more perfect and larger union later on; and I remain intensely apprehensive of the powerful cur rents of opinion on this side of the water which depict United Europe, not as a stage in the evolution of some thing wider, but as the creation of an independent "third force" upholding values which, on this view, the de scendants of Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln are unable to understand. This is a conception which I find intellectually unacceptable and morally antipa thetic: an ignoble ideology of the second rate coffee house, without vision or common sense, an apt index of the spiritual myopia of those who preach it - or are taken in by it. ROBBINS The L6ndoh'\School of Economics October 1967 8 PREFACE THE following essay is based upon five lectures which I was privileged to deliver, in the spring of this year, at the Institut Universitairede HautesEtudesInternationalesofGeneva.

I have completely rewritten my manuscript and consider ably extended the treatment of certain aspects of my sub ject. But the substance and, with .one exception noted below, the general scheme of arrangement remain the same. I should like to take this opportunity of once more thanking M. Rappard and his colleagues for their invita tion and for the indulgence with which they listened to my story. How much of all that was most stimulating and in spiring in the period between two wars is typified in their lovely college by the lake. Long may it flourish, an oasis of sanity in a mad world, to preserve and advance the great principles of international citizenship for which it so con spicuously stands. In deciding to publish at this stage, I have had many hesitations. I do not think that even the most hostile critic can mistake the pretentions of my slender essay for those of a full-blown treatise. But there are sections where I am conscious that, even on this plane, further elaboration would have been desirable; and there are certain features which I contemplated in my original plan, which do not appear at all, notably appendices on the detailed history of the controversies concerning the Marxian theory of imperialism and on the rise of neo-mercantilism in Ger many. But circumstances have not been favourable. Ever since I commenced to work in this field, I have never sat down to work without wondering ifwar would come before my projects were completed. And now, confronted with 9 PREFACE the alternatives of publishing something less than I had intended or of postponing publication perhaps indefinitely, I have had reluctantly to choose the former. I will not con ceal my belief that my conclusions, which, of course, are not exclusively my own but rather the development of a great number of converging lines of investigation, 1 are of considerable relevance to the solution of the problems which we now face; and I would rather present a target to academic critics than leave unsaid the least thing which might conceivably be helpful.

The main body of the essay is an attempt to get into proper perspective the part played by economic motives and economic institutions in the causation ofmodern war. I hope that this will be useful in itself, for it deals with a subject about which there has recently been much con fusion. But, from my point of view at least, much more important is the demonstration, for which all the earlier argument is a preparation, of the fundamental inappro priateness to modern conditions of the present political organization of the world and the necessity of replacing the independent sovereign states by larger federal unions. I first developed this view, some four years ago, in a course of lectures, also delivered at Geneva,which were subse quently incorporated in. my Economic Planning and Inter national Order; and the publication since then of "vorks by Mr. Lionel Curtis and Mr. Clarence Streit, which, ap proaching the general problem of international relations from starting-points' very different from mine, reach sub stantially the same solution, encourages me to believe that the conclusions I then put forward were substantially on the right lines. I have not repeated in this essay the 1 I would like to pay special tribute to the historical researches of Professor Jacob Viner and his school, especially Mr. Staley, without which much of chap. iii could never have been written.

10 PREFACE systematic arguments of the earlier book where I tried to show that, starting, as it were, with a blank sheet, and trying to reason out from general principl~s the require ments of a sensible world order, one arrived necessarily at the idea of federation. But I believe that an examination of the causes which have actually led to war in the past and which will certainly do so agairt and again in the future if action is not taken, leads irresistibly to the same conclusion; and I hope that the analysis and the historical examples here provided will do something to drive it home. In the last section, I have ventured to speculate a little concerning possible developments in Europe; I hope that, at this point, the relevance of the whole argument to our present situation will be readily apparent. The ordeals through which we are passing are surely one tremendous object lesson of the truth of the theme that we must federate or perish. I do not know anything for which men would fight more willingly than the idea of a Europe from which the danger of recurrent civil war was banished, and I know no way by which this can be achieved save by some form of federation.

In the course of lectures upon which this essay has been based, following long established academic tradition, the first section was devoted to questions of definition and pro cedure. I do not think that it inflicted undue pain upon my hearers, nor do I think that it is likely in itself to pre sent any special difficulties to laymen. But the plane of discussion is much more abstract than that of the rest; and for this reason, in preparing a version which aspires to be not merely intelligible but even interesting to the general reader, I have placed it at the end as an appendix. I hope that this will not prevent professional economists, at least, from glancing through it. The investigation of the meanI I PREFACE ing of an economic cause which is its main content does something, I think, to round off the discussions of the nature of the economic, in which some of us have partici pated recently.

I have to express my gratitude to various friends who have helped me at different stages. In particular I should mention Professor Hayek, who is responsible for a great improvement of arrangement, and Mr. L. G. Robinson, who advised me on certain matters of diplomatic history. Mr. Robinson must be exonerated from all blame for my amateurish blunderings. But he has at least this general responsibility in that it was at his lectures many years ago that I first came to love puzzling about this intricate sub ject and the fascinating problems it involves. LIONEL ROBBINS The London School of Economics September16th, 1939 12 THE ECONOl\1IC CAUSES OF WAR CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION I The Menace of Modern War HUMAN life to-day is darkened by a dreadful shadow the shadow of international war. In many parts of the world, war has actually broken out; in others, preparation for war is the mainspring of daily activity. At work, in our homes, in public places, the reverberations are inescapable. Never in history have the thoughts of so many human beings been dominated by this continuous fear.