The Great Illusion
by Norman Angell (1910)
(Revisited)
By Seán English
La Féile Bríde 1 February 2023
Attempts at Constructing a Viable International Peace System: The Failure of the Peace Movements
A number of very prominent and well know anti-war activists including Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell and Norman Angell seem to have abandoned their anti-war principles in the later parts of their lives. Many pacifists who stood by their anti-war principles were very critical of these individuals. It was said that people who are against the use of violence and support the rejection of war are worse than useless if they betray these fundamental principles in relation to some particular war.
It is a little unfair to blame these prominent individuals for betraying the anti-war principles that they so passionately supported in relation to the First World War. But they could see little alternative to doing this in order to address the rise of fascism and the other demented ideologies of the twentieth century. In his contemporary critique of the First World War Bertrand Russell believed that regardless of who won the war the results would be disastrous for civilization for the next 100 years. Much later in his life he restated this belief:
We owe to the first war and its aftermath Russian Communism, Italian Fascism and German Nazism. We owe to the first war the creation of a chaotic unstable world where there is every reason to fear that the Second World War was not the last. (‘Adaptation: An autobiographical epitome’ from Portraits from Memory And Other Essays)
Individuals like Norman Angell who had so passionately argued against the institution of war were reluctantly drawn into supporting the Second World War because they could see no alternative to the ideologies that were determined to destroy the principles of the international world order as it was evolving. But this does not mean that his earlier criticisms of the institution of war in the modern world were flawed or unsound. Germany in particular did not gain anything from the Second World War; in fact the German nation was lucky to survive the war and to recover from that disaster.
This short re-examination of Angell’s theories as they are expressed in his book The Great Illusion tries to address these paradoxes. The key to Angell’s study in The Great Illusion is reflected in the original subtitle of the book A Study of the Relation of Military Power in Nations to their Economic and Social Advantage. He argued that the economic cost of war, especially between the advanced industrial countries, would be so great that no side could gain. In fact, the consequences for both sides would be disastrous. According to Angell, war in the modern world between industrially advanced countries would be not only economically irrational but also socially and culturally devastating. The idea that nations could gain from war and conquest was, he believed, no longer tenable.
The Versailles peace treaty (1919), for all its faults, did try to come to terms with the problem of industrialised warfare between the more economically advanced countries. The setting up of the League of Nations in 1920 can be seen as a vindication of the arguments put forward in The Great Illusion. In 1928, the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which was officially called the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy, seemed to confirm the theories that Angell had outlined in his original study.
The fundamental flaws of the treaty of Versailles and of the structures of the League of Nations were exposed by subsequent economic instability and the rise of fascist and communist ideologies. The failure of international institutions for the maintenance of peace led to the subsequent appalling levels of destruction and mass extermination at a level almost unprecedented in history. At one level this experience made some of the questions raised in The Great Illusion even more relevant in relation to functionality of war. The developments in the science and technology of extermination, particularly in the area of thermo-nuclear weapons, raised a whole new set of questions about the utility of war. It would be hard to find a more irrational strategy than that of the ‘First Strike’ within the scope of ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’(MAD).
The charter of the United Nations committed the organisation to ‘save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’. Under the auspices of the United Nations and related international organisations a number of attempts were made to try and replace the war system of international relations with some other form of security system that could deal with conflicts as they arose. At the same time, the United Nations, and at least some of its members, accepted the need to fundamentally restructure the war system. The McCloy-Zorin Accords (1961) looked at the real possibility of a system of international security through ‘general and complete disarmament’.
Attempts at Constructing a Viable International Peace System
From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards the question of peace versus the question of war began to become a more visible part of political discourse in a number of countries. A series of peace congresses were convened successively in London, Brussels, Paris, London, Frankfurt, Manchester and Edinburgh. These congresses were organised on a semi-official basis by groups that we would recognise as part of civil society. At one level it could be said that these meetings did not achieve any notable successes. But these reform movements were to have an important indirect influence on the policy of various governments and in particular on the sentiments of the individuals who were members of these governments.
The congresses were organised around principles that had been put forward in earlier times by individuals such as Émeric Crucé in the seventeenth century. Many different possibilities were debated at these congresses. The work of Crucé was important because it contained a number of fundamental principles that the later meetings would try to promote. Crucé proposed the creation of a permanent court of international arbitration. This court would be made up of representatives from all the countries and the decisions of the court would be binding on the parties in dispute. It was hoped by those promoting the concept of international arbitration that if such a body was to work it would eventually make international war unnecessary.
In the broader picture, European governments were well aware that the system of international relations that existed ‘de facto’ was very fragile particularly in times of crisis when it would be most needed. The international system at that time was constructed on principles laid down at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. This was the peace conference called after the final defeat of Napoleon and the French revolutionary armies. Between the Congress of Vienna in 1814–1815 and the publication of The Great Illusion no major international conference had tried to address the issues of war and peace in the international system. The Congress of Vienna had in many ways been very successful in the limited goals that it had set itself. It has to be remembered that the task of re-establishing some form of peaceful coexistence in Europe after the bloody and bitter wars of the French Revolution was not going to be easy.
The order established in Vienna did manage to keep the peace in Europe in a general sense for almost one hundred years. But by the time Angell was writing The Great Illusion much of what had been put together at Vienna had been superseded by events and forces unforeseen at the time. The unification of Germany and of Italy, and the Scramble for Africa, were just two of the political forces that had altered the framework established in Vienna. Angell, like many of his contemporaries, believed that the existing system of international relations would not stand the test of a major crisis. In fact, most European governments accepted that the situation needed to be brought up to date with the reality on the ground. The problem was that nobody knew how this could be done. In 1898, Czar Nicholas II of Russia called, through his foreign minister, for the convening of a conference that would address some of these issues.
The First Hague Peace Conference (1899)
In May 1899 the great and the good of Europe gathered in The Hague for one of the first great international government-sponsored peace conferences. The Hague peace conference was unique for a number of reasons. It was probably the first major peace conference called before a war had started. Most previous peace conferences had been called in the aftermath of a particular war or in order to try and resolve particular disputes. It seemed that the statesmen of Europe were at last getting serious about the problem of war and how to prevent the damage war could do to their countries. Or was the Hague conference just another part of the game of international relations that some of its critics believed it to be?
The conference was called on the initiative of Nicholas II the Czar of Russia, appealing to the highest principles and in the spirit of creating a more peaceful world for the new century which was just beginning to dawn. There were many critics of the reasons why Nicholas II had called for such a conference. But the fact is the conference was called and all the major Europeans governments sent their representatives and engaged in the debates there. Many of the particular issues discussed at The Hague are only of historical interest. Most countries were reluctant to discuss the general principles which would have needed to be addressed for the building of a more stable international system.
Each country seemed to adopt a minimalist approach of just protecting its own self-interest. Protecting your own self-interest is a legitimate position but it can only be effective to a limited extent in international relations. In the end, no country seemed willing to put forward serious plans that would address the issues that the Czar had hoped could be dealt with. The Czar had hoped that it might be possible to outline the principles of an international order that would be able to cope with the various crises that were emerging on the horizon. In the end, to take away the bad look of the conference’s failures, it was decided that a second conference should be called. This conference met in 1907, but again the politics of self-interest dominated it and little or no progress was made. Some people believed that by 1907 the die had already been cast and the time for the creation of any stable peace system had already passed.
The Rise of Rationalism in Europe
Norman Angell was heavily influenced by the Irish historian William Lecky and in particular with the approach taken by Lecky in his book A History of the Rise and Influence of The Spirit of Rationalism in Europe published in 1865. Many historians identify the latter half of the nineteenth century as a time of great optimism in European society. The amazing developments of the industrial revolution seemed to indicate that Man was really the master of the natural world.
Historians like Lecky believed that historical forces were showing that Man could also be master of himself. Lecky believed that the passions and the emotions which had traditionally been responsible for so much violence in human affairs could be overcome by the application of reason to them. Lecky also believed that the rising force of rationalism would challenge many of the basic assumptions on which European society rested. He believed that in the bigger historical picture what he called ‘The Secularisation of Politics’ was one of the main contributors to the rise of rationalism in Europe.
One of the most significant examples that Angell picks up from the work of Lecky is that of the religious intolerance and related wars which had been endemic in European society for so long. Lecky believed that it was the progress of rationalism that had finally taken the steam out of these bitter religious conflicts. This was no mean feat, given the extent and depth of religious intolerance in Europe. Angell accepted that religious belief had been replaced by patriotism as the most important factor in the relationships of the various people and powers of Europe.
Angell believed that this was a vital change in relation to the possibility of peace in the European context. He hoped, rightly or wrongly, that political discourse would be much more open to the influence of rational thought than religious discourse had ever been. The lessons learnt from the centuries of religious strife had come very late in the process. There was no need for ‘unending strife’ in pursuit of for compromise was possible without surrender. Lecky was a true child of the Enlightenment in that he believed it was possible to achieve a full rational understanding of ourselves and our world. He believed that this rational understanding would lead to the rejection of such primitive urges as the urge to kill your enemies.
The Victorian Anti-War Liberal Tradition
In many ways Normal Angell can be seen as the heir of Richard Cobden, John Bright and others in the British anti-war, liberal tradition. This tradition cohered around a number of central beliefs. One of the most important of these beliefs was that of the importance of Free Trade. This was promoted by Richard Cobden, who believed that Free Trade, which he saw as fair trade, was a powerful force for peace. Cobden believed that the development of international Free Trade between countries would be the best defence against the tensions of the war system. Cobden was fighting an uphill battle because traditional wisdom held that each state’s protecting its own industries with tariffs was the best way to promote the welfare of any country.
It would be fair to say that Cobden, who was campaigning a generation or so before Angell, laid the foundation on which many of Angell’s ideas were built (Cobden died in 1866). Cobden’s passionate abhorrence of war exposed him to ridicule and reproach from many quarters. But he never wavered in his belief that the development of Free Trade in the international system was the best defence against the tendencies towards war in that system. For Cobden, the philosophy that underpinned his idea of Free Trade was a very radical approach to the international system. In 1849, he brought forward a proposal in Westminster in support of international arbitration as the best means of resolving the disputes that arise from time to time in the international system.
Angell believed that the various peace movements failed because in most cases they were concentrating on the wrong issues. Many of the peace movements based their arguments on a number of false assumptions. The peace school of thought started from the proposition that war could be addressed as an independent variable and that the war system was, from a functional point of view, a means to an end. Angell argued that war was not an independent variable so it could not be isolated from other cultural variables. Angell also argued that from a functional point of view the war system was as much, if not more than, an end itself than a means to an end.
Many commentators believed that if war did not exist it would have to be invented. In fact, the peace school believed that war would have to be replaced by something that would fulfil the same function but do much less damage to society. This question was taken up in an important essay published in 1911 ‘The Moral Equivalent of War’ by the philosopher William James. The peace school was slowly beginning to accept that war and the war system would have to be replaced by something. That something would have to fulfil a whole range of needs, not least the psychological and biological urges that seemed to be catered for by the war system.
Both the war school and the peace school seemed to slowly acknowledge, from different perspectives, that that when viewed in terms of social stability, the war system could be recognised as an end in itself as much as a means to an end. The acceptance of this analysis was, according to Angell, a crucial step for the peace school. If the peace school spent most of its energy in criticising the ends of war they were missing the whole point, or at least a significant part, of the argument. The main function of the war system is not specifically to fight wars but wars have to be fought occasionally to help justify the system.
Angell takes issue with some of the more traditional pacifist interpretations of war. He looks at the argument put forward by some socialists that the so called ‘ Causalities of the Industrial Battlefield’ were more cruel and insidious than the causalities of war. Some statistical information was being produced which showed that the loss of life during peacetime was greater than the loss of life during wartime’. The fact that the causalities inflicted by industrialism were less apparent did not take away from the argument. In fact the causalities and cruelties inflicted by peace were more drawn out and insidious than the cruelties of war.
The fundamental implications of this argument were far more significant than anyone, even the pacifists, would like to concede. If you argued that war should be abolished because it was cruel and the causalities were unacceptable then by implication the peace of the modern industrial system should be abolished also. The enthusiasm with which young men in particular went off to war has many different causes but in the build up to the First World War it seemed to reach a new level of feverishness. The ‘push’ factors that encouraged young men to go to war acted at very different levels in society.
Challenging the War System and its Ideologies
At the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth centuries people in many countries began to seriously question the basic assumptions and the fundamental principles that underlay what for clarity should be called the ‘War System of International Relations’. In particular, they challenged the ideologies that supported and justified that system. There were many reasons why this debate took off at that particular time. One of the more important reasons for this questioning of the war system was the growing awareness of the destructive power of the new technologies of war. While the industrialisation of slaughter was only in its early stages, people were still becoming aware of the potential dangers of this type of progress. In The Great Illusion,which was first published in 1910 Norman Angell set out to try and undermine what he termed as the ‘Great Illusions’ on which the war system of international relations was based.
The ferocious criticism of the book and the controversy that it created were an indication that Norman Angell’s arguments were seen as a serious challenge to the status quo of the war system. The original book went through a number of edited editions in which the author attempted to rebut some of the fierce criticisms that had arisen as a response to the first edition of the book. Norman Angell continued to write about and work for the possibility of peace throughout his long life and he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933.
In some ways The Great Illusion can be seen as a historical document dealing with particular issues of the time. But over one hundred very bloody years later, in the early part of the twenty-first century, we are still dealing with many of the Great Illusions associated with the war system. More significantly we must face the fact that our failure to come to terms with the war system in the cultural sense has critically undermined our ability to address other fundamental issues which now threaten life on our planet. Our cultural obsession with violence and our failure to seriously tackle the economic and environmental problems of our times are partly a reflection of the failure to tackle the war system.
The arguments put forward by Norman Angell and many others in the early part of the twentieth century failed to achieve the goals that they had sought. This failure was disastrous for the people of Europe and the people of the world in general, who were condemned to almost one hundred years of ferocious violence. This failure directly impacts on the world in which we live today. It has undermined our ability to address and solve the problems that threaten even worse disasters for the people of the twenty-first century.
This short reappraisal of The Great Illusion aims to identify the factors identified by Norman Angell which are still supporting the Great Illusions surrounding and supporting the war system today. Some of the particular arguments in the original editions of the book are of historical interest only and it is up to readers to read the original for themselves. This short analysis does not attempt a comprehensive study of The Great Illusion. The importance of the arguments identified are purely the choice of this author and do not reflect the full extent of the arguments put forward by Norman Angell.
The Collapse of the War System of International Relations
In the final analysis, The Great Illusion addresses some of the most fundamental questions concerning the culture of war in human society. In that sense it was seen to challenge the status quo of the rights of the ‘nation’ and the ‘nation state’ to defend itself and its interests in a very imperfect world. The Great Illusion caused so much controversy and drew so much criticism precisely because it challenged the war system from within the very foundations and justifying ideologies of that system.
One good example of this is to look at the arguments that were being put forward against war by someone like Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian author and pacifist, who was writing around the same time. Tolstoy was tenacious in his criticism of the war system from a moral and religious perspective. But Tolstoy’s criticism of the war system was not seen by many of his contemporaries as a series challenge, because Tolstoy based much of his criticism on what was then seen as a very extreme form of pacifism. Tolstoy was the voice crying in the wilderness and the best way for practical men to deal with such a voice was to ignore or dismiss it.
Norman Angell’s criticism of the war system was different because he challenged the belief in the war system at the very foundations of that belief. Angell argued that the war system was a ‘bad system’ for the very reasons that those who supported it believed that it was a ‘good system’. This is why many of the arguments in The Great Illusion are as relevant today as they were when the book was first published. Angell argued that the war system was a ‘bad system’ at almost every level and that those who argued in support of the war system were being blinded by a number of illusions. In this sense Angell was closer to Tolstoy than he himself would have liked to admit.
Angell argues that the war system is a bad system from almost all perspectives of human culture, not just the political and economic perspectives and he insisted that the war system does not do what its supporters claim that it does. It would be hard to give an exact date for the start of the collapse of the war system of international relations as it would be hard to give an exact date for the end of slavery. Certainly, by the time that Norman Angell published The Great Illusion in 1910 the ‘logical absurdity’ of war was clearly recognised. In particular, the logical arguments that were being used to justify the fighting of wars between the advanced industrial states of Europe had been challenged on a number of important grounds. There was still some debate about the rationality of fighting war against ‘inferior’ peoples (mostly those peoples without access to machine guns and the other fruits of industrialisation).
The Great Illusion of War (Revisited)
It is just over one hundred years since Normal Angell set out to challenge the arguments and justifications that supported the war system of international relations. Many of the arguments and explanations put forward by Angell in his masterly work The Great Illusion (1910) are of course contemporaneous with the political and social situation in Europe and the greater world in the early part of the twentieth century. At the same time, the core and fundamental arguments that Angell put forward against what Bertrand Russell called the ‘Logical absurdity of war’ are even more relevant today in the early part of the twenty-first century. At the time that Angell was criticising the use of war in international relations and the dangers that arise from such a system there were no genocidal nuclear weapons in existence. And the dark shadow of the Holocaust was still to make its appearance on the European stage of history.
There are a number of ways of trying to understand what Norman Angell meant by ‘The Great Illusion’: in particular, the question of what were the issues raised in his book which caused so much controversy at the time of its publication. Norman Angell set out to address a number of questions concerning the relationship between the military power of any nation and the economic and cultural well-being of the individuals and society that make up that nation. In trying to get some answers to these questions, he opened up a Pandora’s Box of questions, most of which are as relevant today as they were on the eve of the first great European war of the twentieth century.
Angell’s rational arguments against the war system of international relations were partly drowned out by the tide of hatred created by the first and second world wars. But after all the bloodshed of the last hundred years the central arguments put forward by Angell are still the ones that have to be addressed if we as a species are to free ourselves from our enslavement to violence. Angell argues that the direct damage done by the war system – the death and destruction inflicted on so many individuals – is only a small part of the price we pay for our cultural obsession with violence. The actual direct violence associated with fighting wars is only the tip of the iceberg of the ‘Great Illusion’ of violence.
The arguments put forward by Angell are aimed at critically undermining the cultural paradigms of the war system. He was well aware that the foundations of these cultural paradigms go very deep into human nature and the very foundations of human civilizations and this is where he takes his arguments. Angell believes that it is our social, economic and cultural systems that pay the greatest price of the absurdity of the war system. Today we would have to identify environmental damage as one of the most critical dangers from the iceberg of violence. The arguments put forward by Angell are really challenges to the cultural paradigms, then as now, of the war system of international relations.
What Is the Great Illusion?
The title of Norman Angell’s book, The Great Illusion, could be seen in one sense as very misleading. Angell himself never identifies a single great illusion that was responsible for the war system. It is much easier to understand his approach from the point of view that there are many ‘small’ illusions that combine to create what he calls ‘The Great Illusion’. The subtitle of the 1910 book version of The Great Illusion gives some indication of his general approach to the problem. The subtitle was: A Study of the Relation of Military Power in Nations to their Economic and Social Advantage. But even this subtitle can be misleading as a central part of Angell’s book addresses the role of human nature and in particular the role of social Darwinism in the culture of war. He examines in some detail the psychological drives for war and the psychological drives for peace. His original motivation for writing the book was to try and explain a number of contemporary problems in the international system. In particular, he wished to examine the Anglo-German rivalry and the related arms race and the instability that this rivalry was causing within the European political system.
At this stage, nobody could have foreseen the terrible tragedies of the first and second world wars. The predominate belief, or the ‘war philosophy’, of the time could be summed up in the following way: a quick campaign limited to a number of battlefields and then a sweet victory with everyone home for Christmas. This philosophy of war received some significant support from the work of people like Carl von Clausewitz in his classical study On War, published in 1832, even if he would not have recognised it himself if he had been still alive.
This was just one of the illusions that Angell set out to criticise and undermine. Angell was not the only person who saw the unprecedented dangers posed by the pursuit of industrialised warfare. Many of his contemporaries, both within and without the military system and the peace movements, were also aware of the dangers. Bertrand Russell, writing about the same time, spelt the dangers out very clearly when he said that regardless of who won the First World War: ‘The results would be disastrous to civilization probably for 100 years.’
The Tangled Web of Illusions
Angell very quickly realised that in trying to address the fundamental causes of war rather than just the specific issue of the Anglo-German rivalry he would have to address the much deeper phenomenon of the role of war and organised violence in human affairs. He identifies a tangled web of illusions from history, economics, politics, religion, biology and psychology. Many of these specific areas combine to form what in the modern sense would be called a ‘positive feedback system’. For example, the arguments put forward for ‘The Economic Case’ for and against war, which is the first part of the book, cannot be taken in isolation from politics or history or from such nebulous contemporary concepts as ‘the white man’s burden’. The problem that Angell faced, and which is still unsolved, is that the support for the war system does not rest just in the political or economic structures of a system but the support for the war system also goes deep into the moral and psychological fabric of society.
Angell identifies most of the classical arguments that are the foundation of the support of the war system. For example, he looks at the argument that the war system is the only thing that guarantees the security of a state in an unstable, dangerous and chaotic international system. And connected to this argument is the belief that the economic wealth of a nation state has to be protected from the military point of view. A country that is strong economically must be strong militarily if it is to maintain its economic strength. The political and economic arguments for the war system were supported by broader cultural arguments. The military ethos of a nation was seen by many as the cultural bulwark that protects the heritage and values of that nation. Angell also had to look at the new debate surrounding the developments in biology which seemed to support the belief that the war system was the equivalent of natural selection and the survival of the fittest.
The Functional Necessity of the War System
In The Great Illusion Angell tries to identify and to examine the fundamental beliefs that supported the arguments for the war system of international relations in the early part of the twentieth century. Angell accepts that the case for the war system is supported by a tangled web of beliefs that have their roots deep in the human psyche and in historical and political experience. He recognises that religious justifications for war and violence are as old as the religions themselves. He accepts that the rationalisations and justifications for the war system are to be found in almost all the traditional political, economic and social theories. But Angell is inspired by his own belief that Mankind, with its culture and civilization, can move and has moved beyond beliefs that have become outdated. This move away from the culture of violence may not be based on high moral principles and is as likely to come about through rational and utilitarian acceptance of the limits to the use of violence in the industrial era. Angell believes that these limits were being set by a number of factors, not least the economic burdens imposed on societies by the war system.
Angell believes that we need not be forever enslaved to beliefs or practices that may have at some stage in our history been seen as incontestable. One example that he gives is from that dark period in European history in which witchcraft was seen as a great threat to the social order. As a result, many poor souls met horrible and unnecessary deaths and society was thrown into an artificial turmoil. Angell argues that the illusion of witchcraft created fear and anxiety in many societies and resulted in untold misery for many people. The importance of the strength of Angell’s argument can be seen in this example. For, he does not go on to blame the judges that condemned the unfortunates to horrible deaths. In fact, he accepts that most of the judges believed that they were acting on the highest principles. The fundamental problem was that they and their contemporaries were misguided by an illusion, a very dangerous illusion. In this case the Great Illusion was the illusion of witchcraft.
The illusion of witchcraft, like all such illusions, was by its very nature so all-embracing that it was seen by many in those societies as self-evident and beyond rational argument. The foundations of the belief in witchcraft had, like our belief in the war system, tangled roots in every area of human enterprise. Angell acknowledges that it would have been much easier to understand and condemn those involved in the ‘witchcraft illusion’ if they had been ‘bad’ people acting on ‘evil’ motives. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Nothing is ever so simple. This is the approach that Angell takes in his analysis of the ‘War Illusion’. Those people who support war and those people who want to see war consigned to the dustbin of history cannot be divided along ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ or ‘good’ or ‘bad’ lines. For example, Angell accepted that the people who argued that the British navy must have a superiority of 5: 2: 2 to its rivals believed that they were fully right within their own worldview.
The Political Necessity of the War System
One of the main questions that Angell had to address in 1909 were the arguments that surrounded the necessity for war in the international system as that system was so constructed. Angell accepted that most people who justify their support for the war system do so for very good reasons. Regardless of whether you may think war is a good or bad thing in itself, war is seen by many people as a necessary evil. From a Hobbesian-type perspective, the war option is a requirement in a system in which existence is a struggle of all against all. Angell accepted that many of the people who supported the war system would like a peaceful international system. They genuinely believe that in a very imperfect world the best way to create a stable international system is through the war system. In this scenario the system will remain relatively stable with the application of the balance of power and principles of deterrence. Even if the war system does not guarantee peace, it should guarantee security.
The war system is seen by many as the only guarantee in the final analysis that a ‘state’, a ‘nation’ or a ‘people’ can have to defend itself if and when the need arises. It is believed that military strength is the one sure way of guaranteeing that in the final analysis the economic and political interests of a ‘country’ will be protected. In the same sense the war system underpins the ‘nation’ and its highest principles such as liberty and democracy or for some people communism or fascism. It guarantees the ‘nation’ the ‘freedom’ to develop along its own cultural and historical path.
Angell accepted that at one level many of these arguments in support of the war system were valid in both historical and contemporary terms. He accepted that the basic principles as set out in support of the war system were valid in principle. But this is where Angell departed from the mainstream analysis. He argued that once you applied these principles in the real world they did not actually work. Because other variables came into play. In this sense, the principles, when applied in the real world, did not produce the results that they were supposed to. In fact, Angell argued, the ‘war principles’ would more often than not produce the exact opposite of the security and interests of a country.
Angell takes a number of arguments based on these principles and identifies the problems that arise when they are applied in the real world. For example, in relation to the defence posture of country ‘A’ that defence policy can be easily seen by country ‘B’ as an offence policy. Each nation than pleads the need for defence, which leads to the classical rivalry that produces the various arms races. He identified the Anglo-German rivalry as a good example of this process. Angell might have summed up this ideology by saying that the war system always seems to work in theory but very seldom in practice.
Challenging the Necessities of the War System
One of the great strengths of Angell’s analysis is his ability to see both sides of the arguments and to recognise the strength of the arguments which oppose his own views and beliefs. For Angell, as for others, the central argument against the war system was not specifically related to any particular war as it broke out within the war system. Angell believed that the real arguments against the war system related to the economic and social damage done by ‘the lengthy preparation for war, the condition of armed peace, the burden of armaments which is almost worse than an occasional war’ (The Great Illusion, page 179). Angell goes on to say that ‘The truth is that war in the modern world is the outcome of armed peace.’ Angell spends quite a lot of time in the analysis and discussion of the biological arguments that seem to support the war system and which were very popular in the early part of the twentieth century. He argued that this part of the Great Illusion arises from ‘The indiscriminate application of scientific formulae’ (page 183).
One of the central arguments that Angell has to deal with is the question of the importance of the military strength of a country in relation to its security and its survival in the broadest sense of the question. Angell challenges what he identifies as the ‘The confident dogmatism of military writers on the subject’ (page 222). The arguments in support of militarism were not easy to counter because, as Angell points out, the debate challenged what he termed a fundamental European philosophy and ideology of force. One good example of this type of argument concerned the importance of military service and conscription for young men.
The argument accepted that while war and actual violent conflict itself could be damaging to society it was the preparation for war, the military training involved, that was the most important part of the military contribution to society. There was a general belief that the training and indoctrination of the conscription period made young men into better citizens than those who did not get such training. Angell counters this argument by accepting that although on one level some form of training of young men could be beneficial, the type of training young men get in the military is the exact opposite. This type of training bestows little benefit on society. He quotes from George Bernard Shaw’s John Bulls Other Island, ‘For permanent work the soldier is worse than useless … He has the easiest of lives; he has no freedom and no responsibility. He is politically and socially a child, with rations instead of rights … .’
One of the fiercest set of criticisms of the ideas of the Great Illusion were set around the belief that war and the war system had a very positive role to play in society. At the cultural level the criticism of the Great Illusion can be seen as based on two main schools of thought. The first school of thought was founded on the belief that while certain aspects of war were regrettable war was absolutely necessary for a number of crucial rational and cultural reasons. The second school of thought went much further than this. They believed that war created ennobling experiences and that men should be encouraged to participate in war. This second school of thought believed that war played a vital role in the integrity and the values of the modern state.
Angell is very good at clarifying the arguments from both these schools of thought. He believed that it would be misleading to call these schools of thought militaristic or anti-democratic, because the ideas they expressed went beyond any simple understanding of the term ‘militarism’. Angell quotes extensively from people like Admiral Mahon, General von Bernhardi and Field-Marshal von Moltke in support of the war system. But he also quotes from other non-military but representative individuals such as the Reverend Charles Kingsley and Canon Newbolt. Angell believes that many of these arguments can be summed up in the title of a chapter in a book by Professor Baron Karl von Stengel, who was one of Germany’s delegates to the Hague Peace Conference. The chapter of the book was entitled ‘The Significance of War for Development of Humanity’.
One of the arguments that Angell tries to challenge is the belief that the war system is part of the natural order of things ordained by God. At the time Angell was writing the implications of Charles Darwin’s On The Origin of Species had started to dominate the debate in relation to the evolution of life and the struggle for existence. This argument was very topical towards the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.
Angell looks at the arguments of those who believe that the war system is an essential part of nation building and that military virtues and military training is an essential part of the social cohesion of the nation. ‘Our way of life’, ‘our high ideals’ need to be protected at all costs against whoever or whatever threatens them. In the case of Great Britain and the British Empire, Angell looks at the argument that the historical and continued success of British industry and British wealth was built on and rested upon her military might, particularly as this military might was manifested in the Royal Navy.
Angell was arguing his case against the war system of international relations from the heart of the British Empire. For most people living in England at that time it was almost self-evident that the Empire worked. Free Trade within the British Empire brought prosperity and modernity to many parts of the world. It was generally believed that this system worked on the strength of the military might of the British Navy. Angell accepted that the evidence in favour of this type of argument was very strong, but he believed that it was only half the story. Angell argued that the strength of the British Empire rested not so much on its military might but more significantly on the political principles that the Empire advocated. Towards the end of the nineteenth century Gandhi had travelled from India to South Africa in the belief that the British Empire was a great force for good in the world. Gandhi had already spent a number of years studying in London. At that time Gandhi believed that for all its faults ‘The British Empire existed for the welfare of the world’(An Autobiography, page 324).
Angell was writing The Great Illusion as a British subject at the height of the British Empire. He accepted that the British Empire would not have existed without the use of force. In mitigation he argued that the British Empire was much more successful than previous empires such as the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Belgian, the French etc precisely because the British Empire was built more on trade than on plunder. Trade required a lot less force than plunder. In fact, Angell believed that trade and plunder were almost mutually exclusive. Trade relationships created a win-win situation for many of those involved and this was the key to the stability of the British Empire and not the level of military force that the Empire could bring to bear on its subjects.
From the contemporary perspective, Angell identifies what he calls ‘the optical illusion’ that the more territory a country can acquire the better off that country will be. Angell counters this argument by comparing the economic integrity of the citizen of any small country with that of the citizen of a large country. He found that in general the citizens of small countries were better off than the citizens of larger countries. He did not carry out any exhaustive studies but from anecdotal evidence he was aware that on average a citizen of any of the small European countries was at no disadvantage with a citizen of any large country. He believed that the opposite may well be the case, that citizens of the smaller countries were actually better off than their equivalents in the larger countries. In general terms, the nature and extent of social inequalities seem to be more extreme in larger countries.
Rational War Theories Versus Idealistic Pacifism
The war school of thought in all its various manifestations was still the paradigm within which the various theories of international relations were constructed. Angell set out to address the arguments and in effect he had to try and deconstruct the paradigm of the war system. Generals, politicians, clergy, academics and other movers and shakers in every European country still promoted the ‘ideal’ of war as a virtuous necessity.
Angell quotes extensively from the war school of thought and he does not try and dismiss their arguments out of hand. He accepts that their point of view seems to be based on rational analysis. The ‘war school’ advocates were of course vociferous critics of what could be called the ‘peace school’. The attempt to abolish war, according to one leading critic of The Great Illusion is not only ‘“immoral and unworthy of humanity”, it can also be seen as ‘an attempt to deprive man of his highest possession – the right to stake physical life for ideal ends’ (General Bernhardi, Germany and the Next War, 1912).
The German Field-Marshal von Moltke, is just one of the authorities that Angell quotes as presenting the type of arguments that supported the ‘war school’: ‘A perpetual peace is a dream and not even a beautiful dream. … Without war the world would degenerate and disappear in a morass of materialism.’ Angell realised that his ideas would have to challenge the fundamental set of beliefs that made up what he called the inevitability of the war school of thought. This inevitability of the war school of thought was supported by arguments from traditional religious beliefs as well as implications from the newer sciences; in particular, the Darwinian struggle of the survival of the fittest and the implications of the forces of natural selection on human society.
The Great Illusions of the Second and Third World Wars
The build up to and the outbreak of the Second World War created a major dilemma for Norman Angell and the people in Europe who had spent most of their lives criticising the war system. During the 1930s the endemic violence of the European political systems was reaching new levels of ferocity. There is little doubt that political violence had been given a whole new lease of life in the years after the ending of the First World War. There were many specific causes of the rise in political violence in Europe during this period. In general terms the results of the First World War and of the Russian Revolution had shaken the legitimacy of most of the power structures in Europe.
The crises of political legitimacy combined with economic collapse created an almost unique set of circumstances. The vicious level of violence in the Spanish civil war gave some indication of what was at stake in trying to keep the peace in Europe. Most people recognised that the international institutions that had been created at Versailles – The League of Nations and the various international agreements –were totally inadequate to deal with the problems that bedevilled Europe. Some people believed that the Treaty of Versailles, and all the baggage that went with it, was a major cause of the instability in the system.
Pacifists like Angell, and even those non-pacifists who hoped that the problems could be dealt with without the resort to war, were on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand they had to address the question of the Soviet Union and the rise of the communist ideology. Was this political ideology really the progressive future for Mankind, as its proponents claimed? Or were the communists really the devils out of hell, as their critics believed? Before the pacifists could even get to grips with this question they had to try to understand and to respond to the Fascist ideology that had started to grip so many European countries.
If Norman Angell were writing his book, The Great Illusion, in the early part of the twenty-first century, he could be persuaded to call it The Great Illusions of World War Two. The rational arguments that are used for justifying the Second World War are now a central part of the metanarrative of the war system of international relations. The illusions surrounding the Second World War have been used to reinforce the war system and to justify almost every war that has been fought since the end of it. From the logical absurdities of mutually assured destruction (MAD) to the small, dirty, little wars in various parts of the globe, justifications are made within the illusions of the Second World War. The problem is that the sensitivities surrounding some of the issues make it unattractive for many people to address the illusions.
Clausewitz in his strategic analysis of war in the modern world made the position very clear. In theory, if and when you go to war, you must be prepared to do whatever is necessary to do to win the war and defeat your opponent. Otherwise, don’t go to war. This is regardless of who can be blamed for starting the specific war in question. The logic of this analysis can be very uncomfortable. In the case of the Second World War, in order for the Allied forces to defeat the Nazi forces they would in effect have to out Nazi the Nazis in their destructive potential. If you accept this analysis then many of the great illusions surrounding the Second World War begin to crumble. It is important to be very clear on this analysis. Demented ideologies and the political violence that they create are still part of the world in which we live and they have to be confronted by non-demented ideologies. The Great Illusions of the Second World War have a number of distinct functions in supporting the Ideology of Violence. The Second World War is one of the classic examples of the total failure of the Ideology of Violence so that the role of the Great Illusion is to try and turn what is a catastrophic failure into its opposite. This cannot be done within rational analysis and so the importance of the Great Illusion and its sub-sets are even more relevant before the war system drags us into the Third World War.
The Metanarratives of the Great Illusion And the Price to be Paid
The Great Illusion challenged what we might call today the ‘paradigm’ of self-reinforcing beliefs in the rational and functional utility of war. The State, however defined, and its institutions, the military, the religious, the legal, the political and economic systems have a tendency to justify their existence on very rational and utilitarian grounds. A Great Illusion comes about when the rational justifications for any particular institution or set of historical institutions loses contact with the actual changes that are taking place in real time and in the real world. Some of these changes will in effect undermine the very foundations of the rational justifications that support the existence of a particular institutions or set of institutions. The more this happens the more the institutions will depend on manufacturing mythologies to support and justify their positions. These historical mythologies mixed into the foundations of rational analysis are the core ingredient challenged by Angell in his study of the Great Illusions.
Within the cultural norms surrounding the rationalisations and justifications for the Ideology of War and Violence a number of Great Illusions have evolved. But it is important to be aware that the Great Illusion that supports the Ideology of War and Violence do not and cannot stand alone. The Ideology of War and Violence has to be sustained and supported by the contributions from all the other state, social and cultural institutions. The Great Illusions surrounding the Ideology of War and Violence can be clearly seen in Angell’s general approach to the analysis of the functional nature of war in human culture. This analysis can be found in the narrative of the Second World War as much as it can be identified in the narratives of the First World War. These Great Illusions are not just historical in nature but are used to justify and rationalise the contemporary and ongoing Ideologies of War and Violence.
In the early part of the twenty-first century modern war science and technology have created a ‘military extermination complex’ that has literally put the ‘doomsday clock’ very close to midnight. The Great Illusion associated with this narrative is that omnicidal weapons will never be used. All the experience from history and knowledge of human nature contradicts this illusion. The failure to address the illusions of the ‘military extermination complex’ will unfortunately have a cost that may be unprecedented in human and planetary history.
