20th-century international relations - Postwar Guilt, Reconciliation, Justice | Britannica

20th-century international relations

Table of Contents

Introduction
The roots of World War I, 1871–1914
- The Bismarckian system, 1871–90
  - The era of the great powers
  - The nature of the German state
- The impact of industrialism and imperialism
  - Patterns of population
  - Industry, technology, and trade
  - The New Imperialism
- Completing the alliance systems, 1890–1907
  - Germany’s new course
  - The threats to Britain’s empire
  - The Triple Entente
- Militarism and pacifism before 1914
  - Anxiety and the arms race
  - The peace movements
- The Balkan crises and the outbreak of war, 1907–14
  - Growing tensions and German isolation
  - The final crisis
- The war-guilt question
  - The search for causes
  - The centrality of the Habsburg monarchy
World War I, 1914–18
- Military stalemate and new belligerents
  - From grand plans to the trenches
  - The war at sea and abroad
  - Efforts to break the stalemate
- War mobilization at home and abroad
  - The invention of total war
  - The weapon of morale
- War aims and peace feelers
  - War aims of the belligerents
  - Attitude of the United States
- The crises of 1917
  - War-weariness and diplomacy
  - The Russian Revolution
- Last battles and armistice
  - Russia’s withdrawal from the war
  - The eastern minorities
  - Germany’s final battles
- The collapse of the old order
Peacemaking, 1919–22
- Competing visions of stability
  - The idealist vision
  - The realist vision
- The Versailles Diktat
  - Hammering out the treaty
  - Reaction to the treaty
- The West and the Russian Civil War
  - Bolshevik diplomacy
  - Allied approaches to the Bolsheviks
  - Consolidation of the Revolution
- Central Europe and the Middle East
  - The reorganization of central Europe
  - The reorganization of the Middle East
- The new balance in East Asia
  - The three Pacific powers
  - The organization of power in the Pacific
- The postwar guilt question
A fragile stability, 1922–29
- A broken world
  - The failure of democratic consensus
  - The search for a new stability
- Reparations, security, and the German question
  - The continuing problem of Germany
  - German politics and reparations
  - Allied politics and reparations
- The agreements of mid-decade
  - Reparations agreements
  - Security and the League of Nations
- Italy and east-central Europe
  - Fascism and Italian reality
  - Fascist diplomacy
- The invention of Soviet foreign policy
  - Lenin’s diplomacy
  - Stalin’s diplomacy
- The United States, Britain, and world markets
  - U.S. leverage in world markets
  - U.S. leverage in Latin-American affairs
- The Locarno era and the dream of disarmament
The origins of World War II, 1929–39
- The economic blizzard
  - Political consequences of the Depression
  - Failures of the League
- The rise of Hitler and fall of Versailles
  - Failure of the German Republic
  - European responses to Nazism
  - Italian aggression
  - The first German move
- British appeasement and American isolationism
  - The rationale of appeasement
  - The civil war in Spain
  - The return of U.S. isolationism
  - Japan’s aggression in China
- Anschluss and the Munich Pact
  - The German-Austrian union
  - The taking of Czechoslovakia
- Technology, strategy, and the outbreak of war
  - Rearmament and tactical planning
  - Poland and Soviet anxiety
- Hitler’s war or Chamberlain’s?
World War II, 1939–45
- The last European war, 1939–41
  - Poland and the northern war
  - The Western front
  - The Eastern front
- Origins of American belligerence
  - From neutrality to active aid
  - Japan’s challenge
- The turning point, 1942
- The economic and scientific wars
  - The German economy and the Jews
  - Strategic bombing
  - Allied economic management
  - Science and technology in wartime
- Strategy and diplomacy of the Grand Alliance
  - Allied strategy to the fall of Italy
  - Early war-aims agreement
- The defeat of Nazi Germany
  - The Allied invasion of Europe
  - Soviet advances in the east
  - The final Allied agreements
- The defeat of Japan
  - The encirclement of Japan
  - The atomic decision
The coming of the Cold War, 1945–57
- The Cold War guilt question
- Wasteland: the world after 1945
  - The ruin of Europe and Japan
  - U.S. vision of reconstruction
  - The end of East–West cooperation
- The Cold War in Europe
  - Peace treaties and territorial agreements
  - Atomic energy
  - The economic battle with Communism
  - The division of Europe
- The Cold War in the Middle East and Asia
  - The creation of Israel
  - South Asia
  - The Chinese civil war
  - The Korean War
  - Asian wars and the deterrence strategy
- The pace of European integration
  - The nature and role of Germany
  - Postwar European recovery
  - The Suez Crisis
- Nuclear weapons and the balance of terror
  - The race for nuclear arms
  - Arms control and defense
Total Cold War and the diffusion of power, 1957–72
- The world after Sputnik
  - Soviet progress and American reaction
  - The Sino-Soviet split
  - Soviet diplomatic offensive
  - Decolonization and development
  - Latin-American problems
- Superpower relations in the 1960s
  - Policies of the Kennedy administration
  - The Cuban missile crisis
  - Renewed U.S.–Soviet cooperation
- The Europe of the fatherlands
  - Great Britain and decolonization
  - France’s independent course
- Asia beneath the superpowers
  - The Six-Day War
  - China, India, and Pakistan
- The war in Southeast Asia
  - Cold War assumptions and the quagmire
  - The conduct and cost of the war
- Nixon, Kissinger, and the détente experiment
  - Détente as realism
  - Scaling back U.S. commitments
  - The opening to China and Ostpolitik
  - Arms-limitation negotiations
  - End of the Vietnam War
Dependence and disintegration in the global village, 1973–87
- The decline of détente
  - The distraction of Watergate
  - Events in Southeast Asia and Africa
  - American uncertainty
  - Postmortem
- The “arc of crisis”
  - Palestinian terrorism and diplomacy
  - The Iranian revolution
  - The Soviets in Afghanistan
- Rhetorical cold war revived
  - The Reagan administration
  - Renewal of arms control
  - Regional crises
- Latin-American upheavals
  - Marxism and the Cuban role
  - Nicaragua and El Salvador
- The world political economy
The end of the Cold War
- Gorbachev and the Soviet “new thinking”
- 1989: annus mirabilis
  - Liberalization and struggle in Communist countries
  - Aftermath of the breakup
- The reunification of Germany
  - From skepticism to reality
  - Why the Soviet retreat?
- Disengagement in the Third World
  - The Philippines and Central America
  - Afghanistan
  - The Middle East
- The first post-Cold War crisis: war in the Persian Gulf
  - UN coalition and ultimatum
  - Soviet unrest at home and diplomacy abroad
  - The ground war
- The collapse of the Soviet Union
The quest for a new world order, 1991–95
- Prospects for peace
  - The Middle East
  - South Africa
- Assertive multilateralism in theory and practice
  - Three tests
  - Developments in free trade
- Europe adrift after the Cold War
  - Relations with Russia
  - The role of NATO
  - The Balkans
Toward a new millennium
- Conflict and peacemaking, 1996–2000
- Tension and cooperation at the turn of the century

References & Edit History

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Looking back on 1919–21 from the perspective of World War II, historians easily concluded that the Paris peacemakers had failed. In fact, debate over a “postwar guilt question” began even before the Big Three had completed their work. Anglo-American liberals felt betrayed by Wilson’s failure to fashion a new diplomacy, while exponents of traditional diplomacy ridiculed Wilson’s self-righteous intrusions. As Harold Nicolson put it: “We had hoped to call a new world into existence; we ended only by fouling the old.” In other words, the peace amounted to a self-defeating mixture of contradictory ends or of tough ends and gentle ...(100 of 138320 words)

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