Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
• Liberal
• Socialist
Immanuel Kant
• First major thinker of liberal internationalism
• He liked states in a global system to people
living in a given territory
• If people living in a territory require a
government to prevent lawlessness , shouldn’t
the same principle be applied to states ?
• Without a form of government , the
international system would be chaotic .
• Therefore, citizens like countries must give –
up some freedoms and establish a
continuously growing state consisting of
various nations which will ultimately include
the nations of the world.
• Kant imagined a form of global government .
Jeremy Bentham
• Writing in the late 18th century
• A British philosopher who coined the term
international in 1780
• Advocated the creation of international law that
would govern inter-state relations .
• He believed that objective global legislators
should aim to propose a legislation that would
create the greatest good of all nations taken
together.
Giuseppe Mazzini
• A 19th century Italian patriot.
• Reconciled nationalism with liberal
internationalism
• An advocate for the unification of all Italian –
speaking mini- states
• Critic of the Metternich System
• He believed in a republican system without
kings.
• Proposed a system of free nations that
cooperated with each other to create an
international system.
Woodrow Wilson (1913-21)
• One of the 20th century most prominent
internationalist
• Like Mazzini , Wilson saw nationalism as a pre-
requisite for internationalism
• Because of his faith in nationalism , he
forwarded the principle of self-determination
Principle of self-determination
• The belief that the world’s nations had a right
to free and sovereign governments.
• He hoped that these free nations would
become democracies , because only by being
such would be able to build a free system of
international relations based on international
law and cooperation .
• Wilson became the most notable advocate for
the creation of League of Nations .
• At the end of World War I in 1918, he pushed
to transform the League into a venue for
conciliation and arbitration to prevent another
war
• For his efforts , Wilson was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1919
League of Nations
• The league came into being that same year
• Ironically and unfortunately, US was not able
to join the organization due to strong
opposition from the Senate
• The League was also unable to hinder another
war from breaking out
• It was practically helpless to prevent the onset
and intensification of WWII
• On one side of the war were the AXIS POWERS
1. Hitler’s Germany
2. Mussolini’s Italy and
3. Hirohito’s Japan
who were ultra-nationalists that had an
instinctive disdain for internationalism and
preferred to violently impose their dominance
over nations
• It was in the midst of this war between the Axis
and the Allied that internationalism would be
eclipsed.
• Despite it’s failure, the League gave birth to some
of the more specific international organizations
that are still around until today. The most
popular are:
• WHO (World Health Organization ) and
• ILO (International Labour Organization )
• More importantly , it would serve as the
blueprint for future forms of international
cooperation
• In this respect , despite it’s organizational
dissolution , the League of Nations’ principles
survived WWII
League of Nations
• Was a concretization of the concepts of liberal
internationalism
Kant- emphasized the need to form common
international principles
Mazzini -enshrined the principles of
cooperation and respect among nation-states
Wilson –called for democracy and self-
determination
• These ideas would re-assert themselves in the
creation of United Nations in 1946 .