For centuries philosophers and reformers promoted the vision of a more lawful international order as an essential requirement for peace. Just as the development of law helped to create order and reduce violence within domestic societies, it was hoped that the emergence of international law would tame the anarchy of political relations among nations. The early peace societies in the United States and Europe were internationalist in outlook and experience, and many actively campaigned to establish agreements and institutions for the arbitration of international disputes.
During the nineteenth century the first practical steps were taken to establish and codify principles of international law, as part of a movement to regulate and humanize the conduct of war and to establish mechanisms for preventing the outbreak of war. The decades that followed saw the creation of international law societies, agreements to regulate transnational commerce and communications, the beginnings of international arbitration, and the emergence of a wide array of legal agreements to regulate and prevent conflict among nations. Thus began a movement that has continued to this day toward ever expanding networks of international law and multilateral institutions.
Analyzing the movement for internationalism poses conceptual challenges, and reveals complex and sometimes contradictory impulses among those involved. The terminology available – internationalism, pacifism, peace advocacy – is too imprecise to capture the many differences in nuance and political perspective that exist. As described below, internationalism can be either conservative or liberal. It can emphasize the preservation of existing relations of power, or seek to create more equitable structures. Some see international institutions as guaranteeing the established order while others see them as mechanisms of social change.
Some support international agreements as a means of bolstering the national interest while others support them in the hope of transcending nationalism and broadening global governance. Some focus narrowly on the security dimensions of peace while others emphasize the need for social and economic justice to prevent war. Pacifism (broadly understood) includes internationalism, usually of the liberal variety, but its agenda is wider and includes a range of other issues. Absolute and pragmatic pacifists agree in their support for internationalism, but absolutists place greater emphasis on the need for reform while pragmatists are more willing to work with existing mechanisms.
The term internationalism is used in this context to describe groups that support the development of stronger legal and institutional mechanisms to ameliorate and prevent armed conflict. Internationalism embodies a narrower and more conservative political outlook than pacifism and thus is able to attract greater political support among ruling elites. It provides a gateway through which peace advocates can interact with decision makers and gain a wider hearing for parts of their agenda.
In this narrative we examine the links between campaigns for internationalism and the broader peace movement and also the differences between the two. I review the conceptual origins of internationalism, the rise of organized movements for the arbitration of international conflict in the nineteenth century, the creation of the League of Nations, the movement to outlaw war, and the failure of collective security in the interwar era. Along the way I show how elements of the broader peace agenda have influenced the evolution of internationalism, and how essential principles of peace have yet to find transnational expression.
Anti-Democracy America and Moribund Iranian Democratic Ideals in Mid-Twentieth Century
