| Review of: |
John Maynard Keynes and International Relations: Economic Paths to War and Peace by Donald Markwell
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006
Pages: 320. $85.00 |
| Reviewed By: |
Jonathan Kirshner |
| Reviewed in: |
International Studies Review |
| Date accepted online: |
10/04/2008 |
| Published in print: |
Volume 09, Issue 02, Pages 283-285 |
Is There a Keynesian High Politics?
Donald Markwell's John Maynard Keynes and International Relations: Economic Paths to War and Peace is a thoughtful and knowledgeable book. Yet, it does not live up to the promise of its title, at least not as far as readers of the International Studies Review are likely to be concerned. Although producing a creditable addition to the enormous literature on Keynes, Markwell spends most of his time visiting terrain that is likely to be familiar to those inclined to pick up the book, while leaving unanswered many key and tantalizing questions regarding Keynes' attitudes about international relations and, in particular, about the "high politics" of war and peace.
John Maynard Keynes and International Relations begins with the promising observation that "students of Keynes have not in any systematic or thorough way studied his thinking from the perspective of international relations" (p. 1). After a brief introduction, Chapter 2 attempts to establish "Keynes as a Classical Liberal." Markwell argues that Keynes' IR instincts were shaped in his formative years as a traditionally trained economist. As a result, "the idea that free trade promotes peace" served as a "central tenet" of his perspective (p. 15). Included in this chapter are interesting, if brief, discussions of Keynes' subtle views regarding the British Empire and how his thinking, in general, was influenced by a Malthusian pessimism regarding population pressures. The remaining themes of the chapter-World War I, conscientious objection, and wartime finance-have been well covered elsewhere (for example, Skidelsky 1983).
Chapters 3 and 4 cover the Paris Peace Conference, Keynes' resignation from the British Treasury, the publication of The Economic Consequences of the Peace, and the controversies and debates that ensued. In these chapters, the book lives up to its promise to link Keynes' attitudes and policy preferences to his underlying theoretical vision of international relations. Thus, for example, we see Keynes' view that the delicate, intricate, and underappreciated web of relationships that allowed the European economy to function required a prompt rehabilitation and reintegration of the German economy after the war (pp. 101-102). For Keynes, the true tragedy of the peace of Versailles was not simply what it did, but also what it failed to do: "no provisions for the economic rehabilitation of Europe, ...nothing to stabilize the new states of Europe, nothing to reclaim Russia," nothing to restore the "disordered finances of France and Italy" (Keynes 1919:143).
The following two chapters, however, veer off from the promised "systematic exegesis of Keynes' thinking on International Relations" (p. 2). Chapter 5, in particular, devotes 50 pages to the emergence of Keynesian thinking and the "middle way" and to how this thinking was applied to the central problems associated with the interwar gold standard and the challenges of reconciling domestic and international economic stability. The argumentation is well informed and reasonable, but there is already an enormous literature on these issues (for example, Kirshner 1999) and the links to high politics here are tenuous at best. Markwell's discussion of Keynes' The General Theory is particularly problematic in this regard. This book, which was Keynes' most famous, was simply not written with power politics in mind, and neither Keynes' occasional asides with respect to international relations nor Markwell's analysis of them are compelling. In Chapter 6, Markwell returns to world politics-World War II, the Keynes and White plans regarding the postwar international monetary order, the creation of the World Bank, the management of Lend-Lease, and the negotiation of the postwar Anglo-US loan. But again, even though this discussion is well done, most of this material has been comprehensively covered elsewhere (Gardner 1980; Skidelsky 2001), as Markwell acknowledges.
Keynes and International Relations is also undermined by its central framing of Keynes as an "idealist." Markwell tries to link this argument to the ideas of Hedley Bull, although he readily acknowledges that the crucial core of this perspective-that peace can be promoted by economic means-was not emphasized by Bull (p. 3). IR scholars will remember, however, that this theme is central to E. H. Carr's (1964/1946) seminal interwar distinction between liberal idealists and realists-an association encouraged further by Markwell's repeated linking of Keynes with Norman Angell (pp. 107-109, 191), who was the much maligned whipping-boy in Carr's realist critique of liberalism (Carr 1964/1946:25-26).
However, Keynes was not that sort of idealist. If anything, his prescriptions after World War I (and many of his interwar analyses) were realist. A prompt reintegration of Germany into the European economy was a policy that set morals and passions aside and acknowledged the realities of power. In Economic Consequences, Keynes directed considerable venom at the idealistic Woodrow Wilson, who could "preach a sermon" on any of his fourteen points but who had "no plan" for their practical implementation (Keynes 1919:26). Ultimately, Wilson's failure was seen as rooted in his determination "to do nothing that was not just and right" (Keynes 1919:143).
Markwell explores the theme of "Keynes as an interwar idealist" in a critical section at the end of Chapter 5. One wishes that he had spent 200 pages on these issues rather than on the well worn paths of the World Wars and the emergence of Keynesianism. Instead, in these precious nineteen pages, Keynes and International Relations takes on nine different issues of critical interest. Such brief tastes, however savory, cannot hope to satisfy most readers. But they do provide glimpses of a fascinating, if not idealistic or even coherent, Keynesian perspective on international relations. In his analysis of world politics, Keynes sounds like a realist and, at times, a quite insightful realist-as when he anticipates the Nazi-Soviet pact (p. 200). At the same time, his policy prescriptions seem informed by an overwhelming desire to avoid war, which is an invitation to cognitive dissonance.
Markwell rightly sees idealism in Keynes' support for the League of Nations and intervention in Abyssinia (p. 197). Yet, Keynes held a strictly realist stance on the principal cause celebre of the interwar idealists: the Spanish Civil War. Increasingly the political black sheep among his Bloomsbury cohort, Keynes sympathized with the Loyalists but could see no British interests at stake. Those who favored a more activist policy, he argued, harbored "a deep and disastrous confusion between the rights of personal protest and the criteria of national policy" (Keynes 1937a:62, 1937b:76; Bell 1995:221-226).
On the most pressing issue of the late 1930s (the rise of fascism and the practice of appeasement), Keynes' dissonance resonates. Markwell argues that "Keynes was an early and strong advocate of resistance to the Nazis" (pp. 115, 134-135) and was under few illusions about the true nature of what he had labeled the "brigand powers" (pp. 197-203). Nonetheless, Keynes, seemingly speaking both for Britain and for himself, understood the "fatal dilemma," namely, that "the Fascist Powers are readier to go to war for their objects than we are for ours" (Keynes 1936:55). Where did that leave Keynes on appeasement? Did his realism lead him to conclude, as did Carr, that it was necessary to set idealism aside and accommodate the rise of German power on the continent (Carr 1964 / 1946:219)? Markwell argues persuasively that it would be "misleading" to label Keynes as an appeaser (p. 202), and that Keynes certainly understood that Britain "sacrificed our honour ...and fraternized with what is vile" at Munich (Keynes 1938:127). But what would Keynes have done instead? Unfortunately, even though Markwell's John Maynard Keynes and International Relations is a well researched and judicious book, and despite the promising leads it contains, we still do not have an answer to this question-or a comprehensive understanding of Keynes' vision of international relations.
