The New Atlantic Order
The Transformation of International Politics, 1860–1933

Sheds new light on a transformation process: the struggle to create a modern Atlantic order in the long twentieth century.

Patrick O. Cohrs (Author)

9781107117976, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 May 2022

1130 pages
23.8 x 16.2 x 6.6 cm, 1.72 kg

'The goal of [Cohrs'] impressive erudition is … to reconceptualize the entire process of peacemaking [after the First World War] … He sees [it] within three broader contexts, located in temporally ever larger concentric circles. The smallest … involves understanding peacemaking as an attempt to create a 'new Atlantic order', a transatlantic security and economic architecture linking the United States with western and central Europe … [that anticipated] the more successful transatlantic creations after 1945. Surrounding this circle is the broader notion of a 'long twentieth century', running from 1860 to 2020 … The widest circle is a consideration of … international relations from the Congress of Vienna until the present, emphasizing the idea of … a system of co-operation among sovereign states … under the supervision of a power or powers that act as benevolent hegemons. This combination of detailed empirical research and large-scale reconceptualization creates a complex structure with lots of moving parts, impressive to observe in action …' Jonathan Sperber, Times Literary Supplement

This magisterial new history elucidates a momentous transformation process that changed the world: the struggle to create, for the first time, a modern Atlantic order in the long twentieth century (1860–2020). Placing it in a broader historical and global context, Patrick O. Cohrs reinterprets the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 as the original attempt to supersede the Eurocentric 'world order' of the age of imperialism and found a more legitimate peace system – a system that could not yet be global but had to be essentially transatlantic. Yet he also sheds new light on why, despite remarkable learning-processes, it proved impossible to forge a durable Atlantic peace after a First World War that became the long twentieth century's cathartic catastrophe. In a broader perspective this ground-breaking study shows what a decisive impact this epochal struggle has had not only for modern conceptions of peace, collective security and an integrative, rule-based international order but also for formative ideas of self-determination, liberal-democratic government and the West.

Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
List of maps
Introduction
Part I. Inevitable Descent into the Abyss?: The Wider Pre-History of the Great War. The Involution of International Politics at the Dawn of the “Long” 20th Century: 1. Peace through equilibrium. The 19th century's Vienna system – and its disintegration
2. Transformation and corrosion. The turn towards power politics and global imperialist competition in the formative decades of the “long” 20th century
3. The “ascent” of an exceptionalist world power. The American special path and ephemeral aspirations for an Atlantic order of empires
4. Counterforces – and first visions of a novel transatlantic peace. Internationalist aspirations to overcome imperialist power politics before 1914
5. The unavoidable war? Long and short roads to the catastrophe of 1914
Part II. The Greatest War – and No Peace Without Victory: The Impact of the First World War, Competing Visions of Peace and the Struggle over the Shape of a New – Atlantic – World Order: 6. Tectonic changes. The consequences of the war and the transformation of the transatlantic constellation
7. The political and ideological “war within the war”. The transatlantic competition over the shape of the postwar order
8. No “peace without victory” – and the making of the frail Atlantic armistice of November 1918
9. No prospects for a lasting peace? The urgent and the systemic challenges of peacemaking and the need for a new Atlantic order
Part III. Reorientations and Incipient Learning Processes: The Dominant – Atlantic – Approaches to Peace and Order after the Great War: 10. Towards a progressive Atlantic peace of the victors. The reorientation of American approaches to peace and international order
11. The search for a new equilibrium – and an Atlantic concert. The reorientation of British approaches to peace and international order
12. The search for security and an Atlantic alliance of the victors. The reorientation of French approaches to peace and international order
13. A new beginning? German pursuits of a Wilsonian “peace of justice” and first steps towards an Atlanticist foreign policy
Part IV. No “Pax Atlantica”: The First Attempt to Found a Modern Atlantic Order – and its Frustration: 14. An impossible peace? The incomplete transatlantic peacemaking process of 1919
15. Novel superstructure of a new Atlantic order? The struggle to found the League of Nations and the limitations of the covenant of 1919
16. No just peace without security. The pivotal German settlement and the struggle to found a new Atlantic security system
17. The eastern frontiers – and limits – of the new order. Self-determination, the critical Polish-German question and the wider challenges of “reorganising” Eastern Europe
18. A formative threat? The Western powers and the Bolshevik challenge
19. The political and moral stakes of reparations – and the limited advances towards a new Atlantic economic order
20. The imposed peace. The missed opportunity of a negotiated settlement with Germany?
21. The truncated Atlantic peace order of 1919 – a re-appraisal
Part V. Epilogue: The Political Consequences of the Peace: The Challenges after Versailles and the Making of the Unfinished Atlantic Peace of the 1920s: 22. Peace undermined. The divergent outlooks of the victors, the consequences of Wilson's defeat and the escalation of Europe's postwar crisis
23. Towards a new order. Constructive learning processes and the construction of an Atlantic peace beyond Versailles
24. The remarkable consolidation of the nascent Pax Atlantica of the 1920s – and its dissolution under the impact of the world economic crisis
Part VI. Final Perspectives – the Cadmeian Peace: 25. The eventual creation of the “long” 20th century's Atlantic order after 1945 and the crucial lessons of the era of the First World War
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Diplomacy [JPSD], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], History of the Americas [HBJK]