Conclusion: A Prospective View

Abstract

Prediction is as hazardous for even the best scholars in international relations as it is in other fields of human affairs. The point is borne home by a rereading of E. H. Carr’s preface to the post-war edition (1945) of his The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939,¹ in which he wrote:

The conclusion now seems to impose itself on any unbiased observer that the small independent nation-state is obsolete or obsolescent and that no workable international organisation can be built on a membership of a multiplicity of nation-states.