Beyond Appeasement
Cecelia Lynch
The interwar peace movements were, according to conventional interpretations, naive and ineffective. More seriously, the standard histories have also held that they severely weakened national efforts to resist Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Cecelia Lynch provides a long-overdue reevaluation of these movements. Throughout the work she challenges these interpretations, particularly regarding the postwar understanding of Realism, which forms the basis of core assumptions in international relations theory.
The Realist account labels support for interwar peace movements as idealist. It holds that this support—largely pacifist in Britain, largely isolationist in the United States—led to overreliance on the League of Nations, appeasement, ... Read more
Lynch focuses on the construction of the United Nations as evidence that the conventional history is incomplete as well as misleading. She brings to light the role of social movements in the formation of the normative underpinnings of the U.N., thus requiring scholars to rethink their understanding of the repercussions of the interwar experience as well as the significance of social movements for international life.
Show LessProduct Details
About Cecelia Lynch
Reviews for Beyond Appeasement
Jeffrey W. Knopf, Naval Postgraduate School
Mobilization
Cecelia Lynch, focusing on the activities of British and US ... Read more