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Mr. Toynbee and World Politics: War and National Security

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Kenneth W. Thompson
Kenneth W. Thompson
Affiliation:
Social Sciences division of the Rockefeller Foundation
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Extract

IHE problem of war and national security, at one time conceived of as the province of almost anyone but the peace-minded international relationist, has come increasingly to occupy scholars and researchers. Arnold J. Toynbee, whose major concern is the philosophy of history, preserves a lively interest in international politics and particularly in the problem of war, the principles of foreign policy, and the quest for an applicable body of theory concerning international society. With the publication of the last four volumes of his famed A Study of History, it may be appropriate to call attention to the other side of his work, especially as he brings to the discussion a clarity, simplicity, and concreteness refreshing by contrast with the pompous tautologies of much of modern scholarship. This article reviews Mr. Toynbee's contribution to knowledge on the first of the problems mentioned, namely, war and national security. It seeks to present his conception of the crisis in modern war, social factors underlying the transformation of warfare, and prevailing theories on the nature and inevitability of war.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , April 1956 , pp. 374 - 391
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1956

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References

1 Toynbee, Arnold J., The Prospects of Western Civilization, New York, 1947, p. 33.Google Scholar

2 Toynbee, , Civilization on Trial, New York, 1948, p. 25.Google Scholar

3 Toynbee, , A Study of History, IV, London, 1939, pp. 142–43.Google Scholar

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12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., pp. 150–51.

14 ibid., p. 150, n. 4.

15 Survey of International Affairs, 1931, London, 1932, p. 10.

16 Ibid.

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18 Toynbee, , A Study of History, op. cit., IV, pp. 153–54.Google Scholar This is evidently the type of statement from which some of Toynbee's American protégés like William H. McNeill derive their view that Western civilization can confidently face a Third World War, from which the United States will probably emerge as a universal state. However, it is a mistake to equate Toynbee's thinking with that of his lesser followers, as does The Times (London) in its review of McNeill's latest book.

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20 Toynbee, , A Study of History, op. cit., IV, p. 643.Google Scholar

21 The last-named conceives of man as a beast of prey which “lives by attacking and killing and destroying.” Spengler, Oswald, Man and Technics, New York, 1932, p. 28.Google Scholar J. F. C. Fuller wrote: “If honour be worth safeguarding, war sooner or later becomes inevitable, for in this world, there are always to be found dishonourable men, and if war does not bring a nation against these, then must vice live triumphant.” Fuller, , The Reformation of War, New York, 1923, p. 282.Google Scholar

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23 Ibid., p. 65. To a degree, the Communist dieory of war is romanticist in character. It maintains that war is inevitable under the capitalist system and encourages révolu-tionary wars and wars for national liberation. What is missing, however, is the idealization of war that we have observed above.

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43 Ibid., p. 48.