Conclusion: Reconstructed Idealism and Revised Realism

Abstract

This study has attempted to demonstrate empirically that in certain limited contexts in the interwar years, the pursuit of co-operative treaty-making strategies by nation-states significantly reduced the probability that the parties involved would subsequently go to war. It has also tried to show that the empirical relationship thus described is not simply a spurious statistical coincidence. Both the detailed quantitative analysis developed in Chapter 3 and 4 and the case-study examined in Chapter 5 lend strong support to the idea that co-operation — in the form of a commitment to the bilateral treaty-making process —constituted a significant causal factor in the complex balance of forces which enabled certain dyads to maintain peaceful relations even in the face of the general conflagration of 1939–45.