Abstract
Some would argue that it is not so much that governments deliberately ignore public debates, as the previous chapter suggested, but that they are irrelevant because policy is determined by deeper factors and that all ideas are simply a reflection of these. Others would agree that debates matter but suggest that the British debates are too moralistic, that the Wilberforce or ‘Good Samaritan’ tradition has come to dominate discussion, rather than the more cautious traditions reflected in the work of Cobden, Bloch, Angell and Wells. This explains Britain’s propensity to elect to become involved in wars, allowing its critics, including those quoted at the beginning of this book, to be able to accuse Britain of being the most belligerent of the Great Powers.
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Notes
K. R. M. Short, Western Broadcasting over the Iron Curtain (Croom Helm, London, 1986), p. 6;
Philip M. Taylor, Munitions of the Mind: A History of Propaganda from the Ancient World to the Present Day (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2003), Chapter 24.
Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays, (London, Oxford University Press/Humphrey Milford, 1939).
L. N. Tolstoy, War and Peace, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1961, Volume 2, p. 1407.
Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (Gloucester, Alan Sutton, 1987), p. 21.
Amongst the massive literature on appeasement, see R. A. C. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement: British Policy and the Coming of the Second World War (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1993).
L. S. Amery, My Political Life: The Unforgiving Years (London, Hutchin-son, 1955), p. 286, quoting Amery’s own speech attacking the Munich settlement.
Sir J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England (London, Macmillan, 1900, first published 1883), p. 251 ff.
Randall Davidson, Captains and Comrades of the Faith (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1916), p. 72.
Richard J. Barnet, Intervention and Revolution: The United States in the Third World (London, Paladin, 1972), p. 20;
Michael Ignatieff, Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan (London, Vintage, 2003), p. 43.
For a sympathetic Indian view of imperialism, see Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand Great Anarch! India 1921–1952 (London, Hogarth Press, 1990)
and for Gandhi’s own ideas, see the interview in Upton Close, The Revolt of Asia: The End of the White Man’s World Dominance (New York, Putnam’s, 1927).
Ronald Robinson, John Gallagher with Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism (London and Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1981), p. 20.
Quoted in I. D. Westerman, Provincial Reconstruction in Afghanistan (Cambridge, unpublished M.Phil. thesis, 2008), p. 25.
George Gallup, jr., The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2001 (Wilmington, Scholarly Resources, 2002), p. 43. There is a much larger group who dislike Israel than is the case with the Philippines or Taiwan, but the public rallied round Israel when it was involved in a general war with the Arabs, see Connie de Boer, ‘The polls: Attitudes towards the Arab-Israeli conflict’, Public Opinion Quarterly, Spring 1983.
Bob Woodward, The Commanders (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1991), p. 226.
Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (New York, HarperCollins, 1993), pp. 818–819.
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© 2009 Philip Towle
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Towle, P. (2009). Do Debates on War Matter?. In: Going to War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230234314_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230234314_12
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