The Internationalists

Did outlawing war in the mid-20th Century change international politics? Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro have reignited this debate with their book “The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World.” They suggest that it did and point to the dramatic decline of wars of conquest after the Kellogg-Briand Pact as evidence.

When we wrote "The Internationalists," our aim was not only to offer a novel account of how the world order took shape—that a largely forgotten treaty signed in 1928 to outlaw war set in motion a process that transformed the way states behave. We also sought to counter the common view that law is irrelevant in a world of great power politics. This view is generally associated with the “realist” school of international relations.