- Political idealism came to dominate international relations during the interwar years. Political idealists believed in the inherent goodness of human beings and argued that human beings generally sought welfare of others as well as themselves.
- The idealists believed that bad structural and institutional arrangements on a world wide basis created bad human behaviour. War, according to them was not inevitable, but was a product of the bad structural arrangements.
- The idealists therefore argued that war could be prevented through the creation of proper international structures. These structures were cooperative international institutions; the League of Nations had been one of the most important of them to be established after the First World War.
- The principle of collective security was the operative methodology through which it would be possible to avoid wars. The principle of collective security required joint action and a commitment on part of all the participating states.
- Some idealist thinkers argued in favour of the rule of international law as a means of avoiding wars. In this scheme, nations would renounce war as an instrument of national policy. Still other idealist thinkers looked at arms race as the source of conflicts.
- Consequently, they favoured a systematic dismantling of the arms race and supported the policy of disarmament.
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