ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the idealist aspect of the first ‘great debate’ 1 in IR in which idealism and liberalism opposed realism and its inherency orientation that war and violence are intrinsic to human nature, society, the state, and the international system. Idealism was to offer an ambitious, ethically oriented account of peace through liberal-internationalism and governance, as most famously argued by US President Wilson:
The day of conquest and aggrandisement is gone by…. The programme of the world’s peace, therefore, is our programme; and that programme, the only possible programme, as we see it, is this…. 2
