ABSTRACT

This chapter represents a short guide as to how inter-state security relationships developed from the seventeenth century to the beginning of the Cold War. Attitudes to war had remained unchanged from the fourteenth century when Dubois and Dante were alive through to the eighteenth century when Kant, Bentham and Vattel were writing on the subject. One of the most telling consequences to arise at the end of the First World War was the subordination of Realism to a new, almost universal mood emphasising Idealism and Utopianism. The Great War of 1914-18, the war to end all wars, was never to be repeated and, if that goal were to be achieved, there had to be a fundamental overhaul of the international system. The Spanish Civil War (1936-39) drew in Italy, Germany and the Soviet Union as well as volunteers drawn from throughout the world. During the immediate post-war period there were fears that France and Italy might embrace Communism.