As part of the Gerda Henkel Foundation's special program "Security, Society and the State" historian Haakon Andreas Ikonomou focuses on the failed attempts at general disarmament between the 1890s and 1930s in order to shed more light on a dilemma that still exists today: effective multilateralism versus state interests in controversial policy areas. We interviewed the researcher about his project as part of a new series of interviews. Selected projects from the foundation's special programs will also be presented in short in the coming weeks.
"Effective multilateralism vs. state interests in contested policy areas"
L.I.S.A.: Could you briefly explain the scope of your project? Why is it scientifically worthwhile to deal with the topic?
Prof. Dr. Ikonomou: The failed attempts at general disarmament between the 1890s and 1930s epitomize a struggle that has haunted international society right up until today: the dilemma of effective multilateralism vs. state interests in contested policy areas. This project proposes to study the connected attempts to bolster security and general disarmament from the perspectives of international organization and European multilateralism, examining the key period between the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907 and the collapse of the League of Nation’s disarmament efforts in the 1930s. It seeks to capture the interplay between expert-driven entrepreneurship and interstate bargaining as producing specific imaginations of security that, while deeply flawed, nonetheless carried lessons for future attempts at embedding security and disarmament in an international order. We need to return to one of the greatest failures of European multilateralism to date and explore the guiding question: How and why did it not work?