Keynes, Economics and War: A Liberal Dose of Realism

This paper examines Keynes's thoughts on the economic causes of war. Though an issue upon which the classical economists and their popularisers wrote much, the links between economics and war has become, beyond an unthinking acceptance of the pacific qualities of free trade, an issue largely ignored by economists. Keynes's thinking on the subject, however, was sustained, nuanced and, in its final manifestation, heavily influenced by the implications of his own revolutionary ideas in macroeconomics. By the end of his life Keynes had eschewed the simple liberalism of his youth, combining much that would later emerge within the 'realist school' of international relations with practical plans for a better world.