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war & peace ‘economic weapon’. The severance of trade and financial contacts in the First World War had been so traumatic and damaging that many internationalists believed that the threat of economic sanctions alone could eliminate interstate conflict. Unfortunately, the League’s deterrent had problems. The absence of the United States and (for most of the period) the Soviet Union – both major commodity exporters – from the League undermined the legitimacy and effectiveness of its ‘economic weapon’. Worse, the new legal power to apply economic coercion outside of conflict was destabilising, creating what one contemporary perceptively termed a condition of ‘peacewar’. Even so, economic sanctions were important in maintaining European peace during the 1920s. Threats of blockade successfully halted a Yugoslav incursion into Albania in 1921 and terminated a border war between Greece and Bulgaria in 1925. Feminists criticised the ‘economic weapon’, recognising that its victims were disproportionately the poorer classes, particularly women and children, but internationalists in the League felt vindicated. They even tried, in the abortive Geneva Protocol of 1924, to strengthen sanctions, proposing automatic implementation wherever the League’s Council saw aggression. Further evidence of sanctions’ potential to restrain weaker, import-dependent states came in 1940, when a deliberate slowdown of US oil supplies kept Spain from joining the Second World War. Worryingly for the West’s current confrontation with Russia, from the very start sanctions proved difficult to agree on and less effective against larger, more powerful states. Mulder details how the major test came in 1935 against Europe’s fascist regimes. In response to Nazi Germany’s reintroduction of conscription (a contravention of the Versailles Treaty), France and the Soviet Union planned what would have been tough and, for Nazi rearmament, highly damaging restrictions on mineral imports. Thanks largely to British pusillanimity, however, these sanctions were never imposed. In contrast, the League of Nations did declare Italy an aggressor and activated Article 16 ‘An inspiration to everyone who cares about the countryside today.’ Hilary McGrady, Director General of the National Trust Available in hardback from Yale University Press after Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. Yet the leading powers of the League shrank from imposing the most disruptive measures – an oil embargo or the closure of the Suez Canal to Italian shipping – and the sanctions that were introduced failed to take full effect before Ethiopian resistance collapsed. Most disturbingly, Mulder warns that sanctions, or even just the expectation of sanctions, instead of maintaining peace can escalate conflict. Nazi Germany’s leaders were obsessed with the threat of blockade, and this encouraged them to seek autarky by way of expansion by force. Yet violence and Versailles Treaty revisionism were central to Nazi ideology, so the threat of sanctions may still have served a purpose in prompting the Nazis to launch a war that was in any case inevitable before they were fully prepared. The role of the ‘economic weapon’ in propelling Japan into the Second World War is clearer. US and European sanctions designed to choke oil and metal imports so hamstrung Japan’s military-industrial complex that Japanese hardliners were persuaded in December 1941 to launch a war they knew they could not win. What insights does Mulder’s excellent historical study offer for the current crisis? First, as early 20th-century internationalists discovered, the ‘economic weapon’ is no panacea. Determined regimes may still act against their own material self-interest in single-minded pursuit of political, military and ideological goals. Sanctioninduced hardship often fails to bring democratic regime change, an ambition scarcely known in interwar Europe but which since 1945 has been a prominent justification for sanctions. Nonetheless, the West has acted well. Today, US and European cooperation against Russian aggression contrasts with the disunity among non-fascist states in the 1930s. Sharp financial sanctions introduced quickly – such as those imposed on Putin’s regime (though more should still be done, especially against Russia’s energy exports) – have the best chance of success. A lesson of the Second World War, that economic and military assistance must flow to the victimised state, has been absorbed. Today’s sanctions, backing Ukraine’s resistance, may yet stifle Putin’s bloody challenge to democracy and a rules-based international order. Literary Review | april 2022 8
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frances spalding Bull with a Paintbrush A Life of Picasso: The Minotaur Years 1933–1943 By John Richardson ( Jonathan Cape 368pp £35) biography ‘The Sculptor and His Statue’, July 1933 When in 1933 a title was needed for a new Surrealist magazine, André Masson and Georges Bataille suggested ‘Minotaure’. The Minotaur, part bull, part human, invites many associations, among them fear of the unconscious or the unknown. Masson readily agreed to design the magazine’s cover, but, he recalled, ‘Picasso, having got wind of it, seized upon the idea.’ Meanwhile, an argument arose between André Breton, the ‘Pope’ of Surrealism, and Bataille as to who should hold the reins of this new magazine. Picasso again stepped in: he insisted that the main article should focus on his own art and be authored by Breton, who went on to become the official editor. Picasso not only produced an elaborate image for the magazine’s cover but, by now obsessed with the Minotaur, also filled its frontispiece with four etchings based on this theme. In these and other drawings and prints, the Minotaur becomes his alter ego, tender at times, dangerous at others, clumsy yet noble, god and beast. Hence the subtitle of the fourth volume of John Richardson’s biography of Picasso, in which we see Picasso’s art become increasingly occupied with violence and sexuality as the storm clouds of war approach. We re-enter the story of Picasso’s life in 1933, following his annus mirabilis, a year of exceptional creative fertility, celebrated in 2017–18 in an exhibition, Picasso 1932, shown in Paris and London. The year 1932 also witnessed his first retrospective, in the wake of which Picasso seemed at the height of his career. Instead of workmen’s clothes, which he wore while developing Cubism, he now dresses in suits made in Savile Row. He lives with Olga, his Russian wife and a former dancer with the Ballets Russes, in a grand apartment at 23 rue La Boétie in Paris’s elegant 8th arrondissement. A still more necessary status symbol for a successful artist, Picasso sardonically remarks, is a large car: his is a chauffeur-driven Hispano-Suiza, into the back of which he packs his friends when he wants to show work stored in his château at Boisgeloup. Meanwhile, Albert Skira, the publisher of Minotaure, moves into an office next door to Picasso in rue La Boétie. Also nearby, at No 21, is the dealer Paul Rosenberg, to whom Picasso has given the right of first refusal on all his new work. Rosenberg and his largely silent business associate Georges Wildenstein turn the gallery in rue La Boétie into a focus of the fashionable art world. The trappings of success surround Picasso on all sides. Yet tensions in his life are steadily rising. His friends observe that his Paris apartment is divided into two halves. In the living quarters, Olga insists on bourgeois neatness and restraint. Meanwhile, every room on the upper floor has been turned by Picasso into a chaotic studio. Yet it is at this address that we find the public Picasso, the husband and father to Olga and their son Paulo, and it is here that the Picassos uphold their position among the moneyed elite. Here Picasso oversees the creation of his catalogue raisonné, the first volume of which appeared in 1932 and which will eventually fill thirty-three volumes. It is also here that april 2022 | Literary Review 9

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war & peace

‘economic weapon’. The severance of trade and financial contacts in the First World War had been so traumatic and damaging that many internationalists believed that the threat of economic sanctions alone could eliminate interstate conflict. Unfortunately, the League’s deterrent had problems. The absence of the United States and (for most of the period) the Soviet Union – both major commodity exporters – from the League undermined the legitimacy and effectiveness of its ‘economic weapon’. Worse, the new legal power to apply economic coercion outside of conflict was destabilising, creating what one contemporary perceptively termed a condition of ‘peacewar’.

Even so, economic sanctions were important in maintaining European peace during the 1920s. Threats of blockade successfully halted a Yugoslav incursion into Albania in 1921 and terminated a border war between Greece and Bulgaria in 1925. Feminists criticised the ‘economic weapon’, recognising that its victims were disproportionately the poorer classes, particularly women and children, but internationalists in the League felt vindicated. They even tried, in the abortive Geneva Protocol of 1924, to strengthen sanctions, proposing automatic implementation wherever the League’s Council saw aggression. Further evidence of sanctions’ potential to restrain weaker, import-dependent states came in 1940, when a deliberate slowdown of US oil supplies kept Spain from joining the Second World War.

Worryingly for the West’s current confrontation with Russia, from the very start sanctions proved difficult to agree on and less effective against larger, more powerful states. Mulder details how the major test came in 1935 against Europe’s fascist regimes. In response to Nazi Germany’s reintroduction of conscription (a contravention of the Versailles Treaty), France and the Soviet Union planned what would have been tough and, for Nazi rearmament, highly damaging restrictions on mineral imports. Thanks largely to British pusillanimity, however, these sanctions were never imposed. In contrast, the League of Nations did declare Italy an aggressor and activated Article 16

‘An inspiration to everyone who cares about the countryside today.’

Hilary McGrady, Director General of the National Trust

Available in hardback from Yale University Press after Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. Yet the leading powers of the League shrank from imposing the most disruptive measures – an oil embargo or the closure of the Suez Canal to Italian shipping – and the sanctions that were introduced failed to take full effect before Ethiopian resistance collapsed.

Most disturbingly, Mulder warns that sanctions, or even just the expectation of sanctions, instead of maintaining peace can escalate conflict. Nazi Germany’s leaders were obsessed with the threat of blockade, and this encouraged them to seek autarky by way of expansion by force. Yet violence and Versailles Treaty revisionism were central to Nazi ideology, so the threat of sanctions may still have served a purpose in prompting the Nazis to launch a war that was in any case inevitable before they were fully prepared. The role of the ‘economic weapon’ in propelling Japan into the Second World War is clearer. US and European sanctions designed to choke oil and metal imports so hamstrung Japan’s military-industrial complex that Japanese hardliners were persuaded in December 1941 to launch a war they knew they could not win.

What insights does Mulder’s excellent historical study offer for the current crisis? First, as early 20th-century internationalists discovered, the ‘economic weapon’ is no panacea. Determined regimes may still act against their own material self-interest in single-minded pursuit of political, military and ideological goals. Sanctioninduced hardship often fails to bring democratic regime change, an ambition scarcely known in interwar Europe but which since 1945 has been a prominent justification for sanctions. Nonetheless, the West has acted well. Today, US and European cooperation against Russian aggression contrasts with the disunity among non-fascist states in the 1930s. Sharp financial sanctions introduced quickly – such as those imposed on Putin’s regime (though more should still be done, especially against Russia’s energy exports) – have the best chance of success. A lesson of the Second World War, that economic and military assistance must flow to the victimised state, has been absorbed. Today’s sanctions, backing Ukraine’s resistance, may yet stifle Putin’s bloody challenge to democracy and a rules-based international order.

Literary Review | april 2022 8

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