In Appeasing Bankers, Jonathan Kirshner shows that bankers dread
war--an aversion rooted in pragmatism, not idealism. "Sound money, not
war" is hardly a pacifist rallying cry. The financial world values
economic stability above all else, and crises and war threaten that
stability. States that pursue appeasement when assertiveness--or even
conflict--is warranted, Kirshner demonstrates, are often appeasing their
own bankers. And these realities are increasingly shaping state strategy
in a world of global financial markets. Yet the role of these financial
preferences in world politics has been widely misunderstood and
underappreciated. Liberal scholars have tended to lump finance together
with other commercial groups; theorists of imperialism (including, most
famously, Lenin) have misunderstood the preferences of finance; and
realist scholars have failed to appreciate how the national interest,
and proposals to advance it, are debated and contested by actors within
societies. Finance's interest in peace is both pronounced and
predictable, regardless of time or place. Bankers, Kirshner shows, have
even opposed assertive foreign policies when caution seems to go against
their nation's interest (as in interwar France) or their own long-term
political interest (as during the Falklands crisis, when British bankers
failed to support their ally Margaret Thatcher). Examining these and
other cases, including the Spanish-American War, interwar Japan, and the
United States during the Cold War, Appeasing Bankers shows that, when
faced with the prospect of war or international political crisis,
national financial communities favor caution and demonstrate a marked
aversion to war.
