Machines for Peace: Aviation, Atomic Energy, and the Search for Collective Security, 1920-50

Between 1920 and 1950, British and US internationalists called for aviation and atomic energy to be taken out of the hands of nation-states, and instead used by international organisations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations. An international air force was to enforce collective security and internationalised civil aviation was to bind the world together through trade and communication. The bomber and the atomic bomb, now associated with death and devastation, were to be instruments of world peace. Drawing on his recently published book, Waqar H. Zaidi explores the public and private discourses on the international control of aviation and atomic energy between 1920 and 1950, and by doing so highlights the neglected technological and militaristic strands in twentieth-century liberal internationalism.