The International Criminal Court (ICC) was set up in 2002 with the active support and participation of the African Union (AU) as well as leading African powers. In the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, there was widespread desire to end the impunity enjoyed by national leaders who killed their own citizens. The international community had to act, and it did by establishing the Court in The Hague, in the Netherlands. But since then things have not gone according to plan. In its recent summit in Addis Ababa in October 2013, the AU narrowly averted a motion calling for a collective withdrawal of 34 African states from the ICC. The crisis was sparked by the charges Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto face for the post-election violence that claimed over 1,200 lives following the 2007 elections. The ICC accuses both men of orchestrating the killings. But the AU Commission and African leaders believe the Court only pursues Africans and turns a blind eye to human rights violations elsewhere in the world.

The ICC is but an instance of internationalist activism and belongs to the long line of such initiatives in history. In his most recent book, Governing the World: The History of an Idea, the renowned Columbia University historian, Mark Mazower, tracks the fate of internationalist ideas and policies starting with the 1815 Concert of Europe. The pattern he sketches out over the two following centuries seems to fit with this most recent internationalist experiment, the ICC. While The Hague Court is not one of the internationalist projects Mazower examines in detail, the discussions of various past experiments show how promising too much and not delivering enough came to disappoint the champions of such projects, and often came with human misery for those who put their hopes on the lofty proclamations of international lawyers, experts, and bureaucrats. Governing the World includes a number of historical examples of internationalist experiments that reflected a naïve confidence in international law. While Mazower himself does not make the comparison explicit, it seems the ICC indeed shares a number of characteristics with these historical examples. The ICC started off with sweeping ambitions. It charged a number of African leaders for international crimes – most recently the Kenyan and Ivorian leaders; and promised protection to hundreds of witnesses to build its cases. But the failure to recognize the limits to its resources, competence, and mandate eventually led the cases to dwindle away, leaving hundreds of witnesses exposed to the wrath of their previous tormentors. The Ugandan President Yoweri Museweni's announcement during the April 2013 inauguration ceremony of the new Kenyan leadership is particularly telling:

Museveni's position was echoed by a majority of African leaders and later endorsed by the AU. What is at risk here is not only a court case against Kenyan leaders allegedly involved in the 2007 post-election violence. What is at risk is the legitimacy of international law and institutions. Mazower is a little harsher when he takes on a previous generation of internationalists who managed to be naïve and arrogant at the same time: ‘The lawyers and their supporters thought they could solve the world's problems, but while they fetishized law they could not explain how to enforce it properly’ (p.121). The League of Nations set up after the First World War is the prime example of such naïve arrogance.

‘The League's naïve confidence in international law’ (p. 407), as Mazower puts it, quickly became a fig leaf for the geo-political interests of the Western powers. While former Imperial German and Ottoman lands were dismembered in order to create a new inter-state system composed of modern and free nations – and not pre-modern empires ruled by emperors and sultans – the new nations soon found themselves under the suzerainty of the victors of the war. In a few years’ time, the principle of national self-determination had somehow quietly given way to western mandates in the territories left behind by the multi-nation and multi-faith empires. In due course, the French in Syria and the British in Iraq ended up suppressing nationalist uprisings seeking self-determination. The partial application of supposedly universal norms eventually played into the hands of revisionist states like Italy, Germany, and Japan. The League of Nations had lost credibility, and could not condemn similar attempts by others to occupy and civilize poorer parts of the world with a straight face.

Of course, it was not public knowledge at the time that the British and French had already signed the secret Sykes-Picot agreement during the war, dividing up Ottoman territories among themselves. International lawyers and activists ended up creating an institution that served the interests of the very states they were seeking to restrain. Haughty idealism, inflated hopes, over-confidence in international law, and ostracism towards those who did not share the supposedly enlightened vision ended up turning the League of Nations into a hollow institution, and undermined trust in international law.

This is a book rich with detail, and Mazower does a great job in capturing the complexity behind many such internationalist projects, but also the ideas behind these initiatives. From better-known experiments like the League of Nations to lesser-known ones like the Universal Negro Improvement Association, what comes out the various chapters is how the certainty projected by experts often created a false sense of confidence among the leaders and followers of internationalist projects. While Governing the World takes stock of most intellectual, ideological, political, and regulatory internationalist currents of the last two hundred years, a clear emphasis is on the leaders and champions of internationalist activism. An interesting observation in the book is how the scientific theocracy international lawyers, experts, and bureaucrats were also rather prickly about criticism and tended to ostracize dissenters. But the wishful thinking combined with an inflated sense of confidence in one's own worldview often ended with disappointment.

What is missing from Mazower's critical quill is how the misplaced idealism of self-appointed opinion leaders and experts had come under fire during their own time as well. And not all of this criticism came from reactionary conservatives or those who believed in the futility of idealist activism. Some critics had highlighted how scholarly reflection and prudence had been sidestepped in favour of a belief in instant solutions delivered by technocratic expertise. The moral risk of lending one's academic credentials to political causes was the topic Julien Benda's controversial La Trahison de Clercs (‘the treason of the learned’) published in 1927. Being too close to a subject matter sometimes prevents the even-handed reflection of long-term consequences. When diagnosis is partial, prescriptions cannot deliver on their promises. Benda's criticism was particularly directed towards European intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries whose work had been influenced by political concerns. What is therefore interesting to note is how every generation has to remind the self-appointed experts to stop promising more than they can deliver and stop projecting more certainty than warranted.

Governing the World then traces the historic path of internationalist ideas and projects during the interwar years. As we get close to the Second World War and its aftermath, Mazower's scholarship has more opportunity to shine through. After all, most of his previous books had covered different themes within twentieth century European history. In particular, the end of the Second World War, the birth of the United Nations, and the start of the Cold War are all seamlessly linked and rigorously pursued. His previous book No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (2009) – which was based on an analysis of the same time period – has recently been reviewed on the pages of this journal. There are a few general themes that run parallel in both books: the most visible one is the sense of confidence in an utopian world-view afflicting most internationalists. As the previous reviewer put it:

The range and reach of Governing the World is much wider than the previous volume. This is not a book about well-known and studied internationalist ideas and projects only. In the course of his investigation, Mazower not only covers the luminaries but also the internationalist thinkers and leaders lost to history. As a historian, Mark Mazower's emphasis on personalities as the creators of internationalist ideas and the leaders of internationalist projects also makes one realize how little import we give to individuals in social sciences. In most contemporary analytical schools studying international politics unique individuals are reduced to political actors behaving in an identical way, calculating their interests, and honing their tactics.

The main problem with Governing the World is that, at 475 pages, it is a little too long. Most of it is a very interesting read, as it takes stock of most intellectual, ideological, political, and regulatory internationalist currents – big and small – of the last two hundred years. But with some merciless editing, the book could have been a good 100 pages shorter and still make the same points with the same degree of rigour. Mazower never spells it out in explicit form, but the main lesson that emerges from this tome is one of sober reflection and realistic expectations about how the world works. Failure to recognize the complexity of human affairs, and the limits of our ability to instantly change the world through immediate social engineering not only came to disappoint the self-appointed leaders of the brave new world, but also unleashed human misery on those who believed in the inflated promises of the experts.