The twentieth century is generally considered the age of appetite. Politics in the developed countries is thought to have revolved around the distribution of resources – about who gets what, when and how, in the well-known phrase of Harold Lasswell. International relations, by contrast, is portrayed as a realm dominated by security concerns for much of the century. Two world wars, the Cold War and the breakup of colonial empires and the disputes they spawned – in short, the tragic history of the twentieth century – encouraged realist claims that states must always make security their primary concern and strive to maintain, if not extend, their power. Realists transformed the striking contrast between the domestic and foreign politics of many developed states into another law-like statement: these domains are fundamentally different because of the anarchy of the international system and the fear it engenders. Liberals, by contrast, emphasize the importance of appetite in both international and domestic politics, and the preference of democratic trading states for peaceful relations among themselves. They regard the two world wars and the Cold War, if not as an aberration, as growing pains of a democratic, postindustrial order that has the potential, even likelihood, to usher in a “Kantian world” in which the frequency of war will sharply recede.