Twenty Years After Twenty Years After Twenty Years After () is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, first serialized from January to August 1845. A book of "The d'Artagnan Romances", it is a sequel to "The Three Musketeers" and precedes "The Vicomte de Bragelonne" (which includes the sub-plot "Man in the Iron Mask"). The novel follows events in France during the Fronde, during the childhood reign of Louis XIV, and in England near the end of the English Civil War, leading up to the victory of Oliver Cromwell and the execution of King Charles I. Through the words of the main characters, particularly Athos,
The Twenty Years' Crisis assessing the military, economic, ideological, and juridical facets and applications of power, Carr brings harsh criticism to bear on utopian theorists who forget to consider the exigencies of survival and competition. Carr does not, however, consider the prospect of human improvement a lost cause. At the end of "The Twenty Years' Crisis", he actually advocates for the role of morality in international politics, and suggests that unmitigated Realism amounts to a dismal defeatism which we can ill afford. The sine qua non of his analysis is simply that in the conduct of international affairs, the relative balance of power must