After the turning-point of the Ruhr crisis, not only British and American approaches to European stability were altered. Decisionmakers on both sides of the Atlantic began to recast international politics in Europe, and between Europe and America. They remade European order. More than the Ruhr crisis itself, it was the ‘return’ of the Anglo-American powers to the European continent in October 1923 and their intervention in the Franco-German conflict that marked the systemic caesura of post-World War I international history – at least in the western powers' relations with Germany.

The system of London and Locarno

In sum, what a comparative and systemic analysis of Euro-Atlantic politics after the Great War can bring to light are three distinct stages of what in effect was one overarching process of European stabilisation. It was a process that gained momentum from the autumn of 1923, and led to the two formative international settlements of the mid-1920s – the settlements of London and Locarno. It then continued through half a decade of limited, yet nonetheless remarkable postwar consolidation until it was brought to an end by the World Economic Crisis. The security pact of Locarno would have been impossible had it not been for the initial stabilisation of Europe brought about – to a large extent the American way, yet ultimately only through Britain's pivotal brokerage – through the agreements of London.