Howrse Managing The Cards

Kissinger on the art of building peace

Here is a remarkable extract A World Restored , the work of Henry Kissinger published in 1964 devoted à la reconstruction de l'ordre européen à l'issue de l'épopée napoléonienne. Ce passage très riche s'intéresse à l'art de reconstruire la paix : autolimitation, rejet du vain désir de vengeance, lucidité politique, équilibre, légitimité. (p. 138)

Although every war is fought in the name of peace, there is a tendency to define peace as the absence of war and to confuse it with military victory. To discuss conditions of peace during wartime seems almost indecent, as if the admission that the war might end could cause a relaxation of the effort. This is no accident. The logic of war is power, and power has no inherent limit. The logic of peace is proportion and proportion implies limitation. The success of war is victory; the success of peace is stability. The conditions of victory are commitment, the condition of stability is self-restraint. The motivation of war is extrinsic: the fear of an ennemy. The motivation of peace is intrinsic: the balance of forces and the acceptance of its legitimacy. A war without an ennemy is inconceivable; a peace built on the myth of an ennemy is an armistice. It is the temptation of war to punish; it is the task of policy to construct. Power can sit in judgement, but statesmanship must look to the future.

These incommensurabilities are the particular problems of peace settlements at the end of total wars. The enormity of suffering leads to a conception of war in personal terms, of the ennemy as the «cause» of the misfortune, of his defeat as the moment for retribution. The greater the suffering, the more the war will be conceived an end in itself and the rules of war applied to the peace settlement. The more total the commitment, the more «natural» unlimited claims will appear. Suffering leads to self-righteousness more often than to humility, as if it were a badge of good faith, as if only the «innocent» could suffer. Each peace settlement is thus confronted with the fate of the ennemy and with the more fundamental problem whether the experience of war has made it impossible to conceive of a world without an ennemy.

Whether the powers conclude a retrospective peace or one that considers the future depends on their social strength and on the degree to which they can generate their own motivation. A retrospective peace will crush the ennemy so that he is unable to fight again; its opposite will deal with the ennemy so that it does not wish to attack again. A retrospective peace is the expression of a rigid social order, clinging to the only certainty: the past. It will make a «legitimate» settlement impossible, because the defeated nation, unless completely dismembered will not accept its humiliation. There exist two legitimacies in such cases: the internal arrangement among the victorious powers and the claims of the defeated. Between the two, only force or the threat of force regulates relations. In its quest to achieve stability through safety, icts in myth Of The lack of intrinsic causes for war, peace Produce has a retrospective Revolutionary situation. This, in Fact, Was The situation in Europe Between the Two World Wars.

Winners of Napoleon knew restrict their claims (especially through the efforts of Metternich wp bc and Castlereagh wp bc) and build a viable order in which France was a place and put an end to his projects of conquest.

France, who defeated Germany and Austria in 14-18 was not able to demonstrate such wisdom. She tried to reduce as much as possible in Germany - even without the humiliation she actually lower. The Treaty of Versailles made the bed of an unstable Europe in which Germany was the revolutionary power. Worse still, the principle of self-determination which was based the legitimacy of the new order, allowing France to destroy the Austrian Empire, would become a weapon in the hands of Hitler to annex the regions populated by Germans without reaction powers.

Basically Prussia had not shown more wisdom in 1870 proclaiming the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors and annexing Alsace and Moselle, demeaning and humiliating actions condemning future reconciliation with France . And the Second Reich alienated this country one hand and the possibility to ally with him on the other. Bismarck was also expressed in vain against the annexation.

Closer to home, and after the publication of the book Kissinger, note that the U.S. action in Iraq and Afghanistan, looking for full peace powers does it dissipates a revolutionary situation. But what order is possible between two forces that consider each other as absolute evil?

Note: you can find the beginning of this text in a dictionary of diplomacy - like what I'm not alone in being struck by the quality of this passage - but it seems that restitution is in default.