Introduction
Humanity is "born to trouble as the sparks fly upward," writes the Psalmist. Whether people are inherently quarrelsome or led into conflict by some too-influential minority, driven by perceived economic need or moved by moral or religious imperatives, animated by fear or desirous of ruling others, the frequency of war in human history seems to support the biblical observation of human troublesomeness. Certainly, the experience of war or of threatened war has left an indelible mark on human consciousness, both positive and negative.
Much has been written about the causes of war, how to conduct it, what are the (often unanticipated) consequences of engaging in it, and what might be done to prevent it and to promote peace instead. What is necessary to establish peace remains as debatable as determining the causes of war. Is peace primarily a quality of the spirit, the product of material and technological progress, the result of a certain type of internal political order or the outcome of an international organization of some kind? Who fights, what do we do about it, and why?
Empire is one approach to regional or world order. For Europeans, the Roman Empire, with its famous pax Romana that saw the spread of Roman civilization and law into much of Europe, over the English Channel, and across the Mediterranean, had a long-lasting attraction. The Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages, the Spanish empire of the sixteenth century, the French empire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries each sought in their own ways to recreate the Roman order. Nor is the experience of empire confined to Europe. In Asia, a succession of dynasties based in China periodically brought order, stability, civilization, and peace to that part of the world. In India, the seventh-century Gupta empire is regarded as the "golden age" of Hindu civilization. In the Muslim world, Umayyad, Abbasid, Almohad, and Ottoman caliphates similarly established periods of extensive political control joined with remarkable cultural achievement.
Not everyone agreed that empire was the best approach. Resistance to a "universal" empire among seventeenth and eighteenth century Europeans led to the establishment of an arrangement of nation-states, sovereign but interdependent. Europe, wrote the eighteenth century Swiss diplomat and legal theorist Emmerich de Vattel, was a "sort of republic" whose members were each independent yet bound together to maintain order and preserve liberty through the principle of the balance of power. Having beaten back the Napoleonic challenge in 1815, the European nation-state system enjoyed almost a century of peace, although even that era was interrupted by a few short, dramatic conflicts. Meanwhile, Europe’s Great Powers extended their economic reach, their political control, and their rivalries to the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Some claimed that such activities helped measure human progress. They saw in the colonial wars in Africa and Asia necessary steps for bringing the blessings of Western civilization and commerce to the non-Western world.
The horrifying devastation of World War I shattered this optimism. Allowing nation-states the freedom to make alliances in secret, to engage in wars of aggression, and to deny their own citizens basic rights had led, many believed, to catastrophe. Led by the United States, the peacemakers embarked on an effort to reform international relations and strengthen the chances for peace through the establishment of the League of Nations. Empires were dismantled, in keeping with the principle of the "self-determination of peoples." Disarmament conferences were held and arms limitation treaties signed. War was outlawed and pledges were given to use arbitration as the preferred way of settling international disputes. Aggression was to be met with the collective force of the international community. International public opinion would weigh in the balances of the diplomats and generals. The rise of German, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese fascism in the 1930s challenged and overwhelmed this effort at creating a new international order, however. Within twenty years of the ending of the First World War and the hopeful founding of the League of Nations, the Second World War had broken out.
By the end of the war in 1945, the United States had become the most powerful country in the world. It had roughly half of the world’s economic production, unprecedented global military capability, enormous technological superiority, an educated and enterprising work force, and surpluses of petroleum and other vital resources. Its leadership was determined to shape an international order in which the United States remained engaged and one that would be hospitable to democratic politics, market economics, free trade, and a broad array of international organizations including both a new United Nations and a European Community.
The Cold War confrontation between the Communist bloc, led by the Soviet Union, and the Western bloc, led by the United States, meant that this American vision of international order could only be realized in part, primarily among the industrialized countries of North America, Western Europe and Japan. The result for them has been the establishment of a zone of peace, wealth, and democracy within which it has become practically unthinkable that wars would occur.
Unfortunately, much of the world’s population continues to live in zones of turmoil and development, marked by poverty, arbitrary rule, and war. Here traditional patterns of hatred and rivalry abound, made more brutal by the introduction of sophisticated, modern technology. Their Cold War rivalry drew both the United States and the Soviet Union into these regions, sometimes at great cost with little to show for the effort. The failures of the United States in Vietnam in the 1960s and of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s demonstrated that even "superpowers" were limited in what they could achieve.
With the ending of the Cold War in the early 1990s came renewed hope of a "new world order" with a strengthened United Nations, greater respect for international legal norms, and increased numbers of liberal democratic governments. As the decade wore on, the international community found itself dealing with crises in the Balkans, Southern Africa, the Korean peninsula, and the Middle East. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon in the name of radical Islam brought home to Americans how far much of the world remains from being a zone of peace or democracy. Contemporary international relations are being shaped by these encounters between the West and the non-Western worlds. Clearly, we have not yet reached that point where swords can be beaten into plowshares; in many places war remains an option, peace is fragile, and empire seems a tempting possibility.
The readings in this volume are meant to give a broader perspective to these questions and issues. While a single book can hardly do justice to the full range of what has been said, it can provide readers with some of most notable contributions to the discussion that have been offered over the centuries. Many of those included here draw on their own political and military experiences as diplomats, generals, councilors, presidents, or prime ministers. A few, like Aquinas or Kant, had no direct involvement in political life, but their intellectual impact has been profound and enduring. And though more readings come from the twentieth century than from any other century, the one about which there has been the most commentary - Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War - is one of the oldest.
Source:
Singer, Max and Aaron Wildavsky. 1993. The Real World Order: Zones of Peace, Zones of Turmoil. Chatham, N. J.: Chatham House.
Daniel G. Lang, Ph.D.