One cannot understand the confused evolution or the indignities of the international system at the beginning of the twenty-first century without first grasping what came before it and succinctly describing the way international relations have been configured throughout the modern era.
It all began with two totally unprecedented dynamics that emerged in the Renaissance and gradually became established in Europe, then in the rest of the world. For the first time in the history of humanity, the international order was envisaged in a collective manner. Until the end of the Middle Ages, in Europe and elsewhere, imperial constructions and traditional monarchies coexisted, as well as city states that were not concerned with building even the beginnings of an international system. The issue of coexisting with others was never conceived as such, or at any rate was only imagined within the city or the kingdom. Relations with neighbors, rivals, and competitors naturally existed but were overshadowed from a political and legal standpoint.
Yet it was precisely through two legal instruments of an unprecedented natureâthe MĂźnster and OsnabrĂźck Treaties putting an end to the Thirty Years War in 1648 and founding what was called the âPeace of Westphaliaââthat nearly all the European states would negotiate together a kind of order not named as yet but already resembling an early international system. Naturally, one should not indulge in anachronism and presume that this was their explicit objective. Still, the end of the Thirty Years War defined the future core principle for all diplomacy on the Old Continent: striving to imagine and build a livable space, substituting the juxtaposed sovereignty of territorial states in place of the imperial order and that of universal Christianity; the independence of the Swiss Confederation and the United Provinces (of the Netherlands) was recognized, and the Habsburg Empire itself was henceforth composed of three hundred and fifty sovereign states barely restricted in the exercise of this new prerogative.
This unprecedented dynamic went beyond the mere negotiated construction of European coexistence. It was not only a matter of collectively establishing an order, but of explicitly mobilizing new principles in order to found it, and defining the legal categories that would serve as the basis of the international system being created, ensure its sustainability and subject its actors to new norms. As proof that the break with the past was complete, the Peace of Westphalia was the first formally multilateral negotiation in history, foreshadowing the future.
What were these new emerging norms then? First, the principle of sovereignty establishing, as Jean Bodin was already theorizing, that no state could be forced by a âgreater, smaller, or equalâ one. 1 Then, the principle of territoriality whose fundamental accessory was the clear and unequivocal definition of the concept and the reality of borders, but still more of the idea that the political exists only through the territorial jurisdiction outlining its reality. Finally, we can see the first formalization of the principle of international negotiation. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the art, technique, and law of negotiating began to be created when the states themselves were not fully constituted. For that, they had to wait until the nineteenth century!
These innovations would weigh heavily on the future, explaining the arrogant side of the heirs of the Peace of Westphalia. For the latter, the cause was understood. They were indeed the inventors of an international order they believed would be long-lived, and even of the very idea of an international order . Through the domination they wielded over the following centuries and, in particular in the nineteenth century through colonialism, this concept that grew out of Westphalia would become established the world over. Moreover, the task was easy, for the first non-European partners were in fact themselves Europeans: the United States which, when established as a state, was inspired by philosophy and law from the Old Continent, and the Latin-American nation-states which built their independence by drawing from major European jurists. As for the vast countries of Africa and Asia, subject to European invasion at the end of the nineteenth century, they were gradually subjugated or marginalized. In both cases their forced and often violent integration into the international system was a way of asserting the sustainability of the order that came out of the Westphalian adventure.
The fact remains that colonialism constituted a huge paradox, with the Westphalian state system encountering the still keen memory of the prior imperial form that never stopped haunting European nations and was reinvented through overseas expansion. That memory has remained very present for European actors, even if one recalls that the system growing out of Westphalia was meant precisely to marginalize and make extinct that political system, embodied at the time by the Holy Roman Empire, with its concomitant territorial fragmentations and denial of autonomy. And yet, the âtemptation of empireâ endured, either in its traditional continental form, as revived several times in France by the Napoleonic adventure, or in the extraverted version growing out of the construction of the colonial empires, of which France and Great Britain , as well as Portugal and Spain, were sponsors. If this imperial memory has never totally left the European stage, it is because behind the spirit of Westphalia there is an aporia that was not immediately grasped and is even completely glossed over at times in the present.
Sovereignty, Competition and Power
The basis for that aporia lay in the incongruities in the principle of sovereignty : the international order was a juxtaposition of sovereign states competing with one another. That competition already showed the contradictory nature of emerging legal thinking. On the one hand, there was an attempt to produce an international norm designed to police the interstate order being built; on the other hand, the function of sovereignty was to recognize the absolute freedom of each state, which shielded it from any rule claiming to be outside its authority. Thus the very idea of war looming on the horizon as something normal, necessary and absolute, an old idea which the Western powers would be hard put to rid themselves of. Thus also the old mistrust towards international law, a suspicion that persists even today, in particular in the United States . Competition more or less freed from the rule of law suggested at the same time that power remained the true principle at work in this international order , in other words the freedom to constrain others, especially neighboring states, whatever the means employed. That power would become the great organizer of the new international order , which they believed was to last forever. They would eventually become disenchanted, but much later.
Be that as it may, with power playing the role of natural arbiter in interstate rivalries, it inevitably led to two typical situations that have constantly alternated in the dynamics of the Western world . Either one of the states turned out to be far more powerful than the others, reviving the imperial tradition, which tempted Louis XIV in his day, Napoleon I, and England in the nineteenth century. Or else the major powers were at more or less the same level, then empire was no longer possible and the world had to be organized through an oligarchy, a club of the powerful.
That more or less stable oscillation between imperial hegemony and oligarchy has run throughout European history up to the present. With the imperial mindset, relations of near submission prevail for all the actors, who must accept that hegemony . On the other hand, in an oligarchic situation, that hegemony must be continually renegotiated in order to be tolerable and sustainable. Thus the emergence of the concept of a âbalance of power ,â a major category that has deeply affected the history of international relations since the early nineteenth century. This involved ensuring that the major powers were equal so that no one of them would be tempted by imperial designs.
The great mentor of that new idea was the German chancellor, Bismarck . Once France was defeated and Germany unified in 1871, his whole problem consisted in finding a balance within Europe that would stop its enemy across the Rhine from getting revenge and once again dominating the continent. Thus, his elaboration of a complex system of alliances, such as the âalliance of the three emperorsâ uniting Berlin with Vienna and Moscow starting in 1872, then evolving toward the âTripliceâ connecting Vienna, Berlin, and Rome in 1882 and, the height of complexity, a treaty of âreassuranceâ beginning in 1887 that picked up Russia, which the chancellor was afraid of isolating. The great adventure of cynical alliances was well and truly launched; it was here to stay, deeply marking our modern international politics! In fact, Bismarck was obsessed with the idea not of dominating Europe but of ensuring for its main partners a kind of âbare minimum of powerâ so as not to challenge the overall oligarchic equilibrium. Thus, for instance, thanks to the Congress of Berlin held in 1878 following the first war in the Balkans and the Treaty of San Stefano that put an end to it, he sought to pacify the rivals of a too clearly victorious Russia by offering a consolation prize to a frustrated England which added Cypress to its collection of possessions as a result! Who were the beneficiaries at the time of this âbare minimumâ of power? As of 1815, the candidates appeared almost spontaneously: the four that vanquished NapoleonâAustria, Prussia, England and Russiaâformed the âConcert of Europeâ and were soon joined by France at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, despite its defeat. These five countries would ensure the directorship of Europe, their concerted power continuing with its ups and downs until the First World War . The architecture of this directorship evokes a more contemporary reality: the G8. Its DNA is indeed the same. All the ingredients were already there, and along with them the idea that the fate of the world depends on an aristocracy composed of powers strong enough to co-manage international life, but not solid enough to govern alone. The formula was one that would last, with all its perils.
Naturally, for this solution of oligarchic governance to be relatively consensual, none of the powers could feel in a position to âwin the dayâ by itself. It is understandable in this context why the United States has always been highly reticent with regard to the âconcert of nationsâ and its practices, including formulas such as the G7, G8 and G20 , about which it has never been overly enthusiastic and which were mainly established in its moments of relative weakness. Likewise, in the nineteenth century England was the least enthusiastic member of the concert of the Five, convinced that thanks to its mastery of the seas it could set up its own Pax Britannica that the European club could only hinder. But in the end that perspective of a âconcertâ of the powerful hobbled along for nearly a whole century.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Oligarchic Governance
The âconcertâ system was characterized from the beginning by two birthmarks that never went away, two fundamental deficiencies that were an expression of its basic conservatism. The first arose from the exclusion, or ignorance, of society. With a view toward pure power and a balance between those powers, societiesâwith the plurality and density of their relations and interestsâhad no influence, or almost none. Not only were they not integrated in any way into the mechanisms of this oligarchic governance , but the main efforts by the âco-princesâ of the European order consisted in containing and quelling social outbreaks. The story began in the 1820s with the first post-Napoleonic revolutionary stirrings that shook the continent: the attempt at a constitutional revolution thanks to the insurrection in Cadiz, Spain (January 1820), and rebellions in Naples and Sicily (July 1820). All this, amidst a host of other events of a similar nature, led Metternich or Louis XVIII to assert that the people have no business getting involved in affairs that pertain above all to dynastic legitimism.
The second deficiency was linked to the very nature of oligarchic governance : by definition, some are excluded from it. One could say in modern terms that a sort of âsecond rankâ of states and nations was formed outside it, and its interplay with members of the club created complex and destabilizing configurations. At the end of the nineteenth century, the issue of the Balkans was a prime example that forever complicated the task of the European concert from the moment it had to deal with it. Two powers were interested in the region: Austro-Hungary and Russia. And yet there was another tutelary power in the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire, directly concerned yet almost totally excluded from the European concert: studiously ignored, it was denied a major role in international governance despite being needed. As for the small states gradually created in the Balkan peninsula, they became all the more turbulent by in turn not being integrated into the oligarchic logic. Think of Serbia, which first began stirring things up in July 1876, deciding alone to declare war on Turkey, then starting all over again in October 1912 as an ally of Bulgaria and Montenegro, then repeating the same behavior in June 1913⌠All of which led to the First World War . The Western powers, focusing on who wielded the most power, were never good at dealing with the ânobodiesâ: they paid dearly for it, and still are.
On the other hand, the oligarchyâs strongpoints lay in two fundamental factors. The first came from the feeling of equality and proximity linking the members of the club, the idea that they resembled one another, that they shared the same history and the same traditions, and t...