Peace of Westphalia: How Europe’s peace shaped global power struggles

In his book World Order, Henry Kissinger praises the Western ‘world order’ that originated with the Peace of Westphalia: ‘Since the end of Charlemagne’s empire, and especially since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Europeans have striven for balance (rather than unity) in international affairs, first in their own continent and then globally,’ says the book’s blurb.

Westphalia is achieving iconic or even mythical status. Is it warranted?

On the substance, there is an important precursor: the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, which established the principle of cuius regio, eius religio (‘whose realm, their religion‘) later underlying Westphalia. This principle allowed rulers within the Holy Roman Empire to choose between Lutheranism and Catholicism as the official religion of their territories. The settlement acknowledged religious division and created a legal framework for peaceful coexistence (although it also led to what we would now recognise as a form of ‘ethnic cleansing’, as subjects who did not conform to the ruler’s chosen religion were forced to relocate). Augsburg reflected a political more than a military stalemate (Charles V had defeated the Protestant Schmalkaldic League but could not go further than the battlefield). As the underlying principle attests, it was an ‘agree to disagree’. Even Augsburg, as a precursor, was nothing new. Such reciprocal ‘non-interference concordats’ have existed at least since the 13th century, at least in Switzerland. Many other instances in Europe can likely be found.

The Augsburg settlement applied only to the Holy Roman Empire. Westphalia extended the principle to Western Europe as a whole. It was a result of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) that left all sides weakened and unable to secure a decisive victory (see The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood) and drained nearby European countries of resources, as they had to contribute supplies and soldiers. (The Kingdom of Naples, which was under Spanish control, was bled white to finance the war; this led to a revolution in 1647, which was eventually suppressed; see Rosario Villari’s Un sogno di libertà. Napoli nel declino di un impero 1585 – 1648).

Even after the Peace of Westphalia, the struggle for power in Europe continued – only the reasons and places changed. According to Westphalia, rulers had the final say over their country’s sovereignty. Wars were still fought to install rulers who would be loyal and cooperative. The 18th century in Europe saw many of these ‘wars of succession’, such as in Spain, Austria, and Poland.

Wars were fought outside of Europe to take control of so-called ‘empty’ territories and place them under the rule of different Western powers, which permanently disrupted the balance of power. The argument went that either the autochthonous ruler was ‘illegitimate’ or the ‘land was empty’, or a mix of both. Hence the Americas, Australia and Polynesia, and the Philippines.

The idea of ‘non-interference’ based on national sovereignty conflicted with the Western push for ‘free trade’ globally. As a result, sovereignty was often disregarded in favour of promoting trade. China, Japan, and various countries in Asia and Africa suffered the most from this shift away from Westphalian principles.

One could argue a different view of the Peace of Westphalia. Instead of creating a stable ‘world order’, it spread the conflicts of Western Europe to the rest of the world while only partially protecting Europe itself. A fitting comparison is a hurricane, with a calm centre but violent chaos all around.

Westphalia’s institutions were very basic, relying mainly on occasional congress and family ties between ruling houses. In any system, institutions are meant to limit unpredictability and create stability. However, the weaknesses in Westphalia’s system created imbalances in information,¹ which eventually led to conflict at the heart of Europe (see Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914). The moralistic call for ‘transparency’ in diplomacy aimed at eliminating the information asymmetries by giving all parties to the system full knowledge of the others’ intentions.

The USA stepped in after World War I, proposing better institutions and rules for the world system to follow. Whether these rules were ‘idealistic’, the silent expression of American hegemonism, or ignorance of context need not detain us here – it could be a mix of all three. The real question is whether this kind of system can last. Henry Kissinger argues that the USA should continue to lead as the key decision-maker in global matters. For the world to stay stable, he believes a strong leader (a ‘sovereign’) is needed to keep things in order.

One may present the position succinctly as: ‘At its extreme, this reasoning holds that the USA should not be bound by international rules, even those it has itself developed, but should occupy a position above the rest. In this view, it is in the world’s interest, not merely the American interest, for the USA to do so. A month after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Max Boot of The Wall Street Journal called on America to unambiguously “embrace its imperial role.” “The organising principle of empire,” according to the like-minded Stephen Rosen in The National Interest, “rests on the existence of an overarching power that creates and enforces the principle of hierarchy, but is not itself bound by such rules”’ (The Road from Westphalia by Jessica T. Mathews).

Kissinger (and others even more so than him) believes that a world system needs a Sovereign. He is ‘the one who has the power to decide the state of exception, where law is indefinitely “suspended” without being abrogated’ (see Carl Schmitt’s definition and his treatment by Giorgio Agamben). Kissinger harks back to the idea of the sovereign standing alone, above the fray, and thus free of partisan interest, as the ultimate guarantor of the ‘common weal’ (interestingly, this reasoning undergirds the USA Constitution of 1789; see The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding by Eric Nelson).

Again, nothing new. The proper role of the Sovereign was argued at length in the context of the relationship between the Crown of Spain and the subordinate Kingdom of Naples at the turn of the 17th century (see Un sogno di libertà: Napoli nel declino di un impero, 1585-1648 by Rosario Villari). Not surprisingly, the Neapolitan aristocracy believed that the king should stay ‘above the conflict’ and remain impartial. The Viceroy at the time suggested that the king should use his special powers secretly and unpredictably. If the king had to openly justify his actions, it would restrict his freedom and show that he was following higher rules. (This is similar to pagan criticisms of Christianity, which argued that an ‘almighty god’ would have to be arbitrary, otherwise he would be bound by higher laws and not truly all-powerful).

But do we need such a sovereign at all? The issue cannot be settled theoretically, so an analogy may be useful.

The Greeks developed the corbel arch.² Remove the centre stone, and the arch collapses. We have here Kissinger’s thesis. The Romans developed the vaulted arch. In building such an arch, a temporary support is needed while masons position the keystone. After that, the arch is self-supporting. In this arch, no keystone is visible – all bricks play the same role. Sometimes keystones are identified in the structure, but this is only for decoration: once in place, the keystone loses its unique role and is on par with all other elements.

The USA may well have played the part of the keystone in erecting a more sustainable world system. The psychological difficulty for a ‘keystone country’ is to recognise the inevitable – its very success coincides with the end of its exceptional role.

Abandoning exceptionalism is to acknowledge the equally constructive role of all other ‘stones’. We were fortunate that in 1949 China simply ‘stood up’, rather than trying to achieve recognition through aggression (as Germany, the Soviet Union, and Japan did). Silent evidence of China’s now acknowledged role in the world is the fading in international discourse of the term ‘yellow race’. Islam – in its two forms – has so far failed and has been the object of relentless overt and covert gunboat diplomacy. The strategic goal of world stability leads through the eye of the needle of recognition of these civilisations as ‘keystones’.

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1. ‘In economics, information asymmetry deals with the study of decisions in transactions where one party has more or better information than the other. This creates an imbalance of power in transactions, which can sometimes cause the transactions to go awry.’ In 2001, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to George Akerlof, Michael Spence, and Joseph E. Stiglitz for their ‘analyses of markets with asymmetric information.’ See ‘information symmetry‘.

2. A vaulted arch is constructed by gradually projecting stones or bricks from opposite sides, with each course extending further inward until they meet at the top. This method does not rely on a central keystone for support but rather on the cumulative stability of each element.

This post was first published in DeepDip.