This is the first post in a series that contain my summary of/thoughts about Henry Kissinger’s book “World Order“.  The purpose of the book is to convey the conceptions of World Order that different civilizations have developed over the course of their history.  In this post I’ll be considering the European view of World Order.

A Brief Geopolitical History of Europe

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Charlemagne became the first to unify Europe through conquest in 800 AD and became the first Holy Roman Emperor. This order fell apart after his death, with the various pieces coming under control of kings and nobles who ruled the land via direct ownership. Many tried to unite Europe again, with Charles V ascent to the throne in 1519 being the only time this actually occurred. But Charles V didn’t seek to make this unity a hereditary possession, and so the continent was split again on his death. The increasingly severe religious and strategic rifts led to a series of devastating wars (most notably, the Thirty Years War) that ended with the Peace of Westphalia (1648), wherein the modern idea of nations, sovereignty, independence in a nation’s internal affairs, and the balance of power were created.

It didn’t solve the question of how to restrain a France that was far more powerful than its neighbors and a series of wars ending in Napoleon’s failed conquest of Europe led to the Congress of Vienna (1815). The Congress of Vienna saw the major powers of Europe redefine boundaries to create a stable balance of power, which lasted until the brilliant Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck managed to unify the German people into a single state (1871) that was itself far more powerful than its neighbors.

Bismarck’s brilliance managed to maintain the old power structures, but they quickly fell apart after he was kicked out of office. Two World Wars followed to solve the “German Question”, resulting in Germany’s partition. The European Union was created to provide a lasting solution to the balance of power in Europe by removing incentive to resort to military force to resolve disputes. That Union is now falling apart and it’s unclear whether it can be maintained and what happens afterwards if it can’t be.

Westphalian Sovereignty

The key feature of the European conception of World Order is the idea of Westphalian Sovereignty.  The core of this idea is that each nation state has exclusive sovereignty within its territorial boundaries and that every nation state, no matter how large or small, has an equal right to sovereignty.  To understand why this is revolutionary, let us consider a couple examples.

First let’s look at the Thirty Years War.  The Thirty Years War began when Ferdinand II was elected as Holy Roman Emperor and attempted to force Roman Catholicism upon all states in the Holy Roman Empire.  This was considered an appropriate casus belli because having a national religion other than Roman Catholicism removed the legitimacy of the deviating state; legitimacy came from God and heretics had no legitimacy, and therefore other nations could impose their own will upon the heretical nation.  This is a violation of Westphalian Sovereignty because it holds that every nation is legitimate by virtue of its existence; there are not requirements for it to be considered “legitimate”.

Second, let’s consider the case of the Franco-Ottoman alliance.  When King Francis I of France sought an alliance with the Ottoman Empire, he sent his envoys to Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent and propose the deal, treating Suleiman as an equal.  While Suleiman responded favorably, he did not grant the King an alliance, for that would imply equality between the two sovereigns; instead Suleiman bestowed his support upon Francis as a unilateral act from a superior power to a lesser power:

I who am the Sultan of Sultans, the sovereign of sovereigns, the dispenser of crowns to the monarchs on the face of the earth, the shadow of God on earth, the Sultan and sovereign lord of the White Sea and of the Black Sea, of Rumelia and of Anatolia, of Karamania … To thee who art Francis, king of the land of France. You have sent to my Porte, refuge of sovereigns, a letter … you have here asked aid and succors for your deliverance … Take courage then, and be not dismayed. Our glorious predecessors and our illustrious ancestors (may God light up their tombs!) have never ceased to make war to repel the foe and conquer his lands. We ourselves have followed in their footsteps, and have at all times conquered provinces and citadels of great strength and difficult of approach. Night and day our horse is saddled and our sabre is girt.

Suleiman’s treatment of Francis I as a distinctly junior partner is a violation of Westphalian Sovereignty as well, which holds that because all nations have an equal right to sovereignty, all nations must be treated equally in diplomatic correspondence and protocols.

Balance of Power

The concept of Westphalian Sovereignty does not address the question of how nations should organize their relations, however.  As mentioned previously, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) ended the European wars of religion, but it did not usher in an era of peace.  A key problem in post-Westphalian Europe was the France was far stronger than her neighbors on the continent, resulting in French efforts to gain hegemonic control of the other nations.  This phase ended when Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo (1815) and the Congress of Vienna was convened to address the future of Europe.

In order to address the power-imbalance between France and her neighbors, national boundaries were redrawn with the specific intent to equalize the power of the major players so that no one nation could threaten the continent with hegemony again.  It relied upon the idea that every nation would act in its own self-interest and that the best way to restrain the ambitions of one nation was to set up another nation as a counterbalance.  The idea of seeking a balance of power as a goal of international relations is an outgrowth of Westphalian Sovereignty, for it implicitly assumes that no one nation has sole legitimacy and the right to conquer or otherwise dominate the remaining nations.

How Does It Play Out?

If one assumes the European conception of World Order, one would: be strictly against intervention into the internal affairs of other nations, relate to other nations along strictly transactional lines, seek stability in the international order rather than change.