Violent Peace: a Continuing Process

Abstract

This was nothing new. Europe had seen many common causes from which particular states or social groups had opted out, whether temporarily or lastingly, and for many different reasons. The Crusades, in which the Christian nations of Europe were supposed to join in a common endeavour to liberate the Holy Places of Palestine from infidel control, provided an early example of dissidence: ‘Philip Augustus, and Richard the first, are the only kings of France and England who have fought under the same banners; but the holy service, in which they were enlisted, was incessantly disturbed by their national jealousy.’² Nor was Richard I (1189–99) the only Crusader to suffer greater treachery from fellow-Christians than from his Moslem enemies. Later wars of religion saw as many defections and reversals of alliance as the cynical eighteenth century itself, and in the long struggle from 1793 to 1815 Britain was the only major European belligerent not to have fought beside the French as well as against them, a record almost matched against Germany between 1939 and 1945. Trade, dynastic or ideological advantage, the chance to grab a little territory were considerations that often and easily diverted states from the common cause they professed.

One major trend in twentieth-century power politics, the rise of the superpowers, was beginning to interact with another, newer trend — the political fragmentation of the globe…. Russia and the United States had to grapple with the hard fact that their ‘universalist’ message would not be automatically accepted by other societies and cultures (Paul Kennedy).¹