World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History

In the first chapter of World Order, Kissinger focuses on the Peace of Westphalia. He describes this 17th-century agreement as the foundation of the contemporary global order. The author divides this chapter into four related, thematic categories: “The Uniqueness of the European Order,” “Thirty Years’ War: What is Legitimacy,” “The Peace of Westphalia,” and “The Operation of the Westphalian System.”

First, Kissinger identifies the European system as pluralistic and, therefore, unique as compared to the rest of the world: “Europe thrived on fragmentation and embraced its own divisions” (11). One key reason why Europe was pluralistic was the inability to impose a single ruler’s will onto their counterparts. According to Kissinger, the lack of hierarchy between several rulers, such as the one that occurred in post-Roman Europe, was an anomaly. 

Europe periodically did make attempts to unify, which included the 9th-century Carolingian Empire and the Holy Roman Empire that lasted from the Middle Ages until the early 1800s. However, European unity was challenged in other ways, for example, the spread of Protestantism, the introduction of the printing press in Europe to disseminate new knowledge, and the age of discovery and conquest starting from the late 15th-early 16th century: “The modern era announced itself when enterprising societies sought glory and wealth by exploring the oceans and whatever lay beyond them” (17). These major changes translated into a “revolution of thinking about the nature of the political universe” (17).

For example, the 16th to 17th-century French statesman Cardinal Richelieu likely based his ideas about international order on Machiavelli, by inventing “the idea that the state was an abstract and permanent entity existing on its own right” (21) rather than the ruler’s specifics. Kissinger contrasts this concept with feudal Europe, in which authority depended on the ruler and “governance reflected the ruler’s will” (20). French goals were practical: preventing a united central Europe from dominating the continent.

Successful foreign policy was based on three components: “a long-term strategic concept,” analyzing conflicting pressures, and acting to bridge “the gap between his society’s experiences and its aspirations” (23). The author compares the international area to the Hobbesian state of nature because there existed no supranational authority over individual countries.

After this, the author underscores the importance of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) as a devastating international conflict that ravaged the European continent and forced its leadership to arrive at a different set of rules in international relations. This set of rules was the Peace of Westphalia, a result of separate agreements. This peace was “a path breaker of a new concept of international order that has spread around the world” (23). In the immediate aftermath, the Dutch Republic gained independence from Spain via the Peace of Münster. The European powers also signed the Treaty of Osnabrück.

These revolutionary peace agreements meant that the “state, not the empire, dynasty, or religious confession, was affirmed as the building block of European order” (26). In other words, it was focused on procedural questions. The resultant balance of power, argues Kissinger, was better than the European religious wars of the past. Nonetheless, the ways to challenge the resultant balance of power still remained, such as threatening to achieve hegemony.

Finally, Kissinger moves on to the French Revolution of 1789 and its consequences:

Revolutions erupt when a variety of often different resentments merge to assault an unsuspecting regime. The broader the revolutionary coalition, the greater its ability to destroy existing patterns of authority. But the more sweeping the change, the more violence is needed to reconstruct authority, without which society will disintegrate. Reigns of terror are not an accident; they are inherent in the scope of revolution (41).

This particular revolution had a significant impact on Europe. One consequence was the fusion of domestic and foreign policies when France announced its commitment to support the revolution anywhere with the military. The Revolution also led to the Terror that targeted domestic opposition. Another consequence was the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, an “expression of global power” (47). He dominated Europe, redrew its map, and was only stopped in Russia and at the 1813 Battle of Leipzig.