UN successes | League of Nations failures

Successes of the UN.

Chief among these is the maintenance of some semblance of global peace. At first this was through the interposing of forces between belligerents as happened in 1956 when Anglo-French forces withdrew from Egypt and the UN placed troops between Israeli and Egyptian factions. By the 1980s and the thawing of the Cold War, the superpowers began sponsoring UN operations such as:

CEASEFIRE: Ceasefire monitoring on the Iran/Iraq border;

INSURGENTS: Disarming insurgents in El Salvador and Nicaragua;

MINES: Clearing mines in Cambodia and Angola;

ELECTIONS: Monitoring elections in Cambodia and Namibia;

HUMANITARIAN: Securing humanitarian aid for such stricken zones as Bosnia;

ENCLAVES: Protecting enclaves in Iraq and Serbia.

Flaws of the League of Nations.

Chief among the considerations of those framing the UN Charter in 1945 was to avoid the mistakes of the LoN. These were:

Intergration with the Peace Treaty of 1945 which was perceived by those who came off worst from it – notably Gremany and Japan – to have been unnecessarily punitive and therefore unfair;

Toothlessness – Despite President Woodrow Wilson being the driving force behind its inception and development, the US Senate refused to ratify its Treaties and America did not become a member thus severely limiting the LoN’s powers to act. Neither was the Soviet Union invited to Versailles and indeed, Moscow did not join up until 1934;

Undefined aims – what exactly constituted and act of aggression? The Laegue failed to punish expansionist aggressors in the 1930s, a point highlighted by Noam Chomsky, outspoken critic of America’s 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, who points to a report on humanitarian intervention by Sean Murphy showing how the concept is open to interpretation. Murphy lists three interventions between the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact of Paris outlawing war and the 1945 UN Charter – Japan’s invasion of northern China, Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia and Hitler’s march into Czechoslovakia. These interventions were at least partially supported by the US and Britain at the time, notes Murphy, but with hindsight can be seen as anything but ‘humanitarian’. Why couldn’t the LoN see they were acts of aggression?

Lack of Conviction – it was all very well to suppose that members would subordinate their own sovereignty for the greater good of all, that somehow political compromise and stability could be reached through rational discourse and the enforcement of international law, but when push came to shove, who would step forward to act? As Quintin Hogg said: ‘It is right to fight for one’s own king and country, but it is against nature to die for someone else’s.’ Reinhold Niebuhr concurred, saying it was unrealistic to think man’s natural drives of acquisitiveness and aggression could be harnessed to the goal of international peace in bodies such as the LoN. For E H Carr, the entire enterprise was flawed. In the Twenty Years’ Crisis he describes the liberal internationalist ideology behind the LoN as nothing short of ‘Utopian’.

Why does war still happen?

By John Lee

During the past three decades, between 30 and 40 conflicts have been in progress at any given time across the globe. Comprising wars which result in 1,000 or more violent deaths per year (the categorization used by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and endorsed by the UN) along with other ‘low-intensity conflicts’, this statistic is proof, if any were needed, that armed aggression continues to be a major factor – arguably the major factor – in human interaction and for international relations in particular. This essay will argue that while the use of force between belligerents may be viewed as ‘irrational’, the normative condition of mankind as described in the account of classical realists such as Hobbes and Morgenthau, predisposes actors at the individual and state levels of analysis to take up arms. It will proceed by examining Martin Wight’s motivations and justifications for war through the lenses of Realism, Rationalism and Revolutionism then locate the causes of conflict in the structural model established by Kenneth Waltz. It will account for the changing face of war after 9/11 and go on to explain why, in today’s globalized post-Cold War nuclear age, conflicts still occur at both inter and intra-state level with particular emphasis on what Mary Kaldor calls ‘New Wars’ and Edward Rice identifies as ‘Wars of the Third Kind’.

Before the 20th Century and technological advances in weaponry which resulted in ‘total warfare’ fought across continents (Klein) and carnage on a hitherto unseen scale, it was, Wight points out, unheard of to speculate on whether conflict was the correct way to proceed. For classical Realists, ‘man is an irrational animal and war is natural and inevitable’ while for militarists, combat is not only inevitable, but also beneficial. Francis Bacon wrote: ‘A foreign war is like the heat of exercise and serves to keep the body in health’. For early-19th Century Catholic reactionary Joseph de Maistre, Wight tells us, war is divine with supernatural significance in being the punishment for original sin. ‘The exterminating angel revolves like the sun around this unhappy planet,’ wrote de Maistre, ‘and only lets one nation relax temporarily in order to smite another’. From Thucydides – Greek general and chronicler of the Peloponnesian Wars – to Hobbes – who characterised international politics as a struggle for power or a ‘war of all against all’, the realist account has emphasised the combative nature of the human condition. Hans Morgenthau said: ‘All history shows that nations active in international politics are continuously preparing for, involved in or recovering from organised violence in the form of war.’ To the Realist, then, war is entirely rational and the norm, with peace merely an interlude in which to re-arm and prepare for the next confrontation. Rationalists, however, have a different viewpoint.

While agreeing with Realists that conflict is ‘normal though detestable’ – in Wight’s words – Rationalists argue that the object of war is to achieve peace. In Civitate Dei, St Augustine wrote: ‘Even those who make war desire nothing but victory to attain peace with glory.’ They assert that armed conflict should be seen as a necessary evil in order to right wrongs in a global system where there is no political superior. This sentiment was summed up by Edmund Burke who said: ‘War is the sole means of justice among nations. Nothing can banish it from the world.’ But if war is a ‘necessary evil’ for Rationalists, it is a ‘regrettable necessity’ for Revolutionists. While Rationalists emphasise the individual and his goal of the ‘good life’, Revolutionists see society and its progression to a ‘better’ condition – be that communism, a particular religion or secession from another country, for example – as the key. Their teleological view is that war will end in peace but first there has to be conflict. As Marx said: ‘Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.’ It is evident, then, that Realists, Rationalists and Revolutionists all accept war will happen. But in the modern world, what causes it?

Wight puts forward three explanations, which this essay will investigate with reference to the modern-day behaviour of specific states and leaders. The first is Gain – the idea that dominion leads to the benefits of ‘living space’ and new resources. The Gain motivation can be seen in Iraq’s illegal invasion of Kuwait in the early 1990s. Iraq had been virtually bankrupted by its war with Iran, which ended in 1988 with most of its debt owed to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Neither of those countries would waive the debt and Iraq also accused Kuwait of exceeding its OPEC quotas and driving down the price of oil, thus further hurting the Iraqi economy. After a bout of sabre-rattling, Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990 with the ‘gain’ of Kuwait’s vast oil reserves clearly a deciding factor in Saddam Hussein’s act of aggression.

The second of Wight’s explanations is Fear – strike first before the enemy strikes you. Israel was motivated by fear of Arab-state advances to occupy the West Bank, Gaza and a portion of southern Lebanon captured in 1967. Fear that Saddam Hussein was accumulating WMDs for possible use against the West and its allies could also be said to have motivated the US-led attack on Iraq in 2003. Debate continues over whether the war was illegal because it did not receive UN Security Council approval –  though some say Resolution 1441, which found Iraq in breach of ceasefire terms from the first Gulf War, in fact made it legal. Others say it was illegal but legitimate in that diplomatic avenues had been exhausted, while Anne-Marie Slaughter claims the Iraq war was both ‘illegal and illegitimate’. Wight’s third explanation is Doctrine – the imperative to spread or defend a religious creed or political belief. In his book The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel P Huntington says expansion is a ‘form of crusade’ with those of the same nation supporting each other even if they are from different countries. For example, this happened with Jews from across the world rushing to support Israel in its conflicts with Arab neighbours and Muslims joining the Afghan resistance against Soviet occupation in the 1980s. Indeed, Moscow’s expansion into Afghanistan in the first place – at the request of the Marxist Government in Kabul – can be seen as supporting Marxist-Leninist doctrine.

Added to Wight’s trinity is the ‘diversionary theory of war’. Today’s leaders are often guilty of making foreign policy decisions to distract public attention from problems at home such as economic woes, civil unrest or flagging political popularity. General Galtieri’s attempt to seize the Falklands in 1982 was just such a distraction and Margaret Thatcher’s response did her standing with large parts of the British electorate no harm. Note too, Bill Clinton’s attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan while he faced possible impeachment over the Lewinsky imbroglio. As Desmond Morris said in The Human Zoo: ‘Nothing helps a leader like a good war.’

The explanations offered so far in this essay are contingent on traits of human nature, be they seen as failings (fear, weakness, misguided beliefs, bad judgment) or strengths (righting a wrong, bravery, glory accumulation). For neo-Realists such as Kenneth Waltz, however, it is the structure of society rather than any inherent condition in people, which is the key determinant of states’ decisions whether or not to got to war. Waltz rejects the reductionist approach which attempts to understand the behaviour of actors on the global stage by examining the attributes of the units which make up the international system. Waltz proposes that under conditions of international anarchy with no central arbiter, balances of power form automatically as vulnerable and insecure states forge alliances against potential threats. As Brown notes, ‘Waltz does not assume that states are self-aggrandizing, necessarily aggressive bodies, but he does assume that they desire to preserve themselves’.  In neo-Realist thought, little importance is attached to the internal workings of a state. As Owen Harries says: ‘According to neo-Realists, the foreign policies of all states are driven by the same systemic factors – they are like so many billiard balls obeying the same laws of political geometry and physics.’ But whether the causes of aggression be human or structural, what is the nature of wars themselves?

In the modern arena, most conflicts are neither conventional nor nuclear but are instead on a smaller scale, frequently in LDCs of the Global South and often heavily reliant on guerrilla tactics. Edward Rice identifies these as ‘Wars of the Third Kind’, and categorizes them in two ways. The first are ideological, such as the liberation wars of Eritrea and Nicaragua, while the second type are fragmented with decentralised outbreaks of violence as was the case in Somalia and the Congo. Identifying the causes and motivations of Wars of the Third Kind results in a list of problems characteristic of many LDCs or failed and failing states, particularly in Africa and Central and South America:

i)      Colonial legacy – in which post-independence states are guilty of using colonial instruments of violence to control populations.

ii)    Ethnicity and religion – where, again, colonial authorities impose post-independence structures on states, which bring belligerent ethnic or religious factions into confrontation. For example, the Hutus and Tutsis of Rwanda.

iii)   Poverty and uneven development – which results in militaristic governments conducting themselves like tribal chieftains, recruiting from the poor and disenfranchised and using violence as an instrument of policy.

iv)   Foreign intervention – where, particularly during the Cold War, the superpowers prolonged conflicts by supplying arms to combatants in such places as Afghanistan, Angola and El Salvador.

David Held and Anthony McGrew assert that just as industrialisation engendered ‘total war’ in the 20^th Century, so the information age – ubiquitous internet, 24-hour news media, electronic banking and exchange of information – has facilitated a revolution in military affairs (RMA). Martin Shaw characterises this as ‘global surveillance war’ conducted by ‘largely demilitarised societies with limited objectives and precision force on the perimeters of the west’ (eg Kosovo and Afghanistan). And wars are no longer simply between states or factions within them – the advance of Al-Qaeda, drug cartels and other transnational terrorist and crime organisations has resulted in conflicts in which borders have little relevance. As Robert Keohane argues: ‘States no longer have a monopoly on means of mass destruction: more people died in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon than in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941.’ Such a decentralisation of organised violence is characterised by Hedley Bull’s claim that the world is on the brink of a ‘new medievalism’ in which political authority is fragmented and conflict on the periphery endemic. The core countries, meanwhile, exist in a condition of ‘democratic peace’. Indeed, with three-quarters of the world’s states now liberal democracies, Francis Fukuyama says we are reaching ‘The End of History’ where conflict between these actors is obsolete. But critics of this neo-Liberal view question whether even democratic states are or will be content to exist in a state of pacific calm while resisting the urge to force ‘democracy at gunpoint’ on failed or failing states riven by factional violence and ungovernability. The propriety of any such humanitarian intervention from a powerful western democracy remains open to question. Noam Chomsky, outspoken critic of America’s 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, points to a report on humanitarian intervention by Sean Murphy which highlights how the concept is open to interpretation. Murphy lists three interventions between the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war and the 1945 UN Charter – Japan’s invasion of northern China, Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia and Hitler’s march into Czechoslovakia. These interventions were at least partially supported by the US and Britain at the time, notes Murphy, but with hindsight can be seen as anything but ‘humanitarian’.

In conclusion, it is evident that however irrational war is, geopolitics and conflict continue to be predominant factors in the interactions between states and non-state actors. The motivations and causes for this can be delineated into the Realist account of Wight, Hobbes, Morgenthau et al, in which human nature is the key determinant of action, and the view of Kenneth Waltz and the neo-Realists, which sees the structure of the anarchical society as being of primary relevance. This essay argues that in the modern post-Cold War world – with conflicts shifting from the conventional to Rice’s ‘Wars of the Third Kind’ and Kaldor’s ‘new wars’ plus ideological and criminal struggles fought transnationally by the likes of Al-Qaeda and drug lords – the reason wars are still fought is, in fact, a combination of human and structural factors. While questioning whether international society is on the brink of Bull’s ‘new medievalism’, it rejects Fukuyama’s suggestion that we are approaching ‘The End of History’ where democratic peace will break out across the globe and organised violence – whether monopolised by states or taken up by ‘private’ factions – becomes a thing of the past. The disturbing truth is that Hobbes’s ‘nasty, brutish’ reality must be confronted – war is here to stay.

Has the UN outlived its usefulness?

In his 2006 book, After The Neocons, Francis Fukuyama asserted that the world does ‘not want to replace national sovereignty with unaccountable international organisations – the United Nations is not now, nor will it ever become, an effective legitimate seat of global governance’. While it is arguable that the UN cannot be regarded as a supranational body capable of ruling the anarchic collection of world states, the reader should not infer from Fukuyama’s statement that the UN serves no purpose in the conducting of international relations. Indeed, the question here presupposes a ‘usefulness’ sometime in the past which may or may not now have been ‘outlived’. This essay will argue that while it does suffer from a number of failings, the UN has contributed to global stability over the past 65 years. It will proceed by accounting for the organisation’s role across diverse areas of activity – military, juridical and humanitarian – and it will conclude that in a rapidly globalising world the UN continues to be of substantial and far-reaching ‘use’. But before assessing this ‘usefulness’, it is first important to locate the UN in a historical context.

Foremost among the considerations of those framing the UN Charter in 1945 was the need to avoid the mistakes of the UN’s forerunner, the League of Nations. That organisation suffered from numerous flaws. Firstly it was integrated with the Peace Treaty of 1919, which was perceived by those who came off worst from it – Germany and Japan in particular – as being unfair. Secondly, it was largely toothless. America refused to join, thereby severely limiting its power to act in disputes. Thirdly, its aims were undefined – deciding a case of ‘aggression’ being one of the major areas of vagueness. Fourthly, it was too Euro-centric and fifthly, it lacked conviction. The idea of collective security – ‘one for all and all for one’ – was all well and good, but as Quintin Hogg said: ‘It is right to fight for one’s own king and country, but it is against nature to die for someone else’s.’ Taken together, this litany of shortcomings must lead the observer to view the League as nothing short of disastrous. Indeed, the liberal internationalist ideology behind it is belittled as ‘utopianism’ by EH Carr in The Twenty Years Crisis. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr fuelled the debate further in the 1930s by arguing that it was unrealistic to think man’s natural drives of acquisitiveness and aggression could be harnessed to the goal of international peace and understanding in bodies such as the League of Nations. So how did the nascent UN avoid falling into these same traps and so make itself more viable than the League?

For a start it had more members, 51 at first – including the US and Soviet Union; it wasn’t tied to a peace treaty; it had greater powers to act (denying the veto to all but the five permanent members of the Security Council) and it worked to a far broader agenda, encompassing economic and social concerns. This is not to say that as it developed the UN did not suffer setbacks. For more than 40 years it was severely constrained by the Cold War. Many conflicts which overlapped with the interests of either Washington or Moscow were not even deliberated by the UN. However, because of this the UN developed its peacekeeping role so that the superpowers would not themselves have to intervene in conflicts which might then escalate into full-blown war between them. The UN has also often been hesitant to step in to civil conflicts because of its respect for national sovereignty. Failure to restore order in Somalia in the early 1990s made the US and other leading members reluctant to commit forces quickly in other such conflict zones as Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. Question marks, too, hang over the behaviour of UN forces operating in, for example, the Congo and of the UN’s management of sanctions against Baghdad before the Second Gulf War. Rope in the bloated bureaucracy of the secretariat and claims of corruption and nepotism, and the list of failings starts to look as damning as those of the League. But before concluding that the UN has outlived its usefulness, a rule must be run over its undoubted successes.

Chief among these is the maintenance of some semblance of global peace. At first, this was mainly done by interposing troops between belligerents, as in 1956 when Anglo-French forces retreated from Egypt and UN troops were employed to keep Israeli and Egyptian forces apart. By the 1980s and the thawing of the Cold War, the superpowers began to sponsor UN operations such as;

i)      Monitoring ceasefire lines on the Iran-Iraq border and Afghanistan;

ii)    Disarming insurgents in Nicaragua and El Salvador;

iii)   Clearing mines in Cambodia and Angola;

iv)   Supervising elections in Cambodia and Namibia;

v)    Securing humanitarian aid in Bosnia;

vi)   Protecting enclaves in Iraq and Serbia.

And despite not sanctioning the US war on Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration was still keen to persuade the UN to establish a strong presence in the country when American forces became bogged down.

Aside from military considerations, the UN has roles to play in improving the situations of populations in the LDCs of the Global South. Through agencies such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN is raising political consciousness of the plight of the poor, underfed, persecuted and dispossessed. Critics point out that the wealth gap between rich and poor has actually increased since 1945. But the question must be asked: how much wider would the gap have been without the UN? On a legal front, critics such as Eric Posner of Chicago University argue that the International Court of Justice is rarely used and frequently ignored while the UN’s International Treaty on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) is unpopular and hears few cases. In riposte, Oona Hathaway of Yale points out that ITLOS is still in its formative years while the ICJ has a ‘stunningly good’ record of compliance.

Clearly, the UN has a patchy record and cannot be regarded as entirely successful. Much of its work could be carried out by regional organisations such as the EU, ASEAN and NATO, with the probable removal of layers of bureaucracy and expense. Fukuyama argues that the UN is an obstacle to clear thinking about global governance and international institutions. He cites the Iraq war as highlighting its shortcomings: the UN was not able either to ratify the US decision to go to war or stop Washington from acting on its own, so either way it failed. Fukuyama also questions the UN’s very legitimacy as it makes no demands on its members to be democratic or respect the human rights of its citizens. He concludes that creating new, more effective international institutions will be a major challenge for the coming generation.

But lest we forget, the UN in its current manifestation does much to highlight the plight of the poor and powerless and has a crucial role to play in humanitarian responses to such disasters as the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 and the Haitian earthquake of 2010. It has a creditable record on peacekeeping and maintenance of the law in areas as diverse as war crimes and laws of the sea. But perhaps most importantly, it counts 192 states as members and must still be seen as a crucial forum for the resolution of disputes and antagonisms. Far from prefect it may be, but despite Fukuyama’s protestations, the UN is the nearest thing we have to a global government. And the question must be posed: would the world feel a more secure place to live if it did not exist? This essay answers ‘no’ and therefore concludes that the UN has not outlived its usefulness.

When did international society begin?

By John Lee

In order to isolate and define the problems of applying a date to the origins of modern international society, it is first necessary to identify the nature of the beast – in other words: what exactly is International Society? This essay concurs with the English School in locating that definition somewhere between International Anarchy, which implies chaos among actors in a state of constant conflict, and International Community, which suggests overt harmony and cohesiveness. Lying in the Golidilocks zone – that is, not too disordered on the one hand and not too cosy on the other –  International Society is constructed on the tenets put forward by Hedley Bull as an association of state actors with common interests and values who participate in the maintenance of international institutions. Having defined the terms of modern international society, the essay will proceed by locating its inception. Adam Watson identifies a series of historical loci, all of which could arguably connote the start of International Society. They are; the Greek city states, the city state system of Renaissance Italy, the anti-hegemonial Peace of Westphalia, the Concert System of Europe, the Treaty of Versailles, and the 20th Century’s twin superpower axis. Add to this the globalised, pluralist world stage of the 21st Century and the scale and scope of the question becomes apparent.

Peering back through the telescope of history, the observer can see cross-border interaction in civilisations as early as the ancient Egyptians, Indians and Chinese. However it was with the ancient Greeks five centuries BCE that the first real manifestation of what might be called International Society can be found. There were around 1,500 city states in Greece, the superpowers being Athens, Sparta and Corinth. These city states were bound by a common culture and religion and a view of outsiders – for example, the Persians – as barbarians. And significantly for the subject of this essay, they developed a political vocabulary which included the terms; ‘reconciliation’, ‘truce’, ‘alliance’, ‘arbitration’, ‘treaty’ and ‘peace’.  However, as a mark against this era being the origin of International Society, there were no ambassadors to conduct relations, simply – as Martin Wight notes – a system involving local residents known as ‘proxeny’. International law did not exist for the ancient Greeks, either, with principles being upheld mainly through religious rules. Indeed, Zeus himself had custody of Treaties. This, as Harold Nicolson notes, showed that there was a ‘religious sanction mitigating against unrestrained barbarities analogous to our Geneva Convention’. Yet it must be said that while there were standards of conduct, little equality existed between states. For example, in the Melian Dialogue chronicled by Thucycdides, historian of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, Melos appealed for justice to the Athenians but was spurned by their invading forces who said, ‘the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak must accept what they have to accept.’ Hardly ‘societal’ behaviour. To find a more plausible model of such, the scholar must go forward two millennia.

The intervening centuries were a period of empire. The Greeks were superceded by the Macedonians, who in turn were succeeded by the Romans. Then came the theocracies of Latin Christendom in the west and Orthodox Christianity centred on Constantinople in the east. But nowhere to be found in the Middle Ages is an International Society based on Sovereign States. It was not until the late 15th Century and the dawn of the Italian City States that the seeds planted in ancient Greece peeped through as green shoots. Geoffrey Stern points to the development of polities under secular rulers who broke away from religious authority and Papal intervention. This was the age of Realism, raison d’etat and statecraft encapsulated by Machiavelli’s The Prince. Perhaps most convincingly for those arguing in favour of the Italian City-States System as being the origin of International Society, this period heralded the birth of the diplomatic system with career diplomats, embassies and diplomatic immunity. These diplomats had the power to represent and negotiate on behalf of their city state, but there was always Machiavelli’s last resort of subversion, assassination and finally war should their efforts fail. Which leads to another count in favour of the Italian era as the origin of international society – the inclination towards a balance of power system. Wars were not conducted in order to destroy an opponent, but rather to preserve that balance. But this essay argues that professional diplomacy and balance of power politics do not on their own constitute International Society. Their geographical scope at this time was too small, limited as it was to those city states of the Italian peninsula. Rather they represent a link between its medieval and modern conceptions. For a fully matured model the focus must move forward to immediately after the Thirty Years War which tore Europe apart in the first part of the 17th Century.

The Treaties of Westphalia brought to an end this religious conflict and in doing so, helped create the framework for a system of inter-state co-existence. For Hedley Bull and this essay, it marked the starting point of modern international society. The Westphalian system was built on four cornerstones. The first was secular sovereign statehood – the principle that a ruler was not subject to any higher authority. All states were equal and could expect to exist in a condition of non-intervention from other states. Secondly, states were expected to abide by a self-policing system of international law. As CAW Manning notes, by seeking sovereign status, a ruler indicated their consent to abide by these commonly agreed laws. Thirdly, came the full implementation of organised diplomacy on the lines of the Italian City State system. And the fourth cornerstone of Westphalia, was the promotion of ‘balance of power’ politics in which states adapted to ensure none of their number achieved the supremacy of hegemonial status. These seeds of state sovereignty and non-intervention can be seen to have evolved into the UN Charter and Geneva Conventions of today. And while acknowledging Martin Wight’s assertion that Westphalia merely marked its coming of age, this essay concurs with Bull et al, that modern international society can date its origins to 1648. At this point, it would be timely to look at David Held and Anthony McGrew’s contention that Westphalia merely established a normative trajectory for the shape of international society rather than a complete definition. Mention too must be made of Immanuel Wallerstein’s ‘Long Sixteenth Century’ – the period from 1450 to 1670 when, according to Wallerstein, the modern world system was established. His 220-year blanket does indeed cover the end of feudalism and the beginning of capitalism and a global structure we recognise today. But as Adam Watson reinforces, 1648 saw the birth of a ‘charter of a Europe permanently organised on an anti-hegemonial principle.’ But what of Watson’s subsequent watersheds for the possible starting point of modern international society?

The Concert of Europe – established following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 – comprised the Great Power Coalition of Britain, France, Russia, Prussia and Austria and can be seen as a forerunner of the biggest ‘club’ of countries ever assembled – the present day’s United Nations. The Concert itself was a product of the rise of Nationalism in Europe and for FH Hinsley, it was Napoleon’s attempts to force the peoples of Europe to be free – to bring into being a Europe of nations rather than states – that marked the beginning of modern international society. But as a candidate for the start of modern international society, the essay argues that this locus offers no principle that the Peace of Westphalia had not already instituted.

A century later came Versailles – another international system built on the principles of self-determination and international law. Masterminded by US President Woodrow Wilson, it was intended to promote collective security and spawned the League of Nations. Evan Luard identifies 1918 as his beginning of modern international society, but this essay argues that, once again, it represents no more than a latterday development of Westphalia. The same can be said of the establishment of the United Nations immediately after the Second World War. Seismic in scale and influence though it is, the UN – as an organisation promoting state actors’ rights to self-determination and the upholding of international law – is in the same, albeit far larger, mould, as the post-Westphalian Europe of 1648.

Perhaps the biggest changes to the structure of global politics have taken place in the second half of the 20th Century. Robert Jackson highlights the ‘freezing and sanctifying’ of international boundaries, which can be seen as a double-edged sword. While discouraging acts of expansionist aggression this position is also a barrier to the reshuffling of boundaries in response to changing socio-cultural needs as witnessed in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The past 65 years have also seen international society evolve into a ‘world society’. The position of the state on the global stage has arguably been eroded by the growth of shared norms and values which pertain regardless of individuals’ citizenship. Such norms include human rights, the rebirth of minority and aboriginal groups and the rise of gender in world politics. Environmental concerns also cross boundaries with a new responsibility for those with the greatest capacity for pollution to clean up their acts. Note too the rapid expansion – alongside IGOs such as the UN, World Bank and Nato – of NGOs such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International. The role of MNCs – the largest 500 of which control two-thirds of world trade – is clearly of crucial significance to the changing face of international society too. For some, such as Held and McGrew, the modern international order of states only became truly global at the end of the 20th Century.

In conclusion, this essay argues that modern international society is resolutely state-based. Built on the principles of sovereignty, equality, legitimacy and diplomatic interaction, the world’s 202 states remain the pre-eminent actors in international politics. Indeed, sovereign status is sought by many nations (for example, Basques, Chechens and Palestinians) and while globalisation changes the look of the world, it does not alter this state-based mechanism at a fundamental level. As such, the main difficulty in dating the origin of modern international society is locating where this state system came into being. While the first evidence of state principles in action can be traced back to Ancient Greece and seen to have developed in the Italian City States System of the late 15th Century, this essay argues that they only truly came to fruition in the mid-17th Century at Westphalia. Subsequent mileposts – the Concert System of Europe, the Treaty of Versailles, the post 1945 peace and Cold War, and the globalization of the late 20th Century  – saw no more than an enlargement or redefining of what went before. And because of that, it concurs with Hedley Bull et al, that while there are problems in dating the origins of modern international society, it can be pinned down to one year – 1648.