How long can peace last?

Berlin. Many people before him probably had this dream. But Abbé Charles Castel de Saint-Pierre, a French clergyman, was the first to put the idea on paper in 1713: the concept of “eternal peace”. At that time, Europe had been through the War of the Spanish Succession, which had lasted for more than a decade and had permanently changed the European map in a bloody way and was ended with the treaties of the “Peace of Utrecht”.

Immanuel Kant turned Saint-Pierre's idea into a concept in a text published in 1796. Central to it are generally valid rules and an international association in which interstate conflicts are discussed and decided together. However, the prerequisite for eternal peace is the predominance of republics and respect for the prohibition of violence in foreign policy, wrote Kant.

But despite the United Nations (UN) World Parliament and its Security Council meeting in 1945, such ideas of early thinkers have remained a beautiful dream that can and should still be remembered on September 1st. 85 years ago, the German invasion of Poland sparked the Second World War, which ultimately left an estimated 80 million dead. Today, the date is considered Anti-War Day or World Peace Day in Germany.

Metternich's UN

Incidentally, Abbé Saint-Pierre himself had to experience how his dream of eternal peace burst like a soap bubble. In 1740, three years before his death, Prussia's King Frederick II had declared war on France. This triggered the Silesian Wars, which then lasted five years. The young monarch simply ignored the Utrecht Agreement on the balance of power in Europe. This was followed by the Seven Years' War from 1756 to 1763 and the Napoleonic Wars from 1792 to 1815.

Only after the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte did a longer peace develop as a result of the new borders and states on the European continent decided at the Congress of Vienna in 1814 and 1815. At that time, a kind of UN was already meeting under the leadership of the Austrian Foreign Minister, Prince Klemens von Metternich. Representatives of around 200 European states, monarchies and cities, excluding the Ottoman Empire, came together for this purpose.

The Congress of Vienna met from September 18, 1814 to June 9, 1815 and changed the political map of Europe.

Source: picture alliance / Bildagentur-online

The sensible construct lasted for 40 years, interrupted by the Crimean War from 1853 to 1856. After that, there was peace until 1914, when the First World War began, which lasted four years. After all, until the Balkan Wars, which broke out in 1991 and only ended ten years later, there had been 46 years of peace in Europe – if we exclude the so-called Cold War between the Eastern and Western blocs.

However, this is not the case elsewhere in the world. Israel's current war in the Gaza Strip is unfortunately only one episode in the history of violent conflicts in the Middle East, which began in 1948 with the attack by Arab states on the newly founded Jewish state.

In Asia, people still remember with horror the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, which claimed an estimated four million lives, and the Vietnam War from 1955 to 1975, in which about four times as many civilians as soldiers died. In Afghanistan, there have been military conflicts since 1978 with everything from the Soviet Union to the USA. And the list of terror and violence on the African continent, in Sudan alone, for example, is endless.

It also becomes clear relatively quickly that when we talk about eternal peace, we actually mean that armed conflicts have been at rest for decades, but not forever. But why is it that, despite negative experiences in conflicts – high casualties, pain and suffering – people prefer to force decisions with the use of force and death rather than seeking them through dialogue? Is there such a thing as war dementia? Why does only a balance of terror through huge arsenals of weapons, including nuclear weapons, seem to dampen the desire for war – to some extent?

Political gamblers

Global military spending rose to an all-time high in 2023, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported in the spring. A total of around 2.4 billion dollars (around 2.25 billion euros) were spent on military equipment in 2023. The current report by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) states that the nine nuclear weapon states will spend a total of 91.4 billion US dollars on their arsenals in 2023 – that's the equivalent of 2,898 dollars per second. Germany's leading peace research institutes state in their 2024 peace report that the world has lost its compass.

The world we live in has changed dramatically. Anyone who follows the news closely will notice this.

Political gamblers like former US President Donald Trump or Russian President Vladimir Putin hold enormous power in their hands and disparage international organizations such as NATO and/or the UN, of which their countries are members, or pursue – like Moscow in Ukraine – imperial goals that supposedly stem from historical missions. But politically extreme forces in European democracies such as France, Italy, Great Britain and Germany are also gaining power. In doing so, they are increasingly wearing down the basic liberal order and its elementary rules of the game – by simply ignoring them. And those who are attacked domestically also lose strength in foreign policy – including in terms of international peacekeeping.

Peace researcher Tobias Debiel, professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen, says that only strong, respected international organizations can reduce the risk of war. The deputy director of the Institute for Development and Peace (INEF) recalled the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which played a very important role after the Cold War. “Through their ability to mediate, they had an enormous stabilizing effect, just like the UN did at times.”

But the USA, as a long-standing guarantor of international alliances in the political, military, economic and humanitarian spheres, is neither willing nor able to continue to take on the full program – also due to the rise of China as a new power. The Europeans are still looking for their role in the game. Beijing and Moscow are filling the vacuum left by the USA with war, as in Ukraine, and the threat of war, as against Taiwan.

Professor Tobias Debiel from the Institute for Development and Peace (INEF) at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Source: picture alliance / Geisler-Fotopress

In addition to the current conditions of war and peace, researchers like Debiel analyze why, even after times of serious wars and great losses as well as long periods of peace, an art of forgetfulness sets in, which enables new violent conflicts. The sober answer: “Sure, from the point of view of the population there is little to be gained in wars.” However, individual war actors, be they warlords or heads of government, can certainly enrich themselves. “There are always a few winners,” says peace researcher Debiel. “And for an actor like Putin, his own economic and human losses are not as relevant as gains in power within his own apparatus or on an international level.”

Therefore, in order to maintain peace, the willingness of the most powerful states to support the international peace order on a long-term basis – with political, economic and military means, most conflict researchers agree. “Without effective self-defense capacity, peace cannot be maintained,” says Debiel. The recent Berlin financial debate on aid to Ukraine showed how fragile this willingness is. “But additional capacities are still needed to stabilize transitional situations in countries where there have been interstate wars or civil wars so that the violence stops.” I find that very difficult to imagine without the military.”

And what about the nice pacifist ideas like “making peace without weapons” or “imagine there's a war and nobody goes”? According to expert Debiel, pacifism always includes not only a radical rejection of the military but also a demand for the strengthening of multilateral organizations. “And that is certainly a point on which peace activists can agree across camps.”