the partial control of the possibility of war but also about the use of war as an instrument
to discipline rogue behaviour. Since peace is a concept with several meanings (see the
later discussion), a focus on international order reflects appreciation of the fact that
people, societies and states do not simply favour an unqualified peace. After all, strategic
history might offer them the peace of the grave or the peace of slavery. Those were the
practical options open to non-Jewish Poles from 1939 to 1945. People want the kind of
peace that provides security, and for that they need the contextual discipline of a
functioning international order.
The analysis now will briefly review the historical record of efforts to provide for
international order over the past two centuries. This entails revisiting the four principal
post-war–interwar contexts: those succeeding the Wars of the French Revolution and
Napoleon; World War I; World War II; and the Cold War. The interwar periods were
discussed in detail in the relevant chapters. However, the intention here is to consider the
whole enterprise of containing, controlling and occasionally resorting to war, through the
institutions, practices and norms of what is known as international or world order.
Vienna and Concert diplomacy
After the Congress of Vienna of 1 September 1814 – 9 June 1815, the ‘gang of four’ –
Russia, Prussia, Austria and Britain (later five, when France was readmitted to the top
table in 1823) – established a novel process of Congress diplomacy. The most vital
operating principle was that no great power should take action unilaterally that would
impinge negatively upon the interests of another great power. At least, it should not take
such action without first advising the other interested great power of its intentions. The
Congress System rapidly broke down, primarily because of the ideological cleavage
between liberal Britain and profoundly conservative Russia, Prussia and Austria.
Nevertheless, the Vienna Settlement was by no means a failure. It is a fact that Europe
did not suffer a general war for almost a century, 1815 to 1914. That strategic historical
fact was determined by the play of several factors, but it is necessary to allow some credit
to those who designed and sometimes practised Congress and later Concert diplomacy.
In three particulars at least, the Congress/Concert System can claim some credit for
promoting a stable international order. First, it obliged the great powers to consider the
systemic effects of their behaviour. No longer were issues of war and peace strictly
matters for unilateral calculation and decision. State policy was considered in the context
of the stability of the international, which is to say the European, order. Of course, that
principle was not always followed, but it was still an enduring part of the normative
bequest of the Vienna Settlement. Second, summit and foreign ministers’ conferences
were inaugurated. These rapidly declined in frequency after the early 1820s, but they
remained as an occasional acceptable convenience in the diplomatic arsenal. At the
Congress of Berlin in 1878, Bismarck succeeded in depriving Russia of much of the
advantage it had gained in its recent war with Turkey. Fast-forward to 1986, to the
Reagan–Gorbachev summit at Reykjavik where important common ground on nuclear
disarmament was discovered, to the surprise of the principals. Both episodes provided
evidence of the distant legacy of the Vienna Settlement’s Congress System. Top-level
meetings had become an occasionally necessary part, albeit not a regular feature, of
the struggle for international order. The third claim one can advance in praise of the
War, peace and international order 267