the absence of vital interests in contention. But if one wishes to promote a world order
which, like an oil stain, spreads over a growing geopolitical domain wherein war is all
but unthinkable, and is probably impractical as well, one needs to search for deeper
reasons. For peace in the second sense – the peace that finds war unthinkable – to reign,
two developments are necessary. First, war must cease to be perceived to be useful as an
instrument of policy. No longer must it be the last resort of polities, anticipated to be able
to resolve problems that would not yield to non-violent methods. Second, it has to be
rejected culturally, which is to say normatively, by taboo even. No longer must war be
socially acceptable. Politics and strategy tend to reflect and follow culture. At least, they
will until, or unless, communities suffer extraordinary security shock.
Peace in both senses comprises a political context desired strongly, almost universally.
But how does humankind both reinforce the simple state of non-war and best advance
the prospects for the deeper peace, the kind that rests upon the cultural rejection of war?
Is the question even sensible? Can peace be constructed purposively? Have not
succeeding generations of statesmen for the past two centuries attempted to do this, and
ultimately failed every time? Perhaps the wrong question has been posed, and therefore
largely irrelevant answers have been devised. On a more positive note, the historical
record of peacemaking and international ordering, though studded with awesome
failures, has not been entirely negative. Organized political, and criminal, violence has
been, and remains, widespread and is probably ineradicable. People will always fight
about something. In Thucydides’ immortal formula, they will fight for reasons of fear,
honour (or culture) and interest, so the likelihood of politically motivated violence fading
away entirely cannot be high. But one should not conclude the debate by insisting upon
perfection, which is to say upon the total demise of the institution of war in all its
manifestations, both regular and irregular.
How, if at all, can humankind improve its resistance to war? There is a literature which
points out that an important part of the world already comprises a zone of stability
wherein military strategic questions are of little, if any, policy significance (Singer and
Wildavsky, 1993). In that zone, so the argument goes, war has been culturally rejected.
EU Europe constitutes the core, the exemplar, of a zone of non-strategic, even anti-
strategic, stability. If the whole world viewed war and warfare as do the older members
of the EU, then challenges to international order would no longer include the possibility
of disorder caused by warfare.
There is no denying that much of Europe (minus the Balkans, of course) has turned
its back on war. But the cultural rejection of war by many Europeans is the consequence
of special historical circumstances; not least, it is the product of the horrific, repeated
experience of total war. Also, Europeans inhabit a pleasant realm of affluence, unlike
most of the rest of the human race. A post-military EU Europe, with a declining
population, can be viewed as an island of prosperity amid a sea of relative and absolute
poverty. The greatest threat of disorder in the future, as indeed today, stems ultimately
from grossly uneven development between regions. Today’s international order includes
modernized, partially modernized and unmodernized societies. Huge disparities in
standards of living are visible to all via electronic media that now are near-universally
accessible. This is not a prescription for an orderly international system. Strategic history,
both international and domestic, suggests that prosperous and contented regions need to
be defended against those who wish to join the feast. The fall of Rome in the fifth century
276 War, peace and international relations