A Reforma protestante abriu um abismo na vida cristã e gerou pelo menos
três tipos distintos de igreja. A primeira, com sede em Roma, tem no Papa o
antigo postulante à plenitudo potestatis,
o máximo poder político e religioso. A segunda, a luterana, rompe com Roma e
quarda alguns traços da antiga forma católica, mas modifica pontos essenciais
dos dogmas e da disciplina antigos. A terceira, calvinista, radicaliza a
ruptura com a matriz católica e modifica fortemente as bases das estruturas
hierárquicas, dogmáticas e políticas do cristianismo.
A doutrina que fundamenta a pretensão católica na área política,
especialmente em plano internacional, antes do cisma luterano, surge em plena
Idade Média, quando os juristas da Igreja afirmam ser a missão do papa mais elevada do que a do
imperador. O primeiro, afirmam eles, tem
jurisdição sobre o segundo in
spiritualibus (no âmbito religioso), mas o imperador não teria jurisdição
política sobre o pontífice.
A Santa Sé desempenhou durante séculos o papel
de árbitro entre soberanos. () Mas o papa governava extensos territórios cobiçados pelas várias
potências que lutavam entre sí pela posse e domínio da Itália e pela hegemonia européia. A grande
ambigüidade no papel do Sumo Pontífice (juiz e parte ao mesmo tempo) levou à
desconfiança cada vez maior dos príncipes na sua magistratura internacional,
sobretudo após o reinado de Júlio 2º (1503-13) papa guerreiro inflexível diante de cidades como Bolonha, e que nelas
aplicou a lei de ferro gerada pela sua vontade de vencedor. () O mesmo papa aproveitou a revolta de
Faenza e Rimini contra Veneza e exigiu dos venezianos a devolução daquelas
cidades à Igreja. Ao fracassar sua iniciativa, organizou a Liga de Cambrai com
Luis 12º da França, Ferdinando de Aragão e Maximiliano 1º, imperador germânico.
O santo padre, com esta providência, iniciou as Guerras Italianas, quatro no
todo, que envolveram Estados relevantes e terminaram em 1530. Julio 2º iniciou os planos da Basilica de São Pedro, o que ocasionou a ruptura de
Lutero, com a venda de indulgências na Alemanha, para obter fundos destinados à
construção da Basílica de São Pedro. Tanto no ângulo religioso, com a evidente
simonia, quanto no diplomático, a Santa Sé perdeu qualquer veleidade de isenção
nos julgamentos entre soberanias.
Antes da Reforma protestante, o papa era a grande figura internacional.
Por não ter ligações com esta ou aquela potência em conflito, seu arbítrio
era geralmente acatado. Assim ocorrera
na guerra dos 100 Anos, quando foi concluido o Tratado de Arras (1435), entre
Filipe da Borgonha e Carlos 7º da França, contra os inglêses. Os legados papais libertaram o duque Filipe
do juramento feudal aos nobres da Inglaterra. O papa Clemente 7º formou uma
Liga com o rei da França contra Carlos 5º da Espanha, para livrar a Itália da
dominação imperial. O papa Clemente 6º
(1342-52) escrevera ao bispo de Verceil que as convenções concluídas em
prejuízo da Santa Sé eram nulos, mesmo se confirmados por juramentos.
Nas relações internacionais da Idade Média, o direito canônico e o papa
é a autoridade suprema. Os soberanos laicos não constituem uma sociedade
internacional independente da Igreja. A Santa Sé determina o fim das guerras e
as disputas são examinadas no tribunal do papa. Isto ocorreu, por exemplo, quando
Inocêncio 3º, em 1199, ordenou a Filipe Augusto (1180-1223) da França e a
Ricardo 1º ( 1189-99) da Inglaterra que acabassem suas guerras e submetessem a
ele as suas disputas. Assim deu-se também nas controvérsias territoriais entre
Portugal e Espanha, quando Alexandre 6º (1492-1503), dividiu terras coloniais
entre as duas potências marítimas.
Mas em 1648 o Núncio Chigi só consegue protestar contra a paz de
Westfália e seus acordos. o mesmo Chigi, eleito papa com nome de Alexandre 7º,
nem é representado nas negociações sobre a sorte dos Pirineus. No Tratado
Utrecht, os feudos papais da Sicilia e Sardenha são dispostos como se a Santa
Sé não existisse. Perto das potências protestantes, com seus exércitos e
territórios, a Santa Sé compõe uma força menor. E mesmo se comparado às
católicas Espanha e França, ela não
impressiona.
A origem dos tratados que decidiram Paz de Westfália encontra-se na
guerra religiosa, fruto da Reforma e da
divisão da fé cristã nas três igrejas mencionadas acima. O fenômeno bélico por
motivos de ordem eclesiástica abalou a vida civil e internacional nos instantes
decisivos em que se constituía o mundo moderno.
A Guerra de Trinta Anos (1618-1648)
mobilizou de início soldados católicos e imperiais.
Por seu Edito de
1629, o imperador Ferdinando 2º
determinava que todas as igrejas católicas tomadas pelos protestantes
voltariam para a administração da Santa Sé. Com este ato, o imperador parecia ter-se tornado potente em demasia, o
que excitou a oposição, contra ele, dos soberanos católicos, os quais o
forçaram a demitir o general Wallenstein, seu grande apoio militar. O rei protestante da Suécia, Gustavo Adolfo,
entra na guerra a pedido da França católica e dos protestantes alemães. Ao se
tornarem ameaças graves para a Alemanha, os soldados suecos precisaram
enfrentar Wallenstein, readmitido pelo imperador. O general decide assumir o controle das
negociações de paz, sendo acusado pelos próximos do imperador de alta traição.
Ele foi novamente demitido e assassinado por ordem imperial em 25/02/1634. () A guerra se transforma em pura e simples pilhagem da Alemanha pelos
francêses e suecos.
Além das questões religiosas, problemas de potência estatal definiram a
Guerra de Trinta (1618-48). O conflito não opõe de modo
absoluto católicos e protestantes, visto que soberanos protestantes (como o da
Suécia) unem-se a católicos (como o da França). A França é preocupada com o
cerco pemanente dos Habsburgos que dirigem o Sacro Império e dominam a Europa
central, mas que também comandam a Espanha. Ao Norte, ao Sul e no oeste do
continente europeu, eles ocupam o poder de Estados limítrofes da França. Um
ponto estratégico é a passagem desejada pelos Habsburgos, pelo território
francês, rumo às possessões da Espanha no espaço italiano e da Europa central.
Além desses conflitos de ordem bélica e geopolítica, existe um ponto
doutrinário relativo à legitimidade do poder imperial e dos reis. Os Habsburgos
defendiam a idéia imperial cristã, segundo a qual os príncipes subordinam-se ao
imperador, o qual exerce o poder laico e segue as determinações do Sumo
Pontífice romano. Nenhum monarca pode, neste ideário, ter soberania plena em
seu território e sobre seus cidadãos, e deve aceitar o poder de inspeção do
imperador (ou seja, como se trata de uma família hegemônica com ramo em Viena e
Madrid) da Espanha, subordinado nominalmente ao papa. Os contrários à
semelhante doutrina defendiam a tese, também antiga, de que “o rei é imperador
em seu reino” e a concepção de que o rei dispõe de soberania plena e só deve
prestar contas a Deus. ()
Em terceiro lugar ocorrem, na gênese da Guerra dos Trinta Anos, o
elementos propriamente religiosos. A França pode servir como um ponto de
partida para entender a lógica que determinou a Paz de Westfália. Ela, como todas as potências católicas no debate que preparou aquele
tratado, desde longa data enfrentavam problemas internos e diplomáticos graves.
Já antes de Henrique 4º a França se debatia em lutas religiosas com
ligações internacionais. O sentido da
sobrevivência do Estado tornou-se a cada momento mais claro: era preciso
desligar o soberano dos conflitos teológicos e disciplinares das igrejas e
seitas. Desde longa data Michel de l ´Hospital advertira os juízes francêses em
Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1562) : nada resultaria de bom para o país se a
discussão fosse mantida no plano das crenças particulares e não fosse dirigida
para o plano da eficácia estatal. “Não é preciso considerar se a lei é justa em
si, mas se ela é conveniente aos tempos e aos homens, para os quais ela é
feita…o Rei não quer que entreis
em disputa para saber qual é a melhor opinião; pois não se trata de constituenda Religione (de instauração
religiosa), mas de constituenda Republica
(de instauração da coisa pública): e muitos podem ser Cives (cidadãos) embora não cristãos, e pode-se viver em repouso
com os que ostentam opiniões diversas, como vemos numa família onde católicos
não deixam de viver em paz e amar os da Nova Religião”. ()
Foram inúmeras as tentativas do poder real para diminuir a violência
religiosa. Entre elas, as incursões de magistrados nas províncias em que as
lutas eram mais graves. Este é o caso de Etienne de la Boétie, enviado pela
Corte à Guiana para pacificar a região com base na tese da tolerância
patrocinada pelo soberano e mantida pelas sentenças dos Parlamentos, os
tribunais onde a justiça era aplicada. Governava a regente Catarina de Medicis,
em nome de Carlos 9º. Indecisa sobre qual setor apoiar, o
protestante ou católico, ela acirrou as divisões em vez de coibí-las. Suas preocupações, mais dinásticas e de ordem econômica do que
teológicas, conduziu-a a editar normas de tolerância em 1561, nas quais se
previa a liberdade de culto privado e libertação dos presos por motivos
religiosos. O remédio não surtiu efeito e as violências aumentaram. A regente
promulga outro edito, proibindo as pregações dos protestantes e as
manifestações contrárias dos católicos. O resultado foi desastroso para o reino.
Na Guiana as confusões eram particularmente exacerbadas. Os reformados
invadiam igrejas católicas e nelas exerciam seus cultos, sem licença do poder
público. Isto ocorreu, entre outros lugares, no convento dos jacobinos. Buri, o
enviado pela Corte e seguido por La Boétie, retira os protestantes dos
jacobinos, na cidade de Agen, e lhes destina outra sede católica, a Igreja
Sainte-Foix, na mesma cidade. A decisão dos emissários reais previa que, se
houvesse carência de templos, ou se existisse apenas um no local, os cultos
deveriam ser efetuados em rodízio, uma confissão a cada vez, sem lutas. No
texto redigido por La Boétie sobre o problema, é possível notar o quanto ele,
como L´Hospital, desejava a liberdade dos cultos, desde que os reformados e
católicos respeitassem a lei do Estado. Este alvo, perseguido pelos governantes
francêses, era obstaculizado pelo fanatismo de ambas as partes, católica e
protestante.
É nesse plano que La Boétie critica a massa dos sectários que
esfacelavam o corpo político e desafiavam a lei do soberano e os juízes do
Parlamento. Todo o mal das lutas civis, diz o relatório redigido por La Boétie,
“reside na diversidade de religião. Esta avançou tanto que um mesmo povo,
vivendo sob um mesmo príncipe, dividiu-se claramente em duas partes, e não se
deve duvidar que os de um lado consideram adversários os do outro. Não apenas
as opiniões são diferentes, mas já existem diversas igrejas, diversos chefes,
contrárias observações, diversas ordens, contrária administração religiosa.
Logo, com este olhar, surgem duas repúblicas opostas, uma diante da outra.”
Deste malefício dissolvente que destrói as bases da comunidade política,
afiança La Boétie, surgem outros como a raiva de todos contra todos, com
“tristes efeitos”.
Outra calamidade, diz o relator, é o fato seguinte: com o fanatismo das
igrejas, o “povo se acostuma à uma irreverência diante do magistrado e com o
tempo aprende a desobedecer voluntáriamente e se deixa conduzir pelos atrativos
da liberdade, ou melhor, licença, o mais doce e gostoso veneno do mundo. Isto
ocorre porque o povo, ao saber que não é obrigado a obedecer seu príncipe
natural no campo religioso, usa de modo péssimo esta regra a qual, por si
mesma, não é má, e dela extrai uma falsa consequência, a de que só é preciso obedecer
os superiores nas coisas boas. E depois o povo se atribui o juízo do que é bom
ou ruim e chega a não ter outra lei além de sua consciência, ou seja, na
maioria, a persuasão de seu espírito e suas fantasias (…) pois como nada é mais justo e conforme às
leis do que a consciência de um homem religioso e temente a Deus, probo e
prudente, também nada é mais louco, mais vão e mais monstruoso do que a
consciência e a superstição da multidão indiscreta”. ()
Se os choques religiosos ameaçavam a existência do Estado dentro de seu
território, no plano externo os desafios eram mais graves. Embora convertido ao
catolicismo, um rei anteriormente protestante como Henrique 4º tinha inimigos
católicos para combater se desejasse garantir o espaço francês e o papel de seu
reino no âmbito mundial. Entre os adversários mais perigosos estavam os
Habsburgo. Na Áustria, aquela família mantinha plena hegemonia com possessões
hereditárias como a Alta e a Baixa Austria, os principados de Estiria,
Carintia, Carniola, Tirol, a Boêmia, a Hungria, e bens na Alsácia.
Nominalmente, o chefe da Casa da Austria teria imensos poderes, supostamente
herdados do império romano —mas oriundos do ser divino— e que lhe dariam mando
supremo sobre todos os reis. Mas na verdade os Habsburgo da Espanha eram mais
fortes do que os da Austria. O rei da Espanha também é rei de Portugal desde
1580, domina a Itália como rei de Nápoles e duque de Milão, conserva a região
de Franche-Comté e os Países Baixos, a Flandres e o Artois, antes províncias
francêsas. Dessas posses, os Habsburgos
arrancam ¾ de seus recursos, mas ¼ vem das Américas e das Filipinas. As casas
da Austria e da Espanha se entendiam bem quando se tratava de impôr o poderio
da monarquia no solo europeu.
O lado mais saliente na política internacional da família Habsburgo, era
a defesa do catolicismo. “Contra o
herético, luterano ou calvinista, os Habsburgo lideravam uma cruzada comum,
ajudando-se mútuamente, os de Viena especialmente contra os protestantes do
Sacro império, o da Espanha, ´rei católico´, sobretudo contra os protestantes
dos Países Baixos, da Inglaterra, da França.” () A França, cercada pelas possessões espanholas, estava ameaçada de
fato, sobretudo porque o seu possível domínio pelos Habsburgos resolveria o
problema estratégico número um da família: os transportes que garantiriam a
presença de tropas espanholas na Holanda, na Alemanha, nas fronteiras da
Austria, na Boêmia ou na Hungria. () A Espanha chegou a propôr o seu rei, Filipe II, como candidato a
“Protetor do reino de França”em 1590.
É instrutivo, para entender
o xadrez da política internacional da época, seguir os passos do estadista e
militar Henri de Rohan. Este pensador conhecia profundamente a situação da
França e da Europa, fato aceito pelos mais importantes analistas da raison d´ État. () A primeira potência examinada por Rohan é a Espanha, na optica do
sistema instaurado por Filipe 2º, menos militarista e mais
jurídico-institucional. Rohan nota que a política espanhola visava instaurar
sua dominação sobre um ordenamento racional, dirigido por máximas de poder. A
primeira destas máximas era o uso político e diplomático da fé católica. Assim,
a Espanha assegura o apoio do Papa e dos príncipes italianos de que tanto as
terras pontifícias quanto as principescas estariam seguras com o sustento
espanhol.
Na França, o labor espanhol consiste em apoiar o rei contra os
protestantes, mas sigilosamente ajuda os huguenotes contra o soberano. Na
Inglaterra, dominada pelo protestantismo, o alvo era manter a paz para não ter
incômodos no tráfego dos tesouros vindos das Indias ocidentais e orientais.
Sigilosamente, no entanto, a atividade escolhida era apoiar os católicos,
mantendo em Flandres e na Espanha escolas para os jovens católicos inglêses. Na
Alemanha, o essencial era reforçar o poder Habsburgo, além de ajudar os
católicos suiços, dirigindo-os contra os protestantes. Na Holanda, o objetivo
era conseguir um cisma entre protestantes. Em suma, sobre a Espanha, indica
Rhan que “a fama sobre o seu grande zelo na manutenção da religião católica
cobre com o manto da piedade todos os seus alvos e mantem o povo numa veneração
espantosa”. A política “religiosa”, diz ainda, “é coisa vã na aparência, mas
produz sólidos efeitos”. Mas a análise final de Rohan sobre a Espanha é importante:
“Esta grande máquina composta de tantas partes e como que impedida por seu
próprio peso, move-se por mecanismos secretos, que perdem força a medida em que
são descobertos”. ()
Desde a paz de Augsburgo (1555), recrudesceram os choques entre protestantes
e católicos, tanto na França quanto nas terras dominadas pelos Habsburgos, como
é o caso da Boêmia. Na França, após o Edito de Nantes, cuja aplicacão foi árdua
(em especial depois do assassinato de Henrique 4º pelo católico Ravaillac)
brotam violências devidas, a dar crédito aos protestantes, à aproximação da
Regência com a Espanha, o que teria inclusive abalado as relações
internacionais francêsas com potências reformadas. Os protestantes realizam
assembléias mais políticas do que religiosas contra o poder central, o que
resulta nas guerras do Languedoc (1621-1629), no cerco de La Rochelle
(1627-1628), o que aumenta a fragmentação da opinião pública francêsa. Como
seria possível manter os mandamentos do Edito de Nantes, que admitia liberdades
relativas para os protestantes, com a sua sublevação contra a Regência e logo
após contra o governo de Richelieu? A solução foi a de manter o Edito, mas
garantir o poder central. Assim, foram mantidas as alianças da França com as
potências reformadas, o que determinava certa garantia aos protestantes
francêses. Estes últimos, após o Edito de Graça de Alès (1629), tiveram
confirmados os pontos essenciais do Edito de Nantes, inclusive com a
restauração das escolas reformadas com ajuda do poder real. A contrapartida foi
drástica, no entanto, pois as assembléias protestantes não poderiam mais
adquirir cunho político, mas apenas religioso, e foram suprimidas suas bases
militares. ()
A França entra na Guerra dos Trinta Anos em 1635, em luta direta contra
a Espanha. Os francêses ganham várias batalhas, como em Rocroi (1643),
Dunquerque (1646), Lens (1648). A Espanha perde as Províncias Unidas e a sua
derrota em Dunes (1639) perde o território que ia da zona milanesa ao
Franche-Comté e à Flandres. Ela também perde força com inssurreições internas,
como a que se deu na Catalunha, pelos levantes em Portugal (1640) e depois pela
expulsão de Olivares (1643). Após as vitórias da Suécia (1636, 1645, 1648) na
Alemanha o Império caminha para a confissão da derrota e se prepara para as
negociações de paz. Morto Ferinando 2º (1637), assume Ferdinando 3º, o qual
decide aceitar um tratado de paz.
Em Westfália os príncipes católicos e protestantes concordam em ignorar
os protestos do Papa contra as negociações ocorridas simultâneamente nas
cidades de Münster e Osnabrück. Tais
encontros produzem uma nova lógica normativa nas relações internacionais e nos
assuntos internos de cada país. Os
Estados soberanos anulam a influência da Santa Sé nos temas políticos europeus.
A pretensão teocrática do Pontífice romano, na verdade, for a dissolvida
lentamente num processo histórico com início na Idade Média. Mas em Westfália, pela primeira vez, a Igreja
foi intencionalmente ignorada nas decisões. () Não é por acaso que o papa Inocêncio 10º fulminou a Paz de Westfália
com um Breve, em 1650. ()
Na
Guerra dos Trinta Anos foram ampliadas
as incertezas sobre os limites territoriais da Alemanha e da Europa central, o que exacerbou as
dúvidas sobre o futuro das três grandes confissões religiosas do continente. A
devastação física e moral dos povos e príncipes levou os governos à mesa de
negociação. Os plenipontenciários
precisaram usar de muita cautela para conseguir a redação de dois textos, o de Osnabrück
e o de Münster, hoje conhecidos no singular como o Tratado de Westfália. As
duas localidades serviram para reunir em separado os católicos e os
protestantes. As bases do acordo foram mantidas em vigor até 1792.
A guerra dos Trinta Anos, “maior catástrofe demográfica conhecida pelo
mundo alemão em sua história” () tem seu início marcado pelo fracasso da Paz de Augsburgo (1555), na
qual o Sacro Império decidiu o princípio conhecido como “cujus regio ejus
religio” (a religião do povo é a do príncipe), definindo a existência da
religião luterana à exclusão do calvinismo e demais setores reformados. Os
calvinistas, na Boêmia, onde adquiriram forças consideráveis, resistiram aos
esforços da Contra reforma, movimento católico que resultou do Concilio de
Trento (1545-1552), o que suscitou uma série de incidentes, os quais levaram ao
choque entre as potências católicas e protestantes. Gradativamente as potências
protestantes entraram na luta, cada uma com suas ambições territoriais e planos
políticos, como é o caso da Suécia e da Dinamarca. Após anos tremendos de fome,
insegurança, violências diversas, os dirigentes politicos dos Estados
protestantes e católicos, lentamente iniciam as conversações de paz. O processo
técnico e diplomático exigiu prudência excepcional.
As cidades de Münster e de Osnabrück foram declaradas zona neutra, salvo
condutos foram dados aos diplomatas e aos seus auxiliares. Também a estrada que
unia as duas cidades foi dita neutra. A logística para abrigar, alimentar,
vestir, fornecer correio e todo o aparato necessário às conversações foi das
mais complicadas. Só a delegação francêsa incluia quase duzentas pessoas.
Estavam presentes 194 potências soberanas, das menores até as mais relevantes
na cena internacional. () Das formações estatais apenas a Rússia, o império Otomano e a
Inglaterra estavam ausentes.
Os católicos (representantes do imperador, a França, a Espanha, os
Eleitores e principes catolicos alemães, os representantes das Províncias
Unidas, reuniram-se em Münster. A França, dirigida pelo cardeal Mazarino, desejava
obter do Congresso de Westfália a segurança de suas fronteiras do lado espanhol
e do Santo Império. Ela reivindicou as regiões da Lorena e da Alsácia, além do
Pignerol nos Alpes. E também queria manter as conquistas feitas contra a
Espanha em Artois, Flandres, Roussillon. Mas o alvo primordial francês era
atenuar ao máximo o poderio da família Habsburgo.
O tratado final de Westfália deu
à França resultados importantes. Ele enfraqueceu os Habsburgos austríacos e
espanhóis, descentralizando ainda mais o já fragmentário Sacro Império. Cada um
dos seus 350 príncipes garantiu a soberania local. O tratado permitia alianças entre eles e com
potências estrangeiras, desde que não fossem feitas em prejuízo do imperador. Desaparecia
o sonho de um Estado imperial centralizado. ()
A Alemanha ficou ainda mais enfraquecida territorialmente com a perda da
Holanda e da Suíça. A França, de seu lado, conseguiu a soberania sobre os
bispados de Metz, Toul, Verdun e, no Reno amealhou os territórios de Breisach,
Philippsburg, Alsácia, estratégicas para impedir a movimentação da Espanha,
suas tropas e comércio pelo Reno, rumo à Holanda espanhola e à Itália. A
Suécia, aliada da França, ganhou território na Alemanha do Norte, contolando as
embocaduras dos rios Weser, Elba e outros. A Austria, por força do Tratado de
Westfália, saiu temporariamente do cenário. Ela aceitou não intervir quando
Espanha e França continuaram sua guerra até 1659, com a vitória francêsa.
O tratado de Westfália (1648) é visto comumente como o primeiro acordo internacional tendo em vista garantir a
soberania dos Estados, com as promessas de não intervenção entre eles e
separação entre mundo politico e
religioso. Após a Guerra dos Trinta Anos,
cujas razões encontram-se ao mesmo tempo em formas confessionais,
econômicas e politicas, aquele pacto deu condições para uma atividade
diplomática ou bélica mais sistemática do que a vigente nos tempos em que os
Estados ainda construiam a sua soberania. () Pode-se afirmar que ele
permitiu ao Estado moderno a completude
dos pontos essenciais à sua existência independente, com os monopólios da
violência legítima, da norma juridica, dos impostos.
A
luta comum das soberanias contra as Igrejas concorrentes, as seitas e os
privilégios da nobreza (fontes de guerras civis e internacionais até então)
levou os dirigentes ao acordo mínimo que lhes permitiu administrar a nova
realidade instaurada pela Reforma no século XVI. A partir daquele evento, em
vez da única Respublica christiana
conduzida pelo bispo de Roma, o mundo cristão se esfacelara em múltiplas
confissões, todas dispostas a expulsar da cena pública as doutrinas
“hereticas”. Estas, por definição, seriam as que delas discordavam no relativo
aos dogmas, aos costumes, à disciplina eclesial. A intolerância dos púlpitos
seguiu para as pontas das armas. A Guerra dos Trinta Anos é o resultado
catastrófico da frágil unidade política interna dos Estados e da intensa
divisão, no plano espiritual, da Europa. Na verdade, trata-se de uma sequência
de guerras iniciada em 1618. Os governantes Habsburgo da Austria desejavam que
os protestantes da Boêmia se convertessem ao catolicismo, o que serviu de
estopim para a expansão do belicismo nas relações entre católicos e
protestantes, entre príncipes alemães e Império Romano Germânico, entre este e
a França, incluindo os Habsburgo da Espanha. Foram conduzidas às batalhas a
Suécia, a Dinamarca, a Polônia, a Rússia, a Holanda e a Suíça. ()
A
França foi liderada no período por estadistas e guerreiros do porte de
Richelieu e Mazarino, o Marechal Turenne e o príncipe Conde. Wallenstein
conduziu os exércitos do Império e a Liga Católica teve em Tilly um coordenador
importante. Os imperadores Ferdinando II e Ferdinando III, o rei Christian IV
da Dinamarca, Gustavo Adolfo e Cristina
da Suécia, the Great Elector of Brandenburg, Filipe IV da Espanha. O personagem
mais trágico foi Wallestein assassinado em 1634, com a mancha de traidor.
A
cadeia bélica deu-se especialmente no campo alemão, onde as misérias de todas
as guerras, denunciadas por Erasmo de
Rotterdam, () chegaram ao máximo com os mercenários que assaltavam as casas,
praticavam a rapinagem e deixavam as famílias na pior fome. Rumores cada vez
mais insistentes de canibalismo passaram a circular em panfletos, sermões,
desenhos, versos. O canibalismo, apanágio até então dos indios americanos,
passa a ser denunciado entre europeus que pisavam o solo alemão. “Por volta de
1635, o canibalismo (…) parecia reinar entre cristãos ; ele tornou-se a grade
pela qual o presente era percebido. Merian em 1639, introduzia a descrição do
canibalismo em Worms com as seguintes palavras : ´quem, ao ler em Münster e
outros as narrativas dos canibais africanos e das Indias ocidentais, não sente
os cabelos arrepiados e não se espanta ao máximo? Mas que importa! Quando
buscamos os canibais não na África ou em outra parte, mas diante da porta de
nossa casa, e devemos julgá-los com os nossos próprios olhos, quando
consideramos a coisa de mais perto, quem ignora o que se produz desde o começo
deste ano de 1637 ao redor da atormentada cidade de Worms ?’”. ()
A
velha e superada Respublica christiana
tinha no Sacro Império Romano Germânico a sua expressão política imperfeita e
inconsistente. Como este sistema deixou de ser eficaz nas relações entre os
reinos e as religiões, e sua presença não conseguiu atenuar os pressupostos e
efeitos dos conflitos armados, a Paz de Westfália é vista como o primeiro passo
mundial de uma cultura política autônoma diante das formações religiosas,
política que inaugurou o sistema europeu de Estados e posteriormente definou a
maioria dos poderes nacionais no Ocidente. Ela pode ser dita o ato de nascimento do
sistema estatal, porque nela foi reconhecido o principio da soberania do
Estado.
Os
principais países envolvidos no Tratado de Westfalia incluiam a França e a
Suécia, que na época eram aliados. No outro polo das negociações encontravam-se
a Espanha e o Santo Império Romano com as suas partes envolvidas na Guerra dos
Trinta Anos, além da Holanda. Na chamada Paz de Praga (1635), o Império tentara
conseguir a unidade em seu interior. Mas o imenso e complexo organismo politico
imperial não conseguiu reunir forças para o combate contra a França e a Suécia.
Em 1641 deu-se um Tratado prévio, com alguns Estados participantes reunidos em
Münster e outros em Osnabrück. Após reuniões infrutíferas nos anos 1643, 1644 e
1645, o Tratado de Paz foi definido em 1648.
Os
trabalhos preparatórios envolveram mais de 194 Estados, representados por 179
plenipotenciários e um número imenso de auxiliares que deveriam ser
alimentados, apesar da fome que os rodeava. A conferência foi presidida pelo
Núncio papal, Fabio Chigi (mais tarde eleito papa, com o nome de Alexandre VI)
e pelo Embaixador de Veneza. Tempo enorme gasto em precedências e minúcias, os
representantes da França e da Espanha não estiveram em todas as reuniões,
porque seria impossível seguir o protocolo rigoroso a que eram submetidos pelas
suas respectivas cortes. Correio especial foi providenciado. Só para a
cerimônia da assinatura do texto foram gastas três semanas de negociações.
Os maiores beneficiários em Westfalia, a França e a Suécia, conseguiram
dissolver o Santo Império Romano, atenuando ao máximo o poderio da família
Habsburgo que o dirigia. A potência francêsa manteve o
controle das regiões situadas em Metz, Verdun, Toul, Pinerolo, Alsácia. A Suécia. Conseguiu a Pomerânia, os
arcebispados de Bremen e Verden, Wismar e a ilha de Pöl. Foram reconhecidas a
Holanda, como independente da Espanha, e a Confederação Suíça. No mesmo ato, foi assegurada a Kleinstaaterei
nos territorios alemães, com pequenos
Estados cujos interesses eram
particulares e conflitantes.
No
setor religioso, o princípio formulado
na Paz de Augsbourg, segundo o qual cujus regio, eius religio (a religião do
governante é a religião do país) foi confirmado, estabelecendo-se que os
governados eram livres para exercitar o culto privado ou público, nos Estados
onde esta liberdade existia em 1624. Os calvinistas passam a ser
tolerados, os governos poderiam permitir a tolerância nos seus
territórios. As disputas confessionais
deveriam ser reguladas em negociações, e
não mais nos campos de batalha.
As primeiras sentenças do Tratado de Westfália
rezam que a paz deve ser “cristã, universal, perpétua e que ela seja uma
amizade verdadeira e sincera” entre todas as partes. Houve inovação nos itens
aprovados, pois o escrito não define a paz nos limites de um território preciso
(como era usual na Idade Média, com as Landfrieden), mas determina um contrato
amplo entre governantes de povos distintos. () Sem um organismo internacional jurídico ou religioso (como era o caso
anterior da Santa Sé) para garantir o pacto, a paz de Westfália foi ideada como
equilíbrio a ser subordinado à amizade e à visinhança confiante de cada um.
Trata-se, como em Grotius de uma obrigação civil entre soberanos que se
definem, então, ao mesmo tempo como juízes e partes. Os Estados do Império
poderia, a partir de então, estabelecer relações diplomáticas com qualquer
outro país, desde que não prejudicasse o Imperador. As potências aliadas,
França e Suécia, determinaram o equilíbrio no interior do Império, fazendo-o
seguir, então, uma política de respeito constitucional.
Se houve
inovação nesse aspecto, a qualificação de “cristã” para a Paz de Westfália a
colocou na ordem da antiga “paz religiosa” instituída em 1552 no Tratado de
Passau e em 1555 na paz de Augsburgo. Assim, cada confissão religiosa teve suas
perdas e compensações.
Diplomatic
Europe since the Treaty of Versailles Carlo Sforza; Yale
University Press, 1928. 130 pgs.
Of
what did those traditions and temptations consist? Of this: that French
diplomacy sometimes pays the penalty for having an almost too finished
historical and political culture. I have often fancied thatthe pigeonholes of
the Quai d'Orsay must each contain, ready to hand, a copy of the Peace of
Westphalia, the ideas of which, inspired as they were by the period
corresponding to the end of the Thirty
Years War ( 1648), still seem to have some part in directing the trend of
French political thought. The Westphalian idea was to keep the Germanic race
broken up in fragments; what a temptation, then to make use. of an
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy which might eventually have absorbed Bavaria and
other countries of the Reich, on the strength of its Catholic characteristics.
As frequently happens, even the great newspapers gave the impression of sharing
these illusions, blind terrors and pleasant lies being the alternate menu of
the upper classes' daily intellectual food. A most unique and certainly the
most courageous exception was the old Journal
des Débats which strongly denounced the vain hopes of playing Austria
against Germany and, by doing so, served the interests and the honor of France
as well as the Italian national cause. (p. 36-37).
Policy
Point-Counterpoint: Is Westphalia History?
by
Laura Cruz
Policy
Point-Counterpoint: Is Westphalia History?
Laura Cruz; International Social Science
Review, Vol. 80, 2005.
Does
a discussion of the Treaty of Westphalia, promulgated in 1648, rightfully fall
under the parvenu of a social science journal? The question arises because of
the rather uneasy relationship between historians and social scientists. If one
were to search the various history departments across the United States, for
example, some are organized under colleges of social science and others under
humanities. This ambiguity stems from the belief that there are fundamental
assumptions in the modern practice of history that are largely incompatible with
the tenets of social science but historians are certainly not adverse to
borrowing liberally from their theories and practices, and vice versa. (1)
Nearly despite themselves, however, historians have much to offer current
debates about the future of the modern state system and its alleged origins in
the Treaty of Westphalia.
The
Treaty of Westphalia is used by social scientists as the foundation of several
theoretical schools. Both realist and neo-liberal theories of international
relations use the Westphalian state system as one of their most fundamental
assumptions (though, of course, with different intentions). (2) Theorists of
nationalism also consider the settlement of some significance. By linking
religious identity to state identity, they argue, Westphalia was part of a
long-term process that led to the ideology of nationalism in the nineteenth
century and the primary identification of most ordinary Europeans with their
nation-states. (3) The term has been used so often that most introductory political
science texts treat its use as axiomatic. (4) The historical origins and
context of the term, on the other hand, are generally not deemed of sufficient
import to convey.
Historians
view Westphalia quite differently. The Treaty of Westphalia itself was not the
only agreement concluded at the peace negotiations held in the town of Muenster
in 1648. In addition, the Treaty of Muenster, recognizing the independence of
the United Provinces of the Netherlands and ceding territory to France, and the
Treaty of Osnabruck, granting Sweden its spoils of victory, also came out of
what is more properly called the Settlement of Westphalia. Many of the precepts
ascribed to Westphalia, such as state sovereignty and enforcement and
regulation of international law, come from these two treaties rather than the
Treaty of Westphalia itself. (5) The treaty ended the Thirty Years' War, which
had physically devastated much of the Holy Roman Empire, and marked the
twilight of the power of the Holy Roman Emperor and the rise of powers such as
France, the Netherlands, and, briefly, Sweden in the latter part of the
seventeenth century. (6) By the eighteenth century, however, these powers were
eclipsed by the rise of England and the increasing economic importance of the
Atlantic seaboard over continental markets. As an indicator of the balance of
power in Europe, the consequences of the treaty were, for the most part,
short-lived. The religious outcome of the treaty was based on the same
principle of cuius region, cuius religio (whose region, his religion)
established at the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, though it granted formal
recognition of the Calvinist faith which the Augsburg treaty had denied. In
short, when placed in its historical context, the Settlement. of Westphalia was
neither innovative nor especially enduring. For most historians, it appears as
a footnote in an entire century that is largely glossed over as a period of
disorganization and crisis sandwiched between two centuries of greater interest
and significance. (7)
Political
scientists and international relations specialists, however, have referred to
the Settlement of Westphalia as "the majestic portal which leads from the
old world into the new," in other words, a watershed in Western history.
(8) The treaties, they argue, contain the genesis of the modern political order
through which the West would come to triumph over the rest of the world and
represented a sharp and clearly evident break from medieval practices. Few
historians would give credence to this conception. Delineating the divide
between the medieval and modern worlds is a contentious issue that revolves
around disagreement over the conceptually ambiguous term "modernity,"
but most scholars concede that modernity is multi-faceted and the break between
the two worlds was the result of numerous processes that occurred over a period
of decades, if not centuries. (9) The current consensus seems to focus on the
more-or-less simultaneous impact of Renaissance humanism, the voyages of
discovery, and the Protestant Reformation as indicators of profound change, all
of which occurred or were in process well before 1648. (10) This conceptual
difference can be attributed to changes in the historical profession. In the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the first few generations of
professional historians tended to give preeminence to political and legal
history in their explanations of long-term trends, which would be consistent
with using Westphalia as a turning point. Since World War I, however,
historians turned first to social and economic history and now cultural beliefs
as their primary explanatory lens. The emphasis has turned from precept to
practice and from law to understanding. Because Westphalia resulted in few, if
any, changes in the lives of ordinary Europeans, historians are no longer
inclined to give primacy to any particular treaty, but rather to the long-term
forces and antecedents that shaped it. (11) The changes in legal practice
represented by Westphalia, for example, are now known to have deep medieval
roots. Italians of the late middle ages were well acquainted with the practices
of balance of power politics outlined in the treaty. Sovereignty was a concept
that could be traced back to the ninth century and the age of Charlemagne. The
idea of a universal European empire, the death of which is often attributed to
Westphalia, died as a realistic possibility with the retirement of Spain's King
Charles V in 1555. As Andrew MacRae suggests, political scientists, with few
exceptions, have not reconciled their conceptual tools with evolving historical
practice. (12)
The
argument presented above is largely semantic, however, as it calls into
question whether or not the modern state system can be properly attributed to
the particular settlement at Westphalia, not whether or not the origins of the
modern state system can be traced back to the early modern period. If calling
the system of sovereign states "Westphalian" is simply a
"reference point or convention,"" then the issue is not what the
system is called but its consequences. Stephen Krasner, who has written
extensively on the history of Westphalia, claims that even if one accepts that
many of the foundations of modern state systems were laid down at Westphalia
(which he denies), those principles were often contravened and the triumph was
by no means assured even into the early twentieth century. (14) Competing ideas
of sovereignty and violations and exception to the principles of sovereignty
abound in history as they do in the present day. (15)
Krasner
is a political scientist but his approach is compatible with historical
practice. Historians are far more inclined than most social scientists to
privilege the particular over the general and tend to be skeptical about
advancing universal laws or principles. (16) Similarly, George Santayana's
famous precept, "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to
repeat it" is no longer subscribed to in historical theory. (17) History
is not studied to teach us about the present, but rather to better understand
the past, an idea that is at odds with basic social science methodology. To
argue for continuity between states and state systems of the past and modern
arrangements is to belie the unique historical contexts in which those systems
operated and to take the outcomes of historical processes as assured even when
they were not.
Despite
their skepticism and their sensitivity for historical specificity, modern
historians will (albeit cautiously) recognize long-term trends. Westphalia was,
in many respects, a culmination of prior processes, but it did represent an
aggrandizement of the scope of political actors and systems. By including a
multiplicity of states in its agreements, outlining the responsibility of
states vis-a-vis each other, and affirming the state as the locus of nascent
forms of collective identity (in this case, religious), Westphalia was
innovative and prescient. As Jason Farr argues, Westphalia represented the
recognition of a system that applied to all European states who could only
afford to ignore it at their peril. Prescient should not, however, be confused
with presentist. In eighteenth and nineteenth century diplomatic negotiations,
Westphalia is not referenced as a benchmark in practice. Only with the
promulgation of the charter for the League of Nations was Westphalia trumpeted
as a shining historical model, when its inclusive example served to counteract
the elitist tendencies exhibited by the Congress of Vienna and the subsequent
Concert of Europe. (18) Liberals touted the "Westphalian" ideology of
toleration and saw Westphalia as the forerunner of the type of beliefs that
were enshrined in documents such as Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points. (19) Both
are examples of 'Whig history' which looks at modern history on a grand scale
as the gradual unfolding of progress, education, and freedom. (20) Progress and
freedom, however, are words whose meanings change in historical context. (21)
The conception of religious and other freedoms as inherently good would have
been alien to the peacemakers at Westphalia. (22) Understood in terms of the
mindset of the day, the religious settlement of 1648 was essentially practical
and served as a recognition of political and military limitations, not moral
commitments.
In
the end, however, what is really at stake if the historical reality of the
state system outlined at Westphalia does not exactly match up to the conceptual
baggage often consigned to it by modern theorists? Westphalia seems to be
evoked most often when the state system it purports to represent is at its most
triumphant, as with the founding of the United Nations, or at its most
threatened, as many believe that it is today. Multinational corporations and
globalism in general appear to be on the brink of superceding the state as the
basis of international affairs and social scientists are diligently endeavoring
to make sense of the transition. As popular titles such as Jihad vs. McWorld
and The Lexus and the Olive Tree suggest, the tendency is to portray this
transition as strictly dichotomous, i.e., there can be a Westphalian state
system based on the primacy of the nation-state or there can be a global
system, but the two can not co-exist. (23) As this essay has argued, modern
historians believe that history is much messier and far more complex than general
theories and concepts are capable of allowing. The historical record is
testament to the endurance of the state and its chameleon-like ability to adapt
to changing circumstances. The state and the competitive state system, whether
born at Westphalia or not, have proven to be remarkably resilient despite
numerous crises and potential threats over the past three hundred plus years.
(24) Modern national identity (now variously characterized as
"ambivalent," "Janus-faced," or personal), too, has expanded
to fit the diverse culture of the twenty-first century. (25) The more we
understand and appreciate the intricate historical processes that led to their
development, the better we can understand their potential endurance and
adaptability.
ENDNOTES
(1)
For fundamental assumptions of modern historical practice, see Alun Munslow,
The New History (Harlow: Pearson-Longman, 2004). For the borrowing of theories
from social science, see Peter Burke, History and Social Theory (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1993). There are some who dare to cross the divide
between history and social science, often rather inconveniently called
historical sociologists. Two prominent practitioners are Charles Tilly and John
Hall.
(2)
Stephen D. Krasner, "Compromising Westphalia," International Security
20:3 (Winter 1995-96):121.
(3)
For an overview, see Laura Cruz, The Nation in History: A Theoretical Overview
(New York: Pearson-Longman, forthcoming 2006). For the ties between
confessionalization (religious identification) and national identity, see R.
Po-Chia Hsai, Social Discipline and the Reformation, 1550-1750 (New York:
Routledge, 1992). For a theory of nationalism that takes religious politics as
the first stage, see Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, v. 2, The Rise
of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993).
(4)
See, for example, Walter A. McDougall, "Religion in Diplomatic
History," Orbis 6:3 (Spring 1998):3.
(5)
Leo Gross, "The Peace of Westphalia, 1648-1948," American Journal of
International Law 42:1 (January 1948):28.
(6)
See Richard Dunn, The Age of Religious Wars 1559-1715, 2nd ed. (New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 1979). See also, Geoffrey Parker, The Thirty Years' War,
2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1997). (7) For literature on the age of crisis,
see Christopher Hill, Geoffrey Parker, and Lesley M. Smith, eds., The General
Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1997);
Theodore K. Rabb, The Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1975).
(8)
Gross, "The Peace of Westphalia, 1648-1948," 28.
(9)
David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial
Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present, 2nd ed. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003
(10)
See, for example, Eugene E Rice and Anthony Grafton, The Foundations of Early
Modern Europe, 1460-1559 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994).
(11)
Stephen D. Krasner, "Westphalia and All That," in Ideas and Foreign
Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change, eds. Judith Goldstein and
Robert Keohane (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 235-64.
(12)
For a good attempt at reconciliation, see Daniel Philpott, "The Religious
Roots of Modern International Relations," World Politics 52:2 (January
2000):206-45.
(13)
Krasner, "Compromising Westphalia," 115.
(14)
Ibid., 155-51; Krasner, "Westphalia and All That," 235-64; Stephen D.
Krasner, "Sovereignty and Intervention," in Beyond Westphalia? State
Sovereignty and International Intervention, eds. Gene M. Lyons and Michael
Mastanduno (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 228-49; Stephen
D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, N J: Princeton
University Press, 1999). Andreas Osiander also disputes the importance of
Westphalia in "Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian
Myth," International Organization 55 (Spring 2001):251-88.
(15)
David Lake, "The New Sovereignty in International Relations,"
International Studies Review 5 (Fall 2003):303-23. Lake surveys recent writings
and re-conceptualizations of the meanings of sovereignty.
(16)
See Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago: Chicago University Press,
1985).
(17)
George Santayana, Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense (New York: Scribner's,
1903), 284.
(18)
Gross, "The Peace of Westphalia, 1648-1948," 20.
(19)
Ibid., 22.
(20)
Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (Hammondsworth:
Penguin, 1973).
(21)
R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). The use
of language and ideas and context is the hallmark of the Cambridge School of
intellectual history, including the works of historians Quentin Skinner and
J.C.A. Pocock.
(22)
Modern historical practice recognizes the futility of true objectivity and
instead emphasizes the role of the historian in the creation of the historical
narrative, as suggested here. For a discussion of this change, see Hayden
White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical
Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987). For an
overview of the objectivity debate in American academics, see Peter Novick,
That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical
Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). (23) For confirmation
of this view, see Lyons and Mastanduno, eds., Beyond Westphalia. For some
controversial qualification, see Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations
and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998). For a defense
of globalization, see Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New
York: W.W Norton & Company, 2003).
(24)
David McCrone, The Sociology of Nationalism: Tomorrow's Ancestors (New York:
Routledge, 1998), 169. See also Charles W. Kegley and Gregory A. Raymond,
Exorcising the Ghost of Westphalia: Building World Order in the New Millenium
(Upper Saddle River, N J: Prentice Hall, 2001).
(25)
Homi Bhabha, "Narrating the Nation, in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi
Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1990), 1; Tom Narin, "The Modern Janus,"
New Left Review 94 (November-December 1994):3. See also Tom Narin, Faces of
Nationalism: Janus Revisited (London: Verso Press, 1997).
LAURA
CRUZ is an Assistant Professor of History at Western Carolina University in
Cullowhee, NC. ANDREW MacRAE is a graduate student in political science at
Western Carolina University. JASON FARR is a graduate student in history at the
College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina
Counterpoint:
The Westphalia Overstatement.
by
Andrew MacRae
Counterpoint:
The Westphalia Overstatement
Andrew Macrae; International Social Science
Review, Vol. 80, 2005
Westphalia
is no more. This is not the result of any one particular cause, but an
acknowledgement that the conceptualization of 'the Westphalian state system' is
a pedagogical oversimplification that is based on flawed assumptions. By
referring to modern politics as "Westphalian," international
relations specialists employ a term that no longer provides an accurate view of
history and is incompatible with the two primary ideologies of international
relations, namely, realism and international liberalism. The great Wesphalian
overstatement no longer serves as the progenitor of our descriptive map of the
Western world, if it ever did.
Westphalia
has been seen as epochal for many scholastic disciplines, but none so much as
international relations. Leo Gross, for example, refers to this treaty as the
first "World Charter," a precursor to the United Nations and other
European attempts to establish a world order of sovereign states. (1) This
inaccurate perception of history has codified many mistaken assumptions within
the lexicon of international relations, and is responsible for keeping the
discipline from understanding globalization and other postmodern twenty-first
century trends.
Among
the chief claims Westphalians make is that the peace of 1648 created the first
sovereign states. These states are supposed to have exercised "untrammeled
sovereignty over certain territories ... subordinat[e] to no earthly
authority." (2) Historically and presently, this is Enlightenment fiction
at best; at worst, it highlights a substantial lack of historical knowledge
weakening the foundations and relevance of the discipline of international
relations.
The
rise of the sovereign state was over three centuries old by the time of
Westphalia. Beginning in Italy after the decline in temporal power of the
Papacy, "a gap in the medieval system of hierarchy" created a vacuum,
which was "filled by the political inventiveness of Italians." (3)
Many components of these "omnicompetent, amoral, sovereign states"
and the environment of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy refute the
primacy Westphalia, however other pre-Westphalian examples of sovereignty exist
as well. (4) The most comprehensive example of a sovereignty existing prior to
Westphalia is England which achieved "political unity by the tenth
century, emphasis of central institutions by fourteenth century, and national
identity beginning in the fifteenth century." (5) English political unity
suffered a setback with the War of the Roses (1455-1487), but by the sixteenth
century Henry VIII severed his allegiance to Rome, thereby removing the largest
external threat to domestic sovereignty. (6) During this time, England became
the first country to embrace nationalism in the sense of identifying itself as
a "unique, sovereign people." (7) Elements of this new form of
identity were "individualistic and civic minded" in that both
"commoners and the elite now saw themselves as part of the same social
contract." (8) After this evolution, England relied on the collective
sovereignties of its citizens. This sovereignty came into existence prior to
Westphalia as well as before other modern Europeans discovered sovereignty, nationality,
liberal democracy, or even a new modus operandi of economics, capitalism. (9)
The
Tudors used religious identity, in this case Anglican, to sculpt national
identity. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Latin Christendom was
locked in a struggle between two competing ideological positions, Protestant
and Catholic, which permeated Christian Europe. The Westphalian outcome was not
new. The religious settlement produced a varied version of cuius region, cuius
religio (whose region, his religion) established at the Peace of Augsburg in
1555. While the treaties concluded at Westphalia provided a measure of
religious freedom to the rulers of the German principalities, restrictions were
made and pluralism was denied, thus preventing these rulers from possessing
sovereignty even within their own territory. And legal scholars maintain that
both Augsburg and Westphalia were based on older, Augustinian notions of
Christian peace, which references the authority of the wider Christian
community. (10) Not only did Westphalia fail to provide history with the first
sovereign nation-states, it also failed to provide history with states at all.
Within the treaties concluded at Westphalia, sovereign states are not found.
Instead, German principalities were required to swear an oath of loyalty to and
grant the Holy Roman Emperor certain legal jurisdictions. The provisions of the
treaties call for the removal of trade restrictions and the easing of
transportation obstacles such as tolls. In exchange, the Holy Roman Empire was
forced to recognize the de facto reality of its waning power. German
principalities were given de jure authority to conduct their own foreign
policies, a right the more powerful principalities had already been exercising.
(11) Nowhere in the treaty is the creation of any sovereign state mentioned.
(12)
Even
if the treaties had created a state, then that state would forever have devised
its own sovereignty from international law, and hence would not be sovereign.
International law, as opposed to the canonical law of the medieval world,
emerged in the seventeenth century, the product of contributions by both Hugo
Grotius on commercial and maritime laws and Franciscus de Victoria on laws on
international war, not from Westphalia. (13) History is littered with peace
treaties akin to Westphalia, including the Peace of Lodi (1454) and the Peace
of Augsburg (1555), however, the establishment of international norms of
commerce and war were most significant. Most European states began and
continued to be empires as well as states throughout their existence. The law
of the seas provided de jure protection for explorers fueling Europe's
insatiable quest for new lands and trade routes. While placing limitations on
states after great wars has been a reoccurring theme especially in modern
times, this new international law required the state for ratification, thus
strengthening and legitimizing the state as an international body. This came
with a loss of sovereignty.
The
erosion of the notion of sovereignty arising out of Westphalia also leads one
to question the state system which it allegedly created. The rise in
international law with the state as its prime signatory contributes to the
second assumption of the realist, namely, that the "nation-state is the
primary actor of the international system." (14) However, if the
nation-state becomes primary in the international system through the means of
international law, then it again follows that the nation-state owes its very
existence in the international system from that same international law. Thus
states, like corporations and international organizations, are merely another
form of organizational entity recognized by international standards.
Examples
of the ascendancy of international law and custom over state sovereignty are
replete throughout the history of the Western world, from witch trials to the
Nuremburg trials. (15) While the mere shadows of Gross's sovereign states may
have existed prior to World War II, its aftermath clearly shows that in this
postmodern world states are bound by the judgments of the powerful, and that
international law established and enforced by the powerful is ever binding
beyond the myth of seventeenth century state sovereignty..
Without
a Westphalian leg to stand on, the imagined absolute sovereigns of Leo Gross
have no genesis other than as a Platonic conceptualization. The Westphalian
state is supposed to have two separate spheres of activity. In its domestic
sphere, the state is sovereign over its own territory. In the international sphere,
its relations with other states would be more tenuous, though conducted on the
basis of assumed equality among them. This bifurcated assumption of Westphalia,
i.e., that there exists a "separation between domestic and international
spheres of political life," is a fundamental tenet of realism. (16)
Neo-liberal theorists, on the other hand, believe in the existence of one
sphere, with multiple actors and that the 'foreign' policy of a state can said
to be a continuation of 'domestic' actors preferences. (17) Instead of
dogmatically accepting a two-sphere state centric model, the theory of
international liberalism approaches the subject of states, institutions, and
non-governmental actors in a contextual manner which allows for the existence
of non-state actors. (18) Because the two-sphere model of domestic and foreign
policy requires an imaginary Westphalia creation that did not occur in 1648,
the accompanying realist notion ought to be jettisoned as well.
Intertwined
with the notion of state sovereignty and preeminence in the international
system is a final assertion of the significance of Westphalia that it created a
balance of power among states, placing them on equal footing. This new system
was in part due to "a law operating between rather than above states, and
a power operating between rather than above states." (19) This concept
seems folly. Without the misconception of the territorially sovereign state,
and with the recognition that the significance of the state in the
international system has as much to do with the new international law created
by both Grotius and Victoria as it did Westphalia, this notion of a balance of
power is untenable.
Beyond
the fragile nature of the Westphalian balance of power is another fault with
its primacy. The Italian city-states operated under this principle for quite
some time. As these city-states developed their sovereignty, the Italian
peninsula became an increasingly competitive and dangerous political coliseum.
To compensate for this, politicians employed and developed "jungle law ...
a new style of diplomacy." (20) Thus "by about 1400 ... Italy was
beginning to become such a system of mutually balanced parts in unstable
equilibrium as all Europe was to be three hundred years later." (21)
The
Thirty Years' War had clear winners and losers. The losers, the Holy Roman
Empire and the Papacy, were forced to cede land and authority to France,
Sweden, and German principalities. While this cessation by the monopolistic
power of the Catholic Church in Latin Christendom encouraged continental peace;
that peace was anything but lasting. New powers such as England, the
Netherlands, and Prussia were on the rise, while the Holy Roman Empire
staggered on until its death in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna. Sweden and the
Papacy also suffered a decline in power, while France maintained significant
continental power. Far from a state system based on equally significant
members, Westphalia is an example of power politics. The former hegemonic
powers no longer possessed the strength to force all of Christendom to comply
with their monopoly of temporal and spiritual power. These various political
entities rebelled, and forced their former master to capitulate, ceding power
to the local governing bodies. This was not the magnanimous creation of a
modern state system, but the rise and fall of the powerful. This thematic drama
is precisely what realism is committed to studying. Beyond the first two
mistaken assumptions of realism is the belief that "international
relations is the struggle for power and peace." (22) Though blindly
committed to the Westphalian order, realism merits its significance by focusing
on such a vital and unique aspect of international relations. Great power
politics and the study thereof, however, is not all that exists in
international relations. Even at Westphalia, non-state-actors were present
and/or exercised great influence over the course of events. As the world
embarks down the path of globalization, many new political actors have gained
legitimacy and visibility. The principles of power and peace do not, however,
mandate all of their attention. (23)
It
thus seems that the two paradigms of the international relations discipline do
not necessarily replace each other, but instead are two sides of the same coin.
Realism will benefit from a reassessment of history, especially Westphalian,
and a reexamination of its seemingly dogmatic commitments which mire it
unnecessarily to an outdated philosophical position. International liberalism,
however, while maintaining an approach more consistent with the contextual
nature of history and present, does not provide an effective approach to
studying the thematic nature of power in shaping human interaction. Thus beyond
the collective preferences of actors within political bodies deciding that war
is the correct action to achieve those preferences, the sum of the Thirty
Years' War and its corresponding Peace at Westphalia equals something greater
than its mere parts.
The
conceptual importance of the Peace of Westphalia must be called into question.
Historically, the evidence does not suggest that Westphalia was "the
majestic portal which leads from the old into the new world." (24)
Conceptually, the erosion of the historical significance of Westphalia has
major implications on current international relations theory as scholars
attempt to bring the paradigms of their discipline into the postmodern and
globalized world. For these reasons, Westphalia contradicts its own usefulness;
instead of serving as the paragon of analytic tools, it is the dead weight
anchoring international relations to the gross failure of the Enlightenment.
ENDNOTES
(1)
Leo Gross, "The Paece of Westphalia, 1648-1948," American Journal of
International Law 42:1 (January 1948):1.
(2)
Ibid.
(3)
Garret Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (Oxford: Alden Press, 1955), 56.
(4)
Ibid., 57. For further discussion of medieval origins of the doctrine of the
sovereignty, see Patrick I. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of
Europe (Princeton, N J: Princeton University Press, 2001).
(5)
Stephen D. Krasner, "Westphalia and All That," in Ideas and Foreign
Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change, eds. Judith Goldstein and
Robert Keohane (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 254.
(6)
Ibid.
(7)
Leah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1992), 8. (8) Leah Greenfeld, "Nationalism in Western
and Eastern Europe Compared," in Can Europe Work? Germany and the
Reconstruction of Postcommunist Societies, eds. Stephen E. Hanson and Wilfried
Spohn (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 18.
(9)
Ibid., 25.
(10)
Laurens Winkel, "The Peace Treaties of Westphalia as an Instance in the
Reception of Roman Law," in Peace Treaties and International Law in
European History: From the Late Middle Ages to World War I, ed. Randall Lester
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 222-40.
(11)
Krasner, "Westphalia and All That," 246.
(12)
Randall Lester, "Conclusion," in Peace Treaties and International Law
in European History, ed. Lester, 399-411.
(13)
Gross, "The Peace of Westphalia, 1648-1948," 1-32.
(14)
Richard W Mansbach and John Vasquez, In Search of Theory: A New Paradigm for
Global Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 5.
(15)
Stephen D. Krasner, "Compromising Westphalia," International Security
20:3 (Winter 1995-96): 121.
(16)
Mansbach and Vasquez, In Search of Theory, 5.
(17)
Andrew Moravcsik, "Liberal International Relations Theory: A Scientific
Assessment," in Progress in International Relations Theory: Appraising the
Field, eds. Colin Elmana and Miriam Fendius Elman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2003), 159-204.
(18)
Ibid., 165.
(19)
Gross, "The Peace of Westphalia, 1648-1948," 29.
(20)
Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy, 58-59.
(21)
Ibid., 60. See also Lauro Martinez, Power and Imagination: City States in
Renaissance Italy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988).
(22)
Mansbach and Vasquez, In Search of Theory, 5.
(23)
Kimon Valaskakis, "From Westphalia to Seattle: Long-Term Trends in Global
Government." Paper presented at the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development Forum on 21st Century Governance, March 2000, Hanover, Germany.
(24) Gross, "The Peace of
Westphalia, 1648-1948," 28.
Affluence
and Influence.
by Peter
van Ham , Przemyslaw Grudzinski
Affluence
and Influence
Przemyslaw Grudzinski, Peter Van Ham; The
National Interest, Winter 1999.
The
Conceptual Basis of Europe's New Politics
THE
EUROPEAN Union may, with profit, be regarded as a qualitatively new type of security
organization, one that seeks to create cooperation and harmony through a high
level of economic and political interdependence. Whereas NATO remains at heart
a military organization, the EU defines its security concerns in terms of an
ever widening "sphere of affluence", rather than a classical
"sphere of influence." This distinction is more than just a play on
words: it underscores the importance of economics and trade as the current
basis for stability and democratic development. Although EU member states
pursue what they still imagine to be their "national interests",
already those interests are essentially reduced to rather modest policy
preferences, constrained within a tightly bounded multilateral framework. A
myriad of treaty commitments now limits the room for maneuver of European
states and locks them into dense networks of activities created by
institutional and political decisions. It is these sunken costs of E uropean
integration that preclude "sovereign" member states from tearing up
the Union's founding treaties, packing their bags, and returning to a policy of
national autarky.
The EU has
transformed once proud and sovereign nation-states beyond recognition, changing
their role and place both in Europe itself and in the world at large. A wide
range of traditionally national prerogatives is now either pooled collectively
or shifted to the supranational (or federal) level. Whereas the 1648 Treaty of
Westphalia inaugurated a European system of autonomous states, the 1991
Maastricht Treaty has de facto ended any hopes of saving that system.
Despite
this, most analysts and policymakers continue to think about the EU, not as a
radically novel entity, but as one that merely mirrors the qualities and
drawbacks of the traditional nation-state. The simple fact that we continue to
classify certain actors as something-national (subnational, supranational,
transnational) indicates that our thinking remains based on and bound by the
hegemony of the "nation-state that has characterized recent centuries. But
just as employing hammer and nail to fix one's personal computer would be
counterproductive, so bringing "modern" concepts to bear on
postmodern European politics will prove similarly futile.
Very early
in the new millennium, a new Europe will come fully into being. It will have
three defining elements, already clearly visible. The first and most essential
of these involves a changed attitude toward national sovereignty and
territoriality. The second is a novel understanding of security, which is rapidly
shifting from the traditional military concept to a much broader one. The third
innovation concerns the way the Western part of the continent (which up to now
has constituted the "new Europe") is adopting an open, decentered
approach toward enlarging its sphere of affluence into Central and Eastern
Europe. Taken together, these three changes are destined to transform not only
Europe itself but the international system as a whole. The consequences, not
least for America's involvement in Europe and NATO, will be momentous.
Malleable
Sovereignty
THE
WESTPHALTAN statecentric framework that is now being undermined by
globalization and European integration relies on a territorial conception of
politics. But the commandment of Romans 13:1--"let every person be subject
to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and
those authorities that exist have been instituted by God"--has been
corrupted since Nietzsche declared God dead. Intellectual inertia in coming to
terms with this systemic change has produced a somewhat schizophrenic state of
affairs, one in which Europeans continue to worship the nation-state as the
optimal cultural and democratic area at a time when most West European states
are in the process of selling the remains of their national sovereignty to the
highest bidder. European nation-states cling desperately to as much political
authority, democratic legitimacy and problem-solving capacity as they possibly
can, while they also seem prepared (and are occasionally coerced) to relinquish
their sovereignty as the price for remaining geopolitically relevant. The EU is
seen as the only available raft, not so much to ride the waves of globalization
as to break up these waves into more manageable and human proportions. The hope
is that the EU, by merging the power and influence of individual member states,
can restore the primacy of politics over global commerce. Monetary union and
the euro are considered the paramount instruments to this end. Europeanization
is thus perceived essentially as a protective strategy, one devised to guard
Europe against the onslaught of forces that threaten its uniqueness, its
identity and the independence of its constituent states--and which involves
surrendering some of that identity and independence precisely in order to
prevent their total destruction.
Philip
Cerny's concept of the "competition state" best captures the EU's
novel role in European politics. [1] Cerny argues that the state constitutes
the main agency of the process of globalization, driven by its concern both to
fit into that process and at the same time to remain relevant to
"its" people. More precisely, the central challenge to the EU member
states is to maintain at least rudimentary domestic welfare systems while
promoting the essential structural reforms necessary to improve their
international competitiveness. It is not easy to maintain a balance between
these two ends. In the not-so-long run, maintaining the first depends on
success in achieving the second, for an increasingly expensive welfare state
requires maintaining a thriving, competitive economy.
But there
is a dilemma: for as Europe's competition states are inevitably driven to give
the latter goal priority, they are undermining the traditional national bonds
of communal solidarity (Gemeinschaft) and identity that have given the modern
nation-state its deeper legitimacy, its institutionalized power and social
embeddedness. The European competition state now values efficiency over equity,
competitiveness over solidarity; increasingly its language is the universal
discourse of commerce, which proceeds in terms of consumers, not citizens.
Europe's states are turning consumption and purchasing power into the defining
essence of what was until recently a polity and a community, thereby
annihilating the very ideas of communality and a "public" that are
central to societal relationships. Globalization does not merely scratch the
surface of a democratic society, it corrodes the skeletal frame of political
life.
These
transformations do not call for an end to politics, but they do turn many
traditional state-based political institutions into semi-obedient servants,
catering to the tastes of the economic and financial performers of
late-capitalism. Cerny therefore argues that the competition state has to do
both more and less: it has to "reinvent government" by fostering (or
even imposing) adaptation to global competitive forces; and in return it has to
provide at least temporary protection and legitimacy for its citizens. It has
become apparent that globalization requires a tighter monetary policy alongside
a looser fiscal policy through tax cuts. lit also demands that competition
states encourage mergers and industrial restructuring; promote research and
development; encourage private investment and develop new forms of
infrastructure; pursue a more active labor market policy; and in general
deregulate--while simultaneously imposing new regulatory structures designed to
facilitate global market forces.
These
shifts in responsibilities of the nation-state are mirrored by similar shifts
in the EU itself. It has now acquired a character similar to that of the many
competition states of which it is comprised, becoming in effect a
supra-competition state. The crisis faced by its constituent nation-states has
required the EU to become a kind of international economic and political ninja,
entering into combat on behalf of its member states against emerging trading
blocs around the globe and sheltering them from global turbulence. Within the World
Trade Organization, for example, the EU negotiates on behalf of all member
states, trying to get the best deals for Europe as a whole. Similarly, the euro
has proved to be Europe's strategic answer to the process of economic and
technological globalization, based on the understanding that only a
consolidated Europe will be strong enough to weather the many global economic
and financial viruses that have for so long infected West European economies.
The crumbling of national sovereignty is not always clear and obvious. European
law more often than not crossdresses as national law, disguising its
supranational origins and often deceiving citizens by presenting itself as
homemade. Thus, for example, while in 1998 more than 60 percent of German
legislation had its origin in Brussels as so-called "directives", it
had to be transposed into national law, with a certain flexibility allowed for
local circumstances but with a specific deadline imposed. Clearly, these
shifting forms of sovereignty pose new challenges to the notion of democracy.
Maintaining individual communication with and any degree of control over
government was difficult enough in the nation-state. How can democratic
citizens now enter into any sort of relationship with "the EU" to discuss
the merits of its policies? And how can they hope to "throw the rascals
out" when they are seriously displeased? These are simple questions that,
from a democratic perspective, have a rather embarrassing answer: it is just
not possible.
Then, too,
the notion of "territory" seems to have lost its almost fetishistic
fascination within West European countries. In this part of the world, after
two disastrous wars and the loss of several empires, the impulse for
territorial conquest has waned, as knowledge and information replace material
resources as the main sources of wealth. This has led Richard Rosecrance to
suggest that we are now entering a world of the "virtual state", one
that has deliberately limited its territorially-based production capability and
has almost "emancipated" itself from the land. [2] Since
transnational firms locate their production facilities wherever it is most
profitable, the competition state has to negotiate with foreign and domestic
firms and labor organizations to entice them into its economic space. In this
new era of "virtual states", territory and size no longer determine
economic potential and "power." Within contemporary Western Europe,
sovereignty and territoriality have lost much of their historical charm and political
relevance.
Pop
Security and Lite Powers
A QUESTION
ARISES: Can such a Europe ever live up to its self-proclaimed aim of developing
a Common Foreign and Security Policy, let alone a Common Defense Policy? This
seems rather unlikely, and a strong argument can be made that contemporary
Europe is incompatible with Great Power politics. Barry Buzan, for one, has
argued that the European citizens of today do not put much trust in their
governments and are no longer prepared to die for their countries.
Individualism and a consumer ethic have transformed West European citizens into
lethargic free-riders, looking mostly in vain to an illusory
"international community" (a.k.a. the United States of America) to
put out the many political and military bush fires that continue to flare up
around the world. [3]
Post-Cold
War conflicts are often murky affairs that lack an ideologically sanctioned
division between the forces of good and evil. At the same time, emphasis on
ethical and moral issues of a humanitarian kind, as well as the obligation to
comply with international law, complicate efforts to conduct a resolute foreign
and security policy. As well, the interconnectedness of the world makes it
difficult for individual states and societies to sustain myths of national
superiority and uniqueness. It has therefore become more difficult to engage
cosmopolitan, postmodem society in military conflicts. In a relativistic world
in which a public consensus rarely exists regarding the West's right and
responsibility to impose its will on other peoples, domestic concerns are
increasingly taking preference over international issues.
Although
West European states still very much look like classical modern states, they
are qualitatively different, most obviously because they emphasize wealth and
welfare rather than warfare. In this new environment, traditional concerns like
borders, national identity and state sovereignty are subordinated to the
pursuit of prosperity, democratic governance and individual well-being. It is
the EU, rather than other international organizations like NATO or the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, that is now shaping
people's existence and making a difference, affecting the prosaic concerns of
European citizens (whether they like it or not) by dealing with everything from
food labeling to pension entitlements to maternity leave regulations. In the
field of heroic politics, on the other hand, and especially in its efforts to
develop a more cohesive European foreign and security policy, the EU has so far
hardly been able to make a fist and is unlikely to do so in the future.
Instead,
Europe closely follows the strategy of building a democratic peace based on
open markets and liberal democracy, the two major requisites laid down for
Central European countries to join the EU. In its most profane form, Europe
therefore follows the Big Mac thesis of international politics, which
claims--wrongly, as the Kosovo conflict proved--that "no two countries
that both have a McDonald's have ever fought a war against each other."
This understanding--or misunderstanding--of global affairs is characteristic of
a world in which "politics", as a deliberate, willful endeavor to
shape events, hardly matters. It is a view that has surrendered a voluntaristic
approach toward politics to a doctrine based on the positive, if unwilled,
effects of free trade through globalization and new technologies. WHEREAS
Western Europe now concentrates most of its political energy on
institution-building and monetary integration, other parts of the continent are
witnessing the devolution of state authority to units of marginal power and
size, often connected with atavistic ethnic strife and conflict. With the end
of the East-West divide, Central European countries have gone through a phase
of nationalist celebration, rediscovering their original identity after decades
of communist domination.
Public
opinion in these new--and in some instances still rather delicate--states
clings to the old, attractive abstractions of national sovereignty and independence.
At the same time, Central European political elites have committed themselves
to joining Europe's key institutions (NATO, EU and WEU), realizing all too well
that this implies compromise and the sharing of their recently reclaimed and
highly valued national sovereignty. The institutionalized schizophrenia that
results--a condition that combines the rhetoric of newly salvaged independence
with acceptance of the harsh conditions of globalization--is confusing to the
general Central European public, even if the two concepts are in themselves
perfectly intelligible. The dissolution of Yugoslavia and the Bosnian war have
served as grim reminders that claims to sovereignty and self-determination are
still very much alive on the continent, even as most of its nation-states are
gradually surrendering their autonomy both upward and downward.
All this
serves to demonstrate that the frequently used metaphor of a "developing
European security architecture" is misleading. The image conveys a sense
both of progression and of a logical structure that is far-removed from
reality. At best Europe's security "architecture", with its
overlapping memberships and responsibilities, seems to follow the organic art
nouveau style of a Gaudi rather than the straight and functional lines of a
Corbusier. Anyone looking for a "grand design" for European security
will be disappointed: there just isn't such a thing.
A more
modest and appropriate metaphor, as suggested by the British historian Sir
Michael Howard, might be that of a garden. Howard maintains that the peoples of
Europe and their institutions should be regarded as distinct and living
organisms, rooted in the peculiar soil of their regions, their communities and
their cultures.... And as with all gardens, the work of cultivation is never
ending. [4]
Thinking
along these lines has the considerable advantage that it enables European
security to be seen as an ongoing process of cultivation, and not (as with
architecture) as something that can be given a final shape, cut in stone, and
never altered. But then again, it might be doubted that many politicians will
have the patience required for tending even the simplest of gardens.
No Center,
No Periphery
THE
well-intentioned desire to see military force eliminated as a means of settling
international disputes has proved to be realistic only for a part of Europe,
not for the continent as a whole. The rhetoric of Europe as a "zone of
peace", in which democratic countries would thrive and prosper, has been
useful in defining a political objective. But this rhetoric flourished at a
time of bloody conflict in the former Yugoslavia, military clashes in Moldova,
and civil wars in Georgia and Chechnya. In all those instances, the
"international community" declined to adopt policies and take action
to end the conflicts, only reluctantly intervening in the case of Yugoslavia
after a long delay.
The
security constellation in much of Central Europe and the former Soviet Union is
markedly different from that in Western Europe. This does not mean that we have
to think in terms of two disconnected worlds of security; if the post-Cold War
era has taught us anything, it is that the fates of the different parts of
Europe are intertwined. What is true is that Europe still has many different "security
neighborhoods." As is the case in most cities of the world, in which
conspicuously rich and safe neighborhoods can coexist with dreadfully poor and
dangerous ones, soit is with Europe. Most strategic analysts--from both East
and West--continue to think in terms of "borders",
"boundaries" and "dividing lines" as central elements of
European security. And indeed, when thinking about security and its prospects
one should recognize that the diversity of Europe's nation-states places
natural limits to the logic of enlargement and the process of continent-wide
institutionalization. Thus, to take the most striking and important example,
while Russia may be a European state according to geography and some
definitions, in most respects it is not a full-fledged part of the continent's
frameworks of cooperation, not an integral part of "Europe."
There is no
reason, however, to exaggerate this diversity. While national borders still
remain meaningful, they are fading in significance, becoming more like
administrative boundaries than classic fire walls. Certainly, from now on it
will be well-nigh impossible to re-create one decisive dividing line between
two competing blocs, as happened during the Cold War. Instead, and as we have
already begun to witness, what will characterize the future will be a variety
of different borders, boundaries and perimeters, most of them ephemeral and
porous.
It makes
sense, then, to look at the Europe of today and of tomorrow as a continent full
of delicate-looking walls, elegant hedges and fences of varying heights. These
run along economic, political, cultural, religious and many other lines. They
exist, and will continue to exist, to protect Europe's local patriae, its local
languages, its prejudices and mores, and its distinctiveness. They serve to
make Europeans feel gemutlich and safe. They stand within and between the rich
and the poor regions of Europe. This idea of a multitude of small differences
and fences allows Europeans to minimize the significance of any cultural "velvet
curtain" that might exist between East and West, to realize that being on
the other side of any boundary need not result in total exclusion or
confrontation.
Indeed, the
political goal should be not only to dismantle impenetrable walls, but to
maintain the many elegant fences that make Europe manageable. The EU'S emphasis
on "flexibility", on making its institutions more effective in an
effort to prepare for enlargement, illustrates an awareness of this need. Just
as it is an error to think in terms of one dividing line running across Europe,
or to insist on redefining Europe's identity in one exclusive way, so it is
also wrong to insist that every aspect of the process of European
institutionalization should be all-inclusive, necessarily embracing all applicant
countries regardless of their readiness and willingness to become fully
involved. On the contrary, Europe's institutions will function best when they
reflect the continent's diversity, and an awareness that not all European
countries need to belong to the same set of cooperative arrangements and
alliances. If things are handled properly, what will emerge over the coming
decades is a Europe not of concentric circles, in which some countries are at
the center and some at the periphery, but a security framework that consists of
a pattern of overlapping Olympic circles, in which all countries are involved
in one way or another. Like the five circles of the Olympic flag, there will be
no single center but three or four--and no single periphery either. Most countries
will find themselves on the margins of some activity or some arrangement,
either from choice or necessity, and near the center of others. An awareness of
the wisdom of such an arrangement was evident in the remarks of NATO's then
Secretary-General Javier Solana in February 1998:
I would
like to erase from our consciousness the words 'dividing lines.' These are
words from the Cold War. They meant that some countries were 'in' and some were
'out.' Today, none are in or out--some are only partly in and partly out. [5]
For many
(if not all) European countries, NATO and the EU will remain the core of
Europe's developing security framework, but the flexible and ad hoc
arrangements that will become increasingly more prevalent will gradually blur
the practical distinctions between full membership and other qualified
relationships. The borders between countries in the new Europe will not be
static and permanent, but will be subject to modification to reflect changing
circumstances. When Central European countries adopt and truly internalize
Europe's culture of cooperation and reach a certain level of economic and
political development, the institutional boundaries of Europe will alter, and
this will be a continuing process. So long as Europe's key security institutions
overlap with a genuine European identity, this model for a future Europe will
be one of the best guarantees of its stability and prosperity. But it will be a
basic and prosaic Europe, one that lacks der Wille zur Macht and that will
therefore continue to lean on the United States for heroic support, both in
Europe itself and further afield.
Peter van
Ham is professor of political science at the George C. Marshall European Center
for Security Studies (Garmisch-Partenkirchen).
Przernyslaw
Grudzinski is deputy foreign minister of Poland. The authors published jointly
A Critical Approach to European Security (Pinter Publishers, 1999). The
opinions expressed are those of the authors.
(1.) Cerny,
"Paradoxes of the Competition State: The Dynamics of Political
Globalization", Government and Opposition (Spring 1997).
(2.)
Rosecrance, "The Obsolescence of Territory", New Perspectives
Quarterly (Winter 1995); and "The Rise of the Virtual State", Foreign
Affairs (July/August 1996).
(3.) Buzan,
"The Rise of 'Lite' Powers: A Strategy for the Postmodern State",
World Policy Journal (Fall 1996).
(4.)
Howard, "Land of War, Land of Peace", The Wilson Quarterly (Winter
1997), p. 36.
(5.) Quoted
in Washington Times, February 10, 1998.
Leading
through law.
Leading
through Law
Magazine
article by Anne-Marie Slaughter; The Wilson Quarterly, Vol. 27, Autumn 2003.
by
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Does the
United States need international law? At times in recent years, it has acted as
if it does not. Yet international law provides the foundation not only for
momentous undertakings, such as the efforts to halt the spread of nuclear
weapons and to protect the ozone layer, but also for more routine endeavors,
such as defining the boundaries of territorial seas and guaranteeing the right
of diplomats to move freely. The United States needs international law acutely
now because it offers a way to preserve our power and pursue our most important
interests while reassuring our friends and allies that they have no reason to
fear us or to form alliances as a counterweight to our overwhelming might. And
we will need the law more than ever in the future, to regulate the behavior not
only of states but of the individuals within them.
International
law is not some kind of abstract end in itself. It's a complex of treaties and
customary practices that govern, for example, the use of force, the protection
of human rights, global public health, and the regulation of the oceans, space,
and all other global commons. Each of its specialized regimes is based in the
consent of states to a specific set of rules that allow them to reap gains from
cooperation and thereby serve their collective interests. Overall, the rule of
law in the global arena serves America's interests and reflects its most fundamental
values. But in many specific areas, existing rules are too weak, too old, or
too limited to address current threats and challenges. The United States must
recommit itself to pursuing its interests in concert with other nations,
according to principles of action that have been agreed upon and that are
backed by legal obligation, political will, and economic and military power. At
the same time, it has every right to insist that other nations recognize the
extent to which many rules must be revised, updated, and even replaced.
International
law provides the indispensable framework for the conduct of stable and orderly
international relations. It does not descend from on high. Rather, it's created
by states to serve their collective interests. Consider, for instance, the
concept of sovereignty itself, which is routinely described as the cornerstone
of the international legal system. Sovereignty is not some mysterious essence
of statehood. It is a deliberate construct, invented and perpetuated by states
seeking to reduce war and violence in a particular set of historical
circumstances.
The
founding myth of modern international law is that the Treaty of Westphalia,
which ended the Thirty Years' War in 1648, gave birth to the system of states
and the concept of inviolable state sovereignty. The Thirty Years' War was the
last of the great religious wars in Europe, which were fought not really
between states as such but between Catholics and Protestants. As religious
minorities in one territory appealed to the coreligionist monarch of another,
the Continent burned for three decades, and its people bled in a series of
battles among the Holy Roman Empire, France, Sweden, Denmark, Bohemia, and a
host of smaller principalities. The Treaty of Westphalia restored the principle
of cuius regio eius religio--that is, the prince of a particular region
determines the religion of his people. In today's language, this means that one
sovereign state cannot intervene in the internal affairs of another.
But in
reality, it took centuries for the modern state system to develop, and absolute
sovereignty has never existed in practice, as many states on the receiving end
of great-power interventions would attest. The architects of the Treaty of
Westphalia glimpsed a vision of a world of discrete states armored against one
another by the possession of "sovereignty"--a doctrine of legal right
against military meddling.
It's
important to realize that the right of sovereignty did not mean the prohibition
of war. States were still free to go to war, as a matter of international law,
until the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 formally outlawed war (to evidently
little effect). Sovereignty was the foundation on which modern states were
built, but as they matured, their attacks on one another rapidly became the
principal threat to international peace and security. After the conflagrations
of World War I and World War II, it was evident that if interstate war
continued unchecked, states--and their peoples--might not survive into the 21st
century. Hence, the innovation of the United Nations Charter: Article 2(4)
required all states to refrain from "the use of force in their
international relations against the territorial integrity or political
independence of any state." The right of sovereignty no longer included
the right to make war. Further, given the apparent link between Adolf Hitler's
horrific depredations against the German people and his aggression toward other
states, the right of sovereignty became increasingly encumbered with conditions
on a sovereign state's treatment of its own people. Thus was born the
international human rights movement, which today has turned traditional
conceptions of sovereignty almost inside out. A distinguished commission
appointed by the Canadian government at the suggestion of the UN secretary
general released a report at the end of 2001 that defined a state's membership
in the United Nations as including a responsibility to protect the lives and
basic liberties of its people--and noting that if a member state failed in that
responsibility, the international community had a right to intervene.
Why such a
shift? Because the decade after the Cold War, much like the decades before the
Treaty of Westphalia, revealed a seething mass of ugly conflicts within states.
The dividing lines in those conflicts were drawn by ethnicity as much as
religion, and the divisions were almost always fueled by opportunistic leaders
of one faction or another. But unlike in the 16th and 17th centuries, the
danger as the 20th century drew to a close was not so much from one sovereign's
meddling in the affairs of another as in the failure of regional and
international institutions to intervene early enough to prevent the conflicts
from boiling into violence--producing streams of refugees and heartbreaking
pictures broadcast into living rooms around the world.
The story
of sovereignty, even highly simplified, illustrates a basic point about
international law. It is an instrumental rather than an essential body of
rules, instrumental to achieving the goals of peace, order, justice, human
dignity, prosperity, and harmony between human beings and nature--in short,
those ends that reflect the changing hopes and aspirations of humankind. It is
a highly imperfect instrument, as indeed is domestic law. Because international
law regulates a society of states with no central authority, it lacks even the
hint of coercion that's implicit in every encounter with a domestic police
officer. It can be enforced by the military might of one or more nations, but
that sort of enforcement is the exception rather than the rule.
Yet for all
its imperfections, international law survives because it is the only
alternative for nations seeking to regularize their relations with one another
and bind together credibly enough to achieve common gains. International law
allows diplomats to escape parking tickets in New York City because without
diplomatic immunity embassies would close. It allows a nation to set aside 12
miles of territorial waters for the use of its own fishing boats rather than
just three or five or seven. And it allowed the first President Bush to
assemble a UN coalition against Iraq quickly and easily in 1991 because Iraq
had so flagrantly violated the UN Charter by invading Kuwait.
In the
1980s, political scientists such as Robert Keohaue, Steve Krasner, and John
Ruggie demonstrated more precisely what international lawyers had long
believed: "Regimes," meaning everything from treaties to
organizations to customary practices, allow nations to overcome a dilemma. The
best solution to a problem can be achieved only through cooperation, but any
individual state risks a "sucker's payoff" if it acts cooperatively
and other states do not. Rules and settled practices overcome this dilemma by
making it easier for states to negotiate credible commitments, to gather and
share information, and to monitor one another and develop reputations for good
or bad behavior.
America's
Founding Fathers knew that the United States needed international law as a
shield to protect a new and weak nation. They went to great pains to declare
their new democracy a law-abiding member of the society of nations. The
Declaration of Independence set forth the legal case for revolution out of
"a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." The Constitution
enshrined treaties as "the supreme law of the land," alongside the
Constitution itself and federal law. The first Congress made it possible for
aliens to sue in U.S. federal courts "for a tort only, in violation of the
law of nations." The statute was originally intended to assure foreign
citizens and their governments that they would find sure redress in U.S. courts
for violations of the laws governing relations among countries, such as
diplomatic immunity. Today, it allows foreign victims of grave human-rights
violations to sue their torturers if they find them on U.S. soil. Just over a
century after its founding, the United States was an emerging power with a new
prominence ill world affairs. Yet its commitment to international law remained
firm--much more so, in fact, than we generally recognize today. Though most
accounts of the crucial period after World War I are dominated by the struggle
between President Woodrow Wilson and the American isolationists who opposed his
vision of world order, an important group of Republicans championed a view of
international relations that rested on a commitment to international law more
zealous than Wilson's. The leader of this group was Elihu Root (1845-1937), the
most distinguished lawyer-statesman of his day, who served as secretary of war
under William McKinley, secretary of state under Theodore Roosevelt, and as a
U.S. senator front New York. As Jonathan Zasloff recalls in New York University
Law Review (April 2003), more than a decade before Wilson championed his great
cause, Root was developing and implementing a distinctive vision of world order
based solely on law. Using the kind of rhetoric that would later be associated
with Wilson, Root scornfully declared that diplomacy in the past had "consisted
chiefly of bargaining and largely cheating in the bargain." But unlike
Wilson, who would propose a new international system based on the global spread
of democracy and the political and military power of the League of Nations,
Root argued for a system based strictly on law.
During the
debate over the League, Root, though retired from the Senate, was the principal
architect of Republican strategy. Leading Republican senators embraced U.S.
engagement with the world, but only on the basis of law, not of binding
military and political obligations. They supported legal institutions such as
the Permanent Court of Arbitration (established in The Hague in 1899) and the
new Permanent Court of International Justice (created by the League of Nations
in 1921). But they rejected the collective security guarantee that lay at the
core of the League Covenant. They would vote for the Covenant only with
reservations attached. Root himself denounced the Covenant for abandoning
"all effort to promote or maintain anything like a system of international
law, or a system of arbitration, or of judicial settlement, through which a
nation can assert its legal rights in lieu of war." Wilson, however, would
accept no compromise, and the Covenant was defeated.
Root worked
hard throughout his life to put his vision into effect (in 1912 he won the
Nobel Peace Prize, in part for negotiating treaties of arbitration between the
United States and more than 40 other nations). But the Japanese invasion of
Manchuria in 1931 and the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936 made the
shortcomings of both isolationism and pure legalism evident. In 1945,
Republicans and Democrats finally came together in strong support of a new
international legal order in the United Nations, but one that melded law and
power. The UN Charter was written, as Time put it, "for a world of power,
tempered by a little reason." The provisions giving the Soviet Union,
China, Britain, France, and the United States permanent seats on the Security
Council, along with veto power over Council actions, were recognition that a
law-based order has to accommodate the realities of great-power politics. The
interesting question is why the United States, the overwhelmingly dominant
power at the end of World War II, would choose to embed itself in a web of
international institutions--not just the United Nations but the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In After Victory (2000), political scientist
John Ikenberry argues compellingly that the United States pursued an
institutional strategy as a way of entrenching a set of international rules
favorable to its geopolitical and economic interests. Along the way, however,
it was repeatedly compelled to accept real restraints on American power in
order to assure weaker states in its orbit that it would neither abandon nor
dominate them. For instance, U.S. officials had a sophisticated strategy for
rebuilding Western Europe and integrating West Germany into a Western European
order but sought to keep America aloof from the process. The Europeans,
Ikenberry writes, "insisted that the binding together of Europe was only
acceptable if the United States itself made binding commitments to them."
The power of the United States to build a political order thus required the
nation's willingness and ability to tie itself to a legal order.
Since the
end of the Cold War, as Americans seem never to tire of repeating, America's
power relative to that of other nations has only increased. But instead of
hastening to reassure weaker nations by demonstrating our willingness to accept
rules that further the common good, the United States is coupling its explicit
drive for primacy with an equally explicit disdain for a whole range of
treaties. Consider the current U.S. opposition to virtually all arms-control
treaties--land mines, small arms, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty--and to efforts to strengthen existing treaties
on biological and chemical warfare. The result? Nations around the world are
arming themselves, if not directly against us, then at least, as in the case of
the European Union, to ensure that they have an independent military
capability.
The 1945
strategy was the right one, and it is now more essential than ever. We have an
opportunity to lead through law, not against it, and to build a vastly
strengthened international legal order that will protect and promote our
interests. If we are willing to accept even minimal restraints, we can rally
the rest of the world to adopt and enforce rules that will be effective in
fighting scourges from terrorism to AIDS. The Bush administration, or rather
some of its leading members, have constructed and promoted a simplistic
dichotomy: international law versus national sovereignty. The ridiculousness of
that position is evident the minute one turns to the international economic
arena, where the World Trade Organization has the power to impose enormous
constraints on U.S. sovereignty. A panel of three independent trade experts,
for example, can rule on the legality or illegality of a federal statute under
international trade law, and then enforce its judgment by authorizing trade
sanctions against the United States by all WTO members. No human rights or arms
control treaty has teeth nearly as sharp. Yet the Bush administration strongly
supports an expansion of the WTO regime. Why? Because the free-trade system
ensured by the WTO yields benefits that greatly outweigh the costs of constraints
on American freedom of action.
"That
is the right kind of calculus to make, rather than resorting to knee-jerk
appeals to national sovereignty and fearmongering about world government. And
by that sort of calculus, at a time when the United States is frightening and
angering the rest of the world, the benefits--to ourselves and to other
nations--of demonstrating once again that we are a superpower committed, at
home and abroad, to the rule of law far outweigh the costs of self-imposed
multilateralism. nternational law today is undergoing profound changes that
will make it far more effective than it has been in the past. By definition,
international law is a body of rules that regulates relations among states, not
individuals. Yet over the course of the 21st century, it will increasingly
confer rights and responsibilities directly on individuals. The most obvious
example of this shift can be seen in the explosive growth of international
criminal law. Through new institutions such as the International Criminal
Court, created in 2003 and based in The Hague, the international community is
now holding individual leaders directly accountable for war crimes, crimes
against humanity, and genocide. Most important, under a provision that was
insisted on by the United States, all nations that are party to the treaty have
committed themselves to domestic prosecutions of potential defendants before
the court. Only if the states prove unable or unwilling to undertake these
prosecutions will the court have jurisdiction. Under this arrangement, for
example, Chile would have had primary responsibility to prosecute former
dictator Augusto Pinochet as soon as he was out of office. If the Chilean
prosecutors and courts had failed to act, he would have been remitted to The
Hague. (Instead, Pinochet was arrested in Britain in 1998, under a warrant
issued in Spain, and after being returned to Chile was ultimately spared
prosecution because of ill health.) The political effect of this provision is a
much-needed strengthening of those forces in every country that seek to bring
to justice perpetrators of such crimes within their countries.
But
criminal law is only one field of change. A similarly radical departure from
the traditional model of state-to-state relations is reflected in the 1994
North Aanerican Free Trade Agreement. Under its terms, individual investors can
sue NAFTA member states directly for failing to live up to their treaty
obligations. In one celebrated case, a Canadian funeral home conglomerate is
suing the United States for $725 million over a series of Mississippi state
court decisions that it claims deliberately and unfairly forced it into
bankruptcy; the decisions allegedly violated NAFTA guarantees that Canadian and
Mexican investors will be granted equal treatment with domestic U.S.
corporations. The WTO grows out of a more traditional form of law in which only
states can bring suit against one another, but even in the WTO, evidence of the
new trend can be seen in the knots of lawyers who congregate outside WTO hearing
rooms to represent the interests of individual corporations directly affected
by the rulings of the organization's dispute resolution panels. And now
nongovernmental organizations such as Environmental Defense and Human Rights
Watch are fighting for the right to submit briefs directly in cases that raise
important environmental or human-rights issues.
As they
come increasingly to apply directly to individuals, future international legal
regimes will have more teeth than ever before--through links to domestic courts
and by building up a direct constituency of important voters in important
countries. The United States has long complained about the weaknesses of
international treaty regimes, worrying that they bind states with strong
domestic traditions of the rule of law but allow rampant cheating by states
that lack such traditions or are without systems of domestic governance that
check the power of leaders disinclined to follow the rules. Now is the moment
to begin putting these international regimes on a new foundation, allowing them
to penetrate the shell of state sovereignty in ways that will make the regimes
much more enforceable. nvestment, anticorruption measures, environmental
protection, and international labor rights, it can help shape a new generation
of international legal rules that advance the interests of all law-abiding
nations. If it does not participate, U.S. citizens will be directly affected by
international rules that ignore U.S. interests. To take only one example,
suppose the EU participated with other nations in drafting an international
environmental treaty that imposed sanctions on corporations that didn't follow
certain pollution regulations. The United States could stay out of the treaty,
but any American corporation seeking to do business in the EU would be
affected.
The United
States needs international law, but not just any, international law. We need a
system of laws tailored to meet today's problems. The Bush administration is
right to point out that the rules developed in 1945 to govern the use of force
don't fit the security threats the world faces in 2003. But those aren't the
only roles in need of revision. Well before September 11, politicians and
public figures were calling for major changes in the rules governing the global
economy (remember the cries for a "new global financial
architecture"?), a redefinition of the doctrine of humanitarian
intervention, and major UN reform, including expansion of the Security
Council's membership. All those appeals proceeded from the premise that the
rules and institutions created to address the economic, political, and security
problems present after World War II were inadequate, and sometimes
counterproductive, in the face of a new generation of threats to world
order--to name but a few, AIDS and other new contagions, global warming, failed
states, regional economic crises, sovereign bankruptcies, and the rise of
global criminal networks trafficking in arms, money, women, workers, and drugs.
The
mismatch between old rules and new threats is even more evident today. Two
years after September 11, and one year after President Bush called on the
Security Council to prove its strength and relevance in world affairs by
enforcing a decade of resolutions against Saddam Hussein, the UN General
Assembly convened this fall in a world that had changed radically yet again.
Now both the United States and the UN are targets in a country and a region
that seem to be spinning out of control. It's time to end the finger-pointing
and get serious about generating new rules and updating old ones. Institutions,
too, must be reinvigorated and reinvented. The UN Trusteeship Council, for
example, could be used to spearhead the civilian rebuilding of countries
devastated by war, disease, debt, and the despair of seemingly endless poverty.
The world
needs international law. The United States needs the world. The dream of a just
world under law may be no more than a dream. But the United States has never
been stronger than when it has led the world in trying to make the dream a
reality.
ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER is dean of the Woodrow Wilson
School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and
president of the American Society of International Law. She was formerly J.
Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law at
Harvard Law School. Copyright [c] 2003 by Anne-Mane Slaughter.
Westphalia,
Peace Of
Encyclopedia
article; The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2004. 52323 pgs.
1648,
general settlement ending the Thirty Years War.
It marked the end of the Holy Roman Empire as an effective institution and
inaugurated the modern European state system. The chief participants in the
negotiations were the allies Sweden and France; their opponents, Spain and the
Holy Roman Empire; and the various parts of the empire (which had been riven by
the war) together with the newly independent Netherlands. Earlier endeavors to
bring about a general peace had been unsuccessful. The compact known as the
Peace of Prague (May, 1635) marked a step in the direction of peace and
signaled the belief of the Protestant powers that the Swedish forces on which
they depended would not be able to maintain a preponderant role in Germany. The
conditions of the compact were not in accord with Richelieu's design to break
up the imperial power, however, and the war continued despite offers of
mediation from the pope and the king of Denmark. Congresses were proposed and
discarded. It was not until Dec. 25, 1641, that a preliminary treaty provided
for two concurrent conferences—at Münster and Osnabrück. The conferences, fixed
for 1643, met in 1644 and began serious work in 1645. The treaties were signed
Oct. 24, 1648. Through the French and Swedish "satisfactions" the
power and influence of the Holy Roman Empire and
of the house of Hapsburg were lessened. The sovereignty of the German states
was recognized, and the empire continued only in name. France, emerging as the
dominant European power, had its sovereignty over three bishoprics (Metz, Toul,
and Verdun) and over Pinerolo confirmed. Breisach was made over to France. Alsace was
ceded despite ambiguity of title, and France was allowed to fortify a garrison
at Philippsburg. Sweden obtained W Pomerania, including Stettin and the island
of Rügen; the archbishopric (but not the city) of Bremen and the adjoining
bishopric of Verden; and Wismar and the island of Pöl. It was agreed that the
Upper Palatinate and the old electoral vote should remain with Bavaria, while
the Rhenish Palatinate, with a new electoral vote, was assigned to Charles
Louis, the son of Frederick the Winter King. The Swiss Confederation and the
independent Netherlands were explicitly recognized. The elector of Brandenburg
received compensation for Pomerania; the duke of Mecklenburg, for Pöl and part
of Wismar. The outcome of the religious deliberations was significant.
Territorial rulers continued to determine the religion of their subjects, but
it was stipulated that subjects could worship as they had in 1624. Terms of
forced emigration were eased; Calvinism was recognized; and rulers could allow
full toleration, at their discretion. Finally, religious questions could no
longer be decided by a majority of the imperial estates. Future disputes were
to be resolved by a compromise between the confessions. The era of religious
warfare was over, and a general attempt had been made toward religious
toleration.
See C. V.
Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War
(1938).
O vice-procurador-geral eleitoral, Nicolao Dino