of politics which shapes the actual working of institutions. So, politics must be at the center.
It is worth reminding ourselves that international politics has always been a rough place, dominated by the struggle for power. This has been the case since the time of the Peloponnesian War to today, when we are currently preoccupied with the war in Syria and the instability of the wider Middle East. History is a constant reminder of the decisive importance of power in international politics. The somber message of the “Melian Dialogue,” articulated masterfully by Thucydides, still resonates in many situations in international politics now: “The strong do as they can and the weak suffer as they must.”1 Far too often power prevails over the moral argument.
But it would be factually incorrect and morally wrong to believe that power and military force alone decide all the important questions in international politics. The famous question posed by Stalin: “How many divisions does the Pope have at his disposal?” received a convincing answer several decades later, at the end of the Cold War. None was the answer, but he can nevertheless generate important changes in the international environment. The role of the human spirit, the power ←11 | 12→of ideas and the importance of human values that bind people together must never be underestimated.
And then there is the world of norms. Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of political realism, reminded his readers of an ethical point made long ago by Roman politician and jurist Cicero: There are two ways of contesting, either by force or by law, and force must be resorted to because law is not always sufficient2. As a cultured man, Machiavelli had a clear preference for legal ways. At the same time, as a practitioner of politics, he was sufficiently realistic to understand the limits of law as an instrument of statecraft and international politics. Therefore, he did not hesitate to advise his Prince to be determined and brutal.
However, there are moments in international politics when the use of force becomes so counterproductive that the softer aspects of human nature prevail. Human values gain ground and law becomes the chosen way to durable solutions. People wary of war invariably start searching for ways out of war and that path leads them to the world of norms and institutions. The conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 was such a moment. It ended a period of religious wars in Europe with an agreement which constituted a new international system based on the legal principle of the territorial sovereignty of states. This legal solution has been the main organizing principle of the international system ever since and it needs to be taken seriously. It came about at a serious cost and it continues to be a cornerstone of peace today and into the future.
Another important example of the search for solutions in the world of norms and institutions can be found in the thinking during the Napoleonic Wars. The statesmen of that era had to devise a new system which would provide stability in post-war Europe and thus searched for values, norms and institutions that would make this possible. A promising approach was developed in the memorandum written in 1805 by the British Prime Minister William Pitt (The Younger). The memorandum had an apt and ambitious title: “Deliverance and Security in Europe.” The innovative idea expressed in that document was that post-war arrangements cannot be built solely on border changes and balance of power among the European empires. What was needed, according to Pitt, was an arrangement which would enable “a general and comprehensive system of Public Law in Europe, and provide, as far as possible, for repressing future attempts to disturb the general Tranquility…”3
The Pitt memorandum became the blueprint for the British diplomatic strategy at the Congress of Vienna and helped in the creation of the Holy Alliance. At the Congress, the major European powers restored peace with a combination of territorial changes and political arrangements to which they added a new normative and institutional dimension. The normative focus of this approach, “the Public ←12 | 13→Law of Europe” element, was the key to the concept of the modern collective security that was further developed in the twentieth century. Today, two centuries later, we cannot imagine the existence of Europe without its tightly knit web of legal arrangements, “a comprehensive system of public law of Europe,” as the modern version of a reliable guarantee of European peace and tranquility.
The same normative idea inspired the system of global collective security in the twentieth century. The immense suffering during the two world wars convinced political leaders to ensure that the idea of collective security was the centerpiece in the construction of peace treaties and to expand the scope of international law as the “way of contesting”, to use one of Machiavelli’s expressions. The Covenant of the League of Nations in 1919 brought a host of new norms and institutions. The new system put arbitration and adjudication at the center of the effort to resolve international differences peacefully. The whole design was a product of the legal mind. This was not surprising, given the fact that its chief architect, American President Woodrow Wilson was a distinguished professor of constitutional law. The world owes a deep gratitude to this great leader and his achievements.
At the same time, it is necessary to understand the history lesson relating to the limits of normative ideas and legal solutions in international politics. The League of Nations relied too heavily on legal norms and institutions, and, critically, did not (and, given the historic circumstances, probably could not) incorporate two other key elements, essential for the success of an international institution aimed at preserving peace: the balance of power and a platform of shared values. The demise of the League of Nations made this lesson painfully clear.
The League’s successor, the United Nations, did better, in fact, much better. The Charter of the UN incorporated the balance of power quite successfully. The design of the UN Security Council and the status of its five permanent members by and large proved to be historically adequate. The UN also offered a broad platform of common values: it contained a built-in commitment to peace as the supreme value. Moreover, this commitment allowed a gradual evolution of a comprehensive legal system for the promotion and protection of human rights. This legal system remains imperfect, but it is still much more developed than any other system of human values known in earlier periods of history.
The process of UN construction and evolution has been long and arduous. The Security Council appeared paralyzed during the four decades of the Cold War when there were doubts about the adequacy of the Charter design itself. However, for almost an entire generation, from the 1980s to the 2010s, the Council functioned largely as the authors of the UN Charter had expected, which should be considered as a success of historic proportions.
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The UN system’s work in the promotion and protection of human rights was also developed gradually, proceeding from the embryonic provisions on human rights in the UN Charter. The key development was the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 “as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations…”
It is sometimes suggested that human rights cannot, in fact, be a universal platform of shared values, given the differences among the world’s many cultures and the diversity of paths to human development. Moreover, some critics maintain that human rights are a product of Western civilization, imposed on others who were not yet, at the time of adoption, in a position to make a genuine contribution to the content of the Universal Declaration.
It is only natural that such criticism exists, inviting a continuous discussion on human rights. However, it should be understood that the original aim of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not to dominate but emanated from the wish to create a strong firewall against the re-emergence of oppression, which had been among the primary causes of World War II. It was entirely logical for this war-weary generation to start building a system that would help to prevent a relapse into oppression and war, which had caused so much suffering. Moreover, as the process of construction of the human rights system continued, many voices were heard and many new
