Can we say that peace is a "recent invention"?

Résumé du document

"Man is a wolf for man" wrote the 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes. He meant that men, according to nature, were constantly fighting against each other. The history of International Relations fits completely in this analysis since groups, ethnicities and later nation -states have always been waging wars among themselves for land, interests or power. Hobbes defined peace among men like a simple truce, "a period when war was neither imminent nor actually being fought". However can we really consider that this point of view defines peace? With Kant and the Enlightenment which opened modernity, mankind learnt that this vicious circle of fighting and slaughters could be abolished for ever, and that a "perpetual peace", the synonym of a new peaceful order had to be settled. Here, we will consider that the Kantian concept of peace is the only one. Can we then say that "peace is a recent invention"?

Extraits

[...] from the weakness of the League of Nations, even if the two organizations have in fact the same aim: “preserving peace thanks to international cooperation and collective security”[17]. Like the League of Nations, the United Nations is aiming at defending “human rights”, the right to self –government. The UN charter also asserts equality of nations”. But the main difference is that UN disposes of a military force supposed to enforce international laws (specifically the existence of the 43rd article of the UN charter). [...]

[...] Centuries later, the most evocative symbol of peace was the white flag, which shows that peace was only regarded as a cease - fire. In Europe, war was also justified as part of a "divine order". St Augustine, in the 4th century, legitimated war as a religious act even if it had to be waged in order to serve God's purposes. Michael Howard suggests that it is the whole medieval society and later the "Ancient regime" society that have been shaped by war: threefold hierarchy of estates which persisted until the French revolution . [...]

[...] Moreover, the Europeans then waged wars on a global scale in order to increase their influence. Often with barbarism, they colonised a lot of African and Asian countries, on the grounds that spreading civilisation was the "burden" that "white men" had to “take (the French were cynical enough to try to convince African children that their ancestors hailed from Gaul). Each country only took decisions based on its own interests (economic benefits, domination and strategic advantages). This led to a large number of colonial wars, since they all wanted to increase their power, as well as an increasing rivalry among European powerful states. [...]

[...] Profile Books Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace, a philosophical sketch (1795) Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace : a philosophical sketch Kant's words as well 8 January 1918, President Wilson's Fourteen Points , http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1918/14points.html term used by Immanuel Kant in Perpetual Peace Serge Berstein and Pierre Milza, Histoire du XXème siècle, le Monde entre guerre et paix (1945 1973) http://www.un.org/french/aboutun/ONU_en_bref/ same website as in 12 We can add that this was a mission of peace which also included itself into American “messiahnism”, a concept that has grown to maturation with greater American pretentions. Michael Howard, The invention of peace and the reinvention of war, p.115, ed. Profile Books. [...]

[...] In theory, and by definition, peace had really been invented. However the facts have never confirmed this optimistic statement. Indeed, only a few months after the signature of the Charter, the Soviet Union proved that it did not share the democratic values of its former allies. A process of satellisation began in the East of Europe and Churchill, in the famous Fulton conference of March 1946, could only deplore the settlement of what he called the “Iron Curtain”. The Kantian ideals grew more distant again, a trend all the more blatant that both camps launched in 1947 strategies to counter one another. [...]