The Balance of Power⤒🔗

On various occasions in the history of the world large-scale wars have been waged not for the sake of conquest, nor even directly in self-defence, but primarily in order to ensure or restore stability in international affairs, or (to use a more technical term) to maintain the balance of power among the nations. Usually this type of war is fought by an alliance, formed for the purpose of stemming the threat posed by an aggressor country whose activities endanger international stability.

Whether the goals of such an alliance are achieved depends not merely on the allies' military accomplishments, but also on the peace settlement that they are able to draw up. These settlements may have a stabilizing influence and procure a lasting peace. They may also have the opposite effect, perpetuate or exacerbate political instability, and so make another war inevitable.

In this article we will have a look at some of the peace treaties that have been made in the interest of the balance of power. Such a study, although perhaps uncomfortably heavy in historical detail, has its usefulness. It will, for example, suggest reasons why certain international boundaries are where they are, and increase our understanding of the present world with its power combinations, rivalries and tensions. It should also strengthen our appreciation for the endeavors of statesmen and soldiers to maintain a power equilibrium and so protect the freedom of individuals and nations. In the past month we remembered Hitler's attempts to enslave other peoples for the greater glory of his German Reich. While it is true that not every power which has threatened the peace has aimed at world dominion or been driven by an ideology as diabolical as that of Nazi Germany, the fact remains that aggression leads to the destruction of the freedom, life and property of others. That time and again it has been withstood by counter-alliances has been a blessing for many a smaller nation, whose independence has thus been preserved over the centuries.

Signs of the Times←⤒🔗

Finally, our study should benefit us by drawing our attention to the signs of the times, which we have been ordered to observe. We confess that God through Christ governs the nations, and that, because He is not arbitrary, history is not futile. It has meaning and a goal; it serves the purpose of Him who through aggression, war and peace judges the peoples, and who also, by these same means, destroys tyranny and grants freedom — in order that the Gospel may prosper, the Church be preserved, and God's Kingdom advanced. That is the meaning of history. In the succession of war and peace, in the maintenance and loss of national independence, in the rise and fall of empires and superpowers, and in the conclusion and breakup of peace settlements, the believer may see the hand of Christ who controls all rulers, and who will continue to do so also when the time comes when at last all national governments will topple and all international boundaries be wiped out because of the appearance of the worldwide, universal state, the anti-Christian Leviathan of the Apocalypse.

And who knows how near this development is? It is a question which we, who live in the final decades of the twentieth century, are forced to ask ourselves, experiencing as we do the general political paralysis, the inability of peoples and rulers to return to the system of equilibrium that, with minor interruptions, characterized our society throughout the early modern period. The twentieth-century breakdown of this system threatens to be of catastrophic significance and demands our attention.

The Habsburg Threat and the Peace of Westphalia, 1648←⤒🔗

The main purpose of this article is to compare earlier international political arrangements with those of the present age. To accomplish that we will discuss, in some detail, three major peace settlements made in past centuries (in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth respectively) and show how they differ from the arrangements concluded after the twentieth-century world wars. Let us begin with the power struggles of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, which led to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648.

The sixteenth century has been called the Age of Spain, which was indeed the dominant power in Europe at that time. Its Habsburg rulers (especially the well-known Charles V and his son Philip II), controlled a large empire. In addition to being king of Spain and the Americas, they were ruler of part of Northern Italy, Naples and Sicily, of Sardinia, Burgundy, and the Northern and Southern Netherlands. Furthermore, members of the Habsburg dynasty (Charles V, his brother Ferdinand and the latter's successors) were archduke of Austria with its dependencies and emperor of Germany (which at this time and for some centuries to come was still disunited and consisted of a large number of semi-independent states and free cities). This powerful family was almost inevitably engaged in warfare to preserve and enlarge its dominions. In the process it called into being the resistance of those nations that had reason to fear the expanding Habsburg power.

This had consequences not only for the political equilibrium in Europe, but also for the churches of the Reformation. The Habsburgs of Spain and Austria were the champions of Roman Catholicism and formed the spearhead of the counter reformation. Charles V considered it his foremost duty to wipe out protestantism in Germany and in his other dominions. Philip II was equally strongly determined to restore Roman Catholicism in The Netherlands, which had risen in rebellion against him, and in other areas of Europe, including Scotland and England. An important reason for Charles' failure in his attempts against the Lutherans was his almost constant warfare with Roman Catholic France, the Muslim Turks, and even with the pope, who also felt he had reason to fear Charles' might. Philip II succeeded in reconquering the Southern Netherlands, called Belgium, the country of Guido de Brès, where protestantism was all but wiped out. The Northern Netherlands were able to withstand him, however, again in large part because Spain was once more occupied with war against its French and Turkish rivals, and ultimately with England as well.

In the early seventeenth century, after the death of Philip II, Spain and Austria made one last attempt to establish Roman Catholic and Habsburg supremacy in Europe. It led to the Thirty Years' War, which was fought in Germany from 1618 to 1648. In this war the German protestants received support from Holland, Lutheran Denmark and Sweden, England, and France, Spain's traditional enemy. The Peace Treaty of Westphalia, which concluded the war, introduced a new era in international relations. Among its most noteworthy terms were the following: the Northern Netherlands were declared independent from Spain, Switzerland and the German States received their independence from the Emperor, and protestantism was safeguarded in the Germanies: the Calvinists received the same rights as the Lutherans and Roman Catholics. Territorial gains were made by Sweden, by the protestant German state of Brandenburg-Prussia (capital Berlin, and nucleus of a unified Germany that would finally emerge in 1871), and by France. In fact, France was the main victor. The mantel of the Spanish Habsburgs descended upon the shoulders of the French Bourbon rulers, who in the years to come would attempt to fill the power vacuum left by the collapse of Spain and the Empire. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would become known as the Age of France.

Louis XIV and the Peace of Utrecht, 1713←⤒🔗

The most important ruler of France was Louis XIV, or the Sun King, who took control of French affairs in 1661 and ruled until his death in 1715. In his international policies Louis was no less aggressive than the Spanish Habsburgs had been in their day. He followed them also in their militant Roman Catholicism. It was Louis XIV who in 1685 revoked the Edict of Nantes, a law which almost a century earlier had been passed to give a large measure of freedom to the French Calvinists. Louis subjected the Reformed Church in his country to severe persecutions. Thousands of Huguenots (as the French Calvinists were called) fled to Holland, England and Brandenburg-Prussia. Uncounted numbers of those who could or would not escape were tortured, imprisoned, killed, or condemned to serve as galley slaves.

Louis posed a threat not only to the French protestants but, because of his territorial ambitions and counter-reformation zeal, also to those of other areas in Europe, including the Dutch. Holland aroused his anger because it had given refuge to French Huguenots and because it had tried to prevent France from annexing the Southern or Spanish Netherlands. Louis was also jealous of Holland's trading empire and its riches. The danger to the Dutch was increased by the halfhearted attitude of England. Some of the English kings, members of the Stuart dynasty, sympathized with Roman Catholicism, admired the Sun King, and had a secret understanding with France. Since England was now a major country, one of the few that could stand up against France, the leanings of its rulers endangered the safety of France's less powerful neighbours: Holland, the Southern Netherlands, several German states, and Spain — for Louis was determined to enlarge French territory at the expense of his neighbours to the south and east as well as the north.

Louis' aggression called forth a number of anti-French alliances. They were organized by William III of Orange, the Calvinist stadholder of Holland. In 1688 William, who had married the heiress to the English throne, was made joint-ruler of England with his wife, in the place of his father-in-law, the Roman Catholic and francophile James II whom the English deposed. Henceforth Louis' ambitions were resisted by an alliance that, in addition to Holland and England, included at one time or another Sweden, Spain, the Emperor, Savoy, Prussia and various other German princes.

In 1713 and 1714, shortly before Louis' death, the Peace Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt were signed. These treaties were significant. France had been kept in check but not defeated, and although exhausted by the wars, it remained a major power. It further gained Spain as an ally, because the throne of Spain was awarded to a member of the French Bourbon family. France's European territory remained intact, but for the sake of the power balance some of its neighbours had their territory increased. Austria received Belgium, Milan and Southern Italy from Spain. England was given Gibraltar and Minorca by the same country, while it received from France, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and the Hudson Bay area (later in the century England would take over from the French the rest of Canada, as well as the Mississippi Valley and most of India). The duke of Savoy, whose descendants would in 1870 become the sovereigns of a united Italy, received Sicily and was given the royal title, and the elector of Brandenburg-Prussia was acknowledged king of Prussia. It was another step in the steady rise of that country and its ruling house, the Hohenzollerns.

The treaties of 1713 and 1714 restored the balance of power in Europe. No large-scale war would break out for close to a century, although various local ones were fought in eastern and western Europe and in the colonies. England emerged as the leading colonial, commercial and naval power, France and Austria seemed to be growing weaker, while Prussia, and also Russia, increased their territory and their involvement in European affairs. It might have been expected that the next threat to Europe's peace would come from one of these newer nations. In fact it was France, roused to a new nationalistic fervor as a result of its revolution, which toward the end of the century assumed the role of aggressor once more.

Napoleon's Wars and the Treaty of Vienna, 1815←⤒🔗

The French Revolution broke out in 1789. Although during the first year a number of very legitimate grievances was redressed, the situation deteriorated and in the early 1790s France experienced the horrors of the reign of terror, during which countless Frenchmen were imprisoned and killed. Among the victims of the guillotine was king Louis XVI. The monarchy was ended and a republic proclaimed. A few years after the king's execution, however, the threat of anarchy and the problems of international war facilitated the rise of another absolute ruler, the Corsican adventurer Napoleon Bonaparte, who in 1804 crowned himself emperor and throughout his career continued the revolution's attempts to secure world dominion for France. By 1812 he controlled most of continental Europe and invaded Russia. When it became clear that the Russian winter was too much for him, an alliance consisting of England, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Russia, Prussia and many smaller European nations was formed against France. Napoleon was defeated and exiled; he escaped, fought the allies again, was defeated and exiled for a second time, and spent the rest of his life reminiscing about his final failures.

The statesmen met in Austria to restore order in Europe, and the Treaty of Vienna was concluded in 1815. Again, moderation prevailed. Although France was the aggressor, and although it received an occupation force and had to pay war damages, it was not unduly humiliated: nobody was interested in the collapse of France and the creation of a vacuum on the Atlantic coast. To discourage France from further adventures a "cordon sanitaire" of reasonably strong nations was established on its boundaries. For that reason Belgium was taken from Austria and united with Holland, Austria was compensated with additional lands in Northern Italy, and on France's eastern frontier some German states were strengthened by the grant of additional territory. The main beneficiaries were Prussia and Bavaria. Prussia got also parts of Saxony, and Russia received territory in Poland.

The peacemakers at Vienna made mistakes. Being rather conservative and desiring to restore the situation in Europe as it had been before the earthshaking events of the French revolution, they discounted the forces of liberalism and nationalism that had been let loose. Both Belgium and Northern Italy were dissatisfied with their annexation; Belgium revolted and was given its independence in 1830. Northern Italy's discontent would fester until the middle of the century, when the wars for its independence and unification began. Vienna was successful, however, in that a reasonable balance of power was achieved once more. No war encompassing all of Europe would occur for another hundred years, until the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

In that respect Vienna signified the close of an era: it was the last major peace settlement that succeeded in restoring equilibrium for any length of time.

The Twentieth-Century Breakdown: World War I←⤒🔗

If in one sense the Treaty of Vienna concluded an era, in another it stood for the beginning of a new age. The main difference between the period before and after the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars was the increase in secularism. The wars that we discussed earlier were fought at least in part for religious reasons. With the arrival of the eighteenth-century enlightenment and the French Revolution, however, religion became irrelevant for the European masses and their rulers. Humanism, faith in progress, nationalism, and similar pseudo-religions replaced Christianity, and these secular gospels were spread by the wars arising out of the French Revolution. The modern, secular, post-Christian age had begun. It was in that age and climate that the twentieth-century wars were fought.

The causes of World War I were complex. Although the victorious allies singled out Germany as the guilty party, it would have been much more truthful if the blame had been divided equally over the major continental powers. Although Germany had certainly contributed to the tensions leading to the war, so had others, in the allied camp as well as in that of the Central Powers (which besides Germany included Austria-Hungary and Turkey). Why, then, was Germany made the scapegoat?

For one thing, World War I was the first major war fought in a time of democracy and mass communication. To keep the war effort going, the masses everywhere had to be assured that their side was totally right and the enemy totally wrong. Wartime governments used every means of propaganda at their disposal to fan the fires of nationalism and hatred. Inevitably, this propaganda was reflected in the peace treaties that were drawn up by the allies and imposed upon the defeated nations, whose leader was Germany.

Furthermore, if the question were asked which European country in the decades prior to 1914 posed the most serious threat to the balance of power, the answer would have to be Germany. After the Treaty of Vienna, Prussia had, under the leadership of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, pursued an aggressive foreign policy. It had extended its influence over the German confederacy, shocked the world with the crushing defeat of Austria in 1866 and of France in 1871 (and with the imposition of a most humiliating peace upon the latter country), and had after the war with France united the Germanies into an empire under its own royal house, that of the Hohenzollerns. The new, Prussian, militaristic Germany had loudly demanded its rights and its "legitimate place under the sun," also in the scramble for colonies; it had challenged Britain's industrial and naval supremacy, was anxious to increase its sphere of influence, and was cordially hated by France in the west, Russia in the east, and England across the North Sea. Although a newcomer on the European scene, Germany had begun to dominate it, and the allied governments (with the notable exception of the United States of America) agreed with the masses at home that it should be crushed.

This explains the retributive nature of the Treaty of Versailles of 1919. Germany lost large stretches of its European territory and all its colonies, it was ordered to pay an astronomical sum in war damages, was not allowed to rebuild its army, navy or air force, and lost control of some of its industrial areas, and had to agree to the demilitarization of the Rhineland. The new republican government of Germany had no choice but to accept the treaty, but the people felt humiliated, were indignant, and demanded revenge. Little more than a decade after Versailles, Hitler, who promised revenge and a great future for the defeated country, was voted into power.

The harshness of Versailles, then, was one of the reasons why the peace following World War I turned out to be little more than a truce. Another important reason was the "balkanization" of Europe — that is, the dividing up of large empires into small nations that could easily be swallowed up by their bigger neighbors, Russia, which withdrew from the war after the Communist Revolution of 1917, had to give up the three Baltic countries in the north-east, as well as Finland. Poland, which in the late eighteenth century had been partitioned among Russia, Prussia and Austria, received its independence back. The large but ramshackle Austro-Hungarian empire was divided into four small nations: Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, while other parts went back to Italy and Poland. The Turkish empire also was broken up. At one time the Turks had had control of the Middle East and of the Balkan in south-eastern Europe, including large parts of Hungary. Already before 1914 some areas had freed themselves from Turkish rule, and after the war Turkey was restricted to its homeland in Asia Minor. The Balkan now consisted of small, independent nations, and the Middle East also was divided into separate countries. Some of these received independence, while others were temporarily entrusted to the protection of England or France.

This break-up of empires was accomplished in accordance with the principle of national self-determination and was understandable in an era of nationalism. In many cases, moreover, it was a reparation of past wrongs. Unfortunately, this balkanization created a power vacuum throughout eastern Europe, from the Baltic in the north to the Mediterranean in the south. Once Germany and Russia had recovered from their wounds it was almost inevitable that they would move in to fill the vacuum, and so precipitate World War II.

World War II←⤒🔗

It has been claimed that the second world-war completed the unfinished business of the first. In some respect this was true. Moreover, the statesmen had learned their lesson: the peace settlements which the western allies imposed upon Germany, Italy, Japan and the smaller fascist belligerents were very generous, as was the United States' subsequent treatment of an impoverished Europe and Asia by means of the Marshall Plan and similar financial aid schemes. Although inspired by self-interest, this policy nevertheless stands as a shining example in history. America's self-interest was enlightened.

The way itself, however, completed the political demolition of Europe and left the world in much worse shape than before. After the previous conflict, the allies had been able to reach a settlement together. After World War II, this was no longer possible; the western allies and the Soviet Union went their different ways. Already before the final defeat of Hitler, Europe had been divided between a democratic west and a communist east. The iron curtain descended, soon to be followed by similar dividing lines elsewhere. The world was split up into antagonistic camps, each armed to the teeth, as it is to this day.

True, it has been close to forty years since the latest war ended, and World War III still has not broken out. There is a balance of power of sorts, although it is more appropriate to speak of it — as is usually done — as a balance of terror. The choice seems to be between total extinction and world cooperation-at-any-price, as long as humanity's mere biological existence is preserved. Lest we also are caught up in this doomsday expectation and join the world in a scramble for safety, let us remember that this development was prophesied as the prelude to our deliverance. May He who is coming find His church prepared awaiting her King "with uplifted head."