NATO Earns “Peace of Westphalia Award” and Other Modern Absurdities

As if today’s neoliberal rules-based order couldn’t get any more absurd, the German-based committee managing the International Award of the Peace of Westphalia has pushed the limits of absurdity to yet another level by announcement that the prestigious award in 2026 will be given to none other than… NATO.

That’s right, the military alliance, which launched a unilateral bombing of Yugoslavia, and the agency, which has overseen military interventions to overthrow the elected government of Libya in 2011, and the organization, which has been committed to a military encirclement of Russia and China, has now won an award for Peace. Mark Rutte was kind enough to accept the award on behalf of the military despite the fact that the NATO chief has led the drive to expand NATO’s spending to 5%, telling European governments: “It is time to shift to a wartime mindset. And turbo-charge our defense production and defense spending.”

What makes this event even more distasteful is that the very institution of NATO as a supranational regional military block, which has been the catalyst for so many wars (and potentially an upcoming war of extermination), represents the very anti-thesis of the Peace of Westphalia. Not only did the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 end thirty years of devastating wars that reduced so much life cinders from 1618 to 1648, but it also established the foundation of the modern sovereign nation state itself. Up until this moment in history, the sovereign nation state as an institution has served as the greatest instrument for peace, economic development, and international diplomacy.

This is perhaps why non other than Tony Blair, then serving as Prime Minister of the UK, took the opportunity of his trip to Chicago in April 1999 to deliver a speech, which outlined what became known as “The Blair Doctrine” for a post-Westphalian age. Blair called for a new era of Liberal Interventionism into any nation state deemed incapable of governing itself, either via civil war, authoritarian leaders abusive of human rights, terrorism (or any number of other classifications a liberal imperialist may come up with).

Of course, Blair was perfectly fine with the collective murder of Serbs amidst NATO bombings of Yugoslavia in October 1999, which resulted in the deaths of nearly 40,000 people, and he appeared to have no issue with the vast destruction wrought on nations of the Middle East that had nothing to do with 9/11. Blair explicitly laid out his disdain for Westphalia as an outdated system of governance in 2004, saying:

“Before September 11, I was already reaching for a different philosophy in international relations from a traditional one that has held sway since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648; namely, that a country’s internal affairs are for it, and you don’t interfere unless it threatens you, or breaches a treaty, or triggers an obligation of alliance.”

What made Westphalia a beautiful watershed in human history, and everything Blair and NATO are opposed to, was that it was premised on the concept not of continuing the “Might Makes Right” doctrine of power projection and conflict that devasted Europe in the centuries prior to 1648, but was rather based on the superior concept of Right Makes Might, outlined in the first two articles of the Treaty of Westphalia, signed by leading delegates representing dozens of rival Catholic and Protestant groups.

Although the Treaty that established the framework for the sovereign nation state is often taught to students of political science as a messy legal protocol featuring 128 clauses designed to respect the rights of others to be left alone and not impinge onto territory that doesn’t belong to you, something very special is often left out of the equation. This something is a principle outlined in the first two articles, which serve as a guiding pre-amble of sorts and which infuse vitality into the entire framework: “That all nations will now be guided by the concern for the benefit of their neighbors and the forgiveness for all past transgressions.”

Since it is so rare that these articles are read in today’s world, let us review them here:

Article 1: “That there shall be a Christian and Universal Peace, and a perpetual, true, and sincere Amity… That this Peace and Amity be observed and cultivated with such a Sincerity and Zeal, that each Party shall endeavor to procure the Benefit, Honor and Advantage of the other; that thus on all sides they may see this Peace and Friendship in the Roman Empire, and the Kingdom of France flourish, by entertaining a good and faithful Neighborhood.”

Thus, it is clear that the principle shaping the Peace of Westphalia was NOT one of isolationism and selfishness, as is taught in so many universities today, but rather on the concept of “The Advantage of the Other” and the maintenance of “a good and faithful neighborhood.”

Article 2 took this concept further, saying: “That there shall be on the one side and the other a perpetual Oblivion, Amnesty, or Pardon of all that has been committed since the beginning of these Troubles, in what place, or what manner soever the Hostilities have been practiced, in such a manner, that nobody, under any pretext whatsoever, shall practice any Acts of Hostility, entertain any Enmity, or cause any Trouble to each other.”

These were not pretty words on parchment applicable only to a “western European cultural matrix” as many believe, but foundational principles of natural law applicable to all civilizations and times. We need not look far to see their expression in the modern times not only in the UN Charter, but also the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in 1954, which has come alive with the Eurasian Grand Design of win-win cooperation underlying the Belt and Road Initiative today.

Through the brilliant efforts of French Finance Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the economic power of dirigisme made the peace sustainable, as he understood that no peace treaty could long survive if it were not accompanied by economic development for the benefit of all. Only in this type of dynamic could a real healing of trans-generational wounds begin.

Before his death in 1661, Cardinal Mazarin outlined major infrastructure projects for both Germany and France, which were directed towards developing of the internal powers of labor of the nations of Europe through canals, manufacturing, and roads, while liberating European states from reliance on the Maritime monopolies of the Venetians, Dutch, Spanish, and Genoese.

As Professor Pierre Beaudry outlines in his Peace of Westphalia and the Water Question, chief among those canal projects outlined by Mazarin included:

• the Vistula River (through Silesia, Mazovia, and East Prussia discharging into the Black Sea),
• the Oder River Projects (discharging into Baltic Sea),
• the Elbe River development (Bohemia to North Sea via Dresden, Magdeburg, and Leipzig),
• the Weser River program through middle Germany, and
• the Rhine River (Switzerland, Germany, France, Netherlands).

Some of these projects like the Rhine–Maine–Danube Canal connecting the North and Black Sea were only accomplished 300 years after the Treaty of Westphalia, although Mazarin’s key German ally Friedrich William (The Great Elector of Brandenburg), who was chosen to lead the League of Rhine in 1759, spearheaded the growth of many of Mazarin’s canals and road designs along with his son Friedrich the Great.

One of the first preconditions Mazarin had at the start of the Westphalian treaty’s negotiation in 1642 was the ending of tolls on waterways imposed by narrow-minded princes and dukes who held territorial controls over sections of river systems throughout Germany, which made any economic development of the territory financially unviable. In an early agreement signed in 1642, Mazarin had dozens of princes agree that “from this day forward, along the two banks of the Rhine River and from the adjacent provinces, commerce and transport of goods shall be free of transit for all of the inhabitants, and it will no longer be permitted to impose on the Rhine any new toll, open berth right, customs, or taxation of any denomination and of any sort, whatsoever.”

In France, one of the greatest infrastructure projects in history was begun under Mazarin and continued by his close collaborator Jean-Baptiste Colbert called La Canal Du Midi (aka: Languedoc Canal). This was a 240-km canal creating a direct passage between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean eliminating a 3000 km detour around the Spanish Habsburg-controlled Strait of Gibraltar [see map].