Michael Howard’s War and Peace

Summary of Olof Santesson's article in RSAWSPJ no 6 2001.

In a slim new volume of just a little over one hundred pages, The Invention of Peace - Reflexions of War and International Order (Profile Books, London 2001), Sir Michael Howard has, in a masterful way, dealt with twelve hundred years of European wars. There is, indeed, more to be learnt from this slim volume by the Grand Old Man of British military history than from many more comprehensive but rather less well-reasoned surveys.

The main human occupation, unfortunately, is war. In four chapters, or rather essays, Sir Michael shows how war has developed through the centuries with new techniques and organizational inventions. Peace enters very late into European thinking. And it is only in Western Europe and the United States that this concept became valid, first with the philosopher Immanuel Kant in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), who claimed that, to become a reality, the state of peace had to be “established”.

What man strives for is stability. The author puts forward his thesis that democracy and modernization - heritage of the Enlightenment - are tools of change and thereby in a sense enemies to the dream of stability.

For Sir Michael, there is no stable world order in sight. We will just have to continue to work patiently, with what can be done, towards peace.