Translated material
From Munster to Sarajevo
The emergence of international relations in their modern understanding and the organization of these relations into a system became possible primarily due to the changes that occurred by the beginning of the Modern Age in the nature of European statehood and in the very picture of the world of Europeans.
In the Middle Ages, the monarch understood his state as a kind of great seigneury, personal possession, without making a clear distinction between private and public law, which made things impossible today - the state could be divided, bequeathed, increased by marriages, etc. The very boundaries between states were largely conditional, since feudal lords could own lands in different states.
In the XV-XVI centuries, first in the west of Europe, and then in other parts of it, as a result of processes of centralization and internal consolidation, so-called “new monarchies” appeared - states based on the principles of territoriality and sovereignty. Having clearly defined the territory of the state as the sphere of internal politics, these borders made possible the emergence of an external one in the proper sense of the word - in contrast to the medieval ambiguity of borders and fragmentation of sovereignties.
Another important prerequisite for the formation of a system of international relations was the gradual destruction of the old political picture of the world. Its basis in the Middle Ages was the so-called universalism, i.e. the idea of creating a universal, in other words, a world empire. The idea of universalism was a kind of interweaving, a kind of synthesis of the ideological traditions of Ancient Rome and Christianity. On the one hand, there is the idea of the Roman Empire as an empire without borders. On the other hand, there is an understanding of universalism as the Christian unity of humanity, united under the authority of an emperor - a Christian monarch, who was supposed to act as a defender and conductor of the true faith.
The turn of the 15th and 16th centuries brought decisive changes. Great geographical discoveries made Europe the center of the world, the idea of a united Christian Europe was destroyed by the Reformation that began in 1517 and the religious wars, and the continued strengthening of new centralized states came into increasingly sharp conflict with the principle of universalism.
As a result, the medieval world order collapsed. The hierarchical structure, headed by the emperor and whose parts were held together by religious unity, was replaced by a world of sovereign and formally equal states. Europe has ceased to be a unity, having finally turned into a multitude. And then a completely new problem arose. The old interaction algorithm has collapsed - what will the new one be like?
This question was not so acute while relations were predominantly bilateral, affected mainly the closest neighbors, and their range was limited to the alternative of war or peace. However, gradually these relations experience both quantitative and qualitative growth. The number of participants in international relations grew steadily and, on the other hand, their connectivity increased, and as a result, in the 16th century, previous bilateral contacts began to transform into something qualitatively new - a system of international relations began to take shape.
We are not talking about the fact that already in the 16th century a certain pan-European system of international relations arose. There is no need to talk about the European system because the development of statehood was too uneven and the density of the fabric of international relations in different regions of Europe was too different. However, on the one hand, the rapid growth of interstate contacts was preparing the emergence of a system on a pan-European scale, and, on the other hand, in some places in Europe, in places of particularly intense contacts between different states, local systems began to emerge, which in many of their features anticipated the future pan-European model. First of all, we are talking about Italy.
By the end of the 15th century, a peculiar system of five most powerful states arose here - Florence, Milan, Venice, Rome and Naples. The significance of this system lay in the fact that it represented a certain prototype of the international relations of the future, the international relations of the New Age in semi-medieval Europe. Two points are especially important. Firstly, the foreign policy of these states was secularized. It was no longer motivated by religious motives, but by the principle of state interests. Secondly, these states were included in the system on the basis of the principle of balance, aimed against the establishment of hegemony of one of them. In other words, in Italy of the 16th century those structural principles were already successfully functioning that would become widespread in the rest of Europe only a century later. However, they were not in demand at the time, since in the rest of Europe politics was still largely determined by religion. Moreover, under the influence of the Reformation, its influence intensified, the era of religious wars began, supranational blocs of co-religionists emerged, and for a time, confessional conflicts hid a new foreign policy - a foreign policy of “state interest.”
The end of the era of confessional conflicts is rightly associated with the course and results of the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648, the main participants of which were two large blocs - the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs, on the one hand, and France, the Netherlands and Sweden, on the other, as well as numerous secondary allies of each from the sides. This was the first war of a truly European scale, which consisted of many heterogeneous conflicts, the most important of which was France’s confrontation with the Austro-Spanish Habsburg dynasty - the main European antagonism, which by that time had a century and a half history.
On October 24, 1648, an event took place that can be called the birthday of the first pan-European system of international relations - in the cities of Münster and Osnabrück, located in the historical region of Westphalia in Germany, peace treaties were signed, collectively called the Peace of Westphalia.
From the point of view of the history of international relations, the Thirty Years' War meant a final farewell to the Middle Ages. Having begun in many ways as a religious one, it ended with the triumph of rational “state interest.” Both main supranational, “universalist” political forces – the idea of a single empire and a single faith – are irrevocably a thing of the past. Having ensured the actual sovereignty of the states that were part of the Holy Roman Empire, the Peace of Westphalia increased the number of independent participants in international relations - it increased very significantly, given the spatial extent of the borders of the Empire, which until 1648 formally included, for example, Switzerland, Holland, many Italian states, not to mention already about more than two hundred German ones. As is commonly believed, it was in 1648 that the era of classical foreign policy began - secularized and based on the principles of territoriality and sovereignty. The declaration of these principles by the Peace of Westphalia was all the more important since almost all European countries were represented at the congress, except England, Russia and the Ottoman Empire [1] , and as the so-called “involved” powers in the “fixing” paragraphs of the Osnabrück and Munster treaties, designed to give them greater strength, the contracting parties named Spain, England, Denmark, Norway, Poland, many Italian cities and states, Switzerland, Portugal and Russia. The very fact of their indirect participation served the goal of “universal peace” stated in the Treaty of Osnabrück. Thus, the Peace of Westphalia became the cornerstone of international relations of the New Age and remained so - with modifications - for another century and a half, until the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815.
During the Thirty Years' War, the secularization of international relations was finally established as one of their most important characteristics in modern times. If earlier foreign policy was largely determined by religious motives, then with the beginning of the New Age, the main motive for the actions of an individual state becomes the principle of state interest, according to which all decisions are made not on a religious, ideological or other supranational basis, but based solely on the needs of the state itself.
The relations between European states in the early modern period reached a completely new quality. The disintegration of Christian Europe into separate independent states and the significant intensification and streamlining of relations between them led to the emergence of the first system of international relations in history. Since individual states, driven by selfish “state interest,” entered into it on the basis of competition and often with goals that were difficult to reconcile, a need arose for some kind of algorithm that would ensure the functioning of the emerging system. This algorithm, and even more than that, the ideology, “philosophy” of the system of international relations for the next two centuries, became the concept of balance .
On the one hand, the rapid and widespread dissemination of this idea in the 17th and 18th centuries was associated with its simplicity and clarity - by balancing each other, the forces return to a state of rest, that is, peace. On the other hand, equilibrium as a political practice became a reaction to the attempts of the Habsburgs and then the Bourbons to establish hegemony in Europe. However, despite its importance, balance was understood not as a goal, but as a means to ensure the highest value, which, since the Middle Ages, was still declared to be “peace and harmony.”
As the system of international relations developed, so did the European balance. In the era of antagonism between the Habsburgs and the Valois, which determined the international situation in the 16th century, balance looked like a simple dualism of forces, force balancing force. In addition, not the entire European continent was yet involved in the system. In the 17th century, the emergence of new powerful states in the international arena led to the complication of the equilibrium system, as a model for which the theoretical thought of that time no longer proposed scales, but a mechanism, a machine, whose large and small parts were firmly linked and equally necessary [2 ] .
In the 18th century, the equilibrium system was again modified in connection with the formation of the so-called “pentarchy” (the term itself came into diplomatic use only after the Congress of Vienna in 1815) . The fact is that, despite formal equality, in reality states differed from each other in power and weight in the international arena. To designate the most powerful, mainly militarily, states in the 17th – 18th centuries, the concept of “power” or even “great power” began to be used. In fact, the main criterion of a great power was its power and the associated ability to exert influence in a certain region and single-handedly resist the attack of any other power in the world. In addition, the participation of a particular country in important European congresses was of some importance.
It was the great powers that ultimately determined the political face of Europe. However, if in the 17th century many states claimed the role of a great or at least strong power - in addition to Austria, England and France, Turkey, Venice, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden could be included in them - then in the 18th century the status of a great powers becomes more defined and is firmly associated with only five states - France, Austria, England, Russia and Prussia. Thus, a complex multi-member system is replaced by a “pentarchy”, five “great” powers, in comparison with which “ordinary” states are so small that they themselves mean almost nothing on the scales of European balance. From now on, European politics and European balance are a problem of relations between the states of the “pentarchy”.
The mechanism of equilibrium was based on the principle of “convenance” (from the French convenir - to agree), according to which territorial increments of one state had to occur with the consent of other powers and with compensation in their favor. Therefore, an important prerequisite for balance was the calculability and measurability of the components of state power. The main criteria were precisely quantitative parameters, primarily the size of the territory and population. As long as European states did not know serious qualitative differences, be they differences of a material or spiritual nature, the machine of European balance could work based on the “law of areas and numbers.”
A practical expression of balance and one of the most characteristic features of international relations in the 17th and 18th centuries was the system of short-term and rapidly changing alliances. Secularization, the rejection of religious solidarity in foreign policy and a focus solely on rational “state interest” led to the fact that almost every member of the system could enter into alliances with any other member and leave them immediately after achieving their goals. As a result, the system, especially in the 18th century, was characterized by exceptional mobility, and there were often cases when changes in alliances took place almost overnight. In general, international relations in the 17th and 18th centuries were characterized by a high degree of anarchy and conflict, as a result of which the balance consisted of a clash of opposing forces and constantly balanced on the brink of war. It was war that was the main fuel on which the machine of European balance worked. At the same time, war was recognized as a completely normal, natural means of politics. The threshold separating peace from war was extremely low; statistics testify to the constant readiness to cross it - two years of peace in the 17th century, sixteen in the 18th century.
Finally, another characteristic feature of the Westphalian system was its purely European scale and character. It was the European states that had the main and decisive importance in international relations in the early modern period. First of all, this was due to the fact that one of the most important aspects of the New Age was the world-historical process of European expansion and the spread of European civilization throughout the world, which began in the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries of the late 15th century. In the beginning of the “European era,” which extended until the 20th century, it was the European states that acted as the main dynamic force, increasingly influencing the political appearance of the rest of the world.
On the other hand, the world of non-European states did not know an orderly system of international relations similar to the European one. In Asia, which historically led Europe in the development of statehood, large states still existed - the Ottoman Empire, China, the Safavid power in Persia, and the Mughal Empire in India. However, these states were isolated from the rest of the world, and communication between them, as a rule, was purely local, sporadic and bilateral. On other continents, local statehood was extremely poorly developed or completely absent.
At the same time, the colonies were in no way included in the emerging system of European balance; they were not considered either as a whole with the metropolis on the European scale, or as a separate system of colonial balance. The colonial world was also separated from Europe in international legal terms: European treaties were valid overseas only if this was specifically stipulated; war in the colonies did not necessarily entail a clash between the metropolises in Europe - for example, in the Anglo-Spanish Treaty in Whitehall of 1686 years, it was clearly stated that even in the event of war in the colonies in Europe, “lasting peace and neutrality” would remain between the two countries. In other words, the system of international relations was emphatically Eurocentric; it is no coincidence that in this century the fate of the colonies was largely decided not so much in clashes directly overseas, but in Europe.
The balancing mechanism came into play almost every time one of the powers laid claim to regional or European hegemony. This was the case, for example, in the middle of the 17th century, when Sweden, the great power of that time, began to strive to establish complete control over the Baltic. During the First Northern War (1655-1660), Poland, Denmark, Holland, Brandenburg-Prussia, Austria and Russia opposed it with varying degrees of participation. An even more striking example is the four wars of Louis XIV in the second half of the 17th and early 18th centuries. The dangerous strengthening of one of the members of the system again led to a coalition against him with the participation of England, Austria, Holland, the Holy Roman Empire, Portugal, Savoy and Brandenburg-Prussia.
However, over time, the equilibrium mechanism began to malfunction. First of all, this was due to the emergence in the 18th century of two new acute antagonisms between the great powers, which pushed into the background the Franco-Habsburg antagonism - the main contradiction of past centuries. First of all, we are talking about Anglo-French antagonism, which had a mainly colonial background. In this regard, they sometimes talk about the “second Hundred Years' War” between England and France, which lasted from the wars of Louis XIV to the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The second was the Austro-Prussian antagonism that arose as a result of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740#1748). An additional factor that strengthened the crisis tendencies of the previous system was the rapid growth of Russian power, which, along with Austro-Prussian antagonism, gave new dynamics to international relations in eastern Europe. If over the previous centuries France played the role of the main disturber of European peace, making Western Europe the main hub of international contradictions, then Russia’s advance along the entire perimeter of its western borders turned it into a kind of “France of the East.”
According to classical ideas of equilibrium, such a situation should have caused the intervention of France and England. France, since the time of Richelieu, had the idea of the so-called “eastern barrier”, according to which it cultivated special relations with states in eastern Europe - Sweden, Poland and Turkey - and could use these ties to contain either Russia or the German states. England actually acted as the main mechanic of the European balance. Already in the 16th century, the English king Henry VIII was depicted with scales, the bowls of which symbolized Austria and Spain, in one hand and a weight in the other. Rushing overseas, England always sought to have a calm and safe rear in Europe and saw the main means to this as a system of balance that prevented the excessive strengthening of any power.
Nothing like this happened in the last decades of the 18th century. Preoccupied with colonial contradictions, England and France were unable to oppose anything to either Russia’s successes in relation to Sweden and Turkey, or—and this is especially significant—even to such an extraordinary event that seriously affected the European balance as the partitions of Poland. In general, events in Eastern Europe related to Poland, Turkey and Sweden can be considered as one of the evidence of the crisis of the system of international relations, the crisis of the “pentarchy” and balance. Instead of the free play of the great powers that existed for most of the century, the sum of which was balance, two groups with little overlapping interests arose - colonial England and France and purely continental Austria, Russia and Prussia. The damaged mechanism of European balance was finally broken by the French Revolution [3] .
The Westphalian system of international relations was separated from the Viennese system that followed it, the period of revolution and the Napoleonic wars of 1792-1815, which was extremely eventful and ideas-filled. The creators of the Vienna system themselves were most influenced by the facts of the revolution and the realized European hegemony of Napoleon. Both were completely new experiences, which they tried to deny; However, in subsequent decades, many of the ideas proclaimed by the revolution were not so much rejected as called upon as allies.
In a broader perspective, the features of the development of international relations in the 19th century mainly stemmed from the fact that at that time fundamental, fundamental changes were taking place in the life of Western society and the state. The so-called “double revolution” of the end of the 18th century, i.e., the industrial revolution that began in England and the French Revolution, became the starting point for the process of modernization that took place throughout the next century, during which the traditional class-divided agrarian society was replaced by modern mass industrial civilization. Starting from the “diplomacy of kings” of the Old Order and having gone through the transitional stage of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, international relations of the New Age are now developing in a completely different historical environment, in the changed world of the 19th century. In the new environment, international relations themselves are changing in many respects - from the factors of foreign policy of individual states to the system of international relations. Three major trends that made themselves known during the era of the revolution began to have a huge impact on foreign policy - democratization, nationalization and ideologization, as well as the qualitatively changed role of economic factors that became a consequence of the Industrial Revolution.
In the beginning era of democratization, the state almost completely loses its traditional, centuries-old dynastic and religious background. Gradually, a new form of statehood took shape - the national state, which presupposed the coincidence of the area of the “single and indivisible” nation with the borders of the state and the participation of the nation in its management. Thus, in comparison with the 17th and 18th centuries, a completely new character is asserting itself in the international arena in the person of the national state - an institution-based, depersonalized, bureaucratic state.
The system of international relations that emerged in 1815 was called “Vienna” after the location of the congress that ended the Napoleonic Wars. During its existence, the Vienna system underwent a significant evolution, changing its appearance almost beyond recognition and ultimately leading to a severe crisis, the final chord of which was the First World War. The order of international relations created in 1815 continuously changed and modified over time until it came into direct conflict with the principles declared in Vienna. The main milestones of the changes in the Vienna system were the events of the mid-century - the revolution of 1848 and the Crimean War of 1853-1856, as well as the creation of the German Empire in 1871 and the subsequent transition to a system of unions.
In almost exact accordance with what was planned in Vienna, the system lasted only a decade and a half, until 1830, in connection with which some researchers propose to divide it into the period of the “Vienna System” itself and the decades of the “Vienna Order” that followed 1830 [4] . Up until the events of the mid-century, the development of the Vienna system is described by the concept of “evolution,” while the entire subsequent period is more accurately defined by the word “crisis.” From the point of view of the effectiveness of the system, it is significant that if before 1848 there was not a single war between the great powers, then over the next 30 years each of them fought at least once against any other. To understand this evolution, the elements of the system and the principles of its functioning are of fundamental importance.
The basis of the Vienna system, like the Westphalian one before it, was the great powers. On the one hand, the main criterion for classifying a country into the club of “greats” has been preserved – its military power. At the same time, in connection with the general trend of “economization” of foreign policy, a different criterion has actually appeared for classifying a country as a “great power” - from now on it is impossible to be a great power without a “great” economy. Great powers, despite their equality of status, have previously differed in their actual weight in the international arena. However, in the 19th century, under the influence of the Industrial Revolution, which gave unprecedented dynamics to economic development, the differentiation between the great powers in terms of the potential of their state power became clearer, but at the same time less static. Unlike the past, the promotion of a country to the ranks of great powers of the first rank or, on the contrary, its derogation was associated not so much with changes in long-term quantitative parameters, in particular, territory and population, but with a more dynamic factor of increasing economic power.
Since the recognition of France's equal rights as a great power at the Congress of Aachen in 1822, the European system again assumed its familiar appearance of a “pentarchy” with the following internal divisions implied. The two great powers of the first class were England and Russia, superior to all others due to the advantages of their geopolitical position, the potential of state power and the conduct of an effective foreign policy outside Europe. After the Crimean War, France began to once again lay claim to the role of European leader, while Prussia and Austria, who were in a vulnerable geopolitical position, burdened by mutual rivalry on the German issue, remained the weakest elements of the pentarchy.
In the second half of the 19th century, the number of participants in the Vienna System increased due to another fundamental trend in the development of international relations - nationalization. In particular, a number of new nation states emerged in the Balkans. The most important changes were those that took place directly in the club of great powers, namely the creation of the national states of Germany and Italy. With the rise of Italy, the European system for the first time began to consist of six great powers; The unification of Germany and its developed economic power led to its advancement to the leading roles among the European great powers.
Finally, an absolute innovation was the emergence at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries of non-European great powers - the USA and Japan. By the very fact of their existence, they undermined the idea that great powers represent a certain system, since this system arose in European realities and all the algorithms for its functioning were purely European.
Thus, in a matter of decades, the Vienna system changed at its very core, in terms of the composition of participants: from a “pentarchy” it turned into a “hexarchy”, the weight and status of individual powers underwent rapid changes, and the emergence of the United States and Japan as great powers clearly demonstrated that the Vienna system is not able to fulfill its main function of organizing relations between great powers and that the globalization of international relations has brought them to the threshold of a new quality - the emergence of a world system.
The above-mentioned absence of war as a criterion for the effectiveness of the system immediately indicates its unusualness in comparison with the past - in the 17th and 18th centuries, war, on the contrary, was the main regulator of European balance as the basis of the system. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to understand the fundamental approaches that guided the creators of the Vienna system. The participants in the Congress of Vienna did not set themselves the task of determining the development of international relations for many decades to come. Therefore, when solving the specific task of ending the French threat and the post-war structure of Europe, diplomats were guided by ideas that, for the most part, stemmed from the requirements of a specific situation, but, as it turned out, had a different range of action - some of them had no political perspective, others survived and provided the Vienna system its viability.
One of the fundamental approaches was the idea of restoration . At the same time, we were by no means talking about a complete restoration of the pre-revolutionary order of things - if only because the revolution could return along with it. A direct response to the experience of the revolution were the interconnected principles of legitimism and monarchical solidarity, designed to strengthen the position of monarchs in European countries and, through joint efforts, to prevent the spread of new revolutionary movements. However, the merit of the Congress of Vienna lies largely in the fact that it did not limit itself to direct responses to the challenges of the revolution, but also offered much more flexible options for responding to the experience of the revolution and Napoleon.
The new understanding of balance became especially important. The Congress of Vienna abandoned the previous mechanistic understanding of equilibrium. The new equilibrium had several features. One of the distinctive features of the new understanding of equilibrium was its connection with the internal political situation in European countries. It can be said that the system created in Vienna was based on a double understanding of balance, internal and external, when the subjects of the system were states whose internal development was stabilized through the application of the principle of legitimism proclaimed at the congress. Another characteristic feature of the new equilibrium was the strengthening of the subjective, active moment: from now on the system is consciously regulated .
The regulation of the equilibrium system was carried out primarily with the help of two more innovations. Firstly, this is the practice of holding conferences and congresses, which were actually convened for the purpose of periodic prevention of the system. And secondly, this is the principle of intervention. If in the 18th century the right to intervene in the internal affairs of sovereign states was categorically denied, then at the Congress of Vienna and its adjacent conferences the right of the great powers to intervene in the interests of their own security and European peace was declared. It can be said that the right to intervention particularly clearly demonstrated the difference between the new understanding of equilibrium, with its conscious regulation and connection with domestic politics, from the old one - mechanistic and limited to the external arena.
Finally, another means of maintaining peace and one of the most significant features of the Vienna system was the principle of the “European concert”.
It was based on the idea that balance in the international arena should stem not only from the confrontation of various states, but also from agreement between them. The “Concert of Europe” implied the agreement of the great powers, in the name of preserving the unity of their ranks and thereby the European world, to make concessions and compromises, even to the detriment of some of their own interests, until the status of a great power was threatened. While maintaining the principle of competition as one of the foundations of international relations, for the first time the value of another important principle - cooperation, collaboration - was so clearly recognized, and the system itself was perceived as never before as a relative integrity, as a community bound by certain common interests. The first half of the 19th century was marked by numerous examples of this kind of cooperation, both in fundamental and long-term issues and, above all, in joint opposition to revolutions, and in solving individual problems of international relations - Greek, Belgian, etc.
Thus, the balance of confrontations and compensations of the 18th century was replaced by the balance of containment and compromise of the 19th century. For the first time, the European system was organized preventively as a strategic balance supported by all powers, which excluded the possibility of anyone's hegemony. From the Congress of Vienna and for decades to come, the “Concert of Europe” occupied one of the central places in diplomatic correspondence and, although never existing as an exact mechanism, nevertheless played a significant role in the successful functioning of the Vienna system.
In the first decades of its existence, the Vienna system retained the most characteristic feature of the structure of international relations of previous centuries - a weak center and strong flanks. Moreover, both flanking powers, England and Russia, strengthened their positions so much that some researchers speak in this regard about the emergence of a system of “divided hegemony” [5] , which, however, did not have bipolar antagonism due to the principle of the “European concert” and the presence a number of intermediary institutions.
However, one of the most important achievements of the Vienna system was the new organization of the European center. For centuries, the weak European center served as a kind of shock absorber in the relations of the great powers, allowing ample opportunities for compromise at its own expense, but at the same time the same military-political weakness provoked strong neighbors and was constantly fraught with war. At the Congress of Vienna, a structure was created that preserved the positive and eliminated the negative aspects of the weak European center - the German Confederation. Its structure was designed in such a way that it was too weak to carry out any aggression, but at the same time strong enough to resist any aggression. Thus, the German Confederation not only ensured peace in the center of Europe, but also had an inhibitory, restraining, stabilizing effect on the system as a whole, acting in a passive but necessary role.
The period from 1848/56 to 1878 became a time of crisis for the Vienna system. Its origins were the events of the revolution of 1848 and the Crimean War of 1853-56. The Vienna system had a monarchical legitimist basis and was primarily directed against a repetition of a great European war. Recent experience suggested that such a war could be rooted either in revolution, or in the desire of one of the powers for hegemony, or in the very chaotic nature of the previous system built on the balance of power. From the general desire to avoid war arose the idea of a “concert of Europe,” an idea of relative consensus that was intended to overcome the anarchic nature of international relations.
The events of 1848 marked the beginning of a rapidly developing erosion of the Vienna system, since they broke the seemingly inextricable link between revolution and war. The new “crusade for freedom” - a pan-European revolutionary war on the model of 1792, the prospect of which brought fear to the monarchies - did not take place, and this very fact cast doubt on the need for solidarity between the powers, depriving it of its most important basis. At the same time, the revolution did not bring with it the complete collapse of the Vienna system, which was demonstrated primarily by the final restoration of the territorial and political status quo precisely with reference to the treaties of 1815. However, the main thing was that 1848 showed that the masses were much less susceptible to revolutionary radicalism than it was believed that it was possible to cooperate with the revolution. This meant that with anti-revolutionary solidarity the supranational idea that could be considered a “European interest” disappeared. The great powers drew conclusions from the experience of the 1848 revolution. The “European concert” was replaced by the so-called “realpolitik”.
The term “realpolitik” itself came into circulation after the publication in 1853 of the book “Principles of Realpolitik”, the author of which was L. Rochau, a former stenographer of the Frankfurt National Assembly. “Realpolitik” meant the rejection of cooperation in favor of pursuing exclusively one’s own interests; reliance on data and facts, on sober calculation of risk; denial of the influence on politics of non-political values - morality, ideology, religion. The strength and power of the state acquired particular importance, in the light of which some coercion to consensus present in the Vienna system was perceived as an obstacle to the free development of power.
At the same time, the idea of a nation or, in the language of the era itself, the so-called “principle of nationalities” acquired a new meaning. Without being recorded in any international documents, the “principle of nationality” in international practice, in diplomatic correspondence, gradually - thanks to the widespread dissemination of the national idea, the change of generations of politicians, etc. - becomes the same argument accepted by everyone as legitimism was until recently. For international relations, in particular, this meant that the very idea of the state and its borders was changing. Previously, certain borders were explained by historical law, geographical relief, and the real balance of power. Now nationalism offers a new understanding of the border - the borders of states should be the borders of individual nations, multinational states were declared unnatural and - this is how the idea of legitimacy changes - illegitimate entities. The combination of the “principle of nationalities” and “realpolitik” led to the fact that those questions that the creators of the Vienna system ignored or answered negatively - Italian, German, Polish, Eastern - were again put on the practical agenda. The way to resolve most of them was exactly what the Vienna system was largely built to avoid - war between the great powers.
If the events of 1848 destroyed the anti-revolutionary solidarity of the powers, then the Crimean War destroyed the peculiar taboo on the use of force in their relationships that existed all the years after the Congress of Vienna. A specific, unique period in the history of international relations began when, after several decades of complete abstinence from war, all the great powers, without exception, fought with each other for a decade and a half. The Crimean War, involving Russia, England and France, was followed by the War of France and Piedmont against Austria in 1859, then the Austro-Prussian-Italian War of 1866 and finally the Franco-German War of 1870-71. Wars between the great powers denied the very essence of the “Concert of Europe”, and their political results and, first of all, the formation of a united Germany and Italy practically meant the collapse of the “order of 1815” created in Vienna.
The Great Powers had different views on the prospects for preserving the Vienna System. The main proponent of its preservation was the Habsburg monarchy, since the denial of the “principle of nationality” and legitimism laid at the basis of the Vienna system were ideally combined with the internal structure of Austria, whose numerous nationalities were united mainly by the figure of the emperor. Russia was also one of the main pillars of the Vienna System, however, the infringement of Russia’s position in Europe as a result of the Crimean War, the so-called “Crimean System”, forced it to also demand a revision of the existing European order. Having adopted the program of uniting the German lands under its rule, Prussia, traditionally loyal to it, also abandoned the maxim of preserving the Vienna system. If even Russia and Prussia gradually moved away from unconditional support for the order created in Vienna, France from the very beginning acted as the main revisionist force, since it considered this order to be directed primarily against itself. After 1848 had proven the unfoundedness of fears of revolution, and 1856 had led to the long-term weakening of Russia, England no longer saw the point in close ties with the continent. Its foreign policy began an era of so-called “brilliant isolation,” the most characteristic feature of which was the refusal to conclude any long-term alliances.
The most important event of the second half of the 19th century was the emergence of the Italian and German national states, the methods and results of the creation of which essentially meant the collapse of the political and international legal foundations of the Vienna system. It is not a “European concert” with collective responsibility for peace, but aggressive isolated wars that are changing the face of Europe; the results of these wars are in blatant contradiction with the spirit and letter of the Congress of Vienna, its legal foundations - and are not even sanctioned by the congress or the conference of the great powers.
The role and place of new states in Europe and, more broadly, the problem of ensuring the stability of the system in an era when the “Concert of Europe” practically ceased to exist and its constituent powers acted more and more independently - this is what was now on the European agenda. As a solution to these problems, the Chancellor of the German Empire, Bismarck, proposed something completely new - the creation of a system of long-term alliances.
It was about the change of entire eras in the history of international relations: the Vienna system replaced the international relations of the Old Order with their belief in the natural automatism of balance, with their anarchy and high degree of conflict; By the last decades of the 19th century, the Vienna system itself, with its anti-revolutionary and anti-national orientation, with its desire for consensus and collective action, had exhausted itself. However, there was no return to the anarchy of competing states, since the system received a new international legal and factual basis in the form of long-term alliances created by Bismarck.
Bismarck built a whole system of contradictory alliances that overlapped each other - but this inconsistency itself was supposed to smooth out the real contradictions between the powers. The system allowed conflict but not war, German leadership but not hegemony. Bismarck himself outlined the goal of his system as follows: “so that one sword would sheathe another,” i.e., security and preservation of the status quo in Europe, from the violation of which, in Bismarck’s opinion, Germany would primarily suffer, due to its geographical position in the center of Europe and its political disequilibrium position. And at the same time, despite all the virtuosity of Bismarck, his system turned out to be a temporary phenomenon and was doomed to be dismantled.
The First World War was preceded by a radical reshuffle of forces in Europe, which was based on a complete shift in the axes of traditional alliances and long-term ties in Europe. The connection between St. Petersburg and Berlin, which had existed intermittently since 1813, finally disintegrated, the Anglo-French and Anglo-Russian contradictions that had determined the face of Europe for many decades were resolved, and in their place the Entente appeared - an amazing alliance of three former sworn enemies. Against the backdrop of the disappearance of traditional ones, the emergence of a new antagonism - Anglo-German - was decisive. It was precisely the contradictions with Germany that ultimately formed the basis of the Entente.
The concrete expression of all these structural changes was the confrontation between the two unions. This was the finale of the development of international relations over two and a half centuries: from the spontaneous balance of forces in the early modern period, through the “concert of Europe” during most of the 19th century, through the interpenetration and regulation of the system of alliances in the era of Bismarck, the European system came to a simple dualism of forces. As once during the confrontation between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons, the metaphor of European balance becomes not a complex machine, not the harmony of a “concert”, not Bismarck’s juggling of great powers, but again scales or a swing, where force balances force.
None of the blocks were monolithic; The participants of both the Triple Alliance and the Entente were divided by contradictions; they did not always unconditionally support each other, as, for example, England and Russia in Balkan issues, and Austria-Hungary Germany in colonial issues. On the contrary, there are quite numerous examples of cooperation between countries from opposing blocs. However, of course, another tendency prevailed - the fear of losing an ally. Fearing that their allies would be abandoned to their fate in the face of a hostile coalition, the European powers increasingly showed their readiness to go to great lengths for the sake of the monolithic nature of their own bloc. As a result, alliances lost flexibility, and the complex European system was finally reduced into a simple dualism of forces, the relationships between which were determined by the logic of confrontation and unconditional support for the partner.
The presence of two blocs has narrowed the room for maneuver characteristic of multipolar international relations; on the other hand, the advantage of predictability characteristic of a bipolar system did not arise, since the alliances were not internally cohesive enough, interests varied and there was no unified political will. It was precisely some internal uncertainty of the alliances that made the international situation potentially dangerous, since, on the one hand, there was a threat of an ally being involved in some local conflict and the very fact of its intervention giving it European scope, on the other hand, no one could be completely confident in their partner and, wanting to hold on, followed his support to the end.
Of fundamental importance was the fact that over time the alliances increasingly lost their initially defensive character. This aggressive turn was associated with other characteristic features of the development of international relations before the First World War - the arms race, the specific state of public opinion and an almost continuous series of international crises. Tension in Europe was the result of long-term structural contradictions - Anglo-German, Franco-German, Austro-Russian, etc. - and the crises created a trigger for their détente in the war. The shot in Sarajevo set this mechanism into motion.
[1] Bély L. The art of peace in Europe. Birth of modern diplomacy 16th-18th century. Paris, 2007. P. 225.
[2] Kleinschmidt H. History of international relations. An overview of the history of the system. Stuttgart, 1998. P. 135
[3] On the impact of the French Revolution on international relations, see in more detail: Medyakov A. S. History of international relations in modern times. M., 2007. S. 84#100.
[4] Doering-Manteufel A. The German question and the European state system. Munich, 2001.
[5] Schroeder P. W. The transformation of European politics, 1763#1848. Oxford, 1994.