​A changing world order

Three centuries ago, the European continent’s sovereign powers were divided after a hundred years of religious conflict, sectarianism and monumental political change that resulted in the chaotic Thirty Years’ War. The revolutionary allure of the Protestant Reformation and its challenge to the universality of the dominance of Roman Catholicism gave rise to a series of conflicts between feudal lords who adopted Protestantism and Catholic sovereigns who viewed the rebellion as heretical and, of course, against their own self-interest.

In the Game of Thrones series, King Tommen Baratheon, the First of His Name, proclaims, “The Crown and the Faith are the twin pillars upon which the world rests.” The old European continental order upon which the “two swords” of the empire and the papacy ruled now risked disintegration as the geopolitical equilibrium established by the Habsburg Empire faced a new threat. After three decades of war, millions of people in Central Europe had their lives ended amidst the war’s bloodshed, spread of disease and incessant hunger.

In turn, the war’s end gave birth to a series of agreements including the Treaty of Osnabrück and the Treaty of Münster at the German region of Westphalia which became known as the Peace of Westphalia altogether. Westphalian principles based on national self-determination had prevailed as the idea of an empire, universal religious order or familial dynasty ruling over other states was laid to rest as a new vision of sovereign states acting without the interference of other states became reality.

Yet, this new balance of power faced problems of its own as sovereigns imposed their will on the people they ruled. The climax of this issue culminated in the French Revolution where the people rose up against the monarchy and, ultimately, returned sovereignty to the citizenry. The nation-state was thereby born, as was the conflict between nationalism and globalism that lasts to this day in the European disequilibrium wrought by the the recent Brexit vote.

Two centuries after the end of the Thirty Years’ War brought yet another conflict that would not only ravage Europe, but the entire world. The rise of Adolf Hitler and the imperial ambitions of the Axis powers sought to subjugate world order once more under unilateral control. Fortunately, the moral righteousness of the Allied powers prevailed, led by the United States. Nonetheless, tens of millions of people lost their lives as hegemonic power was failingly pursued yet again by Nazi Germany. Westphalian principles faded away in postwar Europe as Prime Minister Winston Churchill envisaged a “United States of Europe” that eventually resulted in the formation of the European Union in order to avoid the death and destruction of another continental conflict.

Originally conceived as a force for unity and mitigating conflict, the decisions from Brussels—the headquarters of many EU institutions and the unofficial EU capital—have become a main domestic political issue in many European nations. Integration has resembled invasion as migration policies have fanned the flames of xenophobia, led to the rise of populist nationalism and aggravated the economic anxieties of the working-class. The creation of a common currency with a central bank without a common treasury led to far-from-equilibrium economic woes seen in Greece and throughout the eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis. The recent referendum results in the United Kingdom have proven that people are willing to vote against their economic self-interest rather than “confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves,” as President Ronald Reagan once remarked.

Brexit has even engendered similar calls for referendums by politicians in France and the Netherlands that only bring further uncertainty to the European project. Contemporary geopolitics necessitates international cooperation and risks preventable conflict if nations fail to work together. The divisive social forces of the Thirty Years’ War led to a regional order based on the principle of sovereignty. The violent forces of the second World War formed a European order on the precept of harmony and stability while internal conflict threatens to undermine it today. Europe requires unifying leadership, a reorientation of its mission and a revitalized vigor to strengthen the EU once more. The six decades of advancing peace, democracy and human rights since the European Union’s inception and the end of humanity’s bloodiest conflict must not be forgotten.

In his first inaugural address on March 4, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln addressed the secession of seven states of the Confederacy from the Union and asked, “Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens, than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.”