Comment by robjwells
4 days ago
Yes, where would we be without the rules-based international order? Perhaps we would be watching videos every day of children blown apart by weapons of war.
4 days ago
Yes, where would we be without the rules-based international order? Perhaps we would be watching videos every day of children blown apart by weapons of war.
Those videos are occurring because of a major power hypocritically flouting the rules-based international order. In spite of it, not because of it. We know the counterfactual of the rules-based order. It's nonstop European warfare in the 19th and the early 20th centuries.
The time between the Napoleon wars and WW1 (1815-1914) was very peaceful in Europe. Absolutely not nonstop warfare!
Maybe not nonstop warfare, but there was still a lot of violence going on. European powers were engaged in more-or-less nonstop warfare overseas in their empires, but maybe you're excusing that because those weren't in Europe.
In Europe itself, you have quite major conflicts in the Franco-Prussian War, Austro-Prussian War, and the Crimean War, plus more minor conflicts around the unification (more like conquest) of Italy, the independence of various Balkan states from the Ottoman Empire starting with Greece, Prussia's war against Denmark. And then you have all of the internal civil wars or strife people usually don't call outright wars, but in the 19th century, were often quite violent. The Revolutions of 1848, for example. Or France switching governments four times (July Monarchy, Second Republic, Second Empire, Third Republic) after the restored monarchy, all of them quite violent transitions.
Not to mention the fact that the stresses of urbanization and concomitant social changes provoked a lot of resistance from the lower classes, which was often quite violent. It's not until well into the 20th century that major strikes don't involve lots of bloodshed!
19th century Europe is only peaceful relative to the quite bloody conflicts that bookended the time period, which themselves rank among the bloodiest conflicts in all of human history.
7 replies →
> The time between the Napoleon wars and WW1 (1815-1914) was very peaceful in Europe.
If, when you talk about "Europe", you exclude Spain and also Greece, the Balkans, and much of Eastern Europe, sure, the powers in "Europe" did most off their fighting in colonial wars in the period rather than at home (they did a quite a lot of fighting in colonial wars, though.)
> (1815-1914) was very peaceful in Europe. Absolutely not nonstop warfare!
No, absolutely not. This is factually incorrect.
Crimean War 1853-1856? Austro-Prussian War 1866? Italian Wars for Independence throghout the 19th century?
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Europe was busy conquering their colonial empire.
Yep, and UN had been expressing "serious concerns" every time. Although I haven't heard even those for a long time.
I can sympathize the with the cynicism, because I also see the bombing of Ukraine and Gaza in the daily news, which nobody seems to be capable or willing to stop.
Unlike Solferino, there are children dying on a daily basis, which breaks my heart. Yet it remains true that what Dunant has established is a better state than the world would have been in if he had done nothing.
Solferino was a big and cruel battle by the standards of its time, but not by today's standards - in stats: 150,000 men against 150,000 men, 24 km battle front fighting through one night, resulting in 6,000 dead, 2,000 wounded and 12,000 missing [1] (but note Solferino today has less than 2,600 inhabitants today). So a joke if compared to WWII stats. But the point here is a single individual made a difference, and beyond their lifetime, and that should give us some hope.
[1] https://www.kvwuerzburg.brk.de/das-brk/selbstverstaendnis/di...
>but note Solferino today has less than 2,600 inhabitants today
Solferino (like other places nearby where battles have been fought or where armies marched) has always been a very small town with "vast" extensions of cultivable area or pastures around. That (uninterrupted plain ground) explains a battle front so extended.