After Victory

"This book studies post-war settlements such as the Congress of Vienna after the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the Versailles Treaty at the close of World War I, and the order that emerged at the close of World War II. Ikenberry attempts to theorise about order-building in the international system, how bargains, treaties, and other kinds of compacts can tame geo-political rivalry. These two books were important in how I came to write my most recent book, How Enemies Become Friends. This explores when and how bitter rivals are able to find their way to peace. I examine the magical moments in history in which war is eliminated between rivals, in which their relations are demilitarised, in which the prospect of conflict is near zero. And I think these last two books gave me an arsenal of ideas to go after these questions. I think that one of the most important findings of my book is that rivalries come to an end and are replaced by friendship through diplomacy not through coercion. There was a big debate between Barack Obama and John McCain during the US presidential election about whether you should talk to adversaries like Iran. Looking at 20 cases in my book I find that the answer is yes, unequivocally, the best way to get to peace without war is through negotiation. One of the key concepts in the book is that the practice of strategic restraint is a central ingredient of making peace: powers need to accommodate each other in order to step away from rivalry. They need to find ways of making concessions to each other in a way that sends signals of benign intent. After a period of trading concessions and building up a certain level of mutual understanding, the process then becomes more sociological. Then the societies in question start to interact with each other – and eventually the political discourse changes. For example, Britain and the United States were rivals for well over a century. They started down the path of rapprochement in 1896 and by 1902-1903 leaders on both sides were talking about war between the two countries as being like a Civil War or war between brothers. In less than a decade Anglo-American rivalry was tamed – and the practices of animosity were replaced by practices of kinship."