In 1999, a seemingly innocuous speech occurred in Chicago that unveiled a new paradigm in world affairs that was dubbed “the Blair Doctrine”. In this speech, Blair asserted that the realities of the new age of terrorism had rendered the respect for sovereign nation states irrelevant and obsolete requiring a superior doctrine compatible with the need to periodically bomb sovereign nations you don’t like. This new age of humanitarian bombings would be called “the post-Westphalian age”.
Recalling this speech in 2004, Blair mused “before Sept. 11, I was already reaching for a different philosophy in international relations from a traditional one that has held sway since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648; namely, that a country’s internal affairs are for it, and you don’t interfere unless it threatens you, or breaches a treaty, or triggers an obligation of alliance.”
Blair’s original anti-Westphalia speech in 1999 was occuring at moment that a fanatical sect of neocons was preparing to usher in a “New American Century” with a new focus on a Pearl Harbor moment that would justify a new Crusade of never ending wars in Southwest Asia. One of the principle doctrines for this age involved invoking raging fires of war and hatred between Arab and Jew which is what animated Richard Perle’s “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” as a strategic battle plan for Israel’s new Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Cynthia Chung writes that the “Clean Break policy document outlined these goals: 1) Ending Yasser Arafat’s and the Palestinian Authority’s political influence, by blaming them for acts of Palestinian terrorism 2) Inducing the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. 3) Launching war against Syria after Saddam’s regime is disposed of 4) Followed by military action against Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.”
This hellish plan to light the middle east on fire was in many ways made possible by the 1995 murder of Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin (by a radical zionist fanatic) and the American-Israeli creation of Hamas as an anti-Arafat movement which would offset Yasser Arafat’s tendency to find long term solutions with Israeli peacemakers like Rabin as witnessed by the efforts to create a two-state solution and Oslo Accords in 1993.
This tendency for peace between neighboring faiths had to be stopped at all costs.
Rules Based Dis-order vs Westphalia’s Peace among Faiths
By now, we all know the name for this unipolar doctrine and the smoldering wave of destruction and death that it justified for the ensuing two decades.
What is less understood is the nature of the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 which Blair referred to as an obsolete doctrine in desperate need of replacing.
Since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia set the foundations for the later UN Charter drafted by Franklin Roosevelt and Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles in 1941 and since both this 1648 treaty and the UN Charter have been systemically targeted for destruction by Borg-like armies of “International Rule of Law” advocates pushing R2P and a Great Reset onto the world, let us take a moment to ask: What is the Treaty of Westphalia? How did it transform world history? And why is it’s defense so necessary in today’s crisis-ridden world?
The Peace of Westphalia: Phase Shift in World History
Before the Westphalian Treaty, Europe was bereft in chaos and war.
Not only did the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) eliminate over one third of the German population, but an additional century of religious war had set fire to Europe starting with the Knights Revolt of 1522 and the German Peasants War of 1524 that saw up to 300 thousand protestant peasants killed.
Before blowing up in Germany, Protestant vs Catholic wars had ravaged France between 1562-1598 during a devastating period of chaos that came to be known as “the Little Dark Age”, only coming to an end through the wise diplomatic maneuvers of King Henry IV of Navarre. It was Henry IV, along side his lead advisor Maximilien de Bethune (aka: Duke of Sully) who reformed France by establishing religious tolerance in the famous 1598 Edict of Nantes (removing Lutheranism and Calvanism from the list of heresies), while clamping down on corruption, banning usury, ending speculation, banning high rents and investing in internal improvements with a focus on textile manufacturing and agricultural reforms.
The burst of economic growth generated by these reforms doubled the revenues of France within 12 years and revived the spirit of the great nation-building king Louis XI turning France from a house divided in Civil War into a unified state that won the admiration of all the people of Europe (and the disdain of the financier oligarchy). Henry IV also clearly aimed to revive the traditions of the Great Charlemagne who was the last monarch to unite all of Europe under a common principle of law, when he said that Europe should become “a Christian republic, entirely peaceful within itself”.
Sadly, Henry IV’s murder by “a lone assassin” in 1610 left a power vacuum and soon the religious wars grew once again out of control in Europe. This time however, they were concentrated in the more fertile soils of the highly fragmented Holy Roman Empire then occupying most of today’s Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, and Poland. Unlike today’s Germany, the land that blew up in religious conflict during these dark years was dominated by small-minded warlord Princes and Dukes whose power was contingent on how many mercenaries they could hire and land they could steal. In total, over 350 tiny states and principalities existed along with 2000 jurisdictions which divided the Holy Roman Empire under an array of mini sovereignties with no conception of a greater whole. [see map]
To say that the 30 years war was of a purely religious nature is an over-simplified error that many are want to make.
As outlined brilliantly by historian Pierre Beaudry, throughout the conflict, Catholic Bourbons of France often used Protestant Proxies in Germany to fight Spanish (Catholic) Hapsburgs that were territorial rivals over low countries or Poland. Meanwhile the absence of any rules of territorial sovereignty welcomed constant infringement of factions onto each other’s lands. Austro-Hungarian Habsburg emperors constantly pushed expansionist policies and Venetian games were often played on the Baltic and Black Seas while both Venetian, Dutch and other purse strings were funding all warring sides throughout the years of chaos.
Needless to say, it was a disaster that was clearly sending Europe on a fast track towards a new dark age.
By 1609, the world’s first private central bank of Amsterdam was established along with the Dutch East India Company, which soon merged with the British East India Company and established a global maritime empire, where Venice had formerly been the dominant center of banking, world trade, controller of bullion and maritime choke points.
In reality, the same forces of Venice (and their sister “city state” of Genoa) were largely behind the reallocation of imperial command centers from the Venetian Levant Company to the Netherlands and thence to England (where the later takeover was finalized during the 1688 ‘Glorious Revolution’ and the 1694 founding of the Bank of England as I outlined in my article the Art of Political Lying.)
Realizing that a profound change was required to end this slide into hell, forces yearning to revive the policies of Louis XI and Henry IV and unite Europe in peaceful co-existence were organized around France’s Prime Minister Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602-1661) and his young protégé Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1616-1683). Beginning in 1642, Mazarin began a tedious process of organizing for the Treaty of Westphalia offering to serve as peace broker, lead negotiator and guarantor of religious freedoms for all parties, finally arranging the signing to occur in two locations on October 24, 1648, where protestant signators met in Osnabrück and Catholic signators met in Münster.
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