When the 19th Century is mentioned, people usually recall two periods of time: the Napoleonic Wars (1805 - 1815) and the Victorian Era (1837 - 1903). The German nation was a key player on the international stage during both periods. It started off the century as the Holy Roman Empire; a patchwork of an ancient political relic dating back to the time of Charlemagne and Otto the Great during the 1st Millenium. By the end of the century the German nation was in two: one, dominated by the militant Prussians, famed for its Germanness, the German Empire; the other, ruled by the ancient House of Habsburg, famed for its diversity, the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Between the Napoleonic and Victorian periods there is a lesser known third, which played its part as a transitional era. It was a crucial period of history, the Age of Metternich.
Klemens von Metternich, arguably the greatest diplomat to ever live, Chancellor, Foreign Minister and de facto ruler of the Austrian Empire, is the namesake of this Age. His achievements are many, the greatest of which would be his restructuring of the international order following the defeat of France in 1814.
Metternich’s Austria contributed significantly to the defeat of Napoleon and the end of French hegemony. In June 1813, half a year after the annihilation of Napoleon’s forces in the catastrophic invasion of Russia, Metternich met Napoleon in Dresden and made extensive demands of territorial concessions in exchange for Austrian neutrality. When this was refused, Metternich led Austria into the Sixth Coalition against France, culminating in the Battle of Leipzig: seeing over half a million combatants and exceeding one hundred thousand casualties. The Battle of the Nations, as it was known, crippled France’s war effort and spelled its doom. France proper was invaded the following year and after his defeat Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba.
Often in history the victorious parties turn on each other antebellum due to differences and disputes over the spoils of war, for example Bulgaria turning on its former allies, Serbia and Greece, at the end of the First Balkan War (1912 - 1913), and the outbreak of the Second Balkan War (1913). Similar events nearly occurred, as the end of French dominance meant that its former conquests were up for grabs. Each country during the peace conference had their own aims and desires for the post-war order, and many of those interests were contradictory. Said peace conference was known as the Congress of Vienna, and Metternich was its chair.
The outbreak of another war was averted through complex diplomacy. Concessions were given and made. Prussia annexed large parts of Saxony, but the Saxon state remained as an independent nation. Russia took over most of Poland through the Congress Kingdom, which was in personal union with Russia. Austria made significant territorial gains in Italy that would last two generations until the unification of Italy.
The peace conference was ultimately a success for the victors. No country emerged being overly powerful, especially Russia, which was distrusted by Austria and Britain. This was in-line with British interests, who would begin the policy of what would later be known as splendid isolation in less than ten years. What emerged from the Congress of Vienna was a new era in diplomatic history. It created a new balance of power aimed to prevent another great power war similar to the Seven Years War (1756 - 1763) or the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792 - 1815), and it was indeed successful. Great powers did go to war with one another, with an example being the Crimean War (1853 - 1856), but it was not on the same scale. The next time that all great powers were at war was the First World War ninety-nine years later. This is in contrast with the pre-Vienna world, where even before the French Revolution the great powers (and former great powers, such as Spain and the Netherlands) were all at war with one another approximately once every thirty or so years.
It can be concluded that Metternich’s Congress of Vienna had successfully established a new order, and indeed did prevent another major conflict for almost a century, but another of his goals was not achieved as successfully. The Congress wanted to prevent another revolution from ever happening, and so the new system was reactionary. Metternich, who was conservative even for his time, spent the rest of his career combating liberalism and nationalism, especially in Northern Italy.
His efforts to quell these newer, emerging ideologies would ultimately fail, as in 1848 a wave of revolutions spread across the continent, causing widespread regime changes. When the revolutions made their way to Vienna, Metternich was forced to resign by a liberal mob, ending a career that had lasted over half a century.
The view of historians on Metternich is a very wide spectrum. Politicians and diplomats, however, often have their interests drawn towards him: Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State, wrote his doctoral dissertation on Metternich. Kissinger was in a line of US foreign policy realists, such as George F. Kennan, Hans Morgenthau and later Zbigniew Brzezinski. Metternich, of course, was a political realist and a subscriber to realpolitik.
Political realism was the driving force behind the US’ foreign policy approach towards the Soviet Bloc. Under its influence, the Truman administration adopted the Truman Doctrine and NSC 68, advocating for a global containment of communism through a variety of means, particularly military ones. The following Eisenhower administration pursued a rollback approach, seeking regime change in Communist states as well as developing the nuclear doctrine of massive retaliation. The Eisenhower administration was also influenced by then-Secretary of State John F. Dulles’ strategy of brinkmanship.
The zero-sum thinking realism in the late 1940s and 50s brought the US to conflict with the Soviet Bloc with the policies of rollback and containment, and brought future US administrations to the opposite policy of détente in the 1970s. Richard Nixon and the aforementioned Kissenger were both pragmatic realists with the realpolitik approach, and détente was viewed as the pragmatic answer. The goals of previous administrations were no longer seen as realistic, and the Nixon administration stressed less about ideological differences and turned towards interest-based diplomacy. This resulted in Nixon and Kissinger’s visits to China and the USSR, as well as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT).
The more ideologically driven realism of Truman and Eisenhower experienced a resurgence under the administration of Ronald Reagan. Reagan was significantly more confrontational towards Moscow unlike his predecessors, as could be seen in his 1993 ‘Evil Empire’ speech. The Reagan administration pursued policies of rollback and containment, demonstrated by its backing of anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan as well as Central and South America. The Reagan administration saw neoconservatism rise to prominence, and it would outlast the Cold War.
History did not end at the turn of the millennium. Indeed, the US for around twenty years, following the fall of the Iron Curtain and the dissolution of the Soviet Union dominated a unipolar world. That is no longer the case.
George W. Bush, unlike his predecessor Bill Clinton, was a realist. His eight years in the Oval Office saw the apex of neoconservatism, and he was surrounded by hawkish figures such as Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfield and Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz. General Wesley Clark, NATO’s former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, alleged that there was a plan to take out seven countries in five years. If this allegation is true, it would show the extent of hawkish foreign policy at the time of American unipolarity.
With the end of American unipolarity, political realism and realpolitik only become more worthy of studying. Joe Biden is the most realist Democratic president since 1969. His predecessor and soon-to-be successor, Donald Trump, is considered by many to be a subscriber to realpolitik. It is worth noting, however, that Trump is more aligned with paleoconservatism over neoconservatism.
Realism is not confined to the US. The top three countries with the most realist-driven foreign policy are arguably the US, Russia, and China, which coincidentally are the world’s most key players in great power politics. Some look at Washington’s relationship with Beijing through the lens of the Thucydides Trap theory, which holds that historically most of the time an emerging power challenges an established power, it leads to war.
Famed realist academic and political scientist John J. Mearsheimer attributes the ongoing war in Ukraine to a Russian realist geopolitical plan. Carl von Clausewitz described war as a continuation of politics.
If one draws parallels between the post-Napoleonic system, established by Metternich, and that of the post-WW2 system, featuring the United Nations, it can be observed that the world is becoming increasingly unstable. Metternich’s system lasted ninety-nine years until the outbreak of the First World War. Up until today, the post-WW2 system has lasted seventy-nine years. Could the current international system be coming to an end? Could it hold for another two decades? Or will we avoid the horrors of another great power war? With time, the answer shall be revealed.