Word: westphalians
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...People’s Republic, for its part, adamantly invokes the Westphalian defense that, unlike America or the World Bank, it doesn’t involve itself in the internal affairs of other nations. Yet such invasive preconditions suggest otherwise. The terms of Chinese loans certainly put limitations on African sovereignty, just not on African corruption...
...Students of international relations call this the "Westphalian system," after the 1648 Peace of Westphalia that ended Europe's Thirty Years War, a time of indescribable carnage waged in the name of competing religions. The treaties that ended the war put domestic arrangements - like religion - off limits to other states. In the war's aftermath a rough-and-ready commitment to a balance of power among neighbors took shape. Kissinger is a noted scholar of the balance of power. And he is suspicious of attempts to meddle in the internal business of others. In a book that drips with devastating...
...Kissinger is far too sophisticated to attempt to recreate a world that is lost. "Today," he writes, "the Westphalian order is in systematic crisis." In particular, nation-states are no longer the sole drivers of the international system. In some cases, groups of states - like the European Union or Mercosur - have developed their own identities and agendas. Economic globalization has both blurred the boundaries between nations and given a substantial international role to those giant companies for whom such boundaries make little sense. In today's world, individuals can be as influential as nations; future historians may consider the support...
...changes are profound. Kissinger is right to note that globalization has undermined the role of the nation-state less in the case of the U.S. (Why? Because it's more powerful than anyone else.) Elsewhere, the old ways of thinking about the "national interest" - that guiding light of the Westphalian system - have fewer adherents than they once did. Not long ago, the national interest of, say, the Netherlands could be defined by a necessity to protect Dutch blood and soil. It would be absurd to imagine that the modern Dutch think that way now. For a sensible Dutch government...
Lagerfeld, on the face of things, is used to being happy. Certainly he has had a lifetime of being rich. Born in Hamburg to an elegant Westphalian mother and a father who owned one of Europe's largest dairy companies, young Karl grew up in the countryside of Schleswig-Holstein, taught by tutors. When he was twelve, his mother went to Hamburg to inroll him in art school. Karl wanted to be a portrait painter, but the art school director pointed out that "your son isn't interested in art, he's only interested in clothes." Lagerfeld...