Have politicians always ruined the work of soldiers? The Oxbridge Group write up

Many thanks to Gareth Thomas for writing this up…

This week’s session mainly focussed on the effect the involvement of politicians had on peace treaties. The main questions asked were:

What makes a lasting peace treaty?
Why have so many treaties in the past failed?
Is the failure of a peace treaty due to poor planning on behalf of the main players involved, i.e. politicians?
Why do politicians tend to ‘screw up’ when it comes to peace treaties?

The session started with a detailed look at Iraq. The group was dissolved into pairs whereupon each pair would compare/contrast/discuss, and produced five reasons why the current situation in Iraq can be classed as a failure.

There were a copious amount of reasons given that were both reasoned, relevant and valid. Namely:

That Iraq has had no democratic backdrop throughout its history and, therefore, has nothing to base its revised system of rule on.
That the country is riddled with deep social cleavages and is a divided country, with only a consociationalist model of democracy being a viable way of rule (as opposed to the currently proposed Westminster model).
The session then moved onto a debate on a wider scale. The room was divided physically (one side of the table ‘for’ the other ‘against’). The question at hand was ‘Whether politicians always manage to ‘screw up’ peace treaties’. Each debating unit would pose arguments for and arguments against, and then find a middle ground to which a reasoned compromise could be drafted.

Again, many relevant and insightful points were made. Specific examples of treaties used on both sides of the argument were:

The Treaty Of Utrecht
The Peace Of Westphalia
The Congress Of Vienna
The Treaty Of Versailles
The Treaty Of Paris (1856 and 1763)
The general conclusion was that peace treaties or endings of war have been consistently categorised into two lasting models: Carthaginian Peace and Insignificant Reparations. The latter consists of punishing the losing side with insignificant punishments. This is typical of the polarization that exists, where the opposing side is either destroyed completely or let off unpunished. The failure of politicians, in this regard, can be excused as their job would seem near impossible. They have the task of finding a middle ground between these two extremes. Most would argue, therefore, that a lasting peace treaty on a significant scale cannot be achieved by politicians using moderate means. 

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