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this strategy is leading and why. And, third, he must act at the outer edge of the possible, bridging the gap between his society’s experiences and its aspirations. Because repetition of the familiar leads to stagnation, no little daring is required.
THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA
     
    In our time, the Peace of Westphalia has acquired a special resonance as the path breaker of a new concept of international order thathas spread around the world. The representatives meeting to negotiate it were more focused at the time on considerations of protocol and status.
    By the time representatives of the Holy Roman Empire and its two main adversaries, France and Sweden, agreed in principle to convene a peace conference, the conflict had ground on for twenty-three years. Another two years of battle transpired before the delegations actually met; in the meantime, each side maneuvered to strengthen its allies and internal constituencies.
    Unlike other landmark agreements such as the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15 or the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the Peace of Westphalia did not emerge from a single conference, and the setting was not one generally associated with a gathering of statesmen pondering transcendent questions of world order. Mirroring the variety of contenders in a war that had ranged from Spain to Sweden, the peace emerged from a series of separate arrangements made in two different Westphalian towns. Catholic powers, including 178 separate participants from the different states constituting the Holy Roman Empire, gathered in the Catholic city of Münster. Protestant powers gathered in the mixed Lutheran and Catholic city of Osnabrück, roughly thirty miles away. The 235 official envoys and their staffs took up residence in whatever rooms they could find in the two small cities, neither of which had ever been considered suitable for a large-scale event, let alone a congress of all European powers. The Swiss envoy “lodged above a wool weaver’s shop in a room that stank of sausage and fish oil,” while the Bavarian delegation secured eighteen beds for its twenty-nine members. With no official conference head or mediator and no plenary sessions, representatives met on an ad hoc basis and traveled in a neutral zone between the two cities to coordinate positions, sometimes meeting informally in towns in the middle. Some of the major powers stationed representatives in both cities. Combat continued invarious parts of Europe throughout the talks, with shifting military dynamics affecting the course of the negotiations.
    Most representatives had come with eminently practical instructions based on strategic interests. While they employed almost identical high-minded phrases about achieving a “peace for Christendom,” too much blood had been spilled to conceive of reaching this lofty goal through doctrinal or political unity. It was now taken for granted that peace would be built, if at all, through balancing rivalries.
    The Peace of Westphalia that emerged from these convoluted discussions is probably the most frequently cited diplomatic document in European history, though in fact no single treaty exists to embody its terms. Nor did the delegates ever meet in a single plenary session to adopt it. The peace is in reality the sum of three separate complementary agreements signed at different times in different cities. In the January 1648 Peace of Münster, Spain recognized the independence of the Dutch Republic, capping an eight-decades-long Dutch revolt that had merged with the Thirty Years’ War. In October 1648, separate groupings of powers signed the Treaty of Münster and the Treaty of Osnabrück, with terms mirroring each other and incorporating key provisions by reference.
    Both of the main multilateral treaties proclaimed their intent as “a Christian, universal, perpetual, true, and sincere peace and friendship” for “the glory of God and the security of Christendom.” The operative terms were not substantially