Yeah. So I'll talk about a project that was started in 2016 by Brendan Simmons, Michael Axworthy and myself,
a West Valley Families and About a book which we recently published,
which is in many ways the product of this workshop that we've been running so far.
And so basically, in a nutshell, we're asking the question,
what can one learn from the historical knowledge of the 30 Years War and the Peace of West failure in order to promote peace in the Middle East today?
I think it's perhaps quite fitting that I'm speaking at the seminar series, which examines the changing character of war,
because one of the analytical starting points of our project is the notion
that the nature of warfare and conflict that existed in early modern Europe,
especially during the 30 years war and before that,
is remarkably similar to the kind of conflicts that existed in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as the Sahel region today.
So, of course, we're not saying that the character voted in favour of colons.
They were arguing basically in a simplified form that the nature of warfare changed
after about the mid-17th century and has now reverted to this earlier mode,
this earlier constellation and typology that existed in the 16th and 17th centuries.
But I'll come back to this point a bit later,
but basically these parallels and analogies that form the the premise of the Endeavour
to apply peacemaking lessons to the Middle East from the knowledge of West Haven.
Another reason, apart from these these parallels, I think, is the the remarkably ambitious nature of the Peace of Westphalia.
It was convened as a universal Congress in order to achieve a universal peace between all Christian powers in Europe.
At that time, it didn't quite achieve this war continue between France and Spain for another 11 years,
but it did successfully solve a complex nexus of conflicts in Central Europe and the main theatre of the 30 Years War.
Many of these complex were very deep rooted, which at times seemed insurmountable,
perhaps as unsurmountable as the obstacles to general peace in the contemporary Middle East.
For example, some of the negotiating parties never even recognised the status of their counterparts,
yet peace was achieved, despite the fact that not all warring parties had reached a state of exhaustion,
and despite the fact that it became clear during the negotiations that the hope for all encompassing peace would not be attained because two,
that the parties continued fighting.
And also, despite the fact that there was never even a cease fire in place during the entire duration of the negotiations,
which lasted for about five years. And this ambitious character of the Peace Congress makes its destructive potential all the more valuable,
especially in light of those similarities that I just mentioned.
The success of Westphalia, derived from a recalibrated and optimised setup,
which it established for the polity about which the war was was essentially fought the Holy Roman Empire.
It was a negotiated compromise settlement which established a functioning power sharing arrangements between the Emperor and the princes,
between the different confessional groups, and established a sort of a system of limited conditional rights of governmental rule within the Empire,
while placing the whole settlement under a general guarantee, a mutual guarantee.
Um, and also it crucially decoupled the,
the Central European and the German or imperial problems relating to the Holy Roman Empire from ongoing geopolitical conflict elsewhere.
So it set up the Holy Roman Empire as a shared space as opposed to a contested space which had been before.
So what I'll do now is I'll tell you first a little bit about the the project that we've been running and its events before.
Then giving you an outline of the conceptual work that we've been doing, which is mainly relates to this analogy that we're positing between the.
30 year war on the Middle East today. And then I'll look at I'll explain to you some of this more explicitly prescriptive elements of the project,
the sort of practical lessons that we're proposing, which we derive from what, failure and 30 years war.
And I'd hoped to be seen as as a source of inspiration for a new regional peace settlement or even a new regional order in the Middle East.
So the project, as I mentioned, was launched at the beginning of 2016.
We wrote this inaugural article for The New Statesman, and I conducted a series of seminars in London and Cambridge over the course of that year.
And then we wrote another article for Foreign Affairs, which summed up the results of those early seminars.
We then teamed up with the Cover Foundation, which is a political think tank foundation based in Germany,
and organised a series of a further series of workshops in late 2016 and very 2017,
including this one here at with the then Foreign Minister of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, attended, who's now the president.
You can see him on the top left corner.
That was the White House.
And incidentally, opposite him here, I think it's one of these guys was with him is Jamal Khashoggi, who was recently murdered, of course.
And yes, so the foreign ministry has been another who was a collaborator and partner during the the the tenure of Steinmeier as foreign minister.
And one of the things that he often would would explain during speeches was that this well,
the German foreign ministry's involvement, at least in the project, derived from an explicit call from the region.
He used to tell the story of attending a conference in Jeddah and being told by a young Saudi that what this region needs is its own westphalia.
So the Germans sort of like to emphasise that in order to underline the fact that it's not some sort of external imposition,
but rather a reaction to a call from the region itself.
One of the workshops that we held took place in Amman, where the chief of the Jordanian court, as well, as well as the king's brother took place.
That took part and it was also a small was fairly for the Middle East event on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference of 2017,
where the panel included the UN Special Envoy for Syria and also the Secretary General for the Arab League.
So most of these participants were politicians, diplomats, academics and journalists from across the Middle East, but also Europe and North America.
It is as a result of these discussions that we wrote our book.
This was not something that was sort of chiefly designed by us in February,
but this is something that arose as a result of these workshop discussions.
Looking ahead, what we want to do is to sort of continue the intellectual conceptual work with a new series of workshops,
but also we want to try and enhance the practical application for the Middle East.
We want to ideally see one or more states endorse the concept as an official foreign policy objective,
which will then hopefully result in the sort of Congress that we that we envisage.
So moving on to the the parallels and analogies which, as I mentioned, formed the sort of analytical starting point of the concept.
In other words, this is why we believe these similarities.
These these parallels are why it makes sense to look at the historical experience of the 30
Years War in order to open up new avenues for policymaking towards or within the Middle East.
Of course, we're aware of differences that exist over time and space, and the historical analogies are often very imprecise and rather abstract.
But one of the biggest differences, perhaps, was that in Central Europe, the the the Piece of Westphalia was dealing with the Holy Roman Empire,
which was a normative unity, which had an uncredited head and which had an order of peaceful legality that existed since the 15th century.
And all Germans accepted in principle that this was an order that needed to be re-established.
And this degree of normative cohesion and consensus is probably lacking in the Middle East,
which makes the idea of having a westphalia for the Middle East more more challenging.
But a lot of the participants noted that the Middle East should not really be seen as some sort of blank slate either,
and that there are normative sort of unit, the unifying normative elements that can be drawn upon traditions such as, you know,
of course, the factor of Islam, the awareness of being part of a post Ottoman space.
And in a recent book, Malik Dashlane has argued that the key drivers of region of western Saudi Arabia might serve as some kind of internationalised,
integrative space, which, he writes, might facilitate a reordering of the region according to Westphalian lines.
So the analogy consists mainly of two areas.
So first of all,
we have structural parallels and then the role of religion as well as a few others that can't really be ordered into into either of those.
So for us, for the structural parallels,
one of the most striking similarities between now and then is that there was a concurrent or merging of multiple typologies of conflicts,
and this has recently been argued in a new book by a political scientist have the perfect metaphor.
So you have a combination of state and state laws, internal rebellions, civil wars,
proxy wars, external interventions in civil wars, state building wars,
struggles for greater political participation and freedom,
religiously infused wars as well as geopolitical conflicts driven by a real political another similarity similarities.
The complexity of these conflicts with numerous actors of varying statuses factions, state actors, non-state actors,
substate factors, fighting asymmetrical power conflicts in a multi-polar international environment.
So the classic state of the state wars of the 19th and 20th centuries saw centrally organised, unified states fighting each other.
These are the conflicts that we're seeing now, especially in the Middle East and parts of Africa,
are seemingly reverting to the earlier modes of the 17th century,
whereby there is fighting for within states,
for the religious and constitutional setup of those states that already we quote
today be termed failed states fighting beginning with internal rebellions,
struggles for greater political participation, which then escalates into civil wars, followed by proxy wars,
followed by external interventions, which then draw in the regional powers and create a more widespread conflict.
So this was the case with the unrest rebellions in the Hapsburg lands,
which then turned into the 30 Years War as well as the Arab Spring rebellions, which then morphed into the wars that we're seeing today.
Another parallel is the sort of the way in which these conflicts escalate.
So it was the case in Bohemia, as well as in the Dutch rebellion, but also in Yemen, in Syria,
that they they start with civil wars involving struggles for what is perceived as against tyrannical rule,
which then draw in outside powers and as I mentioned, create these these bigger sort of escalations through intervention.
And this has been the case in both cases.
So you have a situation whereby X instability is exported while intervention is imported into these conflict zones and for these contested spaces.
2015, of course, marked a major internationalisation of escalation with the Russian intervention in Syria and the Saudi intervention in Yemen.
Both, in both cases, conflicts which were originally concerned with local matters then tended to fold into broader,
overarching geopolitical rivalries and contacts between the great powers, Iran and Saudi Arabia today, perhaps both in France in the 17th century.
One historian, Yohannes Boychuk, has described many of the early modern conflicts as state building wars.
And I think the early stage of the 30 Years War is a good example,
as it can be interpreted as a failed attempt by the Noble Estates of Bohemia to erect a new Protestant state free of of Hapsburg control.
And similarly, the ISIS phenomenon in Syria and Iraq was not just an exercise in terrorism,
but also in many ways a failed state building exercise, which was not very similar to that of the Bohemian states.
In both cases, the the attempt at setting up a new state was defeated after about four years.
But of course, there are differences and in a sense that ISIS is quite unique and unparalleled,
even in comparison to the brutality of the 30 years war, in the sense that it elevated violence and murder as a sort of final symbolic goal.
Another similarities alliance fluidity with rapidly shifting allegiances, for example.
Olfaction during the first year will help to the process suppress the Bohemian rebellion at the beginning.
Then, with the state in a state of armed neutrality,
then fought together with Sweden against the Emperor before switching sides again and in the Middle East.
There's a similar sort of profusion of shifting loyalties, and it's an assigned conflict, especially in Yemen and Syria.
So the enemy of your enemy might very well still be your enemy.
Another example is the absence of declarations of war.
So the piece of what failure was actually a peace treaty among powers that had largely never declared war against each other.
Apart from the French and the Spanish, that was the only conflict that was failed that they could not resolve.
And the situation in the Middle East is, I think,
quite similar in the sense that there's a high intensity of violence and conflicts without any declarations of war.
So the second main parallel that I mentioned is the role of religion and sectarian animosity.
Until about the 1970s,
it was the general view that wars related to religion were a pre-modern thing of the past and no longer exists and no longer existed.
But this has recently been rectified,
and this is another area in which the nature of conflict has seemingly reverted to this pre-modern mode of the 16th and 17th century.
In both cases, religion is apparently returned after a period of relative absence after the second half of the 16th century in Germany,
where religious conflict was not as widespread as subsequently, and also in the Middle East around the turn of the millennium.
This is perhaps related to a reduction of the unifying effect of shared hostility towards a common enemy.
So in Germany, this was the Ottoman Turks after a long war in the 1590s.
This sort of unifying effect fell away. And also in the Middle East is the hostility towards Israel is now much less central as it was before.
Notwithstanding certain sort of temporary for us again, such as when the Americans accepted these the step of the Israeli capital for the first years,
war, as has been argued by Peter Wilson so convincingly,
was not really a simple religious war in the sense that there was no full confessional solidarity among the
fighting parties and because of the centrality throughout the conflict in political and constitutional matters.
But religion was undeniably an important element.
So very crudely speaking, it was Protestants versus Catholics.
While in the Middle East, conflict exists between sectarian animosity, between the Shias and the Sunnis.
But in both cases, this animosity, which is not necessarily central to conflicts,
is always instrumentalized by certain powers that that wish to see it instrumentalized in order to further their own geopolitical aims,
and thereby it merges with other factors. But this then often runs out of control, goes out of control because it develops its own self dynamics.
The great power rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, of course, does much more to sectarianism.
Local conflicts, including conflicts that were not really sectarian to begin with,
such as tribal conflicts in Yemen, and struggles for greater political freedom of participation in Syria.
And this and it does more to confessionals, these conflicts,
than the Franco Hapsburg rivalry did in Europe, because, of course, both of those powers were conflict.
But it still played a part in the 30 Years War, because this animosity existed at the level of the empire,
where a civil war of the Holy War and within the Holy Roman Empire continued concurrently
with a broader geopolitical contest of outside powers in a way that's similar to the,
to the Middle East now. Um, and also as in the Middle East, in the Holy Roman Empire disputes which were largely political and concerned,
competing corporate and political rights assumed a more debilitating sectarian dimension in the years preceding and during the 30 years war.
So in addition to these two main groups of.
Parallels. We've identified a number of other ones, such as the fact that in both cases, war have in some ways become self-sustaining,
which has largely occurred logically through the influx of foreign funds into the war zone,
which accounts for the longevity of conflicts, and also because there is a tendency of the water to somewhat feed off itself.
So in the 30 Years War that the Swedes, for example,
were existentially dependent upon allowing their commanders and soldiers to continue occupying parts of Germany,
to continue fighting because they needed to continue to live off the land in Germany,
because the central authorities in Sweden could no longer afford to pay the arrears of the salaries.
And so this incentivises the continuation of conflict whereby the continued conflict
was actually less costly than pulling out without an indemnity being paid.
And so many militias active in Syria are possibly disinclined to let to lay down their arms, but for similar reasons.
Another important similarity the role of exiles in driving conflict.
The those in both cases provide a cause around which to rally for the Bohemian and Hapsburg exiles in the 17th century,
as well as the Syrian exiles now with the Yemeni government in exile, as well as Palestinian refugees and the right of return.
This is something that keeps the cause alive and and continues to drive conflict.
It also provides the intervening powers with agents who can facilitate the intervention that they wish to plan.
Another example is the tenuous nature of civil military relations.
In both cases, I think, for example, in with the coups or attempted coup in Egypt and Turkey as well as in the 30 Years War,
the emperor's suspension of his top, Colonel Valentine,
who was eventually killed because it was suspected that he would turn over the army to the enemy of the emperor,
to the enemies of the emperor because of because he was dissatisfied with his treatment.
Most similarity is the existence of hereditary monarchical dynasties in both cases.
And a certain parallel, I think, can be seen between the importance of the Emperor as the head of the hierarchy in Germany and the
analogous importance of the of the King of Saudi Arabia as the custodian of the two holy mosques,
of the similarities or the role of refugee crises in both cases.
And just the general fact, although this might be a kind of a structural parallel,
that the region which is contested is so is considered to be so vital to outside
powers as a result of the importance attached to the resources that exist.
For example, the the soldier trade, the manpower reserves of Central Europe,
the oil reserves of the Middle East, and the implication being that the Middle East now,
just as Germany then, cannot really be ignored by outside powers, and that if there is conflict, they will want to get involved.
We also talked about a number of atmospheric parallels.
In both cases, there's rapid population growth in mainly agrarian societies, but also in cities.
And there is there is even a parallel in terms of climate change.
There was a small ice age around the decades, around 1570, which resulted in a lowered agricultural output and later of hunger crises,
and also a general sort of sense of economic and social malaise and divisions,
which manifested itself in, for example, witchcraft, persecutions and pogroms.
So those were the sort of general parallels that we identified over the course of our project.
And those analogies in many ways lead to the application part.
And in other words, how can this how can the knowledge of these parallels help us to find possible solutions towards peace in the Middle East?
And one thing that we always have to stress over the course of the project is that
this is not supposed to be some kind of blueprint that's imposed from outside.
And also that we have not simply made up these these lessons, but that these have, I mean, in terms of the authors of the book.
But these have been these have all been discussed by people in the workshop and the workshops that we've held.
So we've identified two main kinds of lessons.
Firstly, peacemaking tools, in other words, diplomatic techniques,
methods of negotiation and mediation which facilitate and help produce an eventual peace treaty, whatever the terms might be.
And this also includes, crucially, methods of securing the success and longevity of the peace once it is achieved.
So those are the main sort of lessons that we derived and did not really contain
any normative confidence about what sort of treaty content should exist.
But we did also consider the fact of peace terms, which were, you know, the treaty terms themselves.
Of course, they're not as useful in terms of lessons because it doesn't it's not as helpful or viable to
simply transfer creative treaty content wholesale from a different epoch and a different region.
But given those basic similarities, there are some basic sort of lessons that can be useful simply because they're are potentially transferable.
So turning to those lessons, the as I mentioned, the most important ones were the diplomatic techniques and peacemaking mechanisms.
One of the striking features of the piece, The West failure, was, as I mentioned,
it's a sort of ambitious nature, but also its innovative character in many areas of international law.
While these features were innovative, then of course would no longer be innovative now they still could potentially be applied
with profit because because of the similarities that I mentioned and the innovative nature,
it was essentially the fact that a multi-lateral Congress was convening for the first
time ever in history and that it aimed to simultaneously solve all conflicts at once.
Another sort of innovation was the fact that it was convened at two different
locations in order to mitigate against confessional and precedent disputes.
And also the mutual guarantee was also an innovation in the law of nations.
So one overarching lesson from this innovative nature was that is that it is very important simply to be
willing to adopt and discover innovative means of diplomacy in pursuance of peace and more generally.
In addition to that general point, more specifically, the experience shows, given the interlocked nature of these of these conflicts,
both during the 30 Years War and now basically the lesson was that the complexity,
the interlocked nature, the multilayered aspects of these conflicts meant that solving individual parts of them,
individual parts of them by themselves, would fail. So during the 30th war,
there was an attempt to bring about peace only among the Catholic powers that
were fighting each other France and the Habsburgs for the Congress in Cologne.
But this didn't work because it didn't take into account the idea of the imperial civil war aspect
with which it was tied into or a settlement based only on the Civil War itself in Germany.
So there was a preliminary peace in Prague in 1635 whereby all of the actors within Germany,
within the Civil War managed to achieve a peace that was acceptable for all of them and
would have been sufficient had it not already escalated into an international war.
But the international intervening powers were would be satisfied by the settlement.
And so their intervention continued and the war could not be ended.
So one of the chief lessons is that, as was the case in the 17th century, probably now,
the range of conflicts and grievances in the Middle East is simply too complex and interwoven to be successfully
solved with piecemeal negotiations aimed at addressing individual territorial parts of the broader regional crisis.
So while it might be useful to start negotiations on Syria in the context of separate formats such as the Astana and Geneva format,
they should in the end merge with a comprehensive peace Congress.
Otherwise, it would not be possible to satisfy multiple other involved state and non-state actors.
An inclusive peace Congress that draws in all powers is therefore essential because it
can help to negotiate a new security order for the region under international guarantee,
which is exactly what happened, but was failure after five years of negotiation.
And so what we discussed is that it should be as inclusive as possible, as all inclusive as possible.
That's one of the main lessons as well. Although certain completely irreconcilable or unpalatable actors could potentially be excluded,
although this wouldn't be ideal and this was the case with failure with the Hapsburg rebels
within the hereditary lands and could possibly be the case with the Islamic State now.
And what makes that more possible or more acceptable, from a practical point of view,
is if those unpalatable groups have already been eliminated for the power factors, otherwise they'd need to be engaged.
So the French had wanted a universal Congress to achieve a universal peace.
But rather than a particular instead of a sort of a particular settlement just for Germany, which had been attempted and failed.
But what resulted in the end was was neither a universal peace nor just a settlement for the Civil War,
but was a sort of an intermediary Westphalian solution.
And so one could also aim for a similarly neutralised Middle East,
which has taken out of ongoing great power competition, while international rivalry, of course, continues elsewhere.
And this is precisely what happened with with Central Europe. The whole Roman Empire became a Fed space, was no longer a war zone for a while.
Whereas the 30 Years War or one element of the third will continue elsewhere in Western Europe between France and Spain.
So another parallel I think that leads to a further lesson is the more or less
justified security fears about the opponent's suspected hegemonic goals.
There's this fear that the other side would exploit one's own weakness in order to establish regional dominance.
What was the birth of a monarchy then?
Was just as important between France and the Habsburgs in the 17th century as it is between Iran and Saudi Arabia now.
And this the lesson is that it requires more effective perception management.
And this is important because changing hostile assumptions might be more difficult than actually changing facts on the ground.
So for a mutually acceptable regional settlement to be reached,
the negotiating parties need to openly and transparently set out their core security interests at the outset,
tied in to what each side considers to be its legitimate zones of influence.
So if we consider what these might be for the states and the region,
what's probably less important than actual territorial expansion is the maintenance of one's own perceived zones of informal influence.
So Turkey has a special interest in preventing the emergence of a Kurdish state.
For Saudi Arabia, it is important to limit Iran's influence and to maintain effective leadership of the PCC.
And Iran, in turn, seeks to defend its critical interests by continuing to support to assert its influence in key countries,
primarily Syria and Lebanon. So in the Middle East,
there's this widespread lack of trust on the part of the main regional adversaries
mirrors the lack of trust that existed in Europe at the outset of the negotiations.
Even so, there was actually little or no mutual trust at the beginning of the Westphalian Congress.
But it was the major powers signalling the beginning of their willingness to place the whole settlement
on the guarantee that encouraged a degree of confidence in the viability of the negotiations.
So and following the conclusion of the peace, it took about two generations or so for trust to be re-established between Catholics and Protestants.
And this was largely fostered through simply living under peaceful coexistence.
And so this is also an important lesson, I think, that the absence of trust should not prevent negotiations from getting started in the first place.
The peace process itself has to generate trust as opposed to vice versa.
And the experience of this failure also demonstrates that the results can be achieved through the exploring
of unknown diplomatic terrain and the willingness of parties to be daring in their choice of interlocutors.
So during their failure, the informal modes of communication are often as important as formal ones.
Over the years that the diplomats were essentially locked away among themselves in order to thrash out a peace,
they started to develop a shared kind of sense of identity and a community of faith which
enhanced the desire to make progress and to sort of push their masters towards an accommodation.
This was related to the fact that these were often high aristocrats who were living in much less comfortable
conditions than they were used to and were not allowed to leave until they came to the peace settlement,
which in the end, five years. And so perhaps something similar could be tried for the Middle East.
Negotiators could simply stay at one Congress location until they thrashed out a settlement.
Even if this takes years and so even if there is no kind of end state which which one aspires to,
negotiations could still stop because this is what occurred at West failure.
It was not clear what the end state was supposed to be.
They didn't share a clear vision of the kind of peace that they wanted.
They just knew that they wanted to achieve a peace.
So I'm another lesson is that flexibility was important and that mediation, for example, need not be neutral.
One of the lessons was that the mediator that was allied to one of the negotiating parties was actually much
more effective at applying pressure onto its ally in order to come to an accommodation than a neutral mediator.
Despite this being something that was completely unprecedented at this time.
Contrary to what is often believed was failure was not really a peace of exhaustion.
Some of the smaller actors within the German empire were exhausted.
That's true. But the larger powers could have continued fighting for a long time and in some cases actually did in the west front of the ten years.
So the situation in the Middle East is perhaps similar to the states in the Middle East have reached a state of exhaustion,
but conflict could continue almost perpetually with a potentially endless inflow of Marshall Resources from outside.
And so the lesson to be drawn is that diplomacy works and the steps towards a universal settlement should be undertaken sooner rather than later,
even if there's not yet a kind of catalogue of principles upon which everyone can agree on.
Another lesson is that although a cease fire is desirable,
it should not necessarily be seen as a major stumbling block in the way of commencement of negotiations if the war continues during negotiations.
So throughout the whole Congress of what failure the fighting continued throughout.
Another lesson is the phenomenon of the so-called third party, which in Westphalia was a grouping of weaker states of smaller German princes,
who, when it became clear that the Congress was about to fall apart.
Because it became clear that the French and the Spanish would not be able to reach an accommodation.
And when it became clear that the Emperor was about to recall his main ambassador,
these smaller groupings sort of unified in a cross confessional manner because it was them that were most at risk of continue fighting,
because they had reached a state of exhaustion. They set themselves up as this sort of group that was willing to compromise,
whereas before many of them had been hardliners and essentially forced their larger
partners back to the negotiating table in order to drive the peace process forward,
which which worked in the act, which was quite remarkable.
And during the workshops we talked about the possible equivalent of a third party and a middle Eastern peace.
And there was some talk about the EU, possibly EU states possibly taking off such a role.
But in the end, it became clear that it would have to be the Middle Eastern actors themselves because they are most at risk of continued conflict.
So perhaps the most crucial aspect of the piece was, as I mentioned at the beginning, its mutual guarantee.
And this was the provision that all terms of the Peace of Westphalia, even those which did not affect individual actors,
would have to be guaranteed mutually by every signatory, by armed force, if necessary.
And so this amounted essentially to a collective security system for Central Europe,
not for the whole of Europe, but only for the Central European space.
And this contributed to the successful conclusion of the peace in 1648.
But it was also crucial in maintaining the peace in the longer term and securing it because it was an effective deterrent against obvious
breaches of the peace afterwards and against the clear and authentic deterrent against clear violations of rights that were enshrined.
And it was effective precisely because the guarantors themselves had a geopolitical self-interest in ensuring that the terms were upheld.
And so for a settlement in the Middle East or so it was agreed,
or this was the sort of main consensus in the workshops that local and regional actors need to themselves sort out their own peace settlement,
guarantee themselves, and then drawing outside powers to guarantee it.
And those outside houses would also, of course, have to sign off on the final content of the treaty terms.
They would sort of be tasked with negotiate with with securing the peace,
especially in the light in light of the anticipated continued existence of numerous militias,
insuring the integrity of existing borders, providing assistance for the rebuilding of more inclusive regimes and the protection of minorities.
So, yes, the regional actors would determine their own peace terms. International powers would then guarantee and it is also it was often discussed
why outside powers would have this would be willing to sign up to this duty,
this potential burden. And the Westphalian example shows that countries like France and Sweden were
also aware of the critical importance of the Holy Roman Empire and would so,
so were willing to intervene if necessary, because it furthered their own self-interest.
And the US has actually already proposed and in a limited capacity to be a guarantor.
So they've already thought through this language. On two occasions in 2015 for the Russia UFC Ceasefire Focus negotiations in Geneva and
also for the 2017 to 18 attempts to set up a rough U.S. thought and trilateral guarantee.
And these terms are obviously the most controversial atmosphere because they entailed
a right of intervention by on the part of the guarantees and part of the guarantors.
So this is something that's is often discussed quite controversially.
I don't really have much time to talk about the sort of treaty content itself,
but I'll sort of quickly summarise it one of the factors that made Westphalia so successful.
Was that it sort of introduced a shared form of sort of a limited form of toleration within the Holy Roman Empire.
And something similar would have to be established for the Middle East.
It would have to not only ensure that there's a harmonisation of interests between states,
but also within states, the rights within states and behaviour within states,
behaviour by governments towards that their people would have to be governed by a certain catalogue of
norms or certain certain rights which would need to be enshrined and also placed under this guarantee,
because as we've seen in Syria and other places, but also in the 30 Years War,
it's internal unrest which results from the mistreatment of people of subject populations,
which results in civil war, which would inevitably cause regional instability.
So that would also need to be drawn into an international treaty conditions within states as well as governing relations between them.
Thank you.