Loud voices are claiming that peace is impossible, that peace agreements don’t last, and that there will always be war. War profiteers may scoff at the feasibility of peace but here are some examples of lasting peace for which we can be thankful.
The Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 1842: The U.K. and U.S. settled boundary disputes remaining from the Treaty of Paris (which concluded the Revolutionary War) and ended the (non-violent) Aroostok War over Maine’s border. The Treaty produced what became the longest (still) undefended border in the world.
Treaty of the Triple Alliance, 1876: At the end of a long and bloody war, the Triple Alliance (Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay) wanted to divide up large portions of the defeated Paraguay. U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes, playing a positive role that might amaze today’s world, was asked to arbitrate a dispute over Paraguay’s final borders. His ruling that a contested area remain with Paraguay prevailed without further warfare.
Dissolution of the Norway-Sweden Union, 1905: This nugget is not a treaty but a non-violent peace settlement to a threatened war. Norwegian feelings favoring full independence from Sweden were so high in 1905 that Norway assembled an army to fight Sweden. Cooler heads prevailed and both sides agreed to go to a Court of Arbitration at The Hague instead. The result: no war and Norway achieved its full independence.
Paris Peace Treaties, 1947: Although some of the victorious Allies (particularly the U.S. and U.K.) have been extensively involved in warfare since the end of WWII, it is not with their former enemies, the Axis Powers. Indeed, that peace agreement has been so successful that a recent U.S. President felt compelled to invent a new “Axis” (“of evil”).
Michael Corgan and Kathie Malley-Morrison