Once again I am about to let fly my now famous historical perspectives….

I think we all can agree that the Middle East as it is today is a mess…….as I student of conflicts I am always looking for a possible way to end all these hostilities and bring some sort of peacefulness to the region.

What sort of peace could there possibly be and then I thought about the Westphalian Peace Treaty……it ended the 30 years war……

The Thirty Years’ War (1618-48) began when Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II of Bohemia attempted to curtail the religious activities of his subjects, sparking rebellion among Protestants. The war came to involve the major powers of Europe, with Sweden, France, Spain and Austria all waging campaigns primarily on German soil. Known in part for the atrocities committed by mercenary soldiers, the war ended with a series of treaties that made up the Peace of Westphalia. The fallout reshaped the religious and political map of central Europe, setting the stage for the old centralized Roman Catholic empire to give way to a community of sovereign states.

Why the Peace of Westphalia, which helped end a series of bloody wars in seventeenth century Europe, could work for the Middle East today.

Between 1618 and 1648, central Europe, and the Holy Roman Empire in particular, was devastated by a series of conflicts that were caused by competing visions of political order, great power, and dynastic rivalries, and that were exacerbated by religious differences. This soon came to be called the Thirty Years’ War. But the Peace of Westphalia, which successfully ended the German phase of the conflict, has been much misunderstood.

The 1648 settlement is widely thought to have inaugurated a modern system of sovereign independent nation-states in Europe (often referred to as the Westphalian system). And, as the argument goes, when that concept was later applied to the Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, it actually contributed to much of the region’s current dysfunction. But in reality, the Westphalia settlement did something quite different from what has been commonly thought. It set up a system of limited sovereignty for the numerous states of the Holy Roman Empire (formally known as imperial estates, which were the component territories of the empire, ruled by princes or city councils). It also created legal mechanisms for settling disputes and offered mutual guarantees for upholding the treaty’s terms, which taken altogether, formed a system of collective security.

Source: A Westphalian Peace for the Middle East | Foreign Affairs

Apparently what the world is doing these days will never lead to a peaceful conclusion of the violence and destruction.

Why not take some time and use a previous agreement as a template that could lead to an end to this deadly games?