Science & Tech Quote by Fredrik Bajer

Peace doesn’t arrive here as a moral wish or a holiday sentiment; it’s pitched as a technical project with a career ladder. Bajer’s phrase “waging of peace” is a deliberate seizure of martial vocabulary, an argument that the methods, prestige, and planning we grant to war should be stolen back for its opposite. By calling it “a science, as an art,” he fuses two kinds of authority: the measurable and the imaginative. Peace, he implies, will need data, institutions, and procedure - but also persuasion, narrative, and taste. That hybrid framing is what makes the line work: it flatters modernity’s faith in expertise while admitting that human conflict is never solved by spreadsheets alone.

The subtext is institutional. Bajer isn’t merely hoping people become kinder; he’s imagining a professional class of peace-makers. “Particular individuals designated” signals a future of mandates, offices, and accountability - peace as something administered, not merely desired. It’s an early sketch of the architecture we now associate with arbitration, diplomacy, international law, NGOs, and multilateral bodies: not spontaneous harmony, but staffed systems that outlive any single crisis.

Context matters: Bajer lived through Europe’s long 19th century, when mass politics, industrial weapons, and nationalism made war both more rationalized and more catastrophic. His optimism - “steady progress” - reads like a belief that organization can outrun brutality. It’s a hopeful bet, but not a naive one: if war is a trained profession, peace must be, too.