"One can go to war alone, butyou can't build peace alone"
About this Quote
War flatters the fantasy of the solitary decider; peace exposes how interdependent power really is. Chirac’s line lands because it slices political mythology in two. Violence, he implies, is tragically efficient: a leader can order troops, launch strikes, trigger spirals. The machinery of war can be set in motion with a signature, a speech, a night of security-council briefings kept deliberately narrow. Peace is the opposite kind of project. It requires buy-in from rivals, legitimacy in the eyes of publics, and the slow, unglamorous stitching of institutions that survive after the cameras leave.
The intent is a warning dressed as a proverb. “Alone” is the key word twice, but it means different things each time. In war, being alone is agency, even bravado: the strongman posture, the “coalition of the willing” reduced to a single will. In peace, being alone is impotence: treaties need counterparties, ceasefires need monitors, reconciliation needs something harder than command-and-control.
Context sharpens the edge. Chirac, a French president who famously resisted the 2003 Iraq War, was speaking from a European, post-World War worldview in which the central lesson is that security isn’t a solo act. France’s diplomatic identity - multilateral, institution-forward, wary of unilateral U.S. force - is compressed into twelve words.
The subtext: leaders who make war as a demonstration of autonomy should be judged by a higher standard when the bill comes due. Peace can’t be imposed like a policy; it has to be co-authored, or it’s just an intermission.
The intent is a warning dressed as a proverb. “Alone” is the key word twice, but it means different things each time. In war, being alone is agency, even bravado: the strongman posture, the “coalition of the willing” reduced to a single will. In peace, being alone is impotence: treaties need counterparties, ceasefires need monitors, reconciliation needs something harder than command-and-control.
Context sharpens the edge. Chirac, a French president who famously resisted the 2003 Iraq War, was speaking from a European, post-World War worldview in which the central lesson is that security isn’t a solo act. France’s diplomatic identity - multilateral, institution-forward, wary of unilateral U.S. force - is compressed into twelve words.
The subtext: leaders who make war as a demonstration of autonomy should be judged by a higher standard when the bill comes due. Peace can’t be imposed like a policy; it has to be co-authored, or it’s just an intermission.
Quote Details
| Topic | Peace |
|---|
More Quotes by Jacques
Add to List
