"The security of which we speak is to be attained by the development of international law through an international organization based on the principles of law and justice"
About this Quote
Security, for Quidde, is not a thicker wall or a bigger gun; it is a legal architecture sturdy enough to make violence feel unnecessary and illegitimate. Writing as a German pacifist and public critic who watched Europe treat diplomacy like seasonal theater, Quidde is staking a deliberately unromantic claim: peace won by power is temporary, peace won by rules can be made durable.
The phrasing is telling. "The security of which we speak" sounds like he is correcting a popular misuse of the word, pushing back against a security discourse that flatters militaries and budgets. He offers an alternative path: not goodwill, not moral awakening, but "development of international law" - slow, procedural, and institutional. That is the subtextual wager: the world will not behave better because leaders become wiser; it will behave better when incentives, norms, and enforcement mechanisms change what is rational.
Then comes the ideological fuse: "an international organization based on the principles of law and justice". Quidde is selling legitimacy as strategy. Law supplies predictability; justice supplies consent. Without justice, law is just an instrument of the strong. Without law, justice is just a slogan. His insistence on both reads like a rebuke to great-power clubs that call themselves guardians while carving up smaller states.
Context matters: Quidde lived through imperial brinkmanship, the collapse of the old order, and the faltering attempts at collective security between wars. The quote aims at the interwar dilemma: how to prevent the next catastrophe without pretending that national interests will simply dissolve. His answer is to domesticate power inside a system that can name aggression, arbitrate conflict, and make "security" something other than permanent mobilization.
The phrasing is telling. "The security of which we speak" sounds like he is correcting a popular misuse of the word, pushing back against a security discourse that flatters militaries and budgets. He offers an alternative path: not goodwill, not moral awakening, but "development of international law" - slow, procedural, and institutional. That is the subtextual wager: the world will not behave better because leaders become wiser; it will behave better when incentives, norms, and enforcement mechanisms change what is rational.
Then comes the ideological fuse: "an international organization based on the principles of law and justice". Quidde is selling legitimacy as strategy. Law supplies predictability; justice supplies consent. Without justice, law is just an instrument of the strong. Without law, justice is just a slogan. His insistence on both reads like a rebuke to great-power clubs that call themselves guardians while carving up smaller states.
Context matters: Quidde lived through imperial brinkmanship, the collapse of the old order, and the faltering attempts at collective security between wars. The quote aims at the interwar dilemma: how to prevent the next catastrophe without pretending that national interests will simply dissolve. His answer is to domesticate power inside a system that can name aggression, arbitrate conflict, and make "security" something other than permanent mobilization.
Quote Details
| Topic | Peace |
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