M-31 LITTAUER CENTER

[y]

From C. J. FRIEDRICH

3-26-54

To Henry Kissinger

I think this is excellent. I have
very little to suggest, except the two
minor points marked.

Laslett's researches have shown
Locke's Essay to have been written before
the Revolution; the idea of God bound by
Reason is stated by Grotius, and in fact
goes back to the Spanish jurists of the
16th century. A slight rephrasing will
take care of both.

C. J. Friedrich

## PREFACE

This thesis grew out of two concurrent efforts: a study of the methodological presuppositions of *any* theory and a particular concern with the theory of international relations. The former convinced me that the profundity of a theory depends on its selection of criteria of abstraction and the definition of a range of significant data; the latter, that the significant range of experience for the study of international relations lay in the field of history. For foreign policy — the policy of states acting as units — is the expression of a process which has above all a temporal dimension, because it is primarily through the consciousness of a difference in historical aspirations that states define themselves. For this reason, as developed at greater length in Chapter 17, foreign policy problems can be studied best through an analysis of their historical context; and their solution will depend to a considerable extent on the ability to distinguish commensurable situations, to cut through the formal equivalence of wars, peace settlements, and diplomatic conferences to their inner significance. The success of physical science depends on the selection of the "crucial" experiment; that of political science in the field of international affairs, on the selection of the "crucial" period.

I have chosen for my topic the period between 1812 and 1822, partly, I am frank to say, because its problems seem to me analogous to those of our day. But I do not insist on this analogy. Even

11.

if it is denied, the significance of the period remains in the
fact that it was faced with the construction of a new inter-
national order and, therefore, with all the dilemmas of foreign
policy in their most immediate form: the relationship between
domestic and international legitimacy, the role of the balance
of power, the limits of statesmanship. This thesis was con-
ceived as part of a longer study which includes an analysis of the
disintegration of a "legitimate" order and of the nature of "revo-
lutionary" foreign policy with special reference to the statesman-
ship of Bismarck. Because the sections dealing with Castlereagh
and Metternich can stand by themselves, and to stay within the limits
of a Ph.D. thesis, I have not included the chapters on Bismarck
here.

The study of statesmanship is always a complex matter, for
it assumes the reality of 'antangibles. A study of Castlereagh and
Metternich poses particular problems, because history has not dealt
kindly with them. They were the exponents of a losing cause, which
they defended with an obtuse stubbornness. And the age in which
their histories came to be written abhorred them not only for their
values but also for their failure. To the contemporaries of
Darwin, success was a certain enough indication of fitness, and
defined by the correct apprehension of causal relationships. The
policy of Metternich and Castlereagh could in these terms be due
only to stupidity or to wickedness or to both. But nemesis does
not always triumph by exacting an eye for an eye. Sometimes it
defeats man by fulfilling his wishes too completely. So it was