March, 2015 - Classics of Strategy and Diplomacy

Is Putin Another Metternich?

March 03, 2015

Mitchell A. Orenstein, Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Northeastern University, offers the provocative thesis that Vladimir Putin is an aspiring Metternich. At first glance, this seems a rather odd comparison, in temperament and style, certainly. In foreign policy terms, Metternich would seem to be the consummate conservative, wedded to the idea of a stable European balance of power in which Austria could maximize its waning power; Putin, the foreign policy revolutionary, who seeks to kick over the table in order for Russia to maximize its waning power.

The Original Grotian Moment

Patrick J. Garrity +

March 03, 2015

in February 1603, in which ships commanded by Jacob van Heemskerk of the Dutch East India Company seized the Santa Catarina, a Portuguese merchant ship, without explicit authorization to do so. To defend the seizure, the Dutch hired a 26-year old lawyer named Hugo Grotius, who claimed that it was a legitimate challenge to Portugal’s monopoly on commerce with Asia. The incident happened off Singapore’s upper east coast, near Changi, where the Santa Catarina was anchored after sailing from Macau to Malacca. Grotius' opinion would subsequently be published in Mare Liberum (The Free Sea) and De Jure Praedae (On the Law of Prize and Booty). Grotius’ arguments about the freedom of the seas, and just war, would be folded into his corporate works that became the foundation of the modern law of nations.