Section One: The Preliminary Articles

Preamble

"To Perpetual Peace." Whether this satirical inscription on a Dutch innkeeper's sign, upon which a churchyard was painted, holds for human beings in general, or for heads of state in particular, who can never get enough of war, or only for philosophers who dream that sweet dream, may remain undecided.

The innkeeper's joke: the only perpetual peace is the peace of the grave.

The author of this essay makes one condition. The practical politician stands on a footing with the political theorist from which, with great self-satisfaction, he looks down on him as a pedant, whose empty ideas are no danger to the state, which must proceed from principles of experience; so that the theorist may be allowed to throw his eleven skittles at once, without the worldly-wise statesman needing to turn a hair. If so, the statesman must at least be consistent, and not scent any danger to the state in the opinions which the theorist ventures to express publicly and at random. By this saving clause, the author hopes to be expressly protected against all malicious interpretation.

The Six Preliminary Articles

1. No treaty of peace shall be held valid as such if it is made with a secret reservation of material for a future war.

For then it would be a mere truce, a suspension of hostilities, not a peace, which means the end of all hostilities; and to attach the adjective "perpetual" to it is a suspicious pleonasm.

2. No independent state, large or small, shall be acquired by another state by inheritance, exchange, purchase or gift.

For a state is not, like the ground on which it is situated, a possession. It is a society of human beings, over which no one but itself can command or dispose. To graft it onto another state, as one would a branch, is to abolish its existence as a moral person, and to make it a thing.

Kant is thinking of the dynastic marriages and inheritances by which European states were passed from one ruling house to another.

3. Standing armies (miles perpetuus) shall in time be totally abolished.

For they constantly threaten other states with war by their readiness to appear always prepared for it; they spur states on to outdo one another in the number of armed men, which knows no limit; and since the costs of peace finally become more oppressive than those of a short war, they are themselves the cause of wars of aggression, waged to be rid of this burden. Besides, to hire human beings to kill or be killed seems to involve using them as mere machines and tools in the hand of another — the state — which cannot well be reconciled with the right of humanity in our own person. Quite different is the voluntary, periodic military exercise of citizens, to secure themselves and their fatherland against attack from outside.

4. No national debts shall be contracted in connection with the external affairs of the state.

Credit, as an instrument of power by which states compete — the ingenious invention of a commercial people in this century — is a dangerous financial power: a treasury for the conduct of war, which makes war easy.

Kant has in mind the British system of public debt, which financed its wars.

5. No state shall forcibly interfere in the constitution and government of another state.

For what could justify it? The scandal it gives to the subjects of another state? This can rather serve as a warning, by the example of the great evils which a people has brought on itself by its lawlessness. It would be different if a state, through internal discord, were to split into two parts, each claiming to be a state; but as long as this inner conflict is not yet decided, interference by outside powers would be a violation of the rights of an independent people.

6. No state at war with another shall permit such acts of hostility as would make mutual confidence impossible during a future time of peace: such as the employment of assassins or poisoners, breach of capitulation, and incitement to treason in the opposing state.

These are dishonourable stratagems. Some trust in the enemy's way of thinking must remain even in the midst of war, for otherwise no peace could ever be concluded, and the hostilities would turn into a war of extermination — which would allow perpetual peace only on the vast graveyard of the human race.

Kant does not describe any of these acts; he names them only as forbidden.

Kant notes that articles 1, 5 and 6 are strict laws, to be enforced at once; articles 2, 3 and 4 are permissive, allowing their execution to be postponed until the time is right — but not forever.