After the fall of the Berlin Wall the West set off to re-make the world. Its abstract norms and progressive values set the global agenda. The consequences proved disastrous, and not only for the West. In these circumstances of revisionism abroad and populism at home, is it possible to recuperate a more circumscribed international vision that recognizes that universal moral principles cannot be applied to the actions of states in their abstract universal formulation, but require filtering through the concrete circumstances of time and place? In order to examine the utility of such prudent counsel, this chapter first elucidates the limitations of the liberal, normative, rationalist approach to war and peace and its unintended fragmentation of the global order after 2008. We shall then consider how earlier European thinking, at the inception of the modern state, about the nature of state interest and the supreme virtue in politics, prudence. Prudence is a virtue that does not signal, but weighs the consequences of alternative political actions. This chapter further considers how a prudent statecraft might more usefully inform the conduct of US and European foreign policy today.
