As peace treaties go, few are more maligned than the Versailles Treaty that emerged from the Paris Peace Conference, the centenary of which is marked this month. This treaty, signed with the defeated Germans in the aftermath of the First World War, has been blamed for an even worse catastrophe 20 years later. Whether it was an intrinsically flawed peace agreement, a badly implemented one, or both, remains a source of heated and unresolved debate. Some argue that the manner in which the victorious powers approached the negotiations, France especially, was bound to give birth to a stillborn settlement; it was more a case of vengeance and retribution than seeking a lasting peace and removing the root causes of world conflict. Those negotiations of January 1919 were in stark contrast to what had taken place in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna after the Napoleonic wars, and to the negotiations that would follow the even more horrific events of the Second World War. The Paris Peace Conference yielded a series of treaties between the Allied powers, which included the victorious “Big Five” of France, Britain, Italy, the US and Japan, of which the first four made all the major decisions. The defeated countries, such as Germany and the already disintegrated Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, were subjected to their decisions, rather than negotiated with. If the Congress of Vienna a century earlier was about ensuring that all the main powers remained active parts of the system, balancing and offsetting each other to avoid a single country or a combination of them becoming dominant, the Versailles Treaty was the opposite; its aim was to eliminate Germany as a major player. Germany was perceived as inherently dangerous to world peace. Moreover, by this time the US was questioning the wisdom of its policy of distancing itself from European affairs, having abandoned its neutrality and joined the war in 1917. At the meetings in Paris the contrasting approaches of US President Woodrow Wilson, who sought a new world order based on cooperation and inclusion, and French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, who with considerable support from Britain was looking to punish Germany and its allies and keep them at arm’s length, was striking. The latter viewed Germany as an aggressor with little prospect of altering its behaviour unless it was punished and remained economically, politically and especially militarily weak. In the post-1945 era, some of the lessons of inclusive peace agreements, and the need to build a world order based not on dogma and revenge but on the guiding principle of avoiding future wars, were implemented. Yossi Mekelberg Peace conferences following major international upheavals are attempts, successful or otherwise, to resolve direct issues that arise from a war, such as border disputes, security problems, or economic relations. Most importantly, they should establish a new world order to prevent such calamitous conflicts from happening again, and to that end engage in processes of reconciliation and coexistence. For those who gathered in Vienna in 1815, it was of paramount importance to construct a world order that would counter the attempt of any one country to become a hegemon; hence the defeated France was reintroduced into the system, not punished. That world order survived for 100 years, fending off all challenges whether based on ideology or simply a wish to dominate, mainly because it stuck to the simple principle that offsetting each other’s power would always trump dogma or dreams of domination. The victorious powers at the Paris Peace Conference took the diametrically opposite approach. In Vienna it had been understood that even if France was to blame for the miseries inflicted by the Napoleonic wars it should nevertheless be a full and equal participant in the negotiations and readmitted to the exclusive club of those who determine the fate of the world. But in Paris the victors gave the defeated no voice and imposed on them a solution, as if by that means a country of such potential power, albeit defeated, could be contained and excluded from a leading role in world affairs. However, it was not only Germany that was excluded – Soviet Russia was too; only representatives of those who had been overthrown by the Russian Revolution were invited. A peace conference that is more notable for the countries absent is doomed to yield the wrong results. It was also wavering on the part of the US that rendered the negotiations in Paris, whatever their outcome, less relevant. America was divided; it had a president with a clear vision of the root causes of the war and how such global collective catastrophes could be averted, while most American politicians wanted to withdraw to fortress America and steer clear of the deadly European rivalries. Wilson’s ideas prevailed to some degree, for example in the formation of the League of Nations, but without his own country or the Soviet Union as members it was at best a talking shop, at worst a place of meddling and exacerbating an already volatile international arena. Wilson’s world of disarmament, of free trade and navigation, in which self-determination and not colonialism would be the rule, was not something most countries were ready for. Instead the Paris Peace Conference produced flimsy and half-baked versions of some of these ideas and implemented them without conviction. And as a consequence, it made a significant contribution to the rise of ultra-nationalist movements and the destruction caused by Nazism and fascism in the years to follow. In the post-1945 era, some of the lessons of inclusive peace agreements, and the need to build a world order based not on dogma and revenge but on the guiding principle of avoiding future wars, were implemented. This enabled the defeated countries of the Second World War to become constructive and peaceful members of the international community. Had the participants in the Paris Peace Conference adopted those principles in 1918, they might – just might – have prevented the horrendous consequences that befell the world in the 1930s and 1940s. Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations at Regent’s University London, where he is head of the International Relations and Social Sciences Program. He is also an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. Twitter: @YMekelberg Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News" point-of-view