Great-power conflict and great-power war are still the most dangerous risks the international community is facing today. The volume „Great Power Multilateralism and the Prevention of War. Debating a 21st Century Concert of Powers“, edited by Harald Müller and Carsten Rauch, investigates the feasibility of a modern day concert of powers as a way for managing the risk of great power conflicts in the 21st century. This basic premise is historically inspired by the 19th century European Concert which ensured a period of exceptional peacefulness among the European great powers and limited the scope and duration of conflicts.
The volume presents the outcomes of the research project “A Twenty-First Century Concert of Powers”. The research project systematically examined the conditions responsible for the (early) success as well as the later decline and ultimate fail of the “European Concert” in order to relate them to current international conflict dynamics.
The chapter authors – among them Konstanze Jüngling, Daniel Müller, Harald Müller, Carsten Rauch and Hans-Joachim Spanger – discuss the achievements and limits of the historical concert, define the requirements that a new concert would have to meet, critically evaluate obstacles and risks of the approach and indicate how a 21st century concert of powers could complement, and fit into, the present legal and institutional setting of global politics.
The edited volume „Great Power Multilateralism and the Prevention of War. Debating a 21st Century Concert of Powers“ is published by Routledge.