he measure of a civilisation is not the expanse of its empires, the height of its monuments or the sophistication of its technology. Rather, it is its ability to nurture peace — within its own society and with its neighbours. The civilising process, as Norbert Elias theorised, entails the gradual internalisation of self-restraint, empathy and diplomacy — the moral tools that subdue aggression and transform human coexistence into a shared moral enterprise.

Throughout history, philosophers and humanists have recognised peace not as a passive state, but as the highest expression of reason and moral evolution. Immanuel Kant, in his Perpetual Peace (1795), envisioned a federation of free states bound not by conquest but by law, arguing that genuine civilisation emerges only when “reason triumphs over the passions of domination.” Arnold Toynbee, in A Study of History, offered a similar insight: civilisations rise through moral creativity and decline when they surrender to militarism.

The lesson is timeless — that aggression, however justified in the name of security, ultimately corrodes the very ideals that sustain civilisation. As Nobel laureate Martin Luther King Jr warned, “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.” His words echo through every age: the stability of any nation or region rests not on the might of its armies but on the strength of its moral imagination.

Civilisation demands both inner and outer peace — harmony within and diplomacy without. The internal dimension of peace rests upon justice, equality and the assurance that citizens live without fear or oppression. True justice, however, can only be realised under the rule of law — when no individual, no ruler and no institution stands above it. The rule of law is the invisible architecture upon which human dignity is built, ensuring that before the law, everyone is equal and accountable. As history repeatedly demonstrates, where law bends to power, peace collapses into tyranny.

Equally essential to this moral architecture is the recognition of human rights — not as privileges conferred by the state, but as inalienable attributes of humanity itself. The right to think freely, to speak openly and to dissent without fear is the lifeblood of a civilised order. A society that suppresses the freedom of thought and expression silences the conscience of civilisation itself. Tragically, in an age increasingly dominated by authoritarian populism, this freedom stands imperiled. The world under the stewardship of people like Donald Trump has witnessed a resurgence of intolerance and hostility toward the press, intellectual dissent and pluralism. The corrosion of these freedoms not only weakens democracy but also poisons the spirit of peaceful coexistence, for dialogue cannot flourish where thought is shackled and fear governs speech.

Externally, peace demands the art of negotiation — a recognition that dialogue and compromise, rather than domination, are the instruments of durable stability. Nelson Mandela, whose life was a testament to reconciliation, once observed that “if you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy — then he becomes your partner.” That philosophy, rooted in pragmatic idealism, remains the surest path to civilised progress.

The modern world, for all its technological sophistication, has not fulfilled this civilisational promise. The Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries have been scarred by militarism and the glorification of power. Nobel laureate Kofi Annan lamented that “we may have conquered outer space, but not inner space; we have done so much to make our world a safer place, yet we are not safe from ourselves.” War, often justified through distorted nationalism or ideological fear, continues to masquerade as patriotism — even as it dismantles the moral fabric that binds societies together.

Nowhere is this contradiction more visible than in South Asia, where historical grievances and political manipulation have repeatedly derailed the quest for peace. Pakistan’s experience offers a sobering lesson. Authoritarian leaders — from Ayub Khan to Yahya Khan and from Zia-ul Haq to Pervez Musharraf - have been associated with adventurism and confrontation. Civilian governments seeking dialogue and reconciliation have found their efforts undermined by an entrenched ethos of confrontation.

The pattern is stark: when democratic processes are suppressed, war rhetoric gains strength; when democracy breathes, diplomacy flourishes. As Bertrand Russell famously wrote, “War does not determine who is right — only who is left.” A state’s security lies not in its capacity to strike but in its ability to settle disputes through negotiation, empathy and law. The rule of law, in this sense, is not only an internal necessity but also an external strategy — it guides nations toward predictability, restraint and the peaceful resolution of conflict.

The tragic relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan illustrates this point vividly. Despite shared faith, culture and geography, the two nations have struggled to transform proximity into partnership. Afghanistan’s early opposition to Pakistan’s admission into the United Nations, rooted in the unresolved Durand Line issue, planted seeds of distrust that have never fully healed. The decades since have witnessed cycles of interference and blame — from Pakistan’s involvement in the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s to post-9/11 accusations of cross-border militancy. More recently, military operations, air strikes and tit-for-tat incursions have deepened animosities.

Such confrontations serve neither nation’s interests. They impoverish border communities, destabilise governance and perpetuate the illusion that force can substitute for diplomacy. History, however, teaches the opposite: every enduring peace — from Europe’s post-war reconciliation to South Africa’s transition from apartheid — has emerged through negotiation, not coercion. The path forward for Pakistan and Afghanistan must therefore lie in dialogue, trust-building and institutional cooperation, not in the projection of power.

Philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr captured this paradox with moral precision when he wrote, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” The same holds true for nations. Their ability to empathise makes peace possible, but their temptation toward domination makes peace fragile. To sustain civilisation, therefore, nations must cultivate the moral discipline to choose dialogue over destruction, persuasion over coercion and justice over revenge.

Ultimately, peace and civilisation are inseparable. One cannot flourish without the other. The historian Will Durant aptly noted in The Lessons of History, “Civilisation is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood, but the banks are civilisation — and the stream would soon run dry without them.” Those banks are built by justice, sustained by democracy, strengthened by the rule of law and reinforced by moral courage.

If humanity is to avoid another century of conflict, it must invest not in arsenals but in institutions of dialogue; not in walls, but in bridges; not in coercion, but in consent. A robust democracy — anchored in fairness, the equality of all before the law and an independent system of justice — remains the surest guarantee of peace. Only where the freedom of thought and expression is protected, where human rights are respected and where power answers to the people, can civilisation claim to have triumphed over barbarism. For when justice prevails, law governs, and conscience is free, peace is not merely a dream of civilisation; it becomes its defining reality.

The writer is a professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.