I just finished reading Henry Kissinger's great book "A World Restored" which focused on the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic era in Europe.  In particular, it focused on the efforts of the insular statesman, England's Castlereagh and the Statesman of the Continent, Austria's Metternich.  Kissinger does an amazing job of outlining the personal characteristics of each of these diplomats as they battled to restore some type of stability within Europe after the insanity of the French Revolution and its exporting under the Emperorship (and tactical genius) of Napoleon.  In particular, their struggles to contain the ambitions of the Russian Czar Alexander I who had survived Napoleon's invasion and wished for nothing more (in his, as Kissinger would describe, moods of religious exaltation) than to bring peace to the world under the banner of his theology.

Lessons to be learned include the indispensibility to a statesman of understanding his nation, yet being capable of bridging his countrymen's past with the future.  Ultimately, Kissinger viewed Castlereagh as being too out in front of English domestic opinion, while Metternich was too unable to look outside the confines of the given circumstances to produce anything bold.

Yet it are the sprinklings of philosophical insight that made this such a tremendous achievement.  Better even than Kissinger's magnum opus, Diplomacy.

Look at the quotes on the nature of peace and one can sense the deep understanding of what peace really is, not what it is dreamed to be:

"But the attainment of peace is not as easy as the desire for it. Not for nothing is history associated with the figure of Nemesis, which defeats man by fulfilling his wishes in a different form or by answering his prayers too completely. Those ages which in retrospect seem most peaceful were least in search of peace. Those whose quest for it seems unending appear least able to achieve tranquillity. Whenever peace—conceived as the avoidance of war—has been the primary objective of a power or a group of powers, the international system has been at the mercy of the most ruthless member of the international community. Whenever the international order has acknowledged that certain principles could not be compromised even for the sake of peace, stability based on an equilibrium of forces was at least conceivable."

Or this which encapsulates just what the danger of appeasement is (the succumbing before those of unlimited ambition and objectives- a Napoleon and a Hitler)

"For powers long accustomed to tranquillity and without experience with disaster, this is a hard lesson to come by. Lulled by a period of stability which had seemed permanent, they find it nearly impossible to take at face value the assertion of the revolutionary power that it means to smash the existing framework. The defenders of the status quo therefore tend to begin by treating the revolutionary power as if its protestations were merely tactical; as if it really accepted the existing legitimacy but overstated its case for bargaining purposes; as if it were motivated by specific grievances to be assuaged by limited concessions. Those who warn against the danger in time are considered alarmists; those who counsel adaptation to circumstance are considered balanced and sane, for they have all the good reasons on their side: the arguments accepted as valid in the existing framework. Appeasement, where it is not a device to gain time, is the result of an inability to come to grips with a policy of unlimited objectives."

Or this on the essence of statesmanship versus those who assault the order of society:

"But the claims of the prophet are sometimes as dissolving as those of the conqueror. For the claims of the prophet are a counsel of perfection, and perfection implies uniformity. Utopias are not achieved except by a process of leveling and dislocation which must erode all patterns of obligation. These are the two great symbols of the attacks on the legitimate order: the Conqueror and the Prophet, the quest for universality and for eternity, for the peace of impotence and the peace of bliss.

But the statesman must remain forever suspicious of these efforts, not because he enjoys the pettiness of manipulation, but because he must be prepared for the worst contingency."

Francis Fukuyama comments on the book in an old issue of Foreign Affairs and comes away thinking that Kissinger was wrong in his assessments and that it is is the idealism of the Czar, or at least something akin to his idealism, that seems to drive the world forward (perhaps not an unsurprising position for one who at the time was still a neoconservative).   I am not so sure. 

Many look for a prophet, others to a conqueror, yet it is the prudence of a statesman that preserves all legitimacy.  The prophet and conqueror seduce or impose new orders, it is the task of a statesman to preserve the order of the day.