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“People want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.”

– President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Just two weeks ago, the United States stood at the brink of yet another war. President Obama was announcing plans to order U.S. military strikes on Syria, with consequences that no one could predict.

Then things shifted. In an extraordinarily short time, the people petitioned, called their representatives in Congress, held rallies, and used social media to demand a nonviolent approach to the crisis. The march toward war slowed.

During Tuesday night’s address to the nation, President Obama said his administration will work with close allies, and with Russia and Syria, toward a diplomatic solution: pushing a resolution through the United Nations Security Council requiring the Syrian government to give up its chemical weapons. He also said the United States will give U.N. weapons inspectors a chance to report their findings on the chemical weapons attack of August 21.

If these diplomatic efforts to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles are successful, historians may look back at this as a moment when the people finally got the peace they demanded.

How did we step back from the brink?

On August 29, the British Parliament rejected a motion to authorize an assault on Syria, and Prime Minister David Cameron accepted the vote-even though he was not required to do so by law. The leading member of Parliament from the Labour Party, Ed Milliband, said he’d acted “for the people of Britain,” who “want us to learn the lessons of Iraq.”