Peace and democracy are just two sides of the same coin,
it has often been said. In a speech before the British parliament in June
of 1982, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed that governments founded on a
respect for individual liberty exercise "restraint" and "peaceful
intentions" in their foreign policy. He then, perhaps unaware of the
contrast, announced a "crusade for freedom" and a "campaign
for democratic development."
2
In making these claims the President joined a long list
of liberal theorists (and propagandists) and echoed an old argument: the
aggressive instincts of authoritarian leaders and totalitarian ruling parties
make for war. Liberal states, founded on such individual rights as equality
before the law, free speech and other civil liberties, private property,
and elected representation are fundamentally against war, this argument asserts.
When citizens who bear the burdens of war elect their governments, wars become
impossible. Furthermore, citizens appreciate that the benefits of trade can
be enjoyed only under conditions of peace. Thus, the very existence of liberal
states, such as the United States, the European Union and others, makes
for peace. And so peace and democracy are two sides of the same coin.
 |
Building on a growing literature in international political
science, I question the pacific liberal claim by identifying three distinct
theoretical traditions of liberalism: liberal pacifism, liberal imperialism,
and a liberal internationalism that combines elements of both the previous
two.
Despite the contradictions of liberal pacifism and liberal
imperialism, I find with Immanuel Kant and other liberal republicans that
liberalism does leave a coherent legacy on foreign affairs. Liberal states
are different.
They are indeed peaceful. But they are also prone to make war. Liberal states,
as Kant argued they would, have created a separate peace. They also, as he
feared they might, have discovered liberal reasons for aggression. I conclude
by arguing that the differences among liberal pacifism, liberal imperialism,
and Kant's liberal internationalism are not arbitrary. They are rooted in
differing conceptions of the citizen and of societies and states.
Liberal Pacifism
There is no canonical description of liberalism. What
we tend to call liberal resembles a family portrait of principles
and institutions, recognizable by certain characteristics – for
example, a commitment to individual freedom, government through
democratic representation, rights of private
property, and equality of opportunity – that most liberal
states share, although none has perfected them all. Joseph Schumpeter
clearly fits within this family when he considers the international
effects of capitalism and democracy.
Schumpeter's "Sociology of Imperialisms," which
was published in 1919, made a coherent and sustained argument concerning
the pacifying
(in the sense of non-aggressive) effects of liberal institutions and principle.
3
Unlike some of the earlier liberal theorists, who focused on a single feature,
such as trade
4 or failed to examine critically the arguments they were
advancing, Schumpeter saw the interaction of capitalism and democracy as
the foundation
of liberal pacifism.
Capitalism, he suggests, produces an unwarlike disposition;
its populace is "democratized, individualized, rationalized."
5
The people's daily energies are daily absorbed in production. The disciplines
of industry and the market train people in "economic rationalism;" the
instability of industrial life necessitates calculation. Capitalism also "individualizes;" "subjective
opportunities" replace the "immutable factors" of traditional,
hierarchical society. Rational individuals demand democratic governance.
And democratic capitalism leads to peace. As evidence,
Schumpeter claims that (1) throughout the capitalist world an
opposition has arisen to "war,
expansion, cabinet diplomacy;" (2) contemporary capitalism
is associated with peace parties; and (3) the industrial worker
of capitalism is "vigorously
anti-imperialist." In addition, (4) the capitalist world
has developed the means of preventing war, such as the Hague
Court, and (5) the least feudal, most capitalist society – the
United States – has
demonstrated the least imperialistic tendencies. (With a curious
absence of irony
he notes that the United States left over half of Mexico unconquered
in the war of
1846-48.)
Schumpeter's explanation for liberal pacifism was simple. Only
war profiteers and military aristocrats gain from wars. No democracy would
pursue a minority
interest and tolerate the high costs of imperialism. When free trade prevails, "no
class" gains from forcible expansion: "foreign raw materials
and food stuffs are as accessible to each nation as though they were in
its own
territory. Where the cultural backwardness of a region makes normal economic
intercourse dependent on colonization it does not matter, assuming free
trade, which of the 'civilized' nations undertakes the task of colonization."
6
Liberal Imperialism
In contradistinction to the pacific view of popular government,
Thucydides and later Niccolò Machiavelli argue that not only are free
republics not pacifistic, they are the best form of state for imperial expansion.
Establishing
a republic fit for imperial expansion is, moreover, the best way to guarantee
the survival of a state.
Machiavelli's republic is a classical, mixed republic.
It is not a democracy, which he thought would quickly degenerate into a tyranny;
nor is it founded on the modern liberal view of fundamental human rights.
But it is characterized by popular liberty and political participation.
7
The consuls serve as "kings;" the senate as an aristocracy managing
the state, the people in the assembly as the source of strength.
Liberty results from the "disunion" – the
competition and necessity for compromise required by the division
of powers among senate, consuls and tribunes (the last representing
the common people). Liberty also results from the popular veto.
The powerful few, Machiavelli says, threaten tyranny because they
seek to dominate; the mass demands not to be dominated. Their
veto thus preserves the liberties of the state.
8 But
since the people and the rulers have different social characters,
the people need to be "managed" by the few to avoid
having their recklessness overturn or their fecklessness undermine
the ability of the state to expand.
9
Thus the senate and the consuls plan expansion, consult oracles,
and employ religion to manage the resources that the energy of
the people supplies.
Strength, and then imperial expansion, result from the
way liberty encourages increased population and property, which grow when
the citizens know that
their lives and goods are secure from arbitrary seizure. Free citizens equip
large armies and provide soldiers who fight for public glory and the common
good, because they are in fact their own.
10 Thus, if you seek the honor of
having your state expand, Machiavelli advises, you should organize it as
a free and popular republic like Rome, rather than as an aristocratic republic
like Sparta or Venice. Expansion thus calls for a free republic.
"Necessity" – political survival – calls
for expansion. If a stable aristocratic republic is forced by
foreign conflict "to
extend her territory, in such a case we shall see her foundations
give way and herself quickly brought to ruin."
11 If
domestic security, on the other hand, prevails, "the continued
tranquillity would enervate her, or provoke internal dissensions,
which together, or either of them separately,
will
apt to prove her ruin." Machiavelli therefore believes that
it is necessary to take the constitution of Rome, rather than
that of Sparta or Venice, as our model.
Hence liberal imperialism. We are lovers of glory, Machiavelli
announces. We seek to rule, or at least to avoid being oppressed. In either
case, we want more for ourselves and our states than just material welfare
(materialistic monism). Because other states with similar aims thereby threaten
us, we prepare ourselves for expansion. Because our fellow citizens threaten
us if we do not allow them either to satisfy their ambition or to release
their political energies through imperial expansion, we expand.
There is considerable historical evidence for liberal
imperialism. Machiavelli's (Polybius') Rome and Thucydides' Athens both were
imperial republics in the Machiavellian sense.
12 The
historical record of numerous United States interventions in the postwar period supports
Machiavelli's argument.
13 But the current record of liberal pacifism, weak as it is, calls
some of Machiavelli's insights into question. To the extent that the modern
populace actually controls (and thus unbalances) the mixed republic, their
diffidence may outweigh elite ("senatorial") aggressiveness.
We can conclude either that (1) liberal pacifism has
at last taken over with the further development of capitalist
democracy, as Schumpeter predicted it would; or (2) the mixed
record of liberalism – pacifism
and imperialism – indicates that some liberal states are
Schumpeterian democracies while others are Machiavellian republics.
But before we accept either conclusion, we must consider a third
apparent regularity of modern world politics.
Liberal Internationalism
Modern liberalism carries with it two legacies. They affect liberal states,
not separately, according to whether they are pacifistic or imperialistic,
but simultaneously.
The first of these legacies is the pacification of foreign
relations among liberal states.
14 During the
nineteenth century, the United States and Great Britain engaged in nearly
continual strife. But after the
Reform Act of 1832 defined actual representation as the formal source of
the sovereignty of the British parliament, Britain and the United States
negotiated
their disputes despite, for example, British grievances against the Northern
blockade of the South, with which Britain had close economic ties. Despite
severe Anglo-French colonial rivalry, liberal France and liberal Britain
formed an entente against illiberal Germany before World War One. And in
1914-15, Italy, the liberal member of the Triple Alliance with Germany and
Austria, chose not to fulfil its treaty obligations under the Triple Alliance
to support its allies. Instead, Italy joined in an alliance with Britain
and France that had the result of preventing it from having to fight other
liberal states and then declared war on Germany and Austria. And despite
generations of Anglo-American tension and Britain's wartime restrictions
on American trade with Germany, the United States leaned toward Britain and
France from 1914 to 1917, before entering World War One on their side.
Beginning in the eighteenth century and slowly growing
since then, a zone of peace, which Kant called the "pacific federation" or "pacific
union," began to be established among liberal societies. (More than
fifty liberal states currently make up the union. Most are in Europe and
North America, but they can be found on every continent.)
Here, the predictions of liberal pacifists are borne
out: liberal states
do exercise peaceful restraint and a separate peace exists
among them. This separate peace provides a political foundation for the United
States' crucial alliances with the liberal powers (NATO, the alliances with
Japan, Australia and New Zealand). This liberal alliance engendered the
unbalanced, preponderance of resources that the "West" enjoyed
during the Cold War. This foundation appears to be impervious to economic
competition and personal quarrels with liberal allies. It also offers the
promise of a continuing peace among liberal states. And, as the number of
liberal states increases, it announces the possibility of global peace this
side of the grave or world conquest.
Of course, the outbreak of war, in any given year, between
any two given states, is a low probability event. But the occurrence
of a war between any two adjacent states, considered over a long
period of time, would be more probable. The apparent absence of
war between liberal states, whether adjacent or not, for almost
two hundred years may therefore have significance. Similar claims
cannot be made for feudal, "fascist," communist,
authoritarian or totalitarian forms of rule;
15 nor
for pluralistic, or merely similar societies. More significant
perhaps, is that when states are forced
to decide on which side of an impending world war they will fight,
liberal states wind up all on the same side, despite the complexity
of the paths that take them there. These characteristics do not
prove that the peace among liberals is statistically significant,
nor that liberalism is the peace's sole valid explanation.
16 But
they do suggest that we consider the possibility that liberals
have indeed established a separate peace – but only among
themselves.
Liberalism also carries with it a second
legacy – international
"imprudence."
17 Peaceful
restraint only seems to work in the liberals' relations with other
liberals. Liberal states have fought numerous wars with non-liberal
states.
18
Many of these wars have been defensive, and thus prudent
by necessity. Liberal states have been attacked and threatened
by non-liberal states that do not exercise any special restraint
in their dealings with liberal states. Authoritarian rulers both
stimulate and respond to an international political environment
in which conflicts of prestige, of interest, and of pure fear
of what other states might do, all lead states toward war. War
and conquest have thus characterized the careers of many authoritarian
rulers and ruling parties – from Louis XIV and Napoleon
Bonaparte to Benito Mussolini's fascists, Adolf Hitler's Nazis,
and Joseph Stalin's communists.
But we cannot simply blame warfare on the authoritarians
or totalitarians, as many of our more enthusiastic politicians would have
us do. Most wars arise out of calculations and miscalculations of interest,
misunderstandings, and mutual suspicions, such as those that characterized
the origins of World War One. But aggression by the liberal state has also
characterized a large number of wars. Both France and Britain fought expansionist
colonial wars throughout the nineteenth century. The United States fought
a similar war with Mexico in 1846-48, waged a war of annihilation against
the American Indians, and intervened militarily against sovereign states
many times before and after World War Two. Liberal states invade weak non-liberal
states and display striking distrust in dealings with powerful non-liberal
states.
19
Kant's theory of liberal internationalism helps us understand
these two legacies. The importance of Immanuel Kant as a theorist of international
ethics has been well appreciated.
20 But Kant
also has an important analytical theory of international politics.
Perpetual
Peace, written in 1795, helps
us understand the interactive nature of international relations. Methodologically,
he tries to teach us that we cannot study either the systemic relations of
states or the varieties of state behavior in isolation from each other. Substantively,
he anticipates for us the ever-widening pacification of a liberal pacific
union, explains that pacification, and at the same time suggests why liberal
states are not pacific in their relations with non-liberal states. Kant argues
that perpetual peace will be guaranteed by the ever-widening acceptance of
three "definitive articles" of peace. When all nations have accepted
the definitive articles in a metaphorical "treaty" of perpetual
peace he asks them to sign, perpetual peace will have been established.
First, republican governments, he argues, tame the aggressive
interests of absolutist monarchies and ingrain the habit of respect for individual
rights. Wars then appear as direct charges on the people's welfare that he
and the other liberals thought them to be. Yet these domestic republican
restraints do not end war. If they did, liberal states would not be warlike,
which is far from the case. They do introduce republican caution, Kant's "hesitation," in
place of monarchical caprice. Liberal wars are only fought for popular, liberal
purposes. The historical liberal legacy is laden with popular wars fought
to promote freedom, protect private property or support liberal allies against
non-liberal enemies.
21
Second, in order to see how the pacific union removes
the occasion of wars among liberal states and not wars between
liberal and non-liberal states, we need to shift our attention
from constitutional law
to international law, Kant's second source. Complementing the
constitutional guarantee of caution, international law adds a
second source – a
guarantee of respect. The separation of nations is reinforced
by the development of separate languages and religions. These
further guarantee a world of separate states—an essential
condition needed to avoid a "global, soul-less
despotism." Yet, at the same time, they also morally integrate
liberal states "as culture grows and men gradually move
towards greater agreement over their principles, they lead to
mutual understanding and peace."
22
As republics emerge (the first source) and as culture progresses,
the established practice of recognized legal rights resting
on an understanding of the legitimate rights of all citizens
and of all republics comes into play; and this, now
that caution characterizes policy, sets up the institutional
and moral foundations for the liberal peace. Correspondingly,
international law highlights the
importance of Kantian publicity.
Domestically, publicity helps ensure that
the officials of republics act according to the principles they profess
to hold just and according to the interests of the electors they claim
to represent.
Internationally, free speech and the effective communication of accurate
conceptions of the political life of foreign peoples is essential to
establish and preserve the understanding on which the guarantee of respect
depends.
Domestically, just republics, which rest on consent, then presume foreign
republics to be also consensual, just, and therefore deserving of accommodation.
The recognition of legitimate rights and the experience of cooperation
helps engender further cooperative behavior when the consequences of
state policy are unclear but (potentially) mutually beneficial. At the same
time,
liberal states assume that non-liberal states, which do not rest on free
consent, are not just. Because non-liberal governments are perceived
to be in a state of aggression with their own people, their foreign relations
become for liberal governments deeply suspect. In short, fellow liberals
benefit from a presumption of amity; non-liberals suffer from a presumption
of enmity. Both presumptions may be accurate. Each, however, may also
be
self-fulfilling.
Democratic liberals do not need to assume either that
public opinion rules foreign policy or that the entire governmental elite
is liberal. It can assume that the elite typically manages public affairs
but that potentially non-liberal members of the elite have reason to doubt
that antiliberal policies would be electorally sustained and endorsed by
the majority of the democratic public.
Third and lastly, cosmopolitan law
adds material incentives to moral commitments. The cosmopolitan right to
hospitality permits the "spirit of commerce" sooner or later to
take hold of every nation, thus creating incentives for states to promote
peace and to try to avert war. Liberal economic theory holds that these cosmopolitan
ties derive from a cooperative international division of labor and free trade
according to comparative advantage. Each economy is said to be better off
than it would have been under autarky; each thus acquires an incentive to
avoid policies that would lead the other to break these economic ties. Since
keeping open markets rests upon the assumption that the next set of transactions
will also be determined by legal rights and agreed upon prices rather than
coercion, a sense of mutual security is vital to avoid security-motivated
searches for economic autarky. Thus avoiding a challenge to another liberal
state's security or even enhancing each other's security by means of alliance
naturally follows economic interdependence.
 |
A further cosmopolitan source of liberal peace is that
the international market removes difficult decisions of production and
distribution from the direct sphere of state policy. A foreign state thus
does not appear
directly responsible for these outcomes; states can stand aside from, and
to some degree above, these contentious market rivalries and be ready to
step in to resolve crises. The interdependence of commerce and the international
contacts of state officials help create crosscutting transnational ties
that serve as lobbies for mutual accommodation.
23 According
to modern liberal scholars, international financiers and transnational and
transgovernmental
organizations
create interests in favor of accommodation. Moreover, their variety has
ensured no single conflict sours an entire relationship by setting off a
spiral of
reciprocated retaliation. Trust, property rights and mutual expectation
of the rule of law make economic and other disputes easier to settle. Conversely,
a sense of suspicion, such as that characterizing relations between liberal
and non-liberal governments, can exacerbate disputes and lead to restrictions
on the range of contacts between societies and this can increase the prospect
that a single conflict will determine an entire relationship.
No single constitutional, international or cosmopolitan
source alone is sufficient. Kantian theory is neither solely institutional
nor solely ideological, nor solely economic. But together,
and only together do the three specific strands of liberal institutions, liberal ideas, and
the transnational ties that follow from them plausibly connect the characteristics
of liberal polities and economies with sustained liberal peace. But in their
relations with non-liberal states, liberal states have not escaped from the
insecurity caused by anarchy in the world political system considered as
a whole. Moreover, the very constitutional restraint, international respect
for individual rights, and shared commercial interests that establish grounds
for peace among liberal states establish grounds for additional conflict
in relations between liberal and non-liberal societies.
Comparisons
Much of the debate on the democratic peace or liberal
pacifism isolates one feature of democracy or liberalism and then tests it
against the historical record. It is thus worth stressing that Kant's theory
rejects that approach.
24 He presents each of the three "definitive articles" as
necessary conditions that and only together establish a sufficient condition
of establishing a pacific union.
Representation or democracy (the so-called domestic "structural" causes
of the democratic peace) only ensures that foreign policy reflects the preferences
of the median voter, whatever they may be. If those preferences are rational
egositic, then however rational or powerful the state may be, it will only
be pacific to the extent that a particular bilateral peace produces greater
material benefits than would aggression (discounting but still counting all
systemic and temporal effects). This is a weak reed for a wealthy, resource
rich or strategically vital, but very weak democratic state to rely upon
in its relations with powerful and also democratic states.
25
A related objection applies to purely "normative" explanations
of the liberal peace. The norms, to the extent they are normative, apply
to all statespersons as moral agents, as human beings, anywhere, whatever
their state structure. Yet states other than liberal states do not maintain
peace (and liberals maintain peace only with each other).
26 In short, Kant's
argument for the combined effect of structures, norms, and interests warrants
our attention.
In order to sort out the varied legacy of liberalism
on international relations, we should also recall that Kant's liberal internationalism,
Machiavelli's liberal imperialism, and Schumpeter's liberal pacifism rest
on fundamentally different views on the nature of man, the state, and international
relations.
27 Schumpeter's man is rationalized, individualized, and democratized.
He is also homogenized, pursuing material interests "monistically." Since
his material interests lie in peaceful trade, he and the democratic state
that he and his fellow citizens control are pacifistic. Machiavelli's citizens
are splendidly diverse in their goals, but they are fundamentally unequal
in them as well, seeking to rule or fearing being dominated. Extending the
rule of the dominant elite, or avoiding the political collapse of their state,
each call for imperial expansion.
Kant's citizens, too, are diverse in their goals, and
they are individualized and rationalized. But most importantly,
they are capable of appreciating the moral equality of all individuals
and of treating other individuals as ends rather than as means.
The Kantian state thus is governed publicly according to law,
as a republic. Kant's is the state that – formally,
legally—solves the problem of governing individualized
equals whether they are the "rational devils" he says
we often find ourselves to be or the ethical agents we can and
should become.
“In order to organize a group of rational beings
who together require universal laws for their survival, but of whom each
separate individual is secretly inclined to exempt himself from them, the
constitution must be so designed so that, although the citizens are opposed
to one another in their private attitudes, these opposing views may inhibit
one another in such a way that the public conduct of the citizens will be
the same as if they did not have such evil attitudes.”28
Unlike Machiavelli's republics, Kant's republics are
capable of achieving peace among themselves because they exercise
democratic caution and because they are capable of appreciating
the international rights of foreign republics. These international
rights of republics derive from the representation of foreign
individuals, who are our moral equals. Unlike Schumpeter's capitalist
democracies, Kant's republics remain in a state of war with non-republics.
Liberal republics see themselves as threatened by aggression from
non-republics that are not constrained by representation. And
even though wars often cost more than the economic return they
generate, liberal republics also are prepared to protect and promote – sometimes
forcibly – democracy, private property, and the rights of
individuals overseas against
non-republics which, because they do not authentically represent
the rights of individuals, have no rights to non-interference.
These wars may liberate oppressed individuals overseas; they can
also generate enormous suffering.
Preserving the legacy of the liberal peace without succumbing
to the legacy of liberal imprudence is both a moral and a strategic challenge.
The near certainty of mutual devastation resulting from a nuclear war between
the superpowers has created a "crystal ball effect" which has helped
to constrain the tendency toward miscalculation that was present at the outbreak
of so many wars in the past. But this "nuclear peace" appeared
to have been limited to the superpowers. It did not curb military interventions
in the Third World. Moreover, it is subject to a desperate technological
race designed to overcome its constraints and to crises that have pushed
even the superpowers to the brink of war. We must still reckon with the war
fevers and moods of appeasement that have almost alternately swept liberal
democracies.
 |
Burning oil wells and a destroyed Iraqi tank, Al Maqwa,
Kuwait, March 1991.
Copyright © UN/DPI/J. Isaac |
Yet restraining liberal imprudence, whether
aggressive or passive, may not be possible without threatening liberal
pacification. Improving the strategic acumen of our foreign policy calls
for introducing
steadier strategic calculations of the long run national interest and
more flexible responses to changes in the international political environment.
Constraining the indiscriminate meddling of our foreign interventions
calls
for a deeper appreciation of the "particularism of history, culture,
and membership."
29 However, both the improvement in strategy and the
constraint on intervention, in turn, seem to require an executive freed from
the restraints
of a representative legislature in the management of foreign policy and a
political culture indifferent to the universal rights of individuals. And
these, in their turn, could break the chain of constitutional guarantees,
the respect for representative government, and the web of transnational contact
that have sustained the pacific union of liberal states.
Perpetual peace, Kant says, is the endpoint of the hard
journey his republics will take. The promise of perpetual peace, the violent
lessons of war, and the experience of a partial peace are proof of the need
for and the possibility of world peace. They are also the grounds for moral
citizens and statesmen to assume the duty of striving for peace.
1. This essay draws on parts of Michael W. Doyle's Ways
of War and Peace. 1997. New York: W.W. Norton.
Michael W. Doyle is the Harold Brown Professor at Columbia
University in the School of International and Public Affairs and Columbia
Law School.
Professor Doyle previously has taught at the University of Warwick (United
Kingdom), Johns Hopkins University and Princeton University. His publications
include Ways of War and Peace (W.W. Norton); Empires (Cornell University Press);
UN Peacekeeping in Cambodia: UNTAC's Civil Mandate (Lynne Rienner Publishers);
Keeping the Peace (Cambridge University Press) which he edited with Ian Johnstone
and Robert Orr; Peacemaking and Peacekeeping for the New Century (Rowman and
Littlefield) edited with Olara Otunnu; New Thinking in International Relations
Theory (Westview) edited with John Ikenberry; Escalation and Intervention:
Multilateral Security and Its Alternatives (Westview Press/United Nations Association)
edited with Arthur Day; and Alternatives to Monetary Disorder (Council on Foreign
Relations/McGraw Hill) which he wrote with Fred Hirsch and Edward Morse.
He recently served as Assistant Secretary-General and Special Adviser to United
Nations Secretary-General
Kofi Annan.
His responsibilities in the Secretary-General's Executive Office included strategic
planning, outreach to the international corporate sector (the "Global
Compact") and relations with Washington. He is currently chairman of the
Academic Council of the
United Nations Community.
He was the Director of the Center of International Studies of Princeton University
and chairman of the Editorial Board and the Committee of Editors of
World
Politics. He was the vice-president and senior fellow of the International
Peace Academy and is now a member of its board of directors. He has also served
as a member of the External Research Advisory Committee of the
UNHCR,
the Advisory Committee of the Lessons-Learned Unit of the Department of Peace-Keeping
Operations (UN), and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, New York.
In 2001, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Michael Doyle is married, has a daughter and lives in
Philadelphia and New York.
2. Reagan, Ronald. 1983/1984. "Peace and
National Security," televised address to the nation, Washington D.C.,
March 23, 1983, p. 40 in the U.S. State Department, Realism, Strength,
Negotiation, May 1984.
3. Schumpeter, Joseph. 1950. Capitalism,
Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Doyle, Michael
W. 1986. "Liberalism and World Politics," American Political
Science Review, vol. 80, no. 4 (December), pp. 1151-1169.
4. Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron of.
1748/1966. Spirit of the Laws. New York: Hafner, bk. 20, ch. 1.
5. Schumpeter, Joseph. 1955. "The Sociology
of Imperialism." Imperialism and Social Classes. Cleveland: World
Publishing, p. 68.
6. Ibid. pp. 75-76. A study by R.J. Rummel
of "libertarianism" and international violence is the closest test
that Schumpeterian pacifism has received (1983). "Free" states
(those enjoying political and economic freedom) have considerably less conflict
at the level of economic sanctions or above (more violent) than "non-free" states.
The free, the partly free (including the democratic socialist countries such
as Sweden), and the non-free accounted for .24, .26 and .61 of the violence,
respectively. These correlations are impressive, but not conclusive for the
Schumpeterian thesis. The data set is limited, in this test, to 1976-1980.
It includes, for example, the Russian-Afghan War, the Vietnamese invasion
of Cambodia, China's invasion of Vietnam and Tanzania's invasion of Uganda,
but just misses the U.S. quasi-covert intervention in Angola (1975) and the
not so covert war against Nicaragua (1981). More importantly, it excludes
the cold war period with its numerous interventions and the long history
of colonial wars (the Boer War, the Spanish American War, the Mexican Intervention,
etc.) that marked the history of liberal, including democratic capitalist
states. See Rummel, Rudolph J. 1983. "Libertarianism and International
Violence." Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 27, pp. 27-71.
7. Machiavelli, Niccolò. 1950. The
Prince and the Discourses, trans. Luigi Ricci and Christian Detmold,
ed. Max Lerner. New York: Modern Library, bk. I, ch. 2, p. 112; Mansfield,
Harvey C. 1970. "Machiavelli's New Regime." Italian Quarterly,
vol. 13, pp. 63-95; Skinner, Quentin. 1981. Machiavelli. New York:
Hill and Wang, ch. 3; Huliung, Mark, 1983. Citizen Michavelli. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, ch. 2.
8. Ibid, bk. I, ch. 5, p. 122.
9. Ibid, bk. I, ch. 53, pp. 249-250.
10. Ibid, bk. II, ch. 2, pp. 287-290.
11. Ibid, bk. I, ch. 6, p. 129.
12. Thucydides, 1954/1972. The Peloponnesian
War, trans. Rex Warner, intro. M.I. Finley. Harmondsworth, England:
Penguin, bk. 6.
13. Aron, Raymond. 1973. The Imperial Republic,
trans. Frank Jellinek. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, chs.
3-4; Barnet, Richard. 1968. Intervention and Revolution: The United States
in the Third World. New York: Meridian, ch. 11.
14. Clarence Streit (1938. Union Now: A
Proposal for a Federal Union of the Leading Democracies. New York:
Harper, pp. 88, 90-92) seems to have been the first to point out (in contemporary
foreign relations) the empirical tendency of democracies to maintain peace
among themselves, and he made this the foundation of his proposal for a
(non-Kantian) federal union of the leading democracies of the 1930s. In
a very interesting book, Ferdinand Hermens (1944) explored some of the
policy implications of Streit's analysis. D.V. Babst (1972. "A Force
of Peace." Industrial Research, vol. 14 (April), pp. 55-58)
performed a quantitative study of this phenomenon of "democratic peace." And
R.J. Rummel did a similar study of "libertarianism" (in the sense
of laissez faire) focusing on the post-war period (1983), which
drew on an unpublished study (Project No. 48) noted in Appendix I:7.5 (1979,
p. 386). I use "liberal" in a wider (Kantian) sense in my discussion
of this issue in (1983). In that essay, I survey the period from 1790 to
the present, and find no war among liberal states.
15. Doyle, Michael W. 1983. "Kant, Liberal
Legacies and Foreign Affairs," Part 1 and 2, Philosophy and Public
Affairs, vol. 12, nos. 3-4 (Summer and Fall), p. 222.
16. Babst (ibid, "A Force for Peace," 1972)
did make a preliminary test of the significance of the distribution of alliance
partners in World War One. He found that the possibility that the actual
distribution of alliance partners could have occured by chance was less than
1% (p. 56). But this assumes that there was an equal possibility that any
two nations could have gone to war with each other; and this is a strong
assumption. The most thorough statistical demonstration of the significance
of the liberal peace, controlling for alliance patterns, proximity, economic
interdependence, etc. can be found in Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett, "Alliance,
Contiguity, Wealth, Political Stability: Is the Lack of Conflict Among Democracies
a Statistical Artifact," International Interactions, vol. 17,
no. 3 (1992), pp. 245-267.
17. Hume, David. 1752/1963. "Of the Balance
of Power," Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, pp. 346-347.
18. Small, Melvin and Singer, J. David. 1976. "The
War-proneness of Democratic Regimes." Jerusalem Journal of International
Relations, vol. 50, no. 4 (Summer), pp. 50-69.
19. Op. cit. 1983. "Kant, Liberal Legacies."
20. Armstrong, A.C. 1931. "Kant's Philosophy
of Peace and War." Journal of Philosophy, vol. 28, pp. 197-204;
Friedrich, Karl. 1948. Inevitable Peace. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press; Waltz, Kenneth. 1962. "Kant, Liberalism, and War." American
Political Science Review, vol. 56, pp. 331-340; Hoffmann, Stanley. 1965. The
State of War. New York: Praeger; Hinsley, F.H. 1967. Power and the
Pursuit of Peace. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, ch.
4; Hassner, Pierre. 1972. "Immanuel Kant," in Leo Strauss and Joseph
Cropsey, eds., History of Political Pihlosophy. Chicago: Rand McNally;
Galston, William. 1975. Kant and the Problem of History. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press; Gallie, W. 1978. Philosophers of Peace and
War. New York: Cambridge University Press, ch. 1; Williams, Howard. 1983. Kant's
Political Philosophy. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
21. Kant regards these wars as unjust and warns
liberals of their susceptibility to them (Perpetual Peace, in 1970,
p. 106). At the same time, he argues that each nation "can and ought
to" demand that its neighboring nations enter into the pacific union
of liberal states (p. 102).
22. Op. cit., Kant. 1970, p. 114.
23. See
for example, Russett, Bruce and O'Neal, John, Triangulating Peace: Democracy,
Interdependence, and International Organizations, New York: W.W. Norton,
2000.
24. A useful survey of that literature can be
found in Harvey Starr, "Why Don't Democracies Fight One Another? Evaluating
the Theory-Findings Feedback Loop," Jerusalem Journal of International
Relations, vol. 14, no. 4 (1992), pp. 41-57.
25. Lake, David. 1992. "Powerful Pacifists:
Democratic States and War," American Political Science Review,
vol. 86, no. 1 (March 1992), pp. 24-37.
26. Maoz, Zeev and Russett, Bruce. "Alliance,
Contiguity, Wealth and Political Stability: Is the Lack of Conflict among
Democracies a Statistical Artifact?" International Interactions,
vol. 17, no. 3. pp. 245-268.
27. For a comparative discussion of the political
foundations of Kant's ideas see Shklar, Judith. 1984. Ordinary Vices.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, pp. 232-238.
28. Kant, Immanuel. 1970. Kant's Political
Writings, ed. Hans Reiss and trans. H.B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, England, p. 113.
29. Walzer, Michael. 1983. Spheres of Justice.
New York: Basic Books, p. 5.
First published 22 June 2004
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