Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Liberal Peace K
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
***NOTES***
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Democratic Peace Theory (“DPT”)
Definition:
The theory that democratic nations will not go to war with other democratic nations
Why does democratic peace theory suck?
It’s usually based in (arguably faulty) assumptions about what a “war” is (ie: a conflict between two
nation states), about how non democratic nations will act (usually assumed to act irrationally, violently,
or to mismanage internal issues such as poverty or other social issues), about the superiority of certain
models of governance (the idea that democracy is better than other types of governments), and about
the superiority/responsibilities of democratic nations.
All these issues shape how democracy is talked about in academic spheres as well as how democratic
nations approach interacting with non-democratic nations.
Flawed studies— supporters of DPT often conduct studies based on democratic nations that
have/haven’t gone to war with each other. A problem with these studies is that the definition of
“democracy” or “war” is often highly subjective and each study has a different definition for them,
skewing the results based on biases
Why does democratic peace theory not suck?
Democracy and interdependent economies can be pretty cool.
A lot of negative authors find problems with how DPT approaches spreading democracy, but very rarely
find problems in the democratic model of governance in and of itself.
This is an important component of debating this kritik:
The negative has to problematize the idea that DPT can be effective in creating change, as well as
problematizing how the affirmative’s authors come to the conclusion to the idea that democracy is good
(that is, their epistemology).
The affirmative should try to prove that DPT as a theory is true, and then will most likely have a much
easier time 1) winning that their aff is really important, and 2) that democracy is super sweet and
prevents a bunch of conflicts
What does it have to do with economic engagement with Latin America?
Democratic nations try to promote regional integration and democracy through trade and economic
engagement, based on the idea of free markets and interdependence.
Engagement (the plan) is usually justified by the idea that the US needs to intervene in another nation’s
sovereignty in order to solve its problems, because the US has an obligation to
a) foster democracy in the generally non-democratic nations of Latin America and
b) spread “stability” and “security” through said democracy.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Key Terms of Democratic Peace Theory
Dyadic peace:
The idea that democracies don’t go to war with each other. This is the usual justification for DPT. Most
democratic peace theory researchers agree that this is true. Others don’t.
Counterexamples:
-U.S. Civil War
-Russia vs. Georgia
-Israel-Lebanon
-Spanish-American War
-U.S. invasion of Grenada
-U.S. covert action/assassination of democratically elected gov’ts throughout Latin America
Monadic Peace:
The idea that democracies are more peaceful in general (to all other nations.) Very few researchers
agree this is true, even aff authors.
Zones of peace:
Aff DPT theorists think that democracies form “zones of peace” (areas/agreements of non-conflict) with
each other, as a result of dyadic relationships, and as democracy spreads, so do zones of peace, until
eventually all nations are democratic and there is global peace.
Liberal peace:
Liberalism, in the context of this theory, is the idea that every individual should have access to equality
and rights.
When the authors in this file use the term “liberal peace”, it refers to the spread of western style (ie
economically liberal- free markets, privatization) democracy and the notion that the
commercial/democratic peace prevents interstate conflict.
*Liberalism is NOT the same liberalism as being a liberal on the US political spectrum—this refers to
classical liberalism, a school of thought pioneered by John Locke, Adam Smith, et al.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
The File
When to read this kritik:
This kritik doesn’t have a strong link to every aff on the topic—
It’s best to read it against affs that claim
a) Democracy promotion is good
or
b) Economic liberalization leads to democracy
or
c) read Kagan/Barnett style hegemony impacts that say hegemony protects the liberal international
order
You should read the cards if you’re planning on reading this in a round.
Yeah.
Different 1NC shells:
They’re pretty similar, for the most part, on the link level and alternative level. It’s mostly a matter of
what impact you want to read. If you’re comfortable with all of them, you should pick the one that
interacts most favorably with the aff (which impact sounds like it turns the case/solves the aff’s
impacts/etc)
Also, it’s generally better to have a specific link in the 1nc, so if there’s a link in this file that applies to
the aff, you should replace the generic one with it.
The alternative:
The Richmond evidence that’s the alternative for most of the 1NC’s advocates “eirenism”, which is really
just his fancy way of saying we should “evaluate the claims, apparent or hidden of a particular
epistemology, concept, theory, method, or ideology”, which is also his fancy way of saying we should
question assumptions of democratic peace theory, in order to move away from policies that ignore the
downsides to prioritizing democracy and realize/fix those problems.
The Grayson evidence that’s the alternative for the indigenous peoples 1nc says we should unmask the
violence against the indigenous people such as the Iroquois, which has been hidden by dominant
narratives about war through democratic peace theory. DPT claims that democracy has created a
“peaceful” world through democracy, while ignoring the wars waged internally in states against certain
populations. The alternative brings those conflicts into the light.
Good luck
Varun Jaladi
Lundeen/Pointer Lab
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
1NC
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Shells
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Generic 1NC—Liberal Peace K
Economic engagement is rooted in the theory of liberal peace—it attempts to secure
order through democratization and regional economic integration
Hurrell, professor of international relations, 98
[Andrew, July, International Affairs, Volume 74, Issue 3, “Security in Latin America”,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2624967, page 529-530, accessed 7/10/13, VJ]
The second assumption, which also reflects a deep-rooted strand of liberal thinking on international
relations, is that economic liberalization and regional integration feed naturally and positively into the
creation of a stable and secure regional order. In contrast to the strong claims of democratic peace
theory, the links between economic interdependence and peace have always been more elusive and
difficult either to demonstrate or to refute with any precision. The argument here is that, while there
are certainly cases, most notably within Mercosur and the Southern Cone, where economic integration
appears to have reinforced rapprochement between erstwhile rivals and assisted the creation of a more
stable regional environment, at the same time successful economic regionalization can also be a
significant potential problem for regional order and a source of negative security externalities which,
if unmanaged, are likely to become more serious. The third assumption is that the agenda of regional
security should be broadened to include issues such as drug trafficking, drug-related violence and
criminality, migration and refugees, environmental degradation, and worsening public order in the face
of different forms of internal violence. It is certainly the case that the most serious security problems
and threats to regional order are domestic and transnational in nature. And yet the increasingly
pervasive rhetoric of the new security agenda disguises or even obscures many complex and
contested issues. Divergent understandings of the meaning, nature and implications of the new security
agenda have important policy implications and are likely to impede effective regional responses. Since
the end of the Cold War regional order and security have increasingly come to be defined in terms of
the collective defence of democracy and the promotion of liberal economic reform and regional
integration. These processes will, it is hoped, provide the foundations for the creation of a stronger
sense of regional community and the establishment of a set of political structures within which specific
security threats, both traditional (e.g. old-style border conflicts) and non-traditional (e.g. the
privatization of violence, drugs, migration) can be tackled.2 I do not argue here that this liberal
orthodoxy is wholly wrong. But I do suggest that it needs to be subjected to a much more critical
analysis than has been common hitherto.
That makes war inevitable—Liberal Peace is used as an excuse for crusade and
affirmation of a violent national identity and ontology
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
[Kyle, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal
Representations of War and Peace”, http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf,
accessed 7/1/13, VJ]
Given the representation practices embodied within the democratic peace theory discourse, it is
best to view the interactions that it fosters as ‘imperial encounters’. According to Doty, ‘the term
imperial encounters is meant to convey the idea of asymmetrical encounters in which one entity has
been able to construct ‘realities’ that were taken seriously and acted upon and the other entity has
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
been denied equal degrees of kinds of agency’.39 The ‘reality’ of democratic peace theory has been
defined by Western representational practices outlined above. These representations have shaped
the production of knowledge and identities as well as making particular courses of action appear
possible/impossible/inevitable.40 Furthermore, to borrow a term from David Campbell, democratic
peace theory has constructed a new ‘geography of evil’ that (re)produces national identity while
dictating what courses of action are apt (i.e., conversion/force) when confronting the supposedly nonliberal/democratic ‘other’.41 To reiterate this point in a slightly different fashion, “the context of the
democratic peace, then, includes not only the advent of a zone of peace among core states, but also
international relations of domination and subordination in the periphery…”.42 As a result of this
analysis, the answers to the questions of ‘for whom and for what purpose’ is democratic peace theory
designed are now evident but not surprising. Democratic peace theory and its associated discourse is
for the people of the US/West. Its purpose is to fix the American/Western national identity as
civilized, peacefully inclined, and democratic with the non-West by definition being considered
uncivilized, war-mongering, and authoritarian. Democratic peace theory also aids in the justification
of the American/Western world-view which perceives both democracy and war in a particular fashion.
In turn, these conceptions of democracy and war help to hide much of the sordid past and present of
the international relations of western liberal democratic states. They help to justify the unjustifiable
and to legitimate the illegitimate. Of utmost importance is the ontological basis of these international
relations practices sanctioned by democratic peace theory and its associated discourse within the
popular political realm. This is the focus of the following section which examines the existence of one of
the empirical silences within democratic peace theory research and the consequences of ignoring these
important events. Democratic Peace Theory and the Ontology of War and Peace In Violent
Cartographies: Mapping Cultures of War, Michael Shapiro tries to examine “the ways that enmityrelated global geographies and ethnoscapes emerge as collectivities, and how they try to achieve,
stabilize, and reproduce their unity and coherence”.43 Historically, the practice of war has emerged as
one the most enduring methods to attempt to fix national identities and ontological foundations.
Victory in war confirms all the positive subjective views of the ‘self’ while at the same time providing
‘proof’ of the subjectively perceived inferior nature of the ‘other’. Conversely, defeat not only leads to
(geo)strategic losses, but also to a reappraisal of the national identity and deep questioning of the
foundations that helped define national identity. The American defeat in the Vietnam War provides
an excellent example of these identity/foundation casualties. Therefore, Shapiro argues that war is not
just (geo)strategic, but is also about the confrontation between competing ontologies. As mentioned
earlier, democratic peace theory and its surrounding discourse views war as an activity waged by state
actors in pursuit of (geo)strategic spoils (e.g., territory, resources, wealth), as well as an activity arising
over disputes of ‘ownership’ of spoils and/or perceived violations of sovereignty. As John Vasquez has
argued, “the situation that states in the modern global system are most likely to deal with by the use
of force and violence is one in which their territory is threatened....territorial disputes provide the
willingness to go to war”.44 Democratic peace theorists believe that liberal democracies can
peacefully manage these kinds of disputes amongst themselves; however, in circumstances of dispute
between a liberal democracy and a non-liberal/democracy, war is seen as almost inevitable.
Conventionally, this has been attributed to the inherently aggressive nature of the ‘authoritarian’
state, which prevents liberal democracies from trusting these states to adhere to peacefully
negotiated settlements. Yet, when democratic peace theory is viewed as a representational practice,
war becomes inevitable between disputing liberal democratic states and non-liberal/democratic
states not because of the aggressive nature of authoritarian regimes but because these situations are
viewed as an opportunity for liberal democratic states to engage in a ‘civilizing’ mission and reaffirm
their national identity and ontology by demonstrating their superiority in battle. This imperative
becomes especially clear if we abandon the traditional view of war contained within democratic peace
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
theory and look at democratic non-state/liberal democratic state disputes and the underlying
ontological contestations that fuelled them.45 Barkawi and Laffey have argued that currently “force is
used in the service of defending and expanding economic and to a lesser extent political liberalism (in
the guise of democracy) beyond the liberal capitalist core”.46 From a historical perspective, the dispute
between the Iroquois Six Nations and the Canadian government over the Grand River territory during
the first decades of the twentieth century, provides an excellent example of the ontological impetus
behind international relations practices and how warfare can also be directed towards the
annihilation of culture.
The alternative is to reject the aff’s corrupt epistemology—the 1AC’s
institutionalization ignores the violent discourses of the liberal peace
Richmond, Professor of International Relations, 09
[Oliver, July, Review of International Studies, Volume 35, Issue 03, “A Post Liberal Peace: Eirenism and
the Everyday”, page 563-565, accessed 7/10/13, VJ]
Such a search, via critical research agendas for peace77 termed here eirenism. indicates the need for
an ethical re-evaluation of the liberal peace.71 'Eirenism* was used by Erasmus as a call against
religious chauvinism after the Reformation.74 In a modem context it provides a lens through which
one can evaluate the claims, apparent or hidden of a particular epistemology, concept, theory,
method, or ideology. The failure to apply such a tool has led liberal peacebuilding approaches into a
paradoxical situation. They have reinstated social and economic class systems, undermined
democracy, and caused downward social mobility (as explained in the examples of East Timor and
Afghanistan below). Yet. liberal peace's Renaissance and Enlightenment underpinnings make clear that
the states-system of territorial sovereignty, the approximation of democracy, of human rights and free
trade, also carries a humanist concern with social justice and wide-ranging pluralism (often to be
guaranteed by an international organisation).75 Ironically, this is where its failings are most obvious.
Its focus has remained on security and institutions, rather than developing an engagement with the
everyday life of citizens. It has sometimes been built on force rather than consent, and more often
conditionally, and it has failed to recognise local cultural norms and traditions. It has created a 'virtual
peace' in its many theatres.76 This is not to say that narrow security issues have not been somewhat
assuaged and that this has not been without benefit, of course. Experience and data from a range of UN
and UNDP thematic or country focused reports has shown liberal peacebuilding to have less impact on
everyday life than is often claimed by its institutional proponents, the donor and development
communities, and particularly the International Financial Institutions. One example among many can be
found in the context of East Timor after the crisis of 2006. A UN report conceded that despite a lengthy
and costly UN involvement there since 1999: |.. | poverty and its associated deprivations including high
urban unemployment and the absence of any prospect of meaningful involvement and employment
opportunities in the foreseeable future, especially for young people have also contributed to the crisis.''
Vet there is little sense of a need to reflect on the underlying liberal peace paradigm that allowed a
'peace' to be built in East Timor which ignored these issues. In a more recent example, a report on
Afghanistan by the UN Secretary General ignored any direct engagement with such issues in favour of
traditional political and security concerns, with the exception of one telling reference: The failure of
development actors to ensure that quieter provinces in the north and west receive a tangible peace
dividend has played into the latent north-south fault line within Afghanistan [...f* This report's later
sections on development, human rights, and humanitarian issues or human security, focus on orthodox
issues relating to institution-building or 'emergency' issues.79 In the conclusion to the report the full
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
litany of liberal peacebuilding discourse is repeated in seeming ignorance of the lessons of East Timor,
or indeed of Afghanistan itself. Accordingly, the transition in Afghanistan is under *[.. .| increasing
strain owing to insurgency, weak governance and the narco-economy'. The government needs to *|...]
restore confidence to the popu- lation in tangible ways* but this is conceptualised as being derived
from: |.. .| stronger leadership from the Government, greater donor coherence - including improved
coordination between the military and civilian international engagement in Afghanistan - and a strong
commitment from neighbouring countries, (without which) many of the security, institution-building
and development gains made since the Bonn Conference may yet stall or even be reversed.10 This list of
priorities, focusing on security, terrorism, narcotics, and then the orthodoxy of the liberal peace as a
subsequent priority (governance, development, reconciliation, and human rights abuses in this order)
effectively places a local peace dividend for communities and individuals as a distant and lesser priority,
and disconnects its importance from the conduct of democratic politics and the legitimacy of the
state.11 This is because the liberal peace's primary goal in its intervention into the local or domestic is
actually on an international order between sovereign states. This is to be achieved ideally through the
construction of a liberal social contract to produce domestic and international order. In practice, what
has been achieved in post-conflict environments are the shells of liberal states, reproducing
international order, but achieving a virtual peace in a domestic context - at least in the short to medium
term, as the examples above, and of Cambodia and Bosnia aptly illustrate. The ethical and policy
metanarratives about liberal peace derive from the founding myths of Westphalia, its state-centric
elitism, its focus on territorial boundaries and sovereignty, and its disciplinary nature. Walker has
described this as a 'moment of exclusion" The concept of peace has generally been subject to Utopian
or dystopian assumptions, and the notion of the liberal peace has emerged as an 'auto-ambivalent'
compromise." It has been imbued with a specific set of interests, partly through the decontextualisation
of classical political theory to support inherency arguments about conflict, or confirm liberal norms of
market- democracy, and propensity to reshape rather than engage with non-liberal others. This also
validates territorial state sovereignty and a social contract skewed in favour of the slate, free markets,
and the eradication of the indigenous or locally more authentic (often through property rights).34
among other tendencies.33 This has been used to promote a culture of governmental and securitised
institution- alism rather than a broad peace (often by rejecting Kant's peace federation or by
confirming territorial sovereignty).i6rather than promoting an everyday peace.37 It has supported the
classical liberal view that liberal stales and peoples are effectively superior in rights and status to
others, and extended these arguments to allow for the justification of direct or subtle forms of
colonialism, interventionism. and local depoliticization to occur.38 A civil and emancipatory peace
might arise through liberalism, as Foucault argued, but more often it leads to violence of a structural or
direct nature in non-liberal contexts.39 In practice it also may have negative effects on selfdetermination and agency.40 In this context an ethical evaluation of the liberal peace underlines its
tendency to be flimsy, denying self-determination and self-government, and depoliticising. This is as
opposed to the potential of peace being empathetic. emancipatory, and resting upon an ontological
agreement and hybridity (meaning the development of an ontology that is not exclusive but is open to
difference).41 These latter qualities imply that the agents and recipients of the liberal peace are able
to relate to each other on an everyday, human level, rather merely through problem-solving
institutional frameworks that dictate or negate lived experience. They indicate the need for a deep
negotiation of peace even by the agents of the liberal model, and for a willingness to see the Western
liberal model itself modified by its engagement with its own 'others' - meaning conflict and postconflict, especially non-Western, non-liberal, and 'developmental', polities.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Biopower 1NC—Liberal Peace K
The aff embraces a liberal peace that naturalizes a dichotomy between the self and
other—nonliberal state actors are deemed as inferior, justifying conquest and
imperialism
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
[Kyle, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal
Representations of War and Peace”, http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf,
accessed 7/1/13, VJ]
According to Doty, the hegemonic dimension of global politics is inextricably linked to
representational practices, as hegemonic practices, are those which seek to create a fixedness of
meaning (in identity) that ultimately is impossible.15 What then are the hegemonic representational
practices of democratic peace theory? Doty has divided practices of representation into seven crucial
elements which help to produce and reproduce difference: nodal points, naturalization, classification,
surveillance, negation, positioning, and the logic of difference. These will each be explored below in
relation to democratic peace theory and its two constitutive concepts, ‘democracy’ and ‘war’.16 As a
representational practice, democratic peace theory needs nodal points around which to fix meaning
and establish positions to make predication possible.17 In other words, nodal points help to affirm the
identity of the ‘self’ in relation to the ‘other’, while negating the identity of the ‘other’ in relation to
the ‘self’.18 Two nodal points are of significance for democratic peace theory. First is the conception
of democracy that is common to democratic peace theory discussions. It emphasizes procedural rather
than substantive characteristics including elections and constitutions. When substantive characteristics
are discussed, the focus is on the negative freedoms of early liberal thought and first generation
human rights (e.g., freedom of religion, freedom from arbitrary authority, freedom of opportunity).
Most importantly, the conception of democracy being used as a nodal point is inherently an American
conception. It does not reflect how democracy is practiced in other states, and these differences in
practice tend to be ignored in the literature unless the practice is considered ‘illiberal’.19 Thus, when
Harvey Starr asks ‘how does one separate doves (unlikely to use force) and non-doves’ in foreign
relations, he responds by arguing that there is no reliable method other than dividing states on the basis
of whether they are a liberal democracy (i.e., American/Western) or not (i.e., non-American/nonWestern).20 The second nodal point around which the democratic peace is anchored is a conception
of war. In democratic peace theory, war is strictly an inter-state exercise.21 Intra-state warfare does
not appear on the democratic peace theory radar screen.22 Therefore, the use of force against
domestic populations (e.g., the American ‘War on Drugs’) or collective groups not recognized as state
actors (e.g., the Canadian Armed Forces versus Mohawk warriors at Oka, Quebec) are not problematic
to the mainstream idea of a democratic peace. In addition, democratic peace theory conceptions only
recognize formal declarations of war. As Tarek Barkawi and Mark Laffey argue: US covert action to
overthrow Third World elected governments shows that force is often used by democracies against
the extension of democracy. It is not seen as invalidating the democratic peace because the US did not
use its national military forces openly, but instead relied on clients, mercenaries, and covert
operatives. In this way, sovereign juridical conceptions obscure the actual constitution of force,
through imperial advice and support, and its use in projects of informal empire.23 Moreover, because
war is typically defined in the democratic peace theory literature by the dictates of the Correlates of
War (CoW) database (which requires 1000 battle deaths), many possible instances of war (and definite
uses of force) such as the US invasion of Grenada can be easily ignored. It is also important to note that
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
democratic peace theory perceives war as the physical use of force for the acquisition/maintenance of a
strategic possession.24 Therefore attacks against ideology, religion, identity, and culture that have
typically been directed against minority and indigenous actors are not acknowledged. Naturalization
is a powerful aspect of the representational aspects of democratic peace theory by making certain
presuppositions beyond the realm of legitimate inquiry. In other words, democratic peace theory has
created background knowledge that is taken as true which entails an implicit theorization of how the
world works and the characteristics of all its inhabitants.25 First, liberal democracies are naturalized
so that they can be objectively differentiated from non-liberal/democracies.26 Second, the fact that
there is a relationship between the type of domestic political system and state character is naturalized.
More to the point though, the framework of this relationship shapes our thinking to naturally view
liberal democracies as predisposed towards peaceful interactions with each other and inherently
trustworthy within their relationships with other liberal democratic states. Therefore, liberal
democracies (read Western states) are peaceful towards all states except those who are ‘objectively’
determined to be non-liberal/democratic regimes.27 The use of force against these types of states is
justified because nonliberal/ democratic states are aggressive towards all states and completely
untrustworthy. Therefore, these states are not legitimate global actors. Third, and perhaps most
disturbingly, democratic peace theory naturalizes peace as an aberration in international relations
that must be explained rather than seeing ‘zones of peace’ as natural entities and war as the deviant
circumstance. The irony here is that even the democratic tradition within mainstream international
relations has a Hobbesian impulse which trumps its Lockean counterpart. According to Doty, techniques
of classification serve to reinforce that which has been naturalized by placing things into categories in
which they ‘naturally’ belong, often through the construction of stereotypes which facilitate quick and
easy differentiation/assimilation.28 Therefore, the creation of classification categories which
distinguish between liberal democracy and non-liberal democracy as well as war and peace by their
‘natural’ characteristics are not merely tools designed to make the analysis of complex phenomena
easier, but also serve deeper ontological purposes. It is of little wonder, as Doty contends, that these
classifications are often hierarchical in nature with liberal democratic states at the top of scale and
other states in descending order depending on how many liberal democratic characteristics they are
perceived to exhibit.29 Thus states that emphasize the political and civil rights of liberal thought rank
higher than those who emphasize equally important social and economic rights. As a part of
representational practices, surveillance operates to make subjects known and visible objects of
disciplinary power.30 From a Foucaultian perspective, procedures of observation and examination
enable states to be ‘known’ as democratic or non-democratic, placed within the appropriate
classificatory scheme, and acted upon in a prudent manner.31 Therefore, other states are monitored by
pro-democratic peace academic and policy-making circles to gauge their levels of liberal democracy.32
Furthermore, intensive case studies in democratic peace theory research enable ‘historical’
surveillance of the liberal democratic nature of other states.33 Negation is another fundamental
aspect of representational practices. In the case of democratic peace theory, negation focuses on
erasing the histories of non-Western regions that create ‘spaces’ that are later filled by the West
through processes of facilitating ‘democratization’. Thus, the democratization crusade is viewed as a
mission of “deliverance and salvation rather than conquest and exploitation”.34 Barkawi and Laffey
wisely remind their readers that: …it is forgotten that democracy became one of the major organizing
principles of core states during the creation of a global system of empires, forged and maintained by
colonial wars. Imperial power was pitted against local communities and peoples defending or seeking
forms of rule often more democratic than those imposed on them.35 It is these silences that help to
maintain Western national identities as ‘democratic, civilized, and enlightened’, while at the same
time, reaffirming the corresponding ontology of a naturally hierarchical international system based on
these ‘objectively’ definable qualities.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
The liberal peace disseminates power globally and intensifies it locally—the result is
bare life
Dillon and Reid, Professors of Politics and International Relations, 2K
[Michael, Julian, Jan-March, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 25, Issue 1, “Global Governance,
Liberal Peace, and Complex Emergency”, accessed 6/30/13, VJ]
It is our contention, then, that the liberal peace of global governance has to be distinguished as a
certain form of liberal peace comprised in turn of a complex hybrid form of power. The varied use of
the term governance signals this. In its Kantian variants, it means the rule of law and endorses the
proliferation of nongovernmental organizations, associations, and groups at a global level with the
ambition of establishing a global civil society. In its technocratic-capitalist variants, it means deregulated
processes and practices of enterprise management and accountability. The liberal peace of global
governance is therefore one in which the pacifying effects of Kantian cosmopolitan law obeyed by
sovereign states, combined with an extension of civil society, are heavily reliant also on the
dissemination globally of practices that are premised upon a conception of order and management
that Foucault called governmental. As Foucault's early accounts of governmentality indicate, and as
the extension and application of it subsequently have also shown, the genealogy of global liberal
governance is thus much more varied and diverse than its public claims to a Kantian heritage especially
would imply.[ 14] To say that it is capitalist economically as much as it is liberal politically and
corporately technocratic scientifically, and that this presents a powerful brew of social, political,
economic, and military forces that radically exceed the liberal account of both power and of politics, is
to pose more questions than these phrases answer. Neither capitalism, liberalism, nor science are
simply what they proclaim themselves to be, or what they were once said to be. Each has mutated
locally and globally in dramatic fashion as studies in the history of science, the history of economics,
and the genealogy of governance indicate. Neither are such dynamic enterprises effectively held to
account through the application and operation of the classic liberal distinctions between public-private,
civil-military, national-international, scientific-industrial, and knowledge-power. Rather, they are
obscurely combined in the globally dynamic military-industrial-scientific complexes of the so-called
network societies and knowledge-based economies of contemporary liberal societies that problematize
the democratizing claims of global civil society as much as they do the pacifying effects of cosmopolitan
law.[ 15] Together, these liberal complexes now comprise an extraordinary regime of
power/knowledge that has been disseminated as much globally as it has been intensified locally. It
constitutes a regime of global power that significantly exceeds the Kantian heritage ontologically as
much as it does epistemologically. To the extent that it does so, that tradition is an increasingly
unreliable guide to global liberal governance's operation politically and economically. No longer
exclusively or even primarily legislative in their form, the politics of the elite, the media, and money
also dominate civil institutions in ways that systematically undermine liberalism's standards of
disinterestedness epistemologically, as much as they do its claim to effect representative and
accountable government politically. Just as governance is a specific feature of liberalism, so also liberal
peace is therefore a specific form of liberal governmental power. Hence the peace of global liberal
governance differs from other forms of liberal peace inasmuch as its liberalism differs from earlier and
other forms of liberalism in respect, specifically, of the increasing emphasis placed on its networks of
global governance. It does not, for example, aspire to the ideal of world government. It does not rely
exclusively upon the juridical power of international law. Neither does it problematize the
foundational question of order by premising it exclusively on the sovereign power of states alone. It is
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
also a combative and heavily armed peace deeply reluctant to forgo its own military advantages in the
cause of restraining the dissemination of weapons of mass destruction or the effective control of the
conventional-arms economy globally. What is of primary interest here, however, is not the historically
well-documented propensity of liberal peace to make war against authoritarian regimes. Nor are its
extremely powerful military-industrial-scientific dynamics immediately at issue. We are concerned,
for the moment, with exploring theoretically the ways in which it problematizes the question of order
itself, and with the correlate strategizing of power relations, locally and globally derived from the
ways in which it does so. We argue that these depend upon notions of immanent emergency.
Specifically, they depend upon its twin cognates, exception and emergence, to which the phenomenon
of complex emergency draws our attention. We argue in addition that each such "emergency" reduces
human life to a zone of indistinction in which it becomes mere stuff for the ordering strategies of the
hybrid form of sovereign and governmental power that distinguishes the liberal peace of global
governance. Interpreted this way, complex emergencies not only draw attention to the operation of a
specific international political rationality--that of global liberal governance--but also to certain key
distinguishing features of it as a hybrid order of power. The global governance of liberal peace is a
composite order of power that "lies between traditional images of domestic and international
politics."[ 16] Combining the strategic operations of both sovereign and governmental power, this
composite order produces manifold differentiations between inside and outside that are fluid and
contingent rather than fixed and permanent. It simultaneously both territorializes and deterritorializes,
producing dynamic and adaptive contingent assemblages as much as it does fixed systems and
regimes. It thus requires theorizations of power not exclusively bound by the now widely discredited
juridical international categories of inside/outside.[ 17] These theorizations of power have therefore to
be ones sensitive to all the different practices by which power assemblages of many distinctive forms
are continuously generated and regenerated through various strategic operations of power. Initially, we
find a critical approach to the operation of power as a strategic phenomenon in the work of Michel
Foucault. Where Foucault's sensibility to the manifold strategic ordering of power nonetheless requires
supplementing, specifically in respect of sovereignty, we draw on Giorgio Agamben's postmetaphysical
analytic of sovereignty as itself another strategic ordering of power.[ 18] By strategy of power we mean
with Foucault that power is an active ordering of relations in certain specific ways according to
different operational principles of organization. It is a modus operandi. It works its effects by
establishing relationalities between units whose very constitution as the units that they are is a
function of the principles that govern the strategic dissemination and organization that constitutes
the operation of power itself. Moreover, all power as strategy presupposes a certain account of life,
one that will in fact bear the ordering work of power itself. It is only inasmuch as it does in fact
presuppose such a life that power as strategy institutes itself as a specific and manifest productive
ordering of life. The operation of power as strategy is therefore one that reproduces a life that is
amenable to its sway. It must do so in order continuously to be instituted as the strategic ordering of
life that it is. Power as a strategic ordering of life therefore always effects its own distinctive kind of
biopower. Although we owe this insight to Foucault, we intend to show how its range of reference
extends also to the operation of sovereign power as well. However, in order to do that we have to
theorize sovereign power in a way that Agamben does, and Foucault never quite did, as a strategic
mode of power as well. While drawing attention to the relevance that this Foucauldian-inspired account
of power has for an analysis of the global governance of liberal peace, we do not, therefore, intend to
add to the chorus of those who insist that we are witnessing the simple demise of sovereignty.
Sovereignty remains an important aspect of the organization and operation of international power,
including that of contemporary liberal peace, because liberal states especially, but others to the
extent also that they effect structural adjustments economically and sign-up to good governance
criteria politically, are deeply implicated as key nodes in the networks of global governance. Hence
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
the state form--whose strategic principle of formation is sovereignty--becomes just one form of
subjectification upon which global liberal governance relies. It may not enjoy the exclusivity that
traditional accounts of international relations once said that it enjoyed, but it nonetheless remains a
key mode of subjectification. However, it is now supplemented by many others. "Thus even as the
state remains the primary actor in global politics, the results of interdependence are to create new
networks and associations, many of which are attempting to guide the state's activities in the
domestic and international sphere.
Bare life makes life disposable and a tool to reify governmental sovereignty
Dillon and Reid, Professors of Politics and International Relations, 2K
[Michael, Julian, Jan-March, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 25, Issue 1, “Global Governance,
Liberal Peace, and Complex Emergency”, accessed 6/30/13, VJ]
Since "there is no rule that is applicable to chaos," chaos must first be included in the juridical order
through the creation of indistinction between inside and outside, chaos and the normal situation."[
28] And yet sovereign power is precisely the power that maintains itself as deciding on these binary
political distinctions, to the very degree that sovereign power renders them indistinguishable from
each other. Sovereign power--as a principle of formation that institutes a strategic ordering of
relationships, thereby instituting itself through that very maneuver as the arbitrator of the play of the
relations thus established--is simultaneously premised, then, both "on the violence that posits law and
the violence that preserves it."[ 29] The point has been well made also by Derrida.[ 30] For our
purposes, Agamben's analysis discloses a certain comparability in the operation of sovereign power
and the power/ knowledge that Foucault termed governmentality. Not only are they both a strategic
form of power, they each operate by effecting a kind of "phenomenological" reduction. Both claim to
reduce life to its bare essentials in order to disclose the truth about it, but in so doing actually reduce
it to a format that will bear the programming of power to which it must be subject if the power of
sovereignty (or, as we shall see, that of governance as well) is to be inscribed, instituted, and operated.
Life here is not of course "natural" life, whatever that may be. It is in every sense the life of power. But
since we are talking different operations of power, we are also talking different forms of life;
modalities formed by the different exercises of reduction through which each operation of power
institutes and maintains itself. Each form of life is the "stuff" of power, but in dissimilar ways. That is
what we mean when we say that sovereignty and governmentality reproduce life amenable to their
sway. It is not uncommon for a form of life thus reproduced to desire the processes that originate it.
Sovereign and governmental powers alike each also therefore work their own particular powers of
seduction on the subjects of power that they summon into being. Seduction, as well as imposition, is
thus integral also to their very modus operandi.[ 31] Nationalism might be said to be one form of such
seduction, consumerism another. In respect of sovereignty, Agamben calls the life of sovereign power
"bare life." Bare life is thus life without context, meaning, or history--the state of nature--so that
sovereignty may be installed as the power that orders it. In being abandoned, that which is excluded is
cast into a condition that places it at the mercy of the sovereign power that institutes itself through
instituting this relation. The formal structure of sovereign power understood as a strategic principle of
formation rather than as a metaphysical point of origin is therefore precisely this: "the excluded
included as excluded." By virtue of that inclusion as excluded, bare life is simultaneously both produced
by the exercise of sovereign power and subject to it in a particular way. As excluded life, bare life
under the strategic ordering of sovereign power is life exposed to death--life available to be killed.
Mundanely, it is life that is disposable. In either instance--irrespective of the different rationales
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
advanced for it--the bare life effected by the strategic ordering of life instituted by the operation of
sovereign power is a life-form available ultimately to serve the interest of continuously preserving the
institution of sovereign power itself. Consider the classical nature of sovereign warfare, the discourse of
political realism that articulates it, and the fictions of political subjectivity and interest that are said to
fuel it. Bare life is included in the political order "solely through an exclusion"[ 32] and on the basis of
the reduction of life that such exclusion effects: "The production of bare life is the originary activity of
sovereignty."[ 33] In effect, only by effecting a zone of indistinction between nomos and physis--inside
and outside--does sovereignty come to power as the power of the command that is capable of making
the differentiations for which the specific indistinction it has created calls. in fact repeated in the
governance-related vocabulary of networks and its allied science of complex adaptive systems. The
problematization of inside and outside--nomos/physis--is repeated there, too, albeit in respect of
"systems," "species," and "populations" rather than between peoples, nations, and states. Equally, a
form of life is presupposed that is capable of bearing the inscription of a correlate form of power. The
same maneuver, then, but one effected by a different principle The same maneuver is of formation.
Similarly, there is a biopower effect, but the form of life presupposed and reproduced is also different.
The alternative is to reject the aff’s corrupt epistemology—the 1AC’s
institutionalization ignores the violent discourses of the liberal peace
Richmond, Professor of International Relations, 09
[Oliver, July, Review of International Studies, Volume 35, Issue 03, “A Post Liberal Peace: Eirenism and
the Everyday”, page 563-565, accessed 7/10/13, VJ]
Such a search, via critical research agendas for peace77 termed here eirenism. indicates the need for
an ethical re-evaluation of the liberal peace.71 'Eirenism* was used by Erasmus as a call against
religious chauvinism after the Reformation.74 In a modem context it provides a lens through which
one can evaluate the claims, apparent or hidden of a particular epistemology, concept, theory,
method, or ideology. The failure to apply such a tool has led liberal peacebuilding approaches into a
paradoxical situation. They have reinstated social and economic class systems, undermined
democracy, and caused downward social mobility (as explained in the examples of East Timor and
Afghanistan below). Yet. liberal peace's Renaissance and Enlightenment underpinnings make clear that
the states-system of territorial sovereignty, the approximation of democracy, of human rights and free
trade, also carries a humanist concern with social justice and wide-ranging pluralism (often to be
guaranteed by an international organisation).75 Ironically, this is where its failings are most obvious.
Its focus has remained on security and institutions, rather than developing an engagement with the
everyday life of citizens. It has sometimes been built on force rather than consent, and more often
conditionally, and it has failed to recognise local cultural norms and traditions. It has created a 'virtual
peace' in its many theatres.76 This is not to say that narrow security issues have not been somewhat
assuaged and that this has not been without benefit, of course. Experience and data from a range of UN
and UNDP thematic or country focused reports has shown liberal peacebuilding to have less impact on
everyday life than is often claimed by its institutional proponents, the donor and development
communities, and particularly the International Financial Institutions. One example among many can be
found in the context of East Timor after the crisis of 2006. A UN report conceded that despite a lengthy
and costly UN involvement there since 1999: |.. | poverty and its associated deprivations including high
urban unemployment and the absence of any prospect of meaningful involvement and employment
opportunities in the foreseeable future, especially for young people have also contributed to the crisis.''
Vet there is little sense of a need to reflect on the underlying liberal peace paradigm that allowed a
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
'peace' to be built in East Timor which ignored these issues. In a more recent example, a report on
Afghanistan by the UN Secretary General ignored any direct engagement with such issues in favour of
traditional political and security concerns, with the exception of one telling reference: The failure of
development actors to ensure that quieter provinces in the north and west receive a tangible peace
dividend has played into the latent north-south fault line within Afghanistan [...f* This report's later
sections on development, human rights, and humanitarian issues or human security, focus on orthodox
issues relating to institution-building or 'emergency' issues.79 In the conclusion to the report the full
litany of liberal peacebuilding discourse is repeated in seeming ignorance of the lessons of East Timor,
or indeed of Afghanistan itself. Accordingly, the transition in Afghanistan is under *[.. .| increasing
strain owing to insurgency, weak governance and the narco-economy'. The government needs to *|...]
restore confidence to the popu- lation in tangible ways* but this is conceptualised as being derived
from: |.. .| stronger leadership from the Government, greater donor coherence - including improved
coordination between the military and civilian international engagement in Afghanistan - and a strong
commitment from neighbouring countries, (without which) many of the security, institution-building
and development gains made since the Bonn Conference may yet stall or even be reversed.10 This list of
priorities, focusing on security, terrorism, narcotics, and then the orthodoxy of the liberal peace as a
subsequent priority (governance, development, reconciliation, and human rights abuses in this order)
effectively places a local peace dividend for communities and individuals as a distant and lesser priority,
and disconnects its importance from the conduct of democratic politics and the legitimacy of the
state.11 This is because the liberal peace's primary goal in its intervention into the local or domestic is
actually on an international order between sovereign states. This is to be achieved ideally through the
construction of a liberal social contract to produce domestic and international order. In practice, what
has been achieved in post-conflict environments are the shells of liberal states, reproducing
international order, but achieving a virtual peace in a domestic context - at least in the short to medium
term, as the examples above, and of Cambodia and Bosnia aptly illustrate. The ethical and policy
metanarratives about liberal peace derive from the founding myths of Westphalia, its state-centric
elitism, its focus on territorial boundaries and sovereignty, and its disciplinary nature. Walker has
described this as a 'moment of exclusion" The concept of peace has generally been subject to Utopian
or dystopian assumptions, and the notion of the liberal peace has emerged as an 'auto-ambivalent'
compromise." It has been imbued with a specific set of interests, partly through the decontextualisation
of classical political theory to support inherency arguments about conflict, or confirm liberal norms of
market- democracy, and propensity to reshape rather than engage with non-liberal others. This also
validates territorial state sovereignty and a social contract skewed in favour of the slate, free markets,
and the eradication of the indigenous or locally more authentic (often through property rights).34
among other tendencies.33 This has been used to promote a culture of governmental and securitised
institution- alism rather than a broad peace (often by rejecting Kant's peace federation or by
confirming territorial sovereignty).i6rather than promoting an everyday peace.37 It has supported the
classical liberal view that liberal stales and peoples are effectively superior in rights and status to
others, and extended these arguments to allow for the justification of direct or subtle forms of
colonialism, interventionism. and local depoliticization to occur.38 A civil and emancipatory peace
might arise through liberalism, as Foucault argued, but more often it leads to violence of a structural or
direct nature in non-liberal contexts.39 In practice it also may have negative effects on selfdetermination and agency.40 In this context an ethical evaluation of the liberal peace underlines its
tendency to be flimsy, denying self-determination and self-government, and depoliticising. This is as
opposed to the potential of peace being empathetic. emancipatory, and resting upon an ontological
agreement and hybridity (meaning the development of an ontology that is not exclusive but is open to
difference).41 These latter qualities imply that the agents and recipients of the liberal peace are able
to relate to each other on an everyday, human level, rather merely through problem-solving
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
institutional frameworks that dictate or negate lived experience. They indicate the need for a deep
negotiation of peace even by the agents of the liberal model, and for a willingness to see the Western
liberal model itself modified by its engagement with its own 'others' - meaning conflict and postconflict, especially non-Western, non-liberal, and 'developmental', polities.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Indigenous Peoples 1NC—Liberal Peace K
The aff embraces a liberal peace that naturalizes a dichotomy between the self and
other—nonliberal state actors are deemed as inferior, justifying conquest and
imperialism
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
[Kyle, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal
Representations of War and Peace”, http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf,
accessed 7/1/13, VJ]
According to Doty, the hegemonic dimension of global politics is inextricably linked to
representational practices, as hegemonic practices, are those which seek to create a fixedness of
meaning (in identity) that ultimately is impossible.15 What then are the hegemonic representational
practices of democratic peace theory? Doty has divided practices of representation into seven crucial
elements which help to produce and reproduce difference: nodal points, naturalization, classification,
surveillance, negation, positioning, and the logic of difference. These will each be explored below in
relation to democratic peace theory and its two constitutive concepts, ‘democracy’ and ‘war’.16 As a
representational practice, democratic peace theory needs nodal points around which to fix meaning
and establish positions to make predication possible.17 In other words, nodal points help to affirm the
identity of the ‘self’ in relation to the ‘other’, while negating the identity of the ‘other’ in relation to
the ‘self’.18 Two nodal points are of significance for democratic peace theory. First is the conception
of democracy that is common to democratic peace theory discussions. It emphasizes procedural rather
than substantive characteristics including elections and constitutions. When substantive characteristics
are discussed, the focus is on the negative freedoms of early liberal thought and first generation
human rights (e.g., freedom of religion, freedom from arbitrary authority, freedom of opportunity).
Most importantly, the conception of democracy being used as a nodal point is inherently an American
conception. It does not reflect how democracy is practiced in other states, and these differences in
practice tend to be ignored in the literature unless the practice is considered ‘illiberal’.19 Thus, when
Harvey Starr asks ‘how does one separate doves (unlikely to use force) and non-doves’ in foreign
relations, he responds by arguing that there is no reliable method other than dividing states on the basis
of whether they are a liberal democracy (i.e., American/Western) or not (i.e., non-American/nonWestern).20 The second nodal point around which the democratic peace is anchored is a conception
of war. In democratic peace theory, war is strictly an inter-state exercise.21 Intra-state warfare does
not appear on the democratic peace theory radar screen.22 Therefore, the use of force against
domestic populations (e.g., the American ‘War on Drugs’) or collective groups not recognized as state
actors (e.g., the Canadian Armed Forces versus Mohawk warriors at Oka, Quebec) are not problematic
to the mainstream idea of a democratic peace. In addition, democratic peace theory conceptions only
recognize formal declarations of war. As Tarek Barkawi and Mark Laffey argue: US covert action to
overthrow Third World elected governments shows that force is often used by democracies against
the extension of democracy. It is not seen as invalidating the democratic peace because the US did not
use its national military forces openly, but instead relied on clients, mercenaries, and covert
operatives. In this way, sovereign juridical conceptions obscure the actual constitution of force,
through imperial advice and support, and its use in projects of informal empire.23 Moreover, because
war is typically defined in the democratic peace theory literature by the dictates of the Correlates of
War (CoW) database (which requires 1000 battle deaths), many possible instances of war (and definite
uses of force) such as the US invasion of Grenada can be easily ignored. It is also important to note that
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
democratic peace theory perceives war as the physical use of force for the acquisition/maintenance of a
strategic possession.24 Therefore attacks against ideology, religion, identity, and culture that have
typically been directed against minority and indigenous actors are not acknowledged. Naturalization
is a powerful aspect of the representational aspects of democratic peace theory by making certain
presuppositions beyond the realm of legitimate inquiry. In other words, democratic peace theory has
created background knowledge that is taken as true which entails an implicit theorization of how the
world works and the characteristics of all its inhabitants.25 First, liberal democracies are naturalized
so that they can be objectively differentiated from non-liberal/democracies.26 Second, the fact that
there is a relationship between the type of domestic political system and state character is naturalized.
More to the point though, the framework of this relationship shapes our thinking to naturally view
liberal democracies as predisposed towards peaceful interactions with each other and inherently
trustworthy within their relationships with other liberal democratic states. Therefore, liberal
democracies (read Western states) are peaceful towards all states except those who are ‘objectively’
determined to be non-liberal/democratic regimes.27 The use of force against these types of states is
justified because nonliberal/ democratic states are aggressive towards all states and completely
untrustworthy. Therefore, these states are not legitimate global actors. Third, and perhaps most
disturbingly, democratic peace theory naturalizes peace as an aberration in international relations
that must be explained rather than seeing ‘zones of peace’ as natural entities and war as the deviant
circumstance. The irony here is that even the democratic tradition within mainstream international
relations has a Hobbesian impulse which trumps its Lockean counterpart. According to Doty, techniques
of classification serve to reinforce that which has been naturalized by placing things into categories in
which they ‘naturally’ belong, often through the construction of stereotypes which facilitate quick and
easy differentiation/assimilation.28 Therefore, the creation of classification categories which
distinguish between liberal democracy and non-liberal democracy as well as war and peace by their
‘natural’ characteristics are not merely tools designed to make the analysis of complex phenomena
easier, but also serve deeper ontological purposes. It is of little wonder, as Doty contends, that these
classifications are often hierarchical in nature with liberal democratic states at the top of scale and
other states in descending order depending on how many liberal democratic characteristics they are
perceived to exhibit.29 Thus states that emphasize the political and civil rights of liberal thought rank
higher than those who emphasize equally important social and economic rights. As a part of
representational practices, surveillance operates to make subjects known and visible objects of
disciplinary power.30 From a Foucaultian perspective, procedures of observation and examination
enable states to be ‘known’ as democratic or non-democratic, placed within the appropriate
classificatory scheme, and acted upon in a prudent manner.31 Therefore, other states are monitored by
pro-democratic peace academic and policy-making circles to gauge their levels of liberal democracy.32
Furthermore, intensive case studies in democratic peace theory research enable ‘historical’
surveillance of the liberal democratic nature of other states.33 Negation is another fundamental
aspect of representational practices. In the case of democratic peace theory, negation focuses on
erasing the histories of non-Western regions that create ‘spaces’ that are later filled by the West
through processes of facilitating ‘democratization’. Thus, the democratization crusade is viewed as a
mission of “deliverance and salvation rather than conquest and exploitation”.34 Barkawi and Laffey
wisely remind their readers that: …it is forgotten that democracy became one of the major organizing
principles of core states during the creation of a global system of empires, forged and maintained by
colonial wars. Imperial power was pitted against local communities and peoples defending or seeking
forms of rule often more democratic than those imposed on them.35 It is these silences that help to
maintain Western national identities as ‘democratic, civilized, and enlightened’, while at the same
time, reaffirming the corresponding ontology of a naturally hierarchical international system based on
these ‘objectively’ definable qualities.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
The assault on the Grand River Iroquois nation is a powerful counter-example to their
hypothesized democratic peace. Their representations of democratic peace theory
assume only Western, liberal, American-style democracy, and are an ontological
affirmation of superiority over indigenous peoples. This discourse fixes national
identity by legitimizing self and delegitimizing other, ensuring alternate cultures are
eradicated.
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
[Kyle, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal
Representations of War and Peace”, http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf,
accessed 7/1/13]
According to Ronald Wright, the
Canadian government has been waging a hidden war against the
Iroquois since 1867.47 One the most important battlegrounds has been over the sovereign control of the Grand River territory which
is located on the Grand River, just south east of Brantford in Ontario. The Canadian government has long considered
Grand River to be a ‘reservation’ while the Grand River Iroquois consider the territory to be an
independent nation-state.48 Grand River was among one of the four regions along Lake Ontario given to the Iroquois by the
British in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War.49 Historians note that not only did the Grand River territory
serve as a symbol of British gratitude to the Iroquois for their support, but it also played a
strategic role as a buffer state between the United States and British North America.50 Although
often a source of dispute with Britain over its size and political status, Grand River emerged in the eyes of the Iroquois as a sovereign
political state run in the tradition of the Great Law of Peace.51 Slowly , due to land agreements with private farmers that became interpreted
as legal annexations, the Grand River state began to shrink.52 What started out as a 1200 sq mile territorial state was reduced to 90 sq miles
in less than one hundred years.53 With
the threat of American invasion greatly reduced by the late
nineteenth century, government officials realized that Canada no longer needed any ‘Indian’
(sic) buffer states. Anxious to exercise complete control over Iroquois territory, the Canadian government
embarked upon a ‘civilizational’ process that amounted to replacing democratic indigenous selfgovernments with ‘elected’ band councillors who were puppets of the Indian Affairs
Department. Iroquois territories tried to resist against the Canadian government; however, most efforts proved to be futile. For
example, in 1899, Akwesasne was overrun by the RCMP leaving one dead. Seven chiefs were imprisoned and a puppet council was
established. By contrast, Grand River was able to resist and remained independent. During World War I, Grand River even provided troops
(not under Canadian control) to its old ally England.54 Well
aware of its precarious position after World War I,
Grand River expressed its desire to become a British protectorate. The Grand River Council argued that such a
move did not threaten Canadian interests and would only serve to reinforce sovereign control over the Grand River territory. But in order to
receive protectorate status, the Grand River state would have to clarify their political status with the Canadian government. In 1920, the
Canadian Supreme Court refused to hear the Iroquois case. When the Grand River council took its grievances to the British Colonial Office,
Winston Churchill, the colonial secretary, said that it was a Canadian matter. As a result, Grand
River entered negotiations
with the Department of Indian Affairs. In 1922, despite on-going talks, Grand River was raided.
Shots were fired by police and further discussions were cancelled. Moreover, an Royal Canadian Mounted
Police detachment was placed within yards of the Grand River Council House.55 By 1923, it was clear to the Grand River Council that the
newly formed League of Nations was the only remaining venue in which to have its sovereignty formally recognized. The council had a very
strong case including written treaties and wampum belts but needed a League member to act as a sponsor. The Netherlands, Persia, Ireland,
Estonia, and Panama all expressed an interest but Britain, on behalf of Canada, threatened dire repercussions to anyone who would dare
sponsor the Grand River claim. Needless to say, the appeal was never heard.56 In
1924, armed police once again invaded
Grand River. This time, the Six Nations parliament was dissolved. Moreover, police seized treaty
documents and sacred wampum belts by raiding wampum keepers homes. Important evidence for the
Grand River claim was thus rendered inaccessible. After storming and taking control of the Council Long House,
Indian Affairs appointed a new council; however, to this day, this puppet-council has not been recognized by the majority of Grand River
residents. Instead, Iroquois sachems have sat as a government exiled in their own country.57 The
illegal annexation of Grand
River is a result of a multi-faceted war waged by the Canadian government on the Iroquois. It is
often thought that the forced dissolution of native self-governments was a part of grander strategy to eliminate the Iroquois and other Native
Canadians through processes of assimilation in order to preclude future land claims actions; however,
closer examination also
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
reveals an ontological imperative devoid of any (geo)strategic imperative.58 Therefore, the Grand
River situation should also be seen as an assault on Iroquois culture through the delegitimation
of the Grand Peace and the seizing of wampum belts. To return to the early discussion of
democratic peace theory, Grand River represents one example of the efforts that liberal
democracies will go to in order to remove a system of governance (and the accompanying
ontology) that is in any way different. Furthermore, Grand River demonstrates that this is even the
case when a state exhibits similar (though not identical) democratic principles. Some historians claim that
Duncan Campbell Scott, head of the Indian Affairs Department from 1913-1932, viewed himself as
“Canada’s Kipling’ and strongly believed natives were in fact ‘lesser breeds without the law”.59
Shapiro argues that such views at the time were “less an observation than an ontological
affirmation” of the superiority of European peoples over Native Americans.60 Moreover, he argues that
“the erasure of indigenous peoples, in fact and in representation, has been part of the selfrecognition by which state societies have territorialized and stabilized their identities”.61 Therefore,
the policy of assimilating the Iroquois was far more than a strategy to reap (geo)strategic gain. If
we take Shapiro’s argument to its logical conclusions, it becomes clear that wars do not necessarily have to be
fought with weapons; words are also powerful means of destruction. The verbal attacks of Limbaugh,
Bork, and others of the same ilk seek to delegitimize and render the Iroquois (and other Native Americans
and Native Canadians) invisible through a discourse with its own representational practices much
like the writings of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill did in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.62 Denial of the influence of
the Iroquois Confederacy serves to fortify the national identity and ontology of the United States
(and other Western states) by reaffirming the ‘uniquely’ American/Western contribution to
modern liberal democracy. The intensity of the denials is not surprising, for as Campbell has argued, representational practices
become more overt during periods of crisis.63 Therefore, as a theory and as a practice, the notion of a
democratic peace is able to fix the American national identity at a time when increases in levels
of non-Western immigration to the United States and the rise of multiculturalism contribute to
an identity crisis that is subjectively perceived by American conservatives like Limbaugh and Bork who
fear that the line between the domestic and the foreign is blurring. Therefore, the old saying about ‘sticks and
stones’ does not necessarily hold true in international relations. The construction of discourse and the
representational practices that sustain it can be a powerful weapon in the waging of war by
legitimizing the ‘self’ and delegitimizing the ‘other’. Alternate cultures and their corresponding
ontologies can be wounded or even killed.
The alternative is to reject the affirmative’s representations of democratic peace. The
history of Grand River and other intra-state wars waged on indigenous peoples are
silenced by the discourse of democratic peace. The alternative gives voice to these
forgotten struggles and helps expose the contingent and constructed nature of their
logic of difference, enabling progressive transformation of the self.
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
[Kyle, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal
Representations of War and Peace”, http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf,
accessed 7/1/13]
Even when non-Western state systems are examined such as in the work of Neta Crawford on the
Iroquois Confederacy, it is only to transpose current democratic peace theory understandings in order
to demonstrate their universality.67 For example, Crawford constructs the Iroquois Confederacy as a
‘security regime’ in order to offer new lessons for current security regime theory. The conclusion
reached in the article that “the Iroquois League experience suggests that peace among nations may be
best secured over the long term if both democracy and the institution of a league/security regime are
present” demonstrates a fundamental violence of current international relations theory.68 ‘Our IR’
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
becomes ‘their IR’ in situations where it can reaffirm current ontological presuppositions . Perhaps a far
more beneficial practice for the current study of international relations would be to map instances where ‘our IR’ demonstrates a close likeness
to ‘their IR’ while at the same time respecting the important differences between them.69 Although the ontological nature of war and peace
and the discursive method of waging war are important insights into current international relations practices, we cannot forget one of the most
important aspects of the Iroquois struggle in Grand River. It
is important to note how the history of Grand River has
been effectively silenced in past and current international relations discourses. For example, I find it fascinating
that Serbian actions in Kosovo generated a huge international debate, interest, and action, while a
similar situation (i.e., Grand River) remains unknown to most within Canada, let alone the rest of the world. Thus,
according to Shapiro, the Iroquois, like other groups considered by mainstream international relations to be
non-state nations, “have not had a place in the history and cartography of warfare”.70 Furthermore, the
discourse on war, like that of political economy, has reinforced the geopolitical state centric map. As a
result, Shapiro asserts that “within the historical cartography of war, indigenous struggles still do not
appear”.71 It is of little wonder that Grand River is a forgotten site of struggle except in the Native
American/Canadian communities. First, it undermines the credibility of democratic peace theory by illustrating
that at best the democratic peace is selective in its operation through representational practices that
presuppose what political forms are ‘democratic’ and what assumptions can be made about them. Not
only does democratic peace theory limit the types of states that can be considered democratic, but
more importantly, it limits democratic characteristics to those political entities it recognizes as states.
At worst, Grand River clearly demonstrates that liberal democracies can be aggressive even towards
other democracies.72 Second, to give Grand River (and other similar historical circumstances) a voice in the study and
practice of international relations would severely undercut our perceptions of liberal democracies as
civilized, predisposed towards peace in inter-democratic relations, and naturally reasonable, thereby
presenting clear challenges to conventional thinking. Therefore, one of the roles of the critical international relations
scholar should be to expose these injustices and the representational practices that make them
possible; it is quite likely that there are many ‘Grand Rivers’ and each should be given a voice. As Doty has
argued, it is only by revealing “the contingent and unstable nature of the systems of difference” and
exposing the “foundational essences as arbitrary constructions made possible by the
power/knowledge nexus” that these kinds of practices can be overcome.73 By simply being prepared to
actively listen to the ‘other’, to engage in processes that will foster intersubjectivity, progressive
transformation both inside and outside the ‘self’ can be achieved.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Colonialism 1NC—Liberal Peace K
Economic engagement is rooted in the theory of liberal peace—it attempts to secure
order through democratization and regional economic integration
Hurrell, professor of international relations, 98
[Andrew, July, International Affairs, Volume 74, Issue 3, “Security in Latin America”,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2624967, page 529-530, accessed 7/10/13, VJ]
The second assumption, which also reflects a deep-rooted strand of liberal thinking on international
relations, is that economic liberalization and regional integration feed naturally and positively into the
creation of a stable and secure regional order. In contrast to the strong claims of democratic peace
theory, the links between economic interdependence and peace have always been more elusive and
difficult either to demonstrate or to refute with any precision. The argument here is that, while there
are certainly cases, most notably within Mercosur and the Southern Cone, where economic integration
appears to have reinforced rapprochement between erstwhile rivals and assisted the creation of a more
stable regional environment, at the same time successful economic regionalization can also be a
significant potential problem for regional order and a source of negative security externalities which,
if unmanaged, are likely to become more serious. The third assumption is that the agenda of regional
security should be broadened to include issues such as drug trafficking, drug-related violence and
criminality, migration and refugees, environmental degradation, and worsening public order in the face
of different forms of internal violence. It is certainly the case that the most serious security problems
and threats to regional order are domestic and transnational in nature. And yet the increasingly
pervasive rhetoric of the new security agenda disguises or even obscures many complex and
contested issues. Divergent understandings of the meaning, nature and implications of the new security
agenda have important policy implications and are likely to impede effective regional responses. Since
the end of the Cold War regional order and security have increasingly come to be defined in terms of
the collective defence of democracy and the promotion of liberal economic reform and regional
integration. These processes will, it is hoped, provide the foundations for the creation of a stronger
sense of regional community and the establishment of a set of political structures within which specific
security threats, both traditional (e.g. old-style border conflicts) and non-traditional (e.g. the
privatization of violence, drugs, migration) can be tackled.2 I do not argue here that this liberal
orthodoxy is wholly wrong. But I do suggest that it needs to be subjected to a much more critical
analysis than has been common hitherto.
Liberal peace building is locked in colonial logic
Liden, Coordinator at the Research School in Peace and Conflict, 09
[Kristoffer, February 14th-18th, working paper prepared for the ISA convention, New York, “Peace, SelfGovernance and International Engagement: A Postcolonial Ethic of Liberal Peacebuilding”,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/1/2/0/6/pages312060/p312060
-1.php, accessed 7/1/13, VJ]
With regard to peacebuilding, the parallel to colonialism is old news (Paris, 2002). In Enforcing the
Peace: Learning from the Imperial Past (2004), for instance, Kimberly Z. Marten seeks strategic lessons
from colonial times, although concluding that liberal peacebuilding is an unrealistic venture due to a
lack of resources and international commitment. It is first when this colonial resemblance is celebrated
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
(Ignatieff, 2003), or when peacebuilding is rejected on its basis (Chandler, 2006) that it becomes
controversial. If not a privilege, the temporary transfer of governance to international agencies is
commonly regarded as a lesser evil when compared to the re-emergence of civil war. The transitional
UN trusteeships in Kosovo and East Timor are the most obvious examples of this idea in recent times.
Rather than being exceptions, these trusteeships are symptomatic for a general colonial logic in liberal
peacebuilding, reflected to various degrees in the whole span of operations since the end of the Cold
War (Escobar, 1995; Jahn, 2007; Kapoor, 2008; Paris, 2002). The impact of this logic is not as ‘colonial’ as
one might expect from the policy discourse, however. Before we turn to these ‘realities on the ground,’
it is still worthwhile to dwell at the discursive level for a while in order to better understand the distance
between theory and practice, intention and impact. The icon of ‘the liberal peace,’ Immanuel Kant,
regarded political and economic liberalization as a source of peace within and among states (Doyle,
1997: 257; Kant, [1795] 1996b: First Definitive Article). This assertion underpins the logic of liberal
peacebuilding in war-torn countries (Paris, 2004; Richmond, 2005). With one exception: that these
operations actively expand the peace that Kant expected to naturally grow out political communities
due to the moral constitution of humanity. There is just a slight problem with Kant’s political vision
when it goes global. It is premised on a fundamental association of non-liberal cultures with moral
inferiority and uncivil strife (Behnke, 2008). As will be demonstrated below, this premise is usually
implicit and unintended in liberal political theory. But it sometimes mounts to the surface, as in the
following passage from Kant’s Toward Perpetual Peace: Just as we now regard with profound
contempt, as barbarous, crude, and brutishly degrading to humanity, the attachment of savages to
their lawless freedom, by which they would rather struggle unceasingly than subject themselves to a
lawful coercion to be instituted by themselves, thus preferring a mad freedom to a rational freedom, so,
one would think, civilized peoples (each united in a state) must hasten to leave such a depraved
condition, the sooner the better… (Kant, [1795] 1996b: 326) This outlook of liberalism frames the
subjects of peacebuilding in the South as lacking in capacity to build their own peace. They are
therefore rendered as pawns in a predefined political game. In the next section it will even be
suggested that liberal peacebuilding actually creates ‘the illiberal other’ in its wake by acting upon the
liberal notion of underdevelopment (see also Darby, 2004: 14; Duffield, 2001). On the other hand, this
criticism is unmistakably ‘Kantian’ in its insistence on that all human beings should be treated as moral
subjects and not reduced to a means for realizing the subjective ends of others (Gray, 2000; Kant, [1795]
1996a). It is rather Kant’s anthropology, his ontology of humanity, that is criticized for failing to
recognize the moral value of a- modern life forms. This ontology is still marring the premises of liberal
political thought, although in a more subtle form. Liberal peacebuilding theory is structured by a series
of binary oppositions – liberal-illiberal, peace-war, modern-traditional, developed-underdeveloped,
civilized-barbaric – oppositions with a long history in modern thought (Abrahamsen, 2000; Derrida,
1981; Habermas, 1984; Jabri, 1996; Milliken, 1999: 227; Richmond, 2005; Said, 1978). ‘Liberal
internationalism,’ the political theoretical foundation of liberal peacebuilding, is concerned with the
implications of this outlook for international politics – in broad terms a project of global
modernization (Doyle, 1997; Matthew & Zacher, 1995). Peacebuilding is per definition supposed to
address the root causes of civil war, and in liberal theory these are presented as repression, grievances
and opportunities resulting from a lack of functioning or legitimate political and economic institutions
(Duffield, 2001; ICISS, 2001: §3.19, e.g.). As long as a civil war takes place in a ‘developing country,’ the
remedy is therefore pre-given and context only matters to its implementation (Darby, 2004: 7-8). The
political objective is of course not to colonize. To the contrary, it is to build states that are capable of
protecting the rights and security of their citizens. Echoing the agenda of decolonization rather than
colonization, it is this aim that calls for a transitional mission civilisatrice to prepare the population for a
particular form of civilized self-governance (Paris, 2002: 651). The parallel to liberal justifications of
colonialism is striking. For instance, John Stewart Mill justified British imperialism in India as a way of
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
building the capacity of the Indian nation to govern itself in a civilized manner (Mill, 1973 [1867]: 376).
The premise of this argument is a combination of an analysis of the Indians as uncivilized and liberal
governance as the path to enlightened freedom. Today, negative notions like ‘uncivilized,’ ‘barbaric’
and ‘primitive’ are banned from liberal discourse. All human beings are regarded as equal, and when
societies are underdeveloped or at war it is because they are burdened by unfavourable political,
economic and cultural conditions rather than a primitive human nature. In the words of John Rawls:
Burdened societies, while they are not expansive or aggressive, lack the political and cultural
traditions, the human capital and know-how, and often, the material and technological resources
needed to be well- ordered. The long-term goal of (relatively) well-ordered societies should be to bring
burdened societies, like outlaw states, into the Society of well-ordered Peoples. (Rawls, 1999: 106)
According to this view, all individuals should be treated as potentially modern, civilized, rational,
peaceful and developed – no matter what their histories, traditions, norms and values are. The same
political principles should therefore abide everywhere, and development becomes a question of the
progress of political institutions rather than human nature. By clinging to Western institutional
representations of the positive end of the binary oppositions that constitute liberal political thought
(summed up in the notion of ‘liberal market democracy’), the discourse is nonetheless still locked in a
colonial logic. ‘Sustainable peace’ remains dependent upon a transitional cure of liberal governance. In
other words, the people affected are represented as the building blocks of a dream house built by
international personnel and foreign moral engineers. While the political objective of peacebuilding
therefore shares certain features with the liberal version of colonial imperialism, the pretexts of these
practices are clearly very different. Whereas colonialism was driven by economic interest, geopolitical
competition and racism, peacebuilding is a costly reaction to civil war, based on concerned identification
with the victims and their situation. Hence, Jarat Chopra, himself a strong critic of the lack of local
ownership and participation in peacebuilding, harshly denounces the description of peace operations as
neo-colonial or imperialistic and characterizes it as an academic exercise in disastrous ignorance
(Chopra, 1999: 11-12). Although it can be argued that it promotes Western interests in a larger political
perspective, which allows for a merger of benevolence and high politics, liberal peacebuilding is not a
conscious alternating motive for imperialist strategy. In general, the intentions are not the problem.
Nonetheless, as we have seen, these intentions are built on flawed representations of the societies to
be helped, which produce a biased political space for benevolent reaction. Instead of what liberal
peacebuilding actually promotes, it is therefore rather what it does not address that turns out to be
the main ethical problem. As Phillip Darby writes with regard to democratization in postcolonial
countries: ‘The problem is that prescription from above pays little regard to practices on the ground’
(2004: 18).
Peacebuilding dichotomizes the cultured and the barbaric—legitimizes
interventionism, cultural whitewash, and never ending expansion
Liden, Coordinator at the Research School in Peace and Conflict, 09
[Kristoffer, February 14th-18th, working paper prepared for the ISA convention, New York, “Peace, SelfGovernance and International Engagement: A Postcolonial Ethic of Liberal Peacebuilding”,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/1/2/0/6/pages312060/p312060
-1.php, accessed 7/1/13, VJ]
local meanings of liberal peacebuilding practices are not in accordance with their discursive
representations in liberal peacebuilding policy (Debrix, 1999; MacGinty, 2006; Paris, 2004; Richmond, 2005). A range of case
studies reveal a deep gap between how international actors perceive of peace and how it is
experienced by the local population. ii The meaning of peace is contingent upon the way peacebuilding
The
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
practices play into the existing political, social, economic and cultural landscape. It is therefore crucial
to ‘identify and address the shortfall between idealised and experienced versions of peace’ (MacGinty, 2006:
102). The distance between external political agendas and their local reception resonates with a central concern in postcolonial theory: that ‘cultural
messages’ from external actors are received and interpreted in a great variety of ways, often involving
an element of active resistance beyond the control of the ‘sender’ (Appadurai, 1990; Bhabha, 1994; Robertson, 2006; Smith,
1990; Tomlinson, 1991). This entails a critique of the ‘cultural globalization’ thesis of a streamlined
Westernization of local culture. The possibility of justifying liberal peacebuilding by reference to a preexisting global(ized) culture is thereby undermined. However, this critique also calls for a revisiting of
the thesis of a clear-cut repression of local political culture by global liberal governance (Duffield, 2001).
International agencies depend upon the contingent local meanings of their practices in order to succeed in transplanting external moral and political agendas. As
Homi Bhabha argues with regard to colonialism, the colonial subject has always been a ‘hybrid,’ never identical to its self-representation (Bhabha, 1994). ‘While
colonial power presents itself as muscular and incontrovertible, it simultaneously betrays its
instabilities, fractures, or contradictions’ (Kapoor, 2008: 118). In their study of the liberal experiment of peacebuilding in Cambodia, Oliver
Richmond and Jason Franks describe the fragility of the result, in line with this diagnosis, as a ‘virtual liberal peace hybrid’ upheld by ‘a
superficial overlay of the liberal governance of politics, economy and society controlled by
internationally induced conditionality and dependency, above local indigenous norms, culture and
tradition in both negative and positive forms’ (Richmond & Franks, 2007: 46) If misunderstood, this description could
lead us imagine the state of war-torn societies before liberal peacebuilding operations as indigenous
and ‘pre-modern’. This is obviously not the case in postcolonial countries with a recent history of
colonial presence and modernization. Liberal peacebuilding should rather be seen as exacerbating an
existing social condition. How is this condition to be understood if not as indigenous and traditional? In a discussion of the contemporary conditions
of nation-building in developing countries, Partha Chatterjee vividly illustrates the persistent hybridity of postcolonial societies and warns against interpreting this as
a constellation of the modern and the pre-modern: It is possible to cite many examples from the postcolonial world that suggests the presence of a dense and
heterogeneous time. In those places, one could show industrial capitalists delaying the closing of a business deal because they hadn’t yet heard from their
respective astrologers, or industrial workers who would not touch a new machine until it had been consecrated with appropriate religious rites, or voters who
would set fire to themselves to mourn the defeat of their favourite leader, or ministers who openly boast of having secured more jobs for people from their own
clan and having kept the others out. To
call this the co-presence of several times – the time of the modern and the
times of the pre-modern – is only to endorse the utopianism of Western modernity. Much recent ethnographic
work has established that these “other” times are not mere survivors from a pre-modern past: they are new products of the encounter with modernity itself
(Chatterjee, 2004: 7). This
condition is not necessarily confined to the South. In social theory, the liberal notions of
‘the modern’ and ‘the liberal society’ are frequently exposed as illusions that require non- modern
and non-liberal measures for their apparent realization (e.g. Bauman, 1989; Bourdieu, 2008; Foucault, 1997). Rather than
seeing the hybridity of the modern and the non-modern as a problem of the postcolonial condition
per se, it can therefore be seen as springing from the core of modernity. Historically, the modern state was
established through territorial conquest, not a liberal ‘social contract’, and ideologically it was
constituted through discipline and increased control of the citizenry rather than through individual
liberation from the state (Agamben, 1998; Foucault, 1997). Furthermore, as Edward Said portrays in Orientalism, the dichotomy between the
modern and the pre-modern world rests upon the projection of the ‘non-modern’ upon ‘the orient’, thereby confirming the image of ‘the occident’ as truly modern
(Said, 1978). Through
colonialism and globalization, the South has been placed in the ambivalent position
of both being embraced by modernity and constructed as the non-modern other. This ‘double bind’ is constitutive
of modernism itself, and modernization should therefore not be conceived as a historical transition from ‘the pre-modern’ to ‘the modern’ as self-contained
conditions. Instead modernization produces the non-modern as well as the modern. Consider these words by Zygmunt Bauman, connecting modernization with
globalization and civil war: The growing
volume and intensity of local and segmental conflicts cannot be played
down as the feature of ‘the state of transition’ that leads to something variously ... called ‘global
culture, ‘global society’, or even ... global community. It should be seen instead as a permanent, perhaps constitutive, attribute of a fast globalizing ‘liquid
modern’ world – its staple and massive product rather than a side- effect of a preliminary, yet unfinished but finite and transient stage of globalization. Just as
continuous ... modernization is not a process leading to modernity, but the substance of modernity itself, so
the incessant and permanently
unfinished globalization is the essence of the new globality of human condition (Bauman, 2001: 138) As discussed
in the former section, there is an assumption in liberal peacebuilding policies that civil war represents the
return to pre-modern disorder. Hence, liberal state- building is the answer. It is this policy-framework
that gives rise to the dichotomy between the liberal peace as externally induced and indigenous
culture as the condition before intervention. According to the accounts above, however, liberal modernization does not replace ‘the non-
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
liberal other’ but radically transforms societies and culture in ways that both give rise to replications of ‘the liberal’ and its contextual ‘other’ as an inherent
reaction. When
liberal peacebuilders intervene, they seek to tip the balance in favour of the liberal by
institutionalizing it and creating incentives for getting rid of its other which is associated with war. As
we have seen, postcolonial theory renders the prospects for such a ‘purification process’ rather dim.
Several analyses of the virtual character of the liberal peace in peacebuilding affected societies confirm this assessment (Debrix, 1999; Duffield, 2007; MacGinty,
2006; Richmond, 2005)
The alternative is to reject the aff’s corrupt epistemology—the 1AC’s
institutionalization ignores the violent discourses of the liberal peace
Richmond, Professor of International Relations, 09
[Oliver, July, Review of International Studies, Volume 35, Issue 03, “A Post Liberal Peace: Eirenism and
the Everyday”, page 563-565, accessed 7/10/13, VJ]
Such a search, via critical research agendas for peace77 termed here eirenism. indicates the need for
an ethical re-evaluation of the liberal peace.71 'Eirenism* was used by Erasmus as a call against
religious chauvinism after the Reformation.74 In a modem context it provides a lens through which
one can evaluate the claims, apparent or hidden of a particular epistemology, concept, theory,
method, or ideology. The failure to apply such a tool has led liberal peacebuilding approaches into a
paradoxical situation. They have reinstated social and economic class systems, undermined
democracy, and caused downward social mobility (as explained in the examples of East Timor and
Afghanistan below). Yet. liberal peace's Renaissance and Enlightenment underpinnings make clear that
the states-system of territorial sovereignty, the approximation of democracy, of human rights and free
trade, also carries a humanist concern with social justice and wide-ranging pluralism (often to be
guaranteed by an international organisation).75 Ironically, this is where its failings are most obvious.
Its focus has remained on security and institutions, rather than developing an engagement with the
everyday life of citizens. It has sometimes been built on force rather than consent, and more often
conditionally, and it has failed to recognise local cultural norms and traditions. It has created a 'virtual
peace' in its many theatres.76 This is not to say that narrow security issues have not been somewhat
assuaged and that this has not been without benefit, of course. Experience and data from a range of UN
and UNDP thematic or country focused reports has shown liberal peacebuilding to have less impact on
everyday life than is often claimed by its institutional proponents, the donor and development
communities, and particularly the International Financial Institutions. One example among many can be
found in the context of East Timor after the crisis of 2006. A UN report conceded that despite a lengthy
and costly UN involvement there since 1999: |.. | poverty and its associated deprivations including high
urban unemployment and the absence of any prospect of meaningful involvement and employment
opportunities in the foreseeable future, especially for young people have also contributed to the crisis.''
Vet there is little sense of a need to reflect on the underlying liberal peace paradigm that allowed a
'peace' to be built in East Timor which ignored these issues. In a more recent example, a report on
Afghanistan by the UN Secretary General ignored any direct engagement with such issues in favour of
traditional political and security concerns, with the exception of one telling reference: The failure of
development actors to ensure that quieter provinces in the north and west receive a tangible peace
dividend has played into the latent north-south fault line within Afghanistan [...f* This report's later
sections on development, human rights, and humanitarian issues or human security, focus on orthodox
issues relating to institution-building or 'emergency' issues.79 In the conclusion to the report the full
litany of liberal peacebuilding discourse is repeated in seeming ignorance of the lessons of East Timor,
or indeed of Afghanistan itself. Accordingly, the transition in Afghanistan is under *[.. .| increasing
strain owing to insurgency, weak governance and the narco-economy'. The government needs to *|...]
restore confidence to the popu- lation in tangible ways* but this is conceptualised as being derived
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
from: |.. .| stronger leadership from the Government, greater donor coherence - including improved
coordination between the military and civilian international engagement in Afghanistan - and a strong
commitment from neighbouring countries, (without which) many of the security, institution-building
and development gains made since the Bonn Conference may yet stall or even be reversed.10 This list of
priorities, focusing on security, terrorism, narcotics, and then the orthodoxy of the liberal peace as a
subsequent priority (governance, development, reconciliation, and human rights abuses in this order)
effectively places a local peace dividend for communities and individuals as a distant and lesser priority,
and disconnects its importance from the conduct of democratic politics and the legitimacy of the
state.11 This is because the liberal peace's primary goal in its intervention into the local or domestic is
actually on an international order between sovereign states. This is to be achieved ideally through the
construction of a liberal social contract to produce domestic and international order. In practice, what
has been achieved in post-conflict environments are the shells of liberal states, reproducing
international order, but achieving a virtual peace in a domestic context - at least in the short to medium
term, as the examples above, and of Cambodia and Bosnia aptly illustrate. The ethical and policy
metanarratives about liberal peace derive from the founding myths of Westphalia, its state-centric
elitism, its focus on territorial boundaries and sovereignty, and its disciplinary nature. Walker has
described this as a 'moment of exclusion" The concept of peace has generally been subject to Utopian
or dystopian assumptions, and the notion of the liberal peace has emerged as an 'auto-ambivalent'
compromise." It has been imbued with a specific set of interests, partly through the decontextualisation
of classical political theory to support inherency arguments about conflict, or confirm liberal norms of
market- democracy, and propensity to reshape rather than engage with non-liberal others. This also
validates territorial state sovereignty and a social contract skewed in favour of the slate, free markets,
and the eradication of the indigenous or locally more authentic (often through property rights).34
among other tendencies.33 This has been used to promote a culture of governmental and securitised
institution- alism rather than a broad peace (often by rejecting Kant's peace federation or by
confirming territorial sovereignty).i6rather than promoting an everyday peace.37 It has supported the
classical liberal view that liberal stales and peoples are effectively superior in rights and status to
others, and extended these arguments to allow for the justification of direct or subtle forms of
colonialism, interventionism. and local depoliticization to occur.38 A civil and emancipatory peace
might arise through liberalism, as Foucault argued, but more often it leads to violence of a structural or
direct nature in non-liberal contexts.39 In practice it also may have negative effects on selfdetermination and agency.40 In this context an ethical evaluation of the liberal peace underlines its
tendency to be flimsy, denying self-determination and self-government, and depoliticising. This is as
opposed to the potential of peace being empathetic. emancipatory, and resting upon an ontological
agreement and hybridity (meaning the development of an ontology that is not exclusive but is open to
difference).41 These latter qualities imply that the agents and recipients of the liberal peace are able
to relate to each other on an everyday, human level, rather merely through problem-solving
institutional frameworks that dictate or negate lived experience. They indicate the need for a deep
negotiation of peace even by the agents of the liberal model, and for a willingness to see the Western
liberal model itself modified by its engagement with its own 'others' - meaning conflict and postconflict, especially non-Western, non-liberal, and 'developmental', polities.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
2NC Answers To:
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
AT: Liberal Peace Theory Good
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Generic—Liberal Peace False
Liberal peace theory fails—causes social stratification, corruption, complacency, and
drug trafficking—Central America proves
Kurtenbach, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Peace and Development, 07
[Sabine, September, GIGA Research Unit: Institute of Latin American Studies, “Why Is Liberal Peacebuilding So Difficult?
Some Lessons from Central America”, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1015732, accessed 6/30/13, VJ]
While awareness of the importance of economic developments and globalization for armed conflicts
has grown, the debate about the implications of these factors on peace is just beginning. International
donors and research centered their interest mostly on curbing the trade with licit and illicit products of
war economies (diamonds and drugs), the problems of reconstruction of the physical infrastructure and
the economic reintegration of the excombatants. Most of the peace accords over the last decade did
not address economic concerns directly but treated them ‘with little or vague discussion’ (Woodward
2002:184). While this is not enough for peace-building, there are other influences of globalization that
have had rather negative consequences. This is true most of all for pressures coming from the
international financial institutions that rendered assistance conditional to the implementation of
structural adjustment programs and the opening of national economies to the world markets.18 This
led to a weakening of the state’s options to offer employment in the formal sector that was needed
for the integration of ex-combatants, migrants and displaced people. At the same time the
privatization of state enterprises demanded in these reform packages favored traditional elites and
those actors who gained their fortunes during and via conflict thus perpetuating and enhancing
existing socio-economic disparities and inequalities. Another effect was the establishment of new
monopolies partly based on criminal or violent networks. For sustainable peacebuilding the key
variable here is a development model promoting social inclusion and overcoming at least extreme forms
of inequality. Developments in Central America are an interesting case in point but have been rarely
analyzed under a perspective of resource use and war economy because they were mostly perceived
as results of the cold war. The wars in El Salvador und Nicaragua were externally funded although in the
case of Nicaragua limitations set by the US-Congress on aid to the contras led to the establishment of
criminal networks to circumvent this.19 As Guatemala’s military regimes did not receive foreign aid due
to its gross human rights violations that not even the Reagan administration could ignore, the
establishment of a war economy served as a substitute. The control of the country’s borders gave the
military the control of different forms of smuggling (drugs and humans among others). In none of the
countries have these structures been dismantled or destroyed after the wars ended. Criminalization is
one of the fundamental problems all over the region (see UNODC 2007) and the inherent corruption
and violence undermine all three processes of transformation. At war’s end financial transfers from
international donors and/or diaspora groups are another factor that influences the access to resources.
Although these transfers may help a lot of people to survive and improve their day-to-day living, they
also relieve the governments from their obligation to pursue inclusive policy approaches. This limits
positive effects for democratic legitimacy out of governance performance and at the same time leads
to the establishment of rent seeking structures and the permanence of the social status quo. In
Central America social exclusion and inequality have not – or only marginally – decreased during the
post-war years despite impressive growth rates and macroeconomic stability. 20 The informalization
and criminalization of the region’s economies and the related violence are symptoms of these
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
underlying processes. At the same time traditional economic elites and international enterprises favor
the modernization of the exclusionary model of development. Most investment in the region goes to
so-called ‘megaproyectos’ in mining or energy which offer only a few jobs and where the profit is
made by a small group of local or international entrepreneurs. At the same time these groups only
pay minimal royalties and taxes. Thus natural resources are not used for the public good but for private
enrichment, another process that can be interpreted as path dependency.
Democratic peace creates more conflict and tyranny
Haskoller, PhD candidate at Rutgers, 10
[Elcin, September 28th, DEMOCRATIC INTERNATIONALISM AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE, “The
Conceptualization of Democratic Internationalism as a Norm of Global Governance: How Significant Is
Democratic Governance as a Source of Global Norm for Preventing International Conflict?”,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/4/9/9/8/9/pages499891/p499891
-8.php, accessed 7/3/13, VJ]
Yet, there are systematic errors with the theory of democratic peace and its
internationalization. First, war proclivity is not constrained by the imperatives of democratic
governance. Doyle‟s proposition averts that democracies are “more pacific than other states,
when in fact, they are more warlike, going to war more often and with greater intensity than most
other states” (Zakaria, p. 115). Further, studies conducted by J. David Small and Melvin Singer (1976)
revealed that the wars among democracies between the years of 1816-1965 were analogous in
size and proportion to those fought among non-democratic states, and thus argued that democracies
are not less inclined to war than non-democracies. Second, the Kantian theory of democratic peace
divides the global governance structures between “a core and a periphery” (Stivachtis, 2009, p. 2).
That is, democratic governance has transformed into a regional norm in most of the Western
European states in the post-World World II era. The regional application of the democratic
structures then spread onto the contemporary global society, determining the physical boundaries of
modern European society. Those who adopted the principles of democracy formed the core of the
international society and assumed responsibility to act as guardians to preserve the international
order. Those who failed to embrace democratic norms remained on the peripheries of the
system. According to Stivachtis, such global application of democratic norms contributed to the
isolation of nondemocratic civilizations putting enormous pressures on them to democratize (p. 3).
The external pressures to embrace democratic regimes then increased the risks of conflict.
Political scientists Jack Snyder and Edward Mansfield (1995) allege that “over the past 200 hundred
years democratizing states went to war 60% more often than either stable autocracies or liberal
democracies (Table 1).” Transitional regimes are habitually evolving their governance structures
from autocracy to democracy and regime change could be the undermining element. Hence,
countries not founded upon “constitutional liberalism 2 produce disenchantment, disarray,
violence and new forms of tyranny” (Zakaria, p. 19). When the political system opens up,
major tensions within the society and the international arena are created by the various
possibilities of democratic participation by the religious movements.
Liberalism devolves into an endless repletion of intervention for “democracy
promotion” which fails and turns developing nations against liberalism
Jahn, Professor of International Relations, 2007
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Beate Jahn, Professor of International Relations @ Sussex, march 2007, “The Tragedy of Liberal
Diplomacy: Democratization, Intervention, Statebuilding (Part I)”, Journal of Intervention and
Statebuilding, volume: 1,p. 89-90, JF
In the first section of this essay I will briefly set out the core claims of¶ liberalism as formulated by John Locke. These core claims, it turns out,
are not¶ primarily economic, political or philosophical. Quite fundamentally, they entail a¶ dynamic, constitutive relationship between market
economy and government by¶ consent, based on a philosophy of history embodying a particular definition and¶ narrative of human freedom. I
shall also argue that
this definition and narrative¶ contains inner tensions which, when expressed in
policies towards non-liberal¶ societies, generate interventionist dynamics which rapidly become
counterproductive.¶ This liberal philosophy of history underpinned, as I will show in the second¶ section, the modernization theories of
the early Cold War period. Translated into¶ modernization policies, as surveyed in section three, they exhibited precisely¶ those interventionist
dynamics in practice. And this
interventionism was widely¶ experienced as a de facto denial of selfdetermination which turned the targets¶ of American ‘altruism’ into ‘enemies’. American foreign
policies thus managed¶ to achieve exactly the opposite of their goals / instead of turning Third World¶ countries into
liberal market democracies and thus adding to American security,¶ it led to widespread radicalization and questionable security. William
Appleman¶ Williams famously called this ‘the tragedy of American diplomacy’. My argument¶ however is that, with this nod to ‘American
exceptionalism’, Williams himself¶ had underestimated the historical and philosophical scale of the process, one¶ part of which he was
analyzing.¶ US
democracy promotion during the Cold War produced at best very mixed¶ results. The
intellectual balance sheet of modernization theory, however, was¶ even more disappointing. For reasons
drawn out below, its explicit assumptions¶ were in time largely discredited as contradictory and ideological.
And yet, in a¶ second instalment of this essay, I will show that the core liberal claims are now,¶ in the
post-Cold War period, embodied in the ‘democracy transition’ paradigm.¶ This paradigm has once
again been translated into (democracy promotion)¶ policies and, just like its predecessors, it has
generated a dynamic leading to¶ intervention and attempted statebuilding. And, finally, these policies,
too, have¶ so far met with widespread failure.¶ Once again therefore the tragedy of American
diplomacy seems to be playing¶ itself out. Pervasive interventions are contradicting the claim to
support selfdetermination and democracy, and are turning the targets of American ‘altruism’¶ into its
enemies. And yet, as suggested above, the roots of this tragedy are more¶ liberal than American / and thus in
principle are shared by other liberal states, by¶ IOs and NGOs. This liberalism may have a particular
American flavour today, (and¶ I shall concentrate on American foreign policy), due to the United States’¶ powerful position and, of
course, because general ideologies will always be¶ refracted through the particular historical experience of those who endorse and¶ apply
them. But it has a much longer history which originates in classical¶ European political thought. Moreover, these
policies seem
bound to be repeated,¶ despite their intellectual and practical failures, as long as the most powerful ¶
actors in world affairs are liberals. What we witness in the world today, I will¶ argue in conclusion, is
not the ‘end of history’ but its repetition / and that is the¶ real tragedy of liberal diplomacy.
Liberal peace theory fails at changing attitudes, causes dependency, and brain drain
Kurtenbach, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Peace and Development, 07
[Sabine, September, GIGA Research Unit: Institute of Latin American Studies, “Why Is Liberal Peacebuilding So Difficult?
Some Lessons from Central America”, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1015732, accessed 6/30/13, VJ]
Twenty years ago, on August 7 of 1987, the Central American presidents signed a comprehensive
peace treaty which was the first important step to end the various internal wars. The Esquipulas-IITreaty laid the foundation for the de-escalation of the wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala
that had provoked a series of intrastate incidents and made the region one of the international trouble
spots. During the following ten years peace accords were signed in Nicaragua (1990), in El Salvador
(1992) and in Guatemala (1996).1 War and violence took over 300,000 lives, caused the flight of two
million Central Americans from their homes, and destroyed a significant portion of the already weak
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
social and economic infrastructure. The formal end of the wars was seen as a basis not just for
recovery but for a fundamental transformation of the region towards peace, stability and
development. From a global perspective, Central America was one of the first laboratories for the
liberal peacebuilding paradigm which assumes the threefold transformation to peace, democracy and
market economy is a self-strengthening process leading to sustainable development.2 Although none
of the three countries slipped back into war, serious deficits remain that can be explained neither as a
legacy of war nor as ‘normal’ development problems. This paper tries to explain the current problems
of the post-war societies as a result of the interdependency and interaction of the threefold
transformation processes of democratization, economic liberalization and pacification. Post-war
transformation does not happen in a vacuum but is a result of the influence of four processes that
have different dynamics and time horizons. These include the impact generated by the international
system on a country’s society, its historical, cultural and social foundations, the legacies of violence and
the peacebuilding initiatives the country concerned has witnessed. While the international community
pressed for substantial reforms, the three Central American post-war societies showed a varying
capacity to cope with the challenges these changes provoked. Most academic research as well as
international cooperation assumes that the termination of war is one of the ‘critical junctures’ for
development processes, opening a window of opportunity for reform and change in path-dependent
processes. The Central American cases show that even ten years after the signing of a peace accord –
the time span usually considered necessary to implement peace accords – many challenges remain
unaddressed and the danger of slipping back into traditional development paths is acute. This paper
argues that the problems of the Central American transformation are symptoms of systematic failures
and deficits of the current peace-building approach. It falls short because it is based only on the
experiences of post World War II in Europe and Japan which is inadequate for two reasons: First, the
international framework has changed dramatically from a state-centered to a globalized system
resulting in a series of fractures for the post-war societies that can not be overcome by today’s limited
peace-building efforts. Second peace-building strategies systematically underestimate the influence of
local or national development features as well as of the competing dynamics favoring violence or
peace that characterize post-war societies. Taking Central America as an example this paper wants to
demonstrate that the complex problems of and the differences between post-war societies are a result
of the fractures and continuities encountered during the threefold transformation process. The
structure of the paper will be as follows. The second chapter presents a conceptual framework which
allows for an analysis of the fractures post war societies live with and on their capacities to cope with
the problems that have to be solved in the process. Based on this framework, the third chapter will then
analyze similarities and differences in the main fields of peace-building in the three Central American
countries. Chapter 4 concludes highlighting lessons learned from the Central American cases and
suggesting some policy conclusions for strategies of peace building in general. Nicaragua, El Salvador
and Guatemala share a series of common features both at the level of the regional and international
environment as well as in relation to the historical and cultural basis: The most important influences
from the outside during the last decades can be summarized under the headings of transnationalization
and democratization.8 Both processes have begun during the wars and were reinforced by the dynamics
inherent to war. Transnationalization was an economic as well as a demographic phenomenon. During
the 1980s and 1990s the economic elites of the three countries diversified their economic basis from the
traditional agroexport development model (coffee, bananas, sugar) opening up to new agricultural
products (e.g. fruit and flowers) as well as to investment into the financial sector. Although the
traditional oligarchies of the region were somewhat debilitated by war and in the case of Nicaragua the
Sandinista revolution, this did not weaken them substantially. The differences between the three
countries reflect the specific relations of power between status-quo-oriented and change-oriented
actors. Thus the Nicaraguan revolution restricted the influence of the oligarchy and allowed for some
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
mobility of new social forces around Sandinista networks while in Guatemala the power of the oligarchy
remained nearly untouched. This process is also reflected in a growing dynamic of social change and a
high level of poverty in all three countries (see Table 1). The demographic transnationalization in the
three countries was a result of war and violence that led to the displacement and migration of round
about two million Central Americans inside and out of the region. At the same time the lack of social
and economic mobility and the high levels of poverty constituted another push factor for mostly
illegal migration to the United States. The so called remesas or remittances – money migrants send
home to support their families – is nowadays the most important income in foreign exchange for the
national accounts and has surpassed the traditional export earnings. While this is an important basis for
survival for the most marginalized groups in these Central American countries, it also leads to a
significant brain drain as the most educated and able people go north thus weakening the human
resources for sustainable development inside the region. Democratization began in the midst of war
in all three countries as a result of international – mostly US – pressure. Although this led to an
opening of the former authoritarian systems and to an expansion of options for the non-armed
opposition, it also implied a series of restrictions: - Authoritarian enclaves were institutionalized, - the
military remained in charge of internal ‘security’, and - participation remained restricted as long as the
wars were ongoing. Although the different peace treaties all did have regulations on the consolidation
and deepening of democracy and the civilian control over the armed forces, the three democracies are
characterized by structural defects that can be explained as a form of path dependency. While the
traditional authoritarian systems were replaced, change was mostly restricted to form and did not
include a change of attitudes or substance.9 The consequences of the transnationalization were
another factor inhibiting the construction of stable reform alliances and a social basis for democratic
change. These problems are reflected in the functional fragility of Central American states that are not
able to fulfil central functions like the establishment of a legitimate monopoly of force or the delivery
of basic social services to the population. Besides the common features that are mostly influenced by
the global and regional dynamics, there are some important differences between the three countries
that can be explained by the specific historical and cultural foundations as well as the varying
dynamics of violence and peace. To analyze this we will look at the four central intersections in the
following chapters.
Liberal peace theory fails—multiple warrants
Tziarras, PhD student in Politics & International Studies at the University of Warwick,
12
[Zenonas, June 2nd, The Globalized World Post, “Liberal Peace and Peace-Building: Another Critique”,
http://thegwpost.com/2012/06/02/liberal-peace-and-peace-building-another-critique/, accessed
6/30/13, VJ]
One of the main critiques to liberal peace theory is that its advocates do not present a convincing
causal interpretation of this phenomenon; in other words they do not explain adequately why
democracies are aggressive toward non-democracies and also why many democracies are not
aggressive.[x] One could easily notice that threatening and nationalistic tendencies are no stranger to
democracies. Maybe the key for finding the middle ground lies in a combination of democracy and
satisfaction with the existing territorial borders, that is, the lack of tendency for territorial
revisionism.[xi] In terms of international human rights, the criticism concerns the principle of these
rights as international and internationally consolidated. There is the notion that, human rights is
essentially a western perception which is imposed to other cultures;[xii] this of course, suggests clearly
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
that the developmental model of liberal peace-building does not always – if ever – agree with the
cultural perceptions of human rights in countries whereat is taking place. In this regard, international
human rights protection – and especially the foreign policy of western states – cannot but be unilateral
or inspired by political expediencies. When it comes to the comparison of democracies and
autocracies, democracies could still engage in conflict; they usually initiate their wars with
autocracies; and they tend to fight imperial wars,[xiii] while ‘liberal regimes [use covert actions]
against other liberal regimes’.[xiv] In addition to the above, critiques of liberal peace-building
include:[xv] Inadequate attention to domestic institutional conditions for successful democratization
and marketization. Insufficient appreciation of the tensions and contradictions between the various
goals of peace-building. Poor strategic coordination among the various international actors involved in
these missions. Lack of political will and attention on the part of peace-building sponsors to complete
the tasks they undertake, and insufficient commitment of resources. Unresolved tensions in relations
between the military and non-military participants in these operations. Limited knowledge of
distinctive local conditions and variations across the societies hosting these missions. Insufficient ‘local
ownership’ over the strategic direction and daily activities of such operations. Continued conceptual
challenges in defining the conditions for ‘success’ and strategies for bringing operations to an effective
close. There are also, of course, more extreme critiques of peacekeeping and peace-building
interventions which suggest that these operations instead of promoting peace, they prevent it.[xvi]
Liberal peace fails—Kosovo proves reforms are only superficial
Tziarras, PhD student in Politics & International Studies at the University of Warwick,
12
[Zenonas, June 2nd, The Globalized World Post, “Liberal Peace and Peace-Building: Another Critique”,
http://thegwpost.com/2012/06/02/liberal-peace-and-peace-building-another-critique/, accessed
6/30/13, VJ]
Despite all the above and the diplomatic ways of promoting liberal democracy, the liberal peace
debate is not limited to theoretical and philosophical criticism but includes a discussion regarding the
operational level of peace-building. In the case of Kosovo, the transitional administration model
undertaken by organizations such as the UN, EU, OSCE and NATO, has had its own failures and
weaknesses. The dependency of the economy on external actors; the high rates of unemployment;
the organized crime; the ineffectiveness of the reconciliation processes and of the rule of law, reveal
the weaknesses of the peace-building operations.[xxxvi] In addition, the effectiveness of the Interim
Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has been questioned; there is the concern that peace does
not really exist in Kosovo and that the ethnic divisions have been institutionalized; democracy has not
been embraced by the whole of the society and the electoral participation is low.[xxxvii] Furthermore,
apart from the violent incidents of 2004 that showed how unstable Kosovo’s peace is, the little
consensus regarding the nature of the project in Kosovo (i.e. contrary to the Serbs, Kosovo Albanians
saw it as a state-building project) and the fact that the ‘internationals’ supported the Kosovo Albanian
‘exclusive ethnic agenda, exacerbated the ‘basic causal factors of the conflict’ by undertaking ‘top-down
institution-building’.[xxxviii] In other words, the top-down institution-building along with the emphasis
that was given on the state-building instead of on the peace-building, resulted in the operations
concentrating on the creation of institutions and disregarding the complexities of the situation.
Thereby, the liberal peace-building operations seem to fall short in examining and understanding the
underlying dynamics in given cases – like in Kosovo – while they rush to implement certain reforms
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
that would reflect the democratic transition of the state, although in reality, these reforms are only
superficial.
Empirics prove liberal peace theory fails
Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general, 08
Michael J. Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general. He served as Assistant
Commandant of the Marine Corps, 3-26-08, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 49th
ANNUAL CONVENTION, BRIDGING MULTIPLE DIVIDES, “Democracy and Democratization: The Problem
with Using the Democratic Peace Theory as a Principle of Foreign Policy”, P. 2,
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p253419_index.html,accessed 7-1-13, JF
The Democratic Peace Theory in its simplest incarnation is the theory that¶ democracies do not fight
wars against each other. While many political scientists have¶ developed elegant theories and analyses to support or oppose this
thesis, political leaders¶ in most countries have viewed it with a jaundiced eye. Ever since Emmanuel Kant¶
advocated that peace would be enhanced by universal republican government and an¶ international organization to enforce the peace, the
idea of perpetual peace has been¶ vigorously debated. The idea of a democratic peace has been used
by United States¶ Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to argue that encouraging democracy by ¶
force will make the world a safer place. This position harkens back to the objectives of ¶ Woodrow
Wilson to “make the world safe for democracy.” Despite strenuous efforts by¶ the United States,
especially in Iraq, democracy has not taken hold and the Democratic¶ Peace Theory appears to be
strained when the United States attempts to work with other¶ democratic states.
True democracies that liberal peace requires cant emerge – cultural disposition
against acceptance and perceived weaknesses in the US model.
Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general, 08
Michael J. Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general. He served as Assistant
Commandant of the Marine Corps, 3-26-08, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 49th
ANNUAL CONVENTION, BRIDGING MULTIPLE DIVIDES, “Democracy and Democratization: The Problem
with Using the Democratic Peace Theory as a Principle of Foreign Policy”, P. 6-8,
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p253419_index.html,accessed 7-1-13, JF
Karl Popper argued that democracy
is a political system in which the people can¶ change the government
without violence.7 While this definition does not describe the¶ process people use to choose their leaders it does point to a key element
in a successful¶ modern democracy – namely the lack of violence directed at the change of government.¶ 7 Popper p. 95¶ 6¶ Democracy,
strictly speaking, does not describe the nature of a constitution or¶ electoral procedures. It does not
explicitly prescribe that the rights of minorities are¶ protected from abuse. It does not even explicitly
require that everyone in a state has the¶ right to vote. What it does require is that governments be
changed by peaceful means and¶ that all citizens participate in the process effectively. The classical liberal
mode of¶ democracy acceptable in Western society does expand the definition to mean that all¶ citizens of the society have the right to
participate in the election of its political¶ leadership, that this election process can result in peaceful change of government and that¶ the losers
are not punished for their opposition to the new government. Given that this¶ description of a democracy is valid, why
does the
Western concept not successfully¶ transfer to other countries, especially rising democracies in the
former Soviet block and¶ the developing world?¶ A key element for a democracy to last is that the people who lose an
election must¶ have faith that they will get another chance to win power and to have their voices heard¶ in the interim before the next election
cycle. This requires an institutional expectation that¶ minorities will be protected from retribution by the current political leadership. This¶
means that
any society without a cultural predisposition to accept political opposition will¶ have a
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
difficult time sustaining a democratic form of government on a model similar to¶ the United States and
Western Europe. Another significant difficulty with the efforts by¶ the United States to establish democracy in other countries is
the controversies within the¶ United States over the nature of its own democracy. Recent books by
many authors such¶ as David Hackett Fischer8 and Sean Wilentz9 describe the difficulties in expanding and¶
maintaining democracy in the United States. Because of the instant communications and¶ access to information that exist in
the world of the 21st century, all nations of the world¶ can see and comprehend the weaknesses of American
society as well as its strengths.¶ Consequently, many people find the sermonizing character of American democratization¶ efforts
to be self-serving and illegitimate.
Democracy is nothing new – citizens in the countries engage in brutal violence
following elections – multiple warrants and empirics
Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general, 08
Michael J. Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general. He served as Assistant
Commandant of the Marine Corps, 3-26-08, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 49th
ANNUAL CONVENTION, BRIDGING MULTIPLE DIVIDES, “Democracy and Democratization: The Problem
with Using the Democratic Peace Theory as a Principle of Foreign Policy”, P. 5-6,
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p253419_index.html,accessed 7-1-13, JF
The other side of the problem with democracy being a motivator in foreign policy¶ is when the citizens
of these democracies decide, by popular vote, to engage in very¶ undemocratic, violent and
malevolent behaviors. Adolph Hitler gained power in 1933¶ through a highly competitive democratic process. Violence erupted in India
and Pakistan¶ immediately after partition when the British withdrew. Many democratic elections in¶ 5¶ South America,
Africa and Asia have been followed with brutal repression and even¶ genocide against the losers. The
nations who engage in such violence do so for many¶ reasons but they can be broken down into several categories. Economic class
warfare can¶ follow democratic elections. The poor will attack the rich, seize their property and either¶ expel the formerly
wealthy, or kill them. More often the violence is motivated by ethnic¶ or religious differences. Bigotry is a
powerful force, and does not respect the slightest¶ deviation from the dominant cultural or religious
norm. Ideology and religion are the¶ primary forces for indoctrinating a population to support the
government’s goals. In the¶ case of a country that has a system of popular election in place leaders can use these¶ forces
to demonize their opposition. After they gain power, the opposition is still a threat¶ so violence erupts.
This violence can end up destroying the winners. An excellent¶ example of this consequence is the fall of Maximilien
Robespierre as well as other¶ leaders of the First French Republic. Leaders turn against leaders and the revolution will¶ “eat its young.” Leaders
of the Bolsheviks and the NAZI party leadership in the 1920s¶ and 1930s, military
coup leaders in various countries, and the
leaders in religious¶ dictatorships have all followed this pattern over the centuries. In many cases
these¶ political systems, especially in the past two centuries, are allegedly built up from below ¶ to
create new societies. Unfortunately, this is not really democracy.
Democracies are hard to maintain and takes potentially centuries to reach the level of
western democracies
Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general, 08
Michael J. Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general. He served as Assistant
Commandant of the Marine Corps, 3-26-08, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 49th
ANNUAL CONVENTION, BRIDGING MULTIPLE DIVIDES, “Democracy and Democratization: The Problem
with Using the Democratic Peace Theory as a Principle of Foreign Policy”, P. 8-9,
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p253419_index.html,accessed 7-1-13, JF
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Democracy is a difficult system to maintain because people who gain privileges¶ tend not to want to
share them. In the former communist countries of Eastern Europe and¶ developing countries in Asia
violent abuses of minorities have occurred as well as¶ violence perpetrated by the minorities in
response. Countries with a tradition of¶ democracy also experience such violence but not at the levels
seen in Iraq, Afghanistan¶ and previously in the states of the former Yugoslavia. Violence in areas of
South¶ American countries with large indigenous populations occurs regularly. Minorities in¶ 8¶
Indonesia and the Philippines frequently lead violent opposition to the regular¶ governments. Palestinians
in Israel oppose the occupation of Israeli forces and take their¶ efforts to the cities of that country because they feel left out of the political
process.¶ Hamas and the PLO are fighting each other over who is to lead the Palestinian people in ¶ the future. Why
does democracy
not work for these people? It worked in the United¶ States, right? Or did it?¶ When the constitution
was ratified in 1789, not even white male suffrage was¶ universal. Only New Jersey allowed women to vote and then
only if they owned property.¶ That incidentally was repealed in 1807 when universal male suffrage was established in¶ New Jersey.10 Most
states had religious tests for local and state office, even though¶ religious tests were prohibited in the federal constitution. That prohibition
only applied to¶ the federal government. In general, Indians and freed slaves were not allowed to vote. So,¶ by
today’s standards, the
United States, although perhaps the most democratic society in¶ the world of 1789, was not a
democracy. What happened?
Empirics prove that it fails – social and economic violence
Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general, 08
Michael J. Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general. He served as Assistant
Commandant of the Marine Corps, 3-26-08, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 49th
ANNUAL CONVENTION, BRIDGING MULTIPLE DIVIDES, “Democracy and Democratization: The Problem
with Using the Democratic Peace Theory as a Principle of Foreign Policy”, P. 8,
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p253419_index.html,accessed 7-1-13, JF
What is wrong with the effort to establish democratic forms of government in the¶ world today even with these problems? Many
Western Europeans and Americans feel¶ that all that is needed to make a peaceful world is to
establish democracy in the¶ developing world and the former Soviet Communist states. However,
many of these¶ countries’ efforts have ended in failure. There has been widespread abuse of
minorities,¶ religious and ethnic, and reversion to autocratic rule in several of these governments.¶
Social and economic abuse of minorities even occurs in accepted democracies such as¶ France,
Germany Britain and the Untied States. Violence has been visited on ethnic and¶ religious minorities in
Columbia, Mexico, India and several countries in Africa.¶ Autocratic rule and the suppression of
political opposition have gained ground in several¶ countries, such as Venezuela and Russia.
Democracies cant emerge in certain places – not enough time, lack of a democratic
tradition, colonialism, and religious tensions
Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general, 08
Michael J. Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general. He served as Assistant
Commandant of the Marine Corps, 3-26-08, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 49th
ANNUAL CONVENTION, BRIDGING MULTIPLE DIVIDES, “Democracy and Democratization: The Problem
with Using the Democratic Peace Theory as a Principle of Foreign Policy”, P. 11-12,
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p253419_index.html,accessed 7-1-13, JF
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
The Western democracies are more protective of the rights and privileges of their¶ people now, but it
has taken two centuries to
get where we are. We have developed social¶ and economic rules that incorporate the opportunities and education to allow all people
to¶ improve their conditions in society and to participate in the decision-making processes of¶ our political institutions. It has taken two
hundred years. So how
can we expect countries¶ that have never had a democratic tradition to succeed?
Especially since these Western¶ European based powers imposed colonial rule and otherwise
exploited and destroyed the¶ 11¶ internal cultural cohesion of these countries through violence and
war. In addition, even¶ the Western countries have seen internal failures of democracy over the past
century.¶ Greece, Weimar Germany, Italy in the 1920s, and Republican Spain come to mind.¶ Countries
in Africa and the Middle East have little democratic tradition. In this¶ part of the world religious faith has
often been the sole source of political cohesion. The¶ only other method of holding the country
together has been the application of military¶ and economic power, often violently. In the 19th century,
Africa was brutalized by the¶ division brought about by the European race for colonies. The contest over
Fascism,¶ Communism and Capitalist Democracy dominated the 20th century. All contestants were¶ compelled to worry
about military and economic issues rather than how people¶ participated in their government
processes. After the fall of the Soviet Union, ethnic and¶ religious differences have unleashed hatreds that had
been held in check for the previous¶ 70 years.
Religious conflicts mean that new democracies don’t lead to peace
Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general, 08
Michael J. Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general. He served as Assistant
Commandant of the Marine Corps, 3-26-08, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 49th
ANNUAL CONVENTION, BRIDGING MULTIPLE DIVIDES, “Democracy and Democratization: The Problem
with Using the Democratic Peace Theory as a Principle of Foreign Policy”, P. 12-13,
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p253419_index.html,accessed 7-1-13, JF
All nations in the 21st century want peace. Environmental issues and weapons of¶ mass destruction are only the biggest
reasons for this desire. Many countries are¶ struggling with the concept that democracy is the best approach.
The reason is both¶ simple and extraordinarily complex. The countries that are struggling the most
have little¶ or no tradition of economic fairness and political democracy. Large minorities exist¶ which
are economically disadvantaged and socially and theologically distinct from the¶ majority. The
minorities are discriminated against because they are seen as threats to the¶ existing social structure.
Finally, the minorities are given no hope of becoming part of the¶ majority system unless they give up
their own cultural and religious heritage. Religious¶ faith is particularly important in Muslim countries. Fundamentalists
see a high price for joining the modern international system. Additionally, in Christian countries in the
same¶ way as in Muslim countries, there are extreme fundamentalist elements opposed to any¶
compromise with other societies or even different groups within their own societies. The¶ proponents
of the extreme forms of Muslim and Christian theology advocate destruction¶ of nonbelievers. Examples
can be found in the Koran as well as the Christian and Jewish¶ Bibles. “Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal
rigorously¶ with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate.” (Koran 9:73) “Believers, make war on¶ the infidels who dwell around you. Deal
firmly with them. Know that God is with the¶ righteous.” (Koran 9:123) The Koran also speaks of punishing by death the crime of¶ apostasy.
Not just a matter of democracy – there must be a massive societal change
Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general, 08
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Michael J. Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general. He served as Assistant
Commandant of the Marine Corps, 3-26-08, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 49th
ANNUAL CONVENTION, BRIDGING MULTIPLE DIVIDES, “Democracy and Democratization: The Problem
with Using the Democratic Peace Theory as a Principle of Foreign Policy”, P. 13-14,
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p253419_index.html,accessed 7-1-13, JF
The complex part of the problem of modern democracy is how to make it work¶ peacefully.
If a political system provides no
opportunity for the minority to improve their¶ economic or social status, resentment is going to set in.
When the system discriminates¶ against a group’s ethnic heritage or religious beliefs, resentment sets
in. If the minority¶ has no faith in the fairness of the political system, resentment sets in. Until these
causes¶ of resentment are addressed, no system can be truly democratic. This requires a change in¶ the
total culture of a political society.¶ It will take a generation or two of concentrated effort to educate all
of the people¶ in a society. It will take years of effort to make all of the people believe that if they
lose¶ an election that the political system will not take away their rights. Everyone must¶ believe that
their culture and religion will be respected. Finally, the losers must respect¶ the right of the winners to
lead. If the winners, fail the next election will tell the tale. This¶ problem exists today even in countries with a longer tradition of democratic
actions. The¶ United States continues to suffer the consequences of African slavery. Britain still has¶ problems in Ireland and economic
problems with Muslim and Hindu populations as¶ legacies of its colonial era. France recently has experienced urban upheaval among its¶
Muslim population. Finally, the people of Africa and the Middle East are suspicious of¶ the motives of the Western democracies since the
European powers were the ones who¶ destroyed their societies in the 19th century and after WWI and imposed systems that did¶ not exist for
the peoples’ welfare.¶ The
institutions of government must actively protect minority rights. It must¶ provide
for regular opportunities for all citizens to express their views. The system must¶ respond effectively
to grievances. This also means the governments’ actions must be¶ equitable, what John Rawls referred to as “just.”11
It takes too long for democracies to develop – also doesn’t solve education, violence
social exclusion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and faith in the electoral
system
Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general, 08
Michael J. Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general. He served as Assistant
Commandant of the Marine Corps, 3-26-08, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 49th
ANNUAL CONVENTION, BRIDGING MULTIPLE DIVIDES, “Democracy and Democratization: The Problem
with Using the Democratic Peace Theory as a Principle of Foreign Policy”, P. 14-15,
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p253419_index.html,accessed 7-1-13, JF
Finally, the
Western democracies must understand that the process of creating¶ democracy in any
country will take decades. It took most Western countries a century or¶ more to create effective
democracies. Why should any of us think it would take less time¶ for other countries to do the same?
This does not mean we should impose democracy,¶ because the people will have no faith in a system
that comes from the outside. We must¶ respect their concerns and be patient with their fears.¶ For
democratization to work, we must understand what it is and develop a¶ consensus across all cultures
to make it work. Democracy is a system of government that¶ allows all citizens to be part of the process of selecting their political
leaders. Citizens in¶ a successful democracy must have faith that the government will respect different
views¶ as long as all citizens accept the winners in these elections. The victors must reciprocate ¶ and
respect the views of the losers. Violence, social ostracism and economic hardship are¶ not legitimate
responses to political disagreements. All people must agree to this rule. To¶ allow such a system to
succeed, all citizens must receive an effective education so that¶ they can understand the issues being
debated. Freedom of assembly and freedom of¶ speech are critical for this process. It will take decades
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
before all people to accept¶ democracy as a characteristic of their society. Even in the democracies of
the West there¶ are social groups who do not accept this point of view.
Democratization fails as a foreign policy – too long and has to upheave centuries of
tradition – Iraq proves
Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general, 08
Michael J. Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general. He served as Assistant
Commandant of the Marine Corps, 3-26-08, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 49th
ANNUAL CONVENTION, BRIDGING MULTIPLE DIVIDES, “Democracy and Democratization: The Problem
with Using the Democratic Peace Theory as a Principle of Foreign Policy”, P. 15-16,
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p253419_index.html,accessed 7-1-13, JF
In conclusion, to use democratization as justification for foreign policies is a¶ dangerous practice. Because
democracy must be learned and developed as a consensus¶ practice for all people, a nation must
expect to spend a long time on this one project.¶ Meanwhile, the citizens will look upon the imposition of
this strange concept called¶ democracy as the effort of an outsider to destroy their own traditions. This
is almost¶ always doomed to failure. The United States is learning this lesson in Iraq today . No¶ people
likes being told their traditions are flawed. They will not accept anyone acting like¶ a pedantic school teacher wagging a finger
at them and telling them that the only way to¶ succeed is to completely ignore their own traditions and history
and to try this weird¶ 15¶ thing that will take fifty or one hundred years to make their lives better. It
will not work.¶ The attitude that the Democratic Peace can be used as a basis for foreign policy has
cost¶ the United States over 4000 lives and trillions of dollars of treasure. Long term goals are¶ difficult to sustain
and prone to failure. Democratic education programs may be useful,¶ but they need to be established as a long term program outside of the
immediate goals of¶ a society. Democracy
is a secondary goal.
Liberalism leads to an offense foreign policy as it perceives a threat from the illiberal
other
Jahn, Professor of International Relations, 2007
Beate Jahn, Professor of International Relations @ Sussex, march 2007, “The Tragedy of Liberal
Diplomacy: Democratization, Intervention, Statebuilding (Part I)”, Journal of Intervention and
Statebuilding, volume: 1,p.93, JF
A second problem arises from the historical dynamic at the core of the liberal¶ philosophy of history. As mentioned above, the
minimum
requirement for a¶ liberal foreign policy is the protection of liberal achievements at home. Since¶
capitalism and limited government constitute the foundation of liberal states,¶ potential security
threats arise from those who do not or cannot uphold (for¶ structural or developmental reasons) the rights of
private property and¶ government by consent: that is, from non-liberals. Moreover, as is widely¶ recognized,
capitalism requires growth. Hence, for liberal states closed markets,¶ rising oil prices and the like stand
in the way of economic growth and may well¶ constitute a matter of ‘defence’ which requires
‘expansive’ foreign policies.¶ Similarly, but less broadly acknowledged, liberalism requires political ‘growth’.¶ While
authoritarian governments and illiberal cultures explain the existence of¶ non-liberal states, the latter
are expected to turn liberal, particularly in periods¶ in which deviant forms of ‘authority’, ‘custom’ or
‘economic organization’ lose¶ power and provide an opening for the exercise of reason. The lack of
such¶ development or worse, regression from liberalism to non-liberalism, constitutes¶ a challenge to
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
liberal identity and theory. Hence, where power differentials allow¶ it, there may be a strong incentive
to protect the image and integrity of the¶ liberal model by more active and ‘expansive’ policies,
particularly against open¶ and taunting challenges from non-liberal ‘rogue states’. In short, the liberal¶
philosophy of history entails the expectation and justification of growth¶ economically and politically,
thus making it all but impossible to distinguish¶ definitionally between defensive and offensive foreign
policies. Thirdly, the liberal world view militates against a clear distinction between¶ national and
universal interests. Since liberalism provides the most advanced¶ model of human social and political organization, its protection
benefits¶ humanity / materially, since market economies increase productivity, and¶ politically because of its model character for nonliberals.
The liberal conception¶ of security thus merges national and universal interests, as Tony Smith rightly¶ points
out (2000: 85), just as it blurs the lines between defensive and offensive¶ foreign policies.
Liberalism leads forced regime change and intervention
Jahn, Professor of International Relations, 2007
Beate Jahn, Professor of International Relations @ Sussex, march 2007, “The Tragedy of Liberal
Diplomacy: Democratization, Intervention, Statebuilding (Part I)”, Journal of Intervention and
Statebuilding, volume: 1,p.93-94,JF
A fourth problem arises from the mutually constitutive nature of private¶ property and government by
consent at the core of liberal theory. The circular¶ relationship between these spheres implies, first, that political alternatives to¶
liberalism are expected to turn into economic and, eventually, military ones /¶ and vice versa. This dynamic logic of liberal
expectation, however, is not¶ confined to multiplying the potential threats. It also operates with
regard to¶ altruistic or developmental policies. On the one hand, it encourages aid policies¶ (broadly defined) because it holds
out the prospect that a limited investment in¶ one area / economic, political, educational or military / will nevertheless have¶ repercussions on
all other spheres and thus eventually lead to the development¶ of a liberal society. On the other hand, however,
the failure of such
policies must¶ be put down / in the logic of liberal thought / to shortcomings in other areas. The¶
temptation, therefore, to move from a failed attempt to establish economic¶ liberalism straight on to
attempts to establish political liberalism which in turn¶ may lead to attempts to change the target
culture right up to the reconstruction¶ of every individual in society, is great.2¶ And such intrusive
policies violate the¶ (liberal) right to self-government and thus come back full circle to the first¶
problem mentioned above.
Liberalism leads to offensive “democracy” promotion – which in reality only favors the
elites
Jahn, Professor of International Relations, 2007
Beate Jahn, Professor of International Relations @ Sussex, march 2007, “The Tragedy of Liberal
Diplomacy: Democratization, Intervention, Statebuilding (Part I)”, Journal of Intervention and
Statebuilding, volume: 1,p.97,JF
Modernization theories thus displayed all the core elements of the liberal¶ world view. They identified three stages of development: traditional,
modernizing and modern. Modernity
was defined as market democracy and identified with¶ the US and other
liberal states with all other societies being expected to turn into¶ market democracies over time.
Consequently, modernization theories exhibited¶ the tensions inherent in the liberal world view analyzed
earlier. They identified¶ the very existence of non-liberal states as a potential security threat which was ¶
to be addressed by helping them to develop into liberal states / thus blurring the¶ lines between
defensive and offensive policies as well as between national and¶ universal interests. This process involved
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
the establishment of market economies¶ and democracy underpinned by a thorough transformation of traditional into¶ modern cultures. And
yet, since
traditional or transitional people could not yet¶ be trusted to aim for this goal, modernization
theories propagated a revisionist¶ version of democracy which narrowed the right to self-government
down to elites¶ whose goals were thought to be in line with the liberal model / just as Locke and¶ his successors
in the West had narrowed the right to vote down to those who¶ could be trusted to understand and defend private property as the chief end
of¶ government.
Liberalism leads to forced development filled with western biases
Jahn, Professor of International Relations, 2007
Beate Jahn, Professor of International Relations @ Sussex, march 2007, “The Tragedy of Liberal
Diplomacy: Democratization, Intervention, Statebuilding (Part I)”, Journal of Intervention and
Statebuilding, volume: 1,p.97-98,JF
Given the speculative nature of classical liberal theory, it is not surprising that¶ modernization theories, too, encountered serious problems of
empirical substantiation and theoretical consistency. Firstly,
and most generally, modernization theories identified
the Western model of political, economic and cultural¶ development as the universal goal of human
development. This assumption¶ ‘grossly romanticized the natural history of the West’ (Shafer 1988: 68;¶
Roxborough 1988: 757). Shortcomings of Western societies / such as steep¶ inequalities of income and
power, racism, housing discrimination, delinquency,¶ family disintegration and a general ‘culture of
poverty’ characterized by¶ fatalism, lack of will, refusal to assimilate and the wide spread abstention
of¶ perfectly literate citizens from voting (Latham 2000: 121, 147f; Lerner 1963:¶ 343) / were mentioned but not
used to question the assumption of linear¶ evolutionary development towards the Western model
(Wehler 1975: 23).¶ Secondly, as with modernity, so tradition, too, was defined in homogenizing¶ ways. Empirical differences between Third
World countries simply constituted¶ different ‘stages’ in the developmental schema (Pye 1963a: 229f). Thirdly,¶ tradition
and
modernity were defined as mutually exclusive which provided the¶ theoretical basis for defining the
transition period as unstable and chaotic. And¶ yet, empirically both Western and non-Western societies embody a mixture of¶
‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ values and institutions. Hence, the assumption that¶ contact with modern values would automatically lead to the
decay of traditional¶ ones could not be substantiated as, indeed, political development theorists¶ generally recognized (Huntington 1968: 130;
Cammack 1997). Moreover, if¶ modern
‘man’ could live with a mixture of tradition and modernity there was¶
no reason to assume that this same mixture should be experienced as a trauma in¶ the Third World.
Hence, it was clear neither that modernization would lead to¶ Westernization, nor that modernization was necessarily a source of instability.¶
And finally, the concept of transition or modernization could theoretically cover¶ centuries / given that
it entailed every form of political, economic and social¶ development which was neither properly
traditional nor properly modern¶ (Wehler 1975: 19; Roxborough 1988: 758).
Liberalism as as foreign policy is self-contradicting – its requires both the need to
“liberalize” and allow others self determination
Jahn, Professor of International Relations, 2007
Beate Jahn, Professor of International Relations @ Sussex, march 2007, “The Tragedy of Liberal
Diplomacy: Democratization, Intervention, Statebuilding (Part I)”, Journal of Intervention and
Statebuilding, volume: 1,p.93,JF
Foreign policies inspired by this world view are confronted with four problems.¶ The first follows from
the tension between the ideal claim that all people(s) are¶ born free and the liberal philosophy of history which
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
holds that / so far / most¶ people(s) are the victims
of despotic government and illiberal cultures and,¶ hence, not yet able to
to their own¶ devices they cannot be trusted to opt for private property
and government by¶ consent. Liberal foreign policies, therefore, frequently find themselves
confronted with the choice of honouring the ideal claim / letting people choose their¶ own social and
political organization / and consequently risking illiberal¶ outcomes, or imposing liberal outcomes and
thus violating the liberal principles¶ of self-government or self-determination.
exercise their reason freely. Thus, left
Democratic peace theory uses hegemonic representational practices which fixes
identities of self and other according to a Western liberal model of democracy,
ignoring alternative models.
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
[Kyle, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal
Representations of War and Peace”, http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf,
accessed 7/1/13]
Before undertaking a representational deconstruction of democratic peace theory, it is important to distinguish this technique from the
standard theoretical deconstruction common to critical international relations scholarship. Where the standard theoretical deconstruction
seeks to elucidate the assumptions, presuppositions, and norms that have influenced the foundations of a particular theory, a
representational deconstruction of the sort attempted in this paper seeks to reveal how a theory has both
moulded and become enmeshed within ideas of self-identification and an ontological outlook which
helps to define identity. A standard theoretical deconstruction of the democratic peace would reveal just how much the theory has in
common with realism including positivist epistemology, states as the primary actors, the assumption of anarchy, and the use of sovereignty as
the predominant organizing principle of the international system. Although a fascinating line of inquiry in its own right, I believe that a
standard theoretical deconstruction cannot answer ‘the who and for what purpose’ question as
effectively as a deconstruction of the representational practices of democratic peace theory. According to
Doty, the hegemonic dimension of global politics is inextricably linked to representational practices, as hegemonic practices, are those which
seek to create a fixedness of meaning (in identity) that ultimately is impossible.15 What then are
the hegemonic
representational practices of democratic peace theory? Doty has divided practices of representation into seven crucial
elements which help to produce and reproduce difference: nodal points, naturalization, classification, surveillance, negation, positioning, and
the logic of difference. These will each be explored below in relation to democratic peace theory and its two constitutive concepts, ‘democracy’
and ‘war’.16 As
a representational practice, democratic peace theory needs nodal points around which to
fix meaning and establish positions to make predication possible.17 In other words, nodal points help
to affirm the identity of the ‘self’ in relation to the ‘other’, while negating the identity of the ‘other’ in
relation to the ‘self’.18 Two nodal points are of significance for democratic peace theory. First is the conception of
democracy that is common to democratic peace theory discussions. It emphasizes procedural rather
than substantive characteristics including elections and constitutions. When substantive
characteristics are discussed, the focus is on the negative freedoms of early liberal thought and first
generation human rights (e.g., freedom of religion, freedom from arbitrary authority, freedom of opportunity). Most importantly,
the conception of democracy being used as a nodal point is inherently an American conception. It
does not reflect how democracy is practiced in other states, and these differences in practice tend to
be ignored in the literature unless the practice is considered ‘illiberal’.19 Thus, when Harvey Starr asks ‘how does one separate
doves (unlikely to use force) and non-doves’ in foreign relations, he responds by arguing that there is no reliable method other than dividing
states on the basis of whether they are a liberal democracy (i.e., American/Western) or not (i.e., non-American/non- Western).20
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
AT: Liberal Peace Solves War
Representations of the democratic peace implicitly assume a Western, liberal model.
This requires silence regarding other versions of democracy, and creates the binaries
which enable the war-making practices of the United States.
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
[Kyle, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal
Representations of War and Peace”, http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf,
accessed 7/1/13]
The answer in part, is given that liberal democracy and the liberal democratic political system
are firmly entrenched in the American national psyche, any suggestion that they are not wholly an
‘American’ (or at least ‘Western’) product is tantamount to a full scale attack on US national identity and the
ontological presuppositions that form its foundations. This is particularly acute when Native Americans are involved, for
they have traditionally been seen as the uncivilized and savage ‘other’ on the North American continent. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to
demonstrate that far
from being just window-dressing to (geo)strategic interests as argued by realists, or
the ultimate guarantor of peace as argued by democratic peace adherents, the American (and
Western) conception of liberal democracy creates the binaries necessary for the war-making practices
of the United States and other like-minded allies such as Canada. In order to substantiate this controversial claim, I will
begin by deconstructing the democratic peace. Liberal democracy should be seen not just as a
fundamental principle influencing the nature of state government and domestic rule, but as a
subjective tool to differentiate ‘friend’ from ‘foe’ and ‘opportunity’ from ‘threat’. The notion of liberal
democracy is an integral part of what Roxanne Lynn Doty has referred to as the ‘representational
practices’ of the American (or Western) state.5 Viewing liberal democracy as an international relations
practice within a representational framework clearly illuminates three significant points with regards to
the theory and practice of the democratic peace that will be addressed in this paper. First, is through a representational
deconstruction, the ontological nature of war and of peace become apparent. Second, because war and peace can be just as
much about ontology as strategy, war and peace may take place not only on the battlefield or in
diplomatic chambers but also in classrooms and media outlets (beyond the dissemination of propaganda) through
the production and reproduction of binaries and classification schemes. In other words, devastating wars
are often fought equally with words as with weapons; conversely, peace can be achieved through discursive
understanding as well as the laying down of arms. Therefore, Limbaugh and Bork are not simply uninformed pundits, but are also combatants in
an ontological battleground. Finally, a
representational view of the democratic peace helps to illustrate how
democratic peace theory and practice can and perhaps even must be silent about other versions of
democracy like the Iroquois Confederacy.
Representations of the democratic peace naturalize the state of war, to which peace is
seen as the exception. It produces unquestioned assumptions which justify aggression
against non-liberal states.
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
[Kyle, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal
Representations of War and Peace”, http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf,
accessed 7/1/13]
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Naturalization is a powerful aspect of the representational aspects of democratic peace theory by
making certain presuppositions beyond the realm of legitimate inquiry. In other words, democratic
peace theory has created background knowledge that is taken as true which entails an implicit
theorization of how the world works and the characteristics of all its inhabitants.25 First, liberal
democracies are naturalized so that they can be objectively differentiated from non
liberal/democracies.26 Second, the fact that there is a relationship between the type of domestic political system and state character
is naturalized. More to the point though, the framework of this relationship shapes our thinking to naturally
view liberal democracies as predisposed towards peaceful interactions with each other and inherently
trustworthy within their relationships with other liberal democratic states. Therefore, liberal democracies (read
Western states) are peaceful towards all states except those who are ‘objectively’ determined to
be non-liberal/democratic regimes.27 The use of force against these types of states is justified
because nonliberal/ democratic states are aggressive towards all states and completely
untrustworthy. Therefore, these states are not legitimate global actors. Third, and perhaps most disturbingly,
democratic peace theory naturalizes peace as an aberration in international relations that must
be explained rather than seeing ‘zones of peace’ as natural entities and war as the deviant
circumstance. The irony here is that even the democratic tradition within mainstream international relations has a Hobbesian impulse
which trumps its Lockean counterpart.
Democratic peace theory provides the intellectual cover for democratic crusades,
uniting neo-conservatives and liberal hawks behind US interventions across the globe.
Parmar, Professor of Government, 08
[Inderjeet, December, “The ‘Knowledge Politics’ of Democratic Peace Theory”,
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/about/themes/cip/publications/docum
ents/SSRC%20Think%20Tanks%20paper%20Sept%202008%20NEW.pdf, page 2-4, accessed 7/10/13]
Democratic peace theory provides democracy promotion intellectual legitimacy, the seal of social
scientific approval, justifying policy but also elevating the status of social science itself. Democratic peace theory is, for example,
sometimes referred to as “Doyle’s Law”.29 There are three lines of development that are broadly discernable
in the origins, development and rise to scientific law and established political practice of democratic peace theory: the
first begins with the work of Ford Foundation-funded Princeton scholar, Michael Doyle, in the
1980s and leads to significant theoretical reorientations among liberal internationalist scholars in the American international relations (IR)
community as well as to the “democratic engagement” orientations of the second Clinton administration (1997-2001). The
second line
the work of Larry Diamond, the Hoover Institution scholar closely
associated with the Democrats’ Progressive Policy Institute and the “democratic enlargement”
agenda of the first Clinton administration, as well as the formation in 2000 of the Council of the Community of
Democracies. The third line of development, and probably the least important in theoretical innovation terms, begins with the
publication of Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” article and book, and develops through the
work of Joshua Muravchik, and William Kristol and Robert Kagan. Those lines of thought and development intersect/ed
with one another from time to time, especially through the Clinton era; yet they jangled and did not fully cohere. Coherence and
‘unity’ were forged by the terror attacks of 9-11, which unified conservative nationalists, neoconservatives, and liberal interventionist hawks: rhetorically, promoting democracy took on a
crusading form as the means to security and global ‘improvement’, regardless of political party.
of development encompasses
Democratic peace theory is a set of wishful assertions tailored to be easily
comprehended and regurgitated by policymakers and the general public- they provide
legitimacy for widespread violence in the form of a democratic crusade.
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
[Kyle, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal
Representations of War and Peace”, http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf,
accessed 7/1/13]
What is perhaps most interesting about democratic peace theory is not how its adherents have
attempted to explain the phenomenon, but its resonance with the general public and policymakers. Moreover, this pop-culture popularity has occurred despite the general perception within
the wider academic community that at best, it represents wishful thinking. More importantly, the
nuances of democratic peace theory have been lost as it has become enmeshed within popular
political discourse in the West. Thus, democratic peace theory has been transformed into a set of
assertions that are constantly repeated by commentators and policy-makers at the first signs of
conflict in the international arena: 1. democracies are inherently peaceful unless unjustly attacked (or threatened) by
authoritarian regimes, 2. uses of force by democracies are justified because they are directed against real threats launched by rogue actors
intent on undermining the ‘democratic way of life’, 3. democracies by definition cannot go to war with one another (as a result of assertion
1), 4. the best way to ensure global stability and peace is to promote the spread of democracy. The
power of these four
assertions is augmented by the fact that they are very easy to comprehend and thus disseminate
to the population at large; they muster support and help to provide a basis of legitimacy for
actions (including the large-scale use of violence) that may have otherwise generated internal
apathy if not opposition. In particular, the spread of democracy has been touted by Western
governments as the panacea to all global ills and has therefore been (mis)used as a rationale for
the use of force in several instances including NATO’s bombing of Serbia, the Coalition war
against the Taliban, and the invasion of Iraq. The irony that one ‘brand’ of democracy is being
promoted in the Post-Cold War world through the use of force rather than open discussion
seems to be lost on many Western observers. Given the prevalence of the democratic peace
thesis and its rhetorical impact both in the policymaking community and popular Western
political discourse, a critical international relations scholar is faced with Robert Cox’s key
theoretical questions: to paraphrase, ‘for whom and for what purpose has democratic peace
theory been constructed’?13 From a slightly different angle, Ido Oren and Jude Hays have argued “regularities of
foreign policy can only be found where the analyst searches for them, and US political scientists
tend to devote a disproportionate share of their resources and energy to searches around the
categories of democracy and/or liberalism”.14 Thus far, too few international scholars have been
able or willing to ask why? By deconstructing the democratic peace as a representational
practice, possible answers will be found.
Liberal peace fails—doesn’t prevent conflict and exploits soft power for self interest
Tziarras, PhD student in Politics & International Studies at the University of Warwick,
12
[Zenonas, June 2nd, The Globalized World Post, “Liberal Peace and Peace-Building: Another Critique”,
http://thegwpost.com/2012/06/02/liberal-peace-and-peace-building-another-critique/, accessed
6/30/13, VJ]
Drawing upon the basic notion of liberal peace theory that democracies do not fight each other nor
they experience civil wars,[xvii] it should be noted that depending on the definition of democracy this
claim can be questioned. Based on the “Freedom House” NGO’s statistics,[xviii] every country is rated
as “free”, “partly free” or “not free”, according to its democracy level. The evaluation is based on
parameters such as political rights and social freedoms; but who can really establish a measure of how
to identify or define a democracy? On the interactive map of the website “Democracy Web” (2010),[xix]
countries like Mexico, India and Brazil are rated amongst the countries with the highest level of
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
democracy (“free”) – like in Freedom House’s 2005 report – while it is well known that these countries
face important problems such as social inequalities, insurgencies and/or organized crime. Moreover,
the relations, for example, between countries like Turkey, Greece and Cyprus have also a problematic
place in liberal peace theory. Cyprus, although a republic since 1960, it encountered an ethnic conflict
during the 60s and an interstate conflict in 1974 with Turkey – which was first established as a republic
in 1923. In addition, Greece and Turkey (a state-candidate for an EU membership) have found
themselves on the brink of a war several times during the second half of the 20th century, while the two
countries still have unresolved territorial issues. Cyprus and Greece are acknowledged as “free”
democracies from the Freedom House website unlike Turkey which is characterized as “partly free”;
nonetheless, it is a parliamentary republic, an Islamic democracy. There is no doubt that Turkey faces
domestic and external problems regarding various issues but so does, let us say, “free” India;
furthermore, Turkey has been undertaking important – EU backed – democratic reforms since 2002.
Consequently, it is clear that the lack of consensus regarding the question of what model qualifies as a
democracy remains and constitutes an important challenge to liberal peace theory. In 1976, Small and
Singer[xx] published their study on the relationship between democracy and war during the earlier
historical period of 1816-1965, where through their findings they underpinned the argument that even
though “bourgeois democracies” seem to not fight each other, they are both ‘participants and
initiators in major international wars’; this in turn, along with the then recent developments of the
60s, led them to disagree with the liberal optimism which surrounds the relationship between war
and democracies. Examples of wars ‘between or within democracies’,[xxi] are also used from
Mearsheimer,[xxii] to challenge the liberal idea of universal peace, albeit with more emphasis on liberal
institutionalism. In the same context, Kacowicz[xxiii] explains the fact that democracies do not fight each
other, based on ‘distinctive historical and geographical zones of peace’, while arguing that nondemocracies are just as capable of establishing peace both amongst themselves and also with
democracies. It is worth noting that even though Kacowicz’s article is an attempt to explain the nonconflicting nature of the relationships between democracies, it is in fact a challenge to the universality of
the liberal vision as well. Apart from the different aspects of liberal theory that have been questioned,
certain theories challenge its very foundations as well. For example, according to Marxist theory not
only does the spread of the liberal/capitalist model not help resolving conflicts, but it rather exacerbates
the vacuum between social classes and in the long-term triggers a different kind of conflict: the clash
between the dominant economic classes and the low working classes.[xxiv] From a more cultural or
ideological perspective, the values that liberal peace-building operations impose, even though the
latter claim a meritocratic system which comprises a ‘global culture’,[xxv] they are not universal but
consistent with the ideological and cultural values of the internationally most powerful actors, usually
the western ones.[xxvi] Moreover, the western model of peace-building – which is largely based on
liberal peace theory – has turned into a panacea for international peace-making interventions and has
thus become rather doctrinal instead of an easily adapting model; therefore, at both the operational
and theoretical levels, liberal peace-building neglects ‘traditional and indigenous’ approaches that could
improve or co-exist with the western model thus making it better and more effective by addressing the
particular dynamics in given cases.[xxvii] The controversial nature of liberal peace operations can also
be found in objections from non-western countries – such as China -, regarding western military or
peace interventions that have not been approved by the recipient countries; this also suggests that the
international community should help the concerned actors to address their own issues without using
these situations to promote certain ideologies or development models.[xxviii] These objections are not
without justification since the selectivity of peace-building operations suggests the existence of goals
beyond mere peace-building. Apart from the cases where the countries invite international help and ask
for democratic reforms (e.g. Cambodia, Namibia, Sierra Leone), international organizations and the UN
in particular have supported democratically elected governments (e.g. Haiti and recently Ivory Coast)
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
but they have not done so in other cases such as Pakistan and Mauritania.[xxix] But the self-serving
character of the liberal peace promotion cannot only be found in peace-building operations but also in
diplomatic programs and policies of cooperation such as the “European Neighborhood Policy” (ENP).
Again, the benefits for the cooperating countries with the EU cannot be disregarded; however, the
benefits for the EU are much greater. It offers a relationship which is based on a mutual commitment
for democracy, human rights, justice, good governance, market economy and development.[xxx] In
that sense the ENP essentially offers a deeper political and economic integration; it offers economic
benefits and cooperation to its partners as the “carrot”, with the condition to improve their democratic
institutions and provide benefits such as energy security. It is important, that ENP has nothing to do with
the enlargement of the EU nor does it offer the prospect of accession into the EU. To add a different
perspective, in Greek, the term “liberal peace” translates to “democratic security”; although this term
can be found in English as well, it is not being used very frequently. Thus, from the perspective of
democracy as a security promoting model, initiatives like the ENP seem to seek the engraftment of
democratic values in their neighboring countries in order to ensure stability and security in their ‘near
abroad’. That is not for the sake of development in these countries but for the sake of sustainment
and increase of the initiator’s economic growth; in this case, the EU is also trying to create propitious
circumstances that will allow it to exploit its cooperation with its partners in the field of energy
security, thus giving it energy alternatives to its energy dependency on Russia. This is neither
colonialism nor imperialism; it is, however, the use of “soft power” and the exploitation of other
countries’ weaknesses to make them “want what we want”[xxxi] without taking into account their
particular political and economic needs or particularities. Imperialistic elements can be found
elsewhere.
Liberal peace doesn’t prevent war
Spiro, professor at Harvard, 94
[David E., Fall, International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 50-86, “The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace”,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1398047, accessed 6/30/13, VJ]
Kant's reasoning about popular consent does not lead us to expect a complete absence of wars
between constitutional republics. Indeed, while the monarchs Kant had in mind seemed unconstrained
in their ability to fight short and limited wars with mercenaries, modem leaders even of au- tocracies
are rarely free of societal constraints. Even though they lack dem- ocratic checks and balances,
modern autocrats cannot remain in power for long if they do not respond to societal pressures.9
Conversely, every democ- racy contains a state with some degree of autonomy, and leaders can and
do mobilize public opinion for wars that the leaders wish to initiate. Leaders in modern democracies
may be more constrained than leaders in autocracies in their ability to prosecute unpopular wars, but
the constraints are a matter of degree. This element of democratic-peace theory, which Maoz and
Russett call the "structural" element, yields a prediction that democracies will be more pacific toward
all states (not just toward other democracies), yet many studies have shown that democracies are just
as war-prone as other types of regimes.10 In any case, the absence of wars between democracies
would not be a confir- mation of this theory, unless we were also able to prove that democracies
fought fewer wars with non-democracies. The complete absence of wars between democracies can
only be confir- mation of what Maoz and Russett have called the "normative" elements of democraticpeace theory." Kant predicted that societies governed by civil constitutions would submit to a binding
international law of peace.12 He thought that these states would be more peaceful than others, and
that they would develop a "law of nations founded on a federation of free states." The absence of wars
between liberal regimes would be supporting evidence that they have formed a pacific union, in which
war with each other is deemed illegitimate.13 Doyle argues that there is indeed a "pacific union"
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
among liberal regimes. The union consists of liberal nations, which have upheld three sets of rights:
freedom from arbitrary authority, protection and promotion of freedom, and democratic
participation. "Even though liberal states have become involved in numerous wars with nonliberal
states," writes Doyle, "constitutionally secure liberal states have yet to engage in war with one
another."14 Doyle argues that representative states recognize the legitimacy of other liberal states'
independence of action. In liberal theory, the individual is the seat of moral value, and a polity that
represents autonomous individuals therefore enjoys the right to liberty of action.15 A liberal and
representative state recognizes this liberty, and does not interfere with the policies of other liberal
nations. It is the illegitimacy of war against other liberal states, Doyle argues, that has led to the
mutual pacifism of democracies. Calling Kantian theory "a source of insight, policy, and hope," Doyle
makes persuasive arguments against realist explanations of the liberal peace, and suggests that the
absence of wars must be explained by examining "the workings of liberalism among its own kind."16 Yet
Doyle's work did not go beyond suggesting what empiricists might look for, and empiricists have done
surprisingly little to show that elements of liberalism and democracy are causal influences on peace.
Bruce Russett, for instance, concedes that before World War II democracies were too scarce and far
apart to have been likely to fight, and "hence the absence of murderous quarrels between
democracies was not too surprising, and may need—at least for the pre-1945 era—little further
explanation."17 He lists several other factors that have influenced peace between nations since World
War II (alliances, wealth, political stability), and he confines his ar- gument about the effects of
democracy on peace to the very recent past. These caveats would seem to argue against the efficacy of
liberal theory for explaining international relations, yet the core thesis of Russett's book Grasp- ing the
Democratic Peace is that democracies do not fight one another. And despite the very limited role that
democracy plays in Russett's empirical results, he nonetheless concludes that "the realist top-down,
outside-in view… misses a great deal.
Democracy bears no causal relationship to war—their studies are inconclusive
Layne, IR theorist, 94
[Christopher, Autumn 1994, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace,” International Security,
Volume: 19, p. 26-28, YGS]
Proponents have made sweeping theoretical claims for, and have drawn¶ important policy conclusions from,
democratic peace theory. These claims¶ rest on a shaky foundation, however. The case studies presented above¶
subject both democratic peace theory and realism to a robust test. It is striking¶ that in each of these four cases realism, not
democratic peace theory, provides¶ the more compelling explanation of why war was avoided.
Indeed, the¶ democratic peace theory indicators appear not to have played any discernible¶ role in the
outcome of these crises.¶ In each of these crises, at least one of the democratic states involved was¶
prepared to go to war (or, in the case of France in 1923, to use military force¶ coercively) because it believed it had vital
strategic or reputational interests¶ at stake. In each of these crises, war was avoided only because one side¶
elected to pull back from the brink. In each of the four crises, war was¶ avoided not because of the "live and let
live" spirit of peaceful dispute¶ resolution at democratic peace theory's core, but because of realist factors.¶
Adverse distributions of military capabilities explain why France did not fight¶ over Fashoda, and why Germany resisted the French occupation
of the Ruhr¶ passively rather than forcibly. Concerns that others would take advantage of¶ the fight (the "waterbirds dilemma") explain why
Britain backed down in¶ the Venezuela crisis, and the Union submitted to Britain's ultimatum in the¶ Trent affair. When one actually looks
beyond the result of these four crises¶ ("democracies do not fight democracies") and attempts to understand why¶ these crises turned out as
they did, it becomes clear that democratic
peace¶ theory's causal logic has only minimal explanatory power.¶
Although democratic peace theory identifies a correlation between domes-¶ tic structure and the
absence of war between democracies, it fails to establish¶ a causal link. Because democratic peace theory's deductive logic
lacks explanatory power, a second look at the theory's empirical support is warranted¶ to see if the evidence is as strong as is commonly
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
believed. The
statistical¶ evidence that democracies do not fight each other seems impressive but in¶
fact, it is inconclusive, because the universe of cases providing empirical ¶ support for democratic
peace theory is small, and because several important cases of wars between democratic states are not
counted for reasons that are not persuasive.
Democratic peace theory is flawed—doesn’t avert war
Layne, IR theorist, 94
[Christopher, Autumn 1994, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace,” International Security,
Volume: 19, p. 12-14, YGS]
Institutional constraints do not explain the democratic peace. If democratic¶ public opinion really had
the effect ascribed to it, democracies would be¶ peaceful in their relations with all states, whether
democratic or not. If¶ citizens and policymakers of a democracy were especially sensitive to the¶ human
and material costs of war, that sensitivity should be evident whenever¶ their state is on the verge of
war, regardless of whether the adversary is¶ democratic: the lives lost and money spent will be the
same. Nor is democratic public opinion, per se, an inhibitor of war. For example, in 1898 it was ¶ public
opinion that impelled the reluctant McKinley administration into war¶ with Spain; in 1914 war was
enthusiastically embraced by public opinion in¶ Britain and France. Domestic political structure—"checks and
balances"—¶ does not explain the democratic peace either. 'This argument," as Morgan¶ and
Schwebach state, "does not say anything directly about the war-prone-¶ ness of democracies,"
because it focuses on an independent variable—decisional constraints embedded in a state's domestic political structure—
that is¶ associated with, but not exclusive to, democracies. Because these explanations fall short, the democratic norms
and culture¶ explanation must bear the weight of the democratic peace theory's causal¶ logic. It is there we must look to find that "something
in the internal makeup¶ of democratic states" that explains the democratic peace.16¶ Democratic peace theory not only predicts a specific
outcome—no war¶ between democracies—but also purports to explain why that outcome will¶ occur. It is thus suited to being tested by the
case study method, a detailed¶ look at a small number of examples to determine if events unfold and actors¶ act as the theory predicts. The
case study method also affords the opportunity¶ to test the competing explanations of international political outcomes offered¶ by democratic
peace theory and by realism. To test the robustness of democratic peace theory's causal logic, the focus here is on "near misses," specific¶
cases in which democratic states had both opportunity and reason to fight¶ each other, but did not.¶ The case studies in this article use the
process-tracing method (opening¶ up the "black box") to identify the factors to which decisionmakers respond,¶ how those factors influence
decisions, the actual course of events, and the¶ possible effect of other variables on the outcome.19 As Stephen Van Evera¶ says, if a theory has
strong explanatory power, process-tracing case studies¶ provide a robust test because decisionmakers "should speak, write, and¶ otherwise
behave in a manner consistent with the theory's predictions."20¶ Democratic peace theory, if valid, should account powerfully for the fact¶ that
serious crises between democratic states ended in near misses rather¶ than in war. If
democratic norms and culture explain
the democratic peace,¶ in a near-war crisis, certain indicators of the democratic peace theory should¶
be in evidence: First, public opinion should be strongly pacific. Public opinion¶ is important not because it is an
institutional constraint, but because it is an¶ indirect measure of the mutual respect that democracies are said to
have for¶ each other. Second, policymaking elites should refrain from making military¶ threats against
other democracies and should refrain from making preparations to carry out threats. Democratic peace
theorists waffle on this point by suggesting that the absence of war between democracies is more important¶ than the absence of threats. But
this sets the threshold of proof too low.¶ Because the crux of the theory is that democracies externalize their internal¶ norms of peaceful
dispute resolution, then especially in a crisis, one should¶ not see democracies threatening other democracies. And if threats are made,¶ they
should be a last-resort option rather than an early one. Third,
democracies should bend over backwards to
accommodate each other in a crisis.¶ Ultimata, unbending hard lines, and big-stick diplomacy are the
stuff of¶ Realpolitik, not the democratic peace.¶ A realist explanation of near misses would look at a
very different set of¶ indicators. First, realism postulates a ratio of national interest to democratic¶
respect: in a crisis, the more important the interests a democracy perceives¶ to be at stake, the more
likely that its policy will be shaped by realist¶ imperatives rather than by democratic norms and
culture. When vital interests are on the line, democracies should not be inhibited from using threats,¶ ultimata, and big-stick diplomacy
against another democracy. Second, even¶ in a crisis involving democracies, states should be very attentive to strategic¶ concerns, and the
relative distribution of military capabilities between them¶ should crucially—perhaps decisively—affect their diplomacy. Third, broader¶
geopolitical considerations pertaining to a state's position in international¶ politics should, if implicated, account significantly for the crisis's
outcome.¶ Key here is what Geoffrey Blainey calls the "fighting waterbirds' dilemma,"¶ involving concerns that others watching from the
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
sidelines will take advantage of a state's involvement in war; that war will leave a state weakened¶ and in an inferior relative power position
vis-a-vis possible future rivals; and¶ that failure to propitiate the opposing state in a crisis will cause it to ally¶ with one's other adversaries or
rivals.21
Democracies don’t prevent war—the most quantitative research agrees
Weede, political scientist and professor at the University of Bonn, 84
[Erich, December 1984, “Democracy and War Involvement,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Volume:
28, p. 649, YGS]
Most quantitative researchers had agreed that regime type and war involvement are ¶ not
significantly related to each other until Rummel recently challenged this consensus. ¶ According to Rummel,
libertarian or democratic states are less intensively involved in ¶ foreign conflict and tend to participate in
wars less often than do other states. Rummel's ¶ assertion is disputed in this article. Relying on various
definitions of war and compilations ¶ of data for the 1960s and 1970s, it is demonstrated that
democracy and war involvement ¶ are not consistently and significantly correlated with each other.
Only in the late seventies ¶ did democracies succeed in avoiding involvement in wars. Unfortunately,
this period ¶ seems rather exceptional. ¶ Whether a nation enjoys democratic rule or suffers from
dictatorship, ¶ the risk of getting involved in war is the same. This has been one of the ¶ findings in Weede (1971: 380).
Nor was this an isolated finding. Indeed, ¶ my work was heavily indebted to Rummel's (1968) pathbreaking study ¶ and, as far as
the democracy-war involvement relationship is concerned, ¶ merely replicated Rummel's (1968: 191, 207) earlier results. Relying on a ¶
much larger war data base, Small and Singer (1976) also found that ¶ democracy and war involvement
are unrelated. With the exception of ¶ some dissenting voices (like Haas, 1965),' surveys of the literature ¶
(McGowan and Shapiro, 1973: 94, and Zinnes, 1980) or textbooks ¶ (Russett and Starr, 1981: 204) also claimed that regime type
does not ¶ affect foreign violence or war. Until recently there was an overwhelming ¶ consensus on this point.
One democracy can brand the other “less democratic” and still engage in war
Rosato, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, 3
[Sebastian, 11/03, “The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,” The American Political Science
Review, Vol. 97, pp. 586-587, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3593025, LV]
While mutual trust and respect generally ensure that ¶ conflicts of interest between democracies are
resolved ¶ amicably, there will be some situations in which ostensibly democratic states do not
perceive each other to ¶ be democratic and therefore fight one another. In par- ¶ ticular, a democracy
may not be recognized as such if it is in the early stages of democratization or if it does ¶ not meet the
criteria that policymakers in another state ¶ have adopted to define democracy (e.g., Russett 1993, ¶ 34-35;
Weart 1998, 90-92, 132-34). ¶ This logic also explains why democracies have often been prepared to go to war
with nondemocracies. ¶ Simply put, nondemocracies are neither trusted nor re- ¶ spected. They are not respected because their
domestic ¶ systems are considered unjust, and they are not trusted ¶ because neither do they respect the freedom of self- ¶ governing
individuals, nor are they socialized to resolve ¶ conflicts non-violently. Large-scale
violence may therefore occur for one of
two reasons. First, democracies ¶ may not respect nondemocracies because they are considered to be
in a state of war against their own citizens. ¶ War may therefore be permissible to free the people ¶
from authoritarian rule and introduce human rights or ¶ representative government. Second, because
democracies are inclined toward peaceful conflict resolution, ¶ nondemocracies may be tempted to try
and extract con- ¶ cessions from them by attacking or threatening to use ¶ force during a crisis. In such
circumstances democracies may either have to defend themselves from attack ¶ or launch preemptive
strikes (e.g., Doyle 1997, 30-43; ¶ Russett 1993, 32-35).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Empirics are on our side - democracies DO go to war and throw away their values
while creating false claims
Rosato, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, 3
[Sebastian, 11/03, “The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,” The American Political Science
Review, Vol. 97, pp. 588-589, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3593025, LV]
Liberal democratic norms narrowly circumscribe the ¶ range of situations in which democracies can
justify the ¶ use of force. As Doyle (1997, 25) notes, "Liberal wars ¶ are only fought for popular, liberal
purposes." This does ¶ not mean that they will go to war less often than other ¶ kinds of states; it only
means that there are fewer reasons available to them for waging war. ¶ Democracies are certainly
justified in fighting wars of ¶ self-defense. Locke ([1690] 1988), for example, argues ¶ that states, like men in the state of
nature, have a right ¶ to destroy those who violate their rights to life, liberty, ¶ and property (269-72). There is
considerable disagreement among liberal theorists regarding precisely what ¶ kinds of action constitute self-defense, but repulsing an ¶ invasion, preempting an
impending military attack, and ¶ fighting in the face of unreasonable demands all plausibly fall under
this heading. Waging war when the other ¶ party has not engaged in threatening behavior does ¶ not. In short, democracies should only go to war when ¶ "their
safety and security are seriously endangered by ¶ the expansionist policies of outlaw states" (Rawls 1999, ¶ 90-91).
¶ Another justification for the use of force is inter- ¶ vention in the affairs of other states or peoples,
either ¶ to prevent blatant human rights violations or to bring ¶ about conditions in which liberal
values can take root. ¶ For Rawls (1999, 81), as for many liberals, human rights ¶ violators are "to be condemned and in grave cases may ¶ be subjected to forceful sanctions and even to inter- ¶ vention"
(see also Doyle 1997, 31-32, and Owen 1997, ¶ 34-35). Mill ([1859] (1984)) extends the scope of inter- ¶ vention, arguing that "barbarous" nations can be conquered to
civilize them for their own benefit (see also ¶ Mehta 1990). However, if external rule does not ensure ¶ freedom and equality, it will be as illiberal as the system ¶ it seeks to replace.
Consequently, intervention can only ¶ be justified if it is likely to "promote the development ¶ of conditions in
which appropriate principles of justice ¶ can be satisfied" (Beitz 1979, 90). ¶ The imperialism of Europe's great
powers between ¶ 1815 and 1975 provides good evidence that liberal ¶ democracies have often waged
war for reasons other ¶ than self-defense and the inculcation of liberal values. ¶ Although there were
only a handful of liberal democracies in the international system during this period, they ¶ were
involved in 66 of the 108 wars listed in the Correlates of War (COW) dataset of extrasystemic wars ¶ (Singer and Small 1994). Of these 66 wars, 33 were
"imperial," fought against previously independent peoples, ¶ and 33 were "colonial," waged against
existing colonies. ¶ It is hard to justify the "imperial" wars in terms of ¶ self-defense. Several cases are clear-cut: The
democracy faced no immediate threat and conquered simply for profit or to expand its sphere of
influence. A ¶ second set of cases includes wars waged as a result of ¶ imperial competition: Liberal
democracies conquered ¶ non-European peoples in order to create buffer states ¶ against other
empires or to establish control over them ¶ before another imperial power could move in. Thus ¶
Britain tried to conquer Afghanistan (1838) in order ¶ to create a buffer state against Russia, and
France invaded Tunisia (1881) for fear of an eventual Italian ¶ occupation. Some commentators describe these wars ¶ as defensive
because they aimed to secure sources of ¶ overseas wealth, thereby enhancing national power at ¶ the expense of other European powers. There are three ¶ reasons to dispute this assessment. First, these wars ¶
were often preventive rather than defensive: Russia ¶ had made no move to occupy Afghanistan and
Italy ¶ had taken no action in Tunisia. A war designed to avert ¶ possible action in the future, but for which there is
no ¶ current evidence, is not defensive. Second, there was ¶ frequently a liberal alternative to war. Rather than ¶ impose
authoritarian rule, liberal great powers could ¶ have offered non-European peoples military assistance
¶ in case of attack or simply deterred other imperial ¶ powers. Finally, a substantial number of the
preventive ¶ occupations were a product of competition between ¶ Britain and France, two liberal
democracies that should ¶ have trusted one another and negotiated in good faith ¶ without
compromising the rights of non-Europeans if ¶ democratic peace theory is correct. ¶ A third set of cases
includes wars waged directly ¶ against non-Europeans whose territory bordered the ¶ European
empires. Because non-Europeans sometimes initiated these wars contemporaries tended to ¶ justify them as defensive wars of "pacification" to protect existing imperial possessions. Again, there are ¶ good reasons to
doubt the claim that such wars were ¶ defensive. In the first place, non-Europeans often attacked to prevent further encroachment on
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
their lands; ¶ it was they and not the Europeans that were fighting in ¶ self-defense. Moreover, there is
considerable evidence ¶ that the imperial powers often provoked the attacks or ¶ acted preventively
and exploited local instabilities as a ¶ pretext for imposing control on the periphery of their ¶ empires
(Table 1). Nor were any of the extrasystemic wars fought to ¶ prevent egregious abuses of human rights or
with the ¶ express purpose of replacing autocratic rule with a ¶ more liberal alternative. The "colonial"
wars, by definition, were conflicts in which imperial powers sought to ¶ perpetuate or reimpose
autocratic rule. The "imperial" ¶ wars simply replaced illiberal indigenous government with authoritarian rule. When imperial rule was not ¶ imposed directly, the European powers supported local elites but
retained strict control over their actions, ¶ thereby underwriting unjust political systems and ef- ¶ fectively implementing external rule. In short, despite ¶ protestations that they
were bearing the "white man's ¶ burden," there is little evidence that liberal states' use ¶ of force was
motivated by respect for human rights ¶ or that imperial conquest enhanced the rights of nonEuropeans.s ¶ There are, then, several examples of liberal states ¶ violating liberal norms in their conduct of foreign policy and therefore the claim that liberal states generally ¶ externalize their internal norms of
conflict resolution ¶ is open to question. ¶
Democratic peace theory has become increasingly militarized as actually understood
by policymakers- it is used to justify aggressive intervention against potential threats
to the ‘zones of peace’.
Parmar, Professor of Government, 08
[Inderjeet, December, “The ‘Knowledge Politics’ of Democratic Peace Theory”,
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/about/themes/cip/publications/docum
ents/SSRC%20Think%20Tanks%20paper%20Sept%202008%20NEW.pdf, page 2-4, accessed 7/10/13]
The coincidence of the Cold War’s end with the rise of Bill Clinton’s presidential ambitions and
strategy presented an opportunity for democratic peace theory ideas – via scholar-activists like
Larry Diamond – to go straight from opposition platforms to policymaking circles. The presence of liberal
internationalist scholar, John Ikenberry (1991-92), in the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff reinforced the
tendency given the PPS’ mission of “Fusing Thought With Action”. In its migration from academia to the state,
however, democratic peace theory became increasingly militarised and interventionist : words
like “threat”, “national security”, “zones of peace” and “zones of turmoil” became increasingly
associated with the practice of the “peace” theory. That is, democratic peace theory was
transformed into political technology that established “certainty” among policy-makers looking
for fresh orientations and a higher moral purpose behind which to align and mobilise American
power.
ZERO guarantee we won’t attack other democracies in our self interest
Rosato, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, 3
[Sebastian, 11/03, “The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,” The American Political Science
Review, Vol. 97, pp. 590-591, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3593025, LV]
American interventions to ¶ destabilize fellow democracies in the developing world ¶ provide good
evidence that democracies do not always ¶ treat each other with trust and respect when they have ¶ a
conflict of interest. In each case, Washington's commitment to containing the spread of communism
over- ¶ whelmed any respect for fellow democracies. Although ¶ none of the target states had turned
to communism ¶ or joined the communist bloc, and were led by what ¶ were at most left-leaning
democratically elected governments, American officials chose neither to trust nor ¶ to respect them,
preferring to destabilize them by force ¶ and replace them with autocratic (but anticommunist) ¶ regimes
rather than negotiate with them in good faith ¶ or secure their support by diplomatic means (Table 2).
Three features of these cases deserve emphasis. First, ¶ all the regimes that the United States sought to undermine
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
were democratic. In the cases of Guatemala, ¶ British Guyana, Brazil, and Chile democratic processes
were fairly well established. Iran, Indonesia, and ¶ Nicaragua were fledgling democracies but Mossadeq, ¶
Sukarno, and the Sandinistas could legitimately claim ¶ to be the first proponents of democracy in their re- ¶ spective countries. Every
government with the excep- ¶ tion of the Sandinistas was replaced by a succession of ¶ American-backed dictatorial regimes. ¶ Second,
in
each case the clash of interests between ¶ Washington and the target governments was not par- ¶
ticularly severe. These should, then, be easy cases for ¶ democratic peace theory since trust and
respect are ¶ most likely to be determinative when the dispute is ¶ minor. None of the target
governments were communist, and although some of them pursued leftist policies ¶ there was no indication that they intended to
impose ¶ a communist model or that they were actively court- ¶ ing the Soviet Union. In spite of the limited scope of ¶
disagreement, respect for democratic forms of government was consistently subordinated to an
expanded ¶ conception of national security. ¶ Third, there is good evidence that support for democracy
was often sacrificed in the name of American ¶ economic interests. At least some of the impetus for ¶
intervention in Iran came in response to the nationalization of the oil industry, the United Fruit
Company ¶ pressed for action in Guatemala, International Tele- ¶ phone and Telegraph urged
successive administrations ¶ to intervene in Brazil and Chile, and Allende's efforts ¶ to nationalize the copper industry
fueled demands that ¶ the Nixon administration destabilize his government. ¶ In sum, the record of American interventions in
the ¶ developing world suggests that democratic trust and ¶ respect has often been subordinated to
security and ¶ economic interests. ¶ Democratic peace theorists generally agree that ¶ these interventions are examples of a
democracy using ¶ force against other democracies, but they offer two rea- ¶ sons why covert interventions should not count against ¶ the
normative logic. The first reason is that the target ¶ states were not democratic enough to be trusted and ¶ respected (Forsythe 1992; Russett
1993, 120-24). This ¶ claim is not entirely convincing. Although the target ¶ states may not have been fully democratic, they were ¶ more
democratic than the regimes that preceded and ¶ succeeded them and were democratizing further. In- ¶ deed, in every case American action
brought more au- ¶ tocratic regimes to power. ¶ The second reason is that these interventions were ¶ covert, a fact believed by democratic
peace theorists ¶ to reveal the strength of their normative argument.
It ¶ was precisely because these states were
democratic that ¶ successive administrations had to act covertly rather ¶ than openly initiate military
operations. Knowing that ¶ their actions were illegitimate, and fearing a public ¶ backlash, American officials decided on covert action ¶
(Forsythe 1992; Russett 1993, 120-24). This defense ¶ fails to address some important issues. To begin with, it ¶ ignores the fact that
American public officials, that is, ¶ the individuals that democratic peace theory claims are ¶ most
likely to abide by liberal norms, showed no respect ¶ for fellow democracies. Democratic peace theorists will ¶
respond that the logic holds, however, because these ¶ officials were restrained from using open and massive ¶ force by the liberal attitudes of
the mass public. This ¶ is a debatable assertion; after all, officials may have ¶ opted for covert and limited force for a variety of rea- ¶ sons other
than public opinion, such as operational ¶ costs and the expected international reaction. Simply ¶ because the use of force was covert and
limited, this ¶ does not mean that its nature was determined by public ¶ opinion. ¶ But even if it is true that officials adopted a covert ¶ policy to
shield themselves from a potential public ¶ backlash, the logic still has a crucial weakness: The
¶ fact remains that the United
States did not treat fellow ¶ democracies with trust or respect. Ultimately, the logic ¶ stands or falls by
its predictive power, that is, whether ¶ democracies treat each other with respect. If they do, ¶ it is powerful; if
they do not, it is weakened. It does not ¶ matter why they do not treat each other with respect, ¶ nor does it matter if some or all of the
population wants ¶ to treat the other state with respect; all that matters ¶ is whether respect is extended. To put it another
way, ¶ we can come up with several reasons to explain why ¶ respect is not extended, and we can always find social ¶ groups that oppose the
use of military force against ¶ another democracy, but
whenever we find several ex- ¶ amples of a democracy using
military force against ¶ other democracies, the trust and respect mechanism, ¶ and therefore the
normative logic, fails an important ¶ test.6
Saying democratic leaders won’t go to war is a lie – no consequences in comparison to
non-democrats
Rosato, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, 3
[Sebastian, 11/03, “The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,” The American Political Science
Review, Vol. 97, pp. 594-595, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3593025, LV]
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Therefore, determining
whether autocrats or democrats are more accountable and, consequently, more ¶
cautious about going to war rests on answering three ¶ questions: Are losing democrats or losing
autocrats ¶ more likely to be removed from power? Are losing ¶ democrats or losing autocrats more
likely to be pun- ¶ ished severely? and Are democrats or autocrats more ¶ likely to be removed and/or
punished for involvement ¶ in costly wars, regardless of the outcome? ¶ To answer these questions I have used a
modified ¶ version of Goemans's (2000b) dataset. Our analyses ¶ differ in one fundamental respect: While he counts the ¶ removal of leaders by
foreign powers as examples of ¶ punishment, I do not. This decision is theoretically informed.
The purpose of the analysis is to
determine ¶ whether leaders' decisions for war are affected by their ¶ domestic accountability, that is,
if there is something ¶ about the domestic structure of states that affects their ¶ chances of being
punished. Punishment by foreign powers offers no evidence for or against the claim that ¶ democrats or dictators have a higher or lower
expectation of being punished by their citizens for unpopular ¶ policies, and these cases are therefore excluded. I have ¶ also made two minor
changes to the data that do not ¶ affect the results: I have added 19 wars that appear ¶ in the COW dataset but not in Goemans's dataset and ¶
coded 11 regimes that Goemans excludes.12 The results ¶ appear in Table 4. ¶ Although democratic losers are two times more ¶ likely to be
removed from power than autocratic losers, ¶ this evidence is not strong. This
is because there are only ¶ four cases of
democratic losers in the entire dataset, ¶ making it impossible to draw any firm conclusions ¶ about
the likelihood that losing democrats will be removed. Prime Minister Menzies of Australia, for exam- ¶ ple, resigned early
in the Vietnam War, but his resig- ¶ nation may have had more to do with the fact that he ¶ was in his seventies than the expectation of defeat
in ¶ South East Asia a decade later. If this case is recoded, ¶ as it probably should be, democratic losers have only ¶ been removed from power
50% of the time and the ¶ distinction between democrats and autocrats is small. ¶ Losing
autocrats are more likely to suffer
severe punishment than their democratic counterparts. None of ¶ the four losing democrats was
punished, whereas 29% ¶ of autocratic losers were imprisoned, exiled, or killed. ¶ Thus, while democratic and
autocratic losers have similar chances of being removed from office, autocrats ¶ seem to be more likely to suffer severe
punishment in ¶ addition to removal. ¶ The evidence from costly wars, regardless of whether ¶ the
leader was on the winning or losing side, confirms ¶ these findings. Costly wars are defined as wars in
which ¶ a state suffered one battle fatality per 2,000 population, ¶ as the United States did in World
War I.13 Historically, ¶ autocrats have been more likely both to lose office and ¶ to be punished severely if
they become involved in a ¶ costly war. Autocrats have been removed 35% of the ¶ time and punished
27% of the time, while democrats ¶ have only been removed 27% of the time and punished ¶ 7% of the
time.14 ¶ In short, there is little evidence that democratic lead- ¶ ers face greater expected costs from
fighting losing or ¶ costly wars and are therefore more accountable than ¶ their autocratic
counterparts. This being the case, there ¶ is good reason to doubt each variant of the institutional ¶ logic.
Democracies aren’t afraid to launch surprise attacks if they think they’re in harm’s
way
Rosato, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, 3
[Sebastian, 11/03, “The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,” The American Political Science
Review, Vol. 97, pp. 597-598, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3593025, LV]
Democracies are no less capable of carrying out surprise attacks than other kinds of states. 19 The main ¶
reason for this is that an attacker's regime type is ¶ largely unrelated to the success or failure of an attack. "Analysis of surprise attacks," notes
Kam (1988, 37), ¶ "suggests that the intelligence community seldom fails ¶ to anticipate them owing to a lack of relevant information. In most
cases the victim possesses an abundance ¶ of information indicating the imminence of the attack." ¶ Instead, the common wisdom holds that
attacks achieve ¶ surprise because defenders cannot identify the relevant ¶ signals amidst the "noise," and because of cognitive or ¶
organizational shortcomings (Betts 1982, 87-149; Kam ¶ 1988, 7-212). In short, regardless of
whether attackers ¶ are
democratic or autocratic, they do not appear to ¶ be able to keep their attacks secret; attacks achieve ¶
surprise because defenders are poor at evaluating information. ¶ Even if we accept that the achievement of surprise is
¶ a function of the transparency of the attacker, there is ¶ little historical support for the claim that democracies ¶
are less able to conceal their intentions or impending ¶ actions. There have been approximately 10
cases of surprise attack since the beginning of World War II.20 Two ¶ of these attacks, the British-
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
French-Israeli coalition's ¶ attack on Egypt (1956) and the Israeli initiation of the ¶ Six Day War (1967),
were carried out by democracies. ¶ There are not enough cases to make any statistical ¶ claims but we should note that
democracies have made ¶ up approximately one third of state-years since 1939, ¶ and therefore, one would expect on the basis of chance ¶
alone to see three surprise attacks by democracies in ¶ this period. Therefore, democracies do not appear to ¶ be less likely than
nondemocracies to launch surprise ¶ attacks. ¶ Israel,
France, and Britain planned the Suez War of ¶ 1956 in such
secrecy that even Eisenhower was surprised by the attack when it came (Betts 1982, 63-65).21 ¶ Dayan, the
Israeli Chief of Staff, engaged in a successful campaign of deliberate deception leading outside ¶
observers to believe that any attack would merely be ¶ an extended reprisal campaign. Meanwhile,
the relevant decision makers in Britain justified secrecy in stark ¶ terms: "It is never agreeable to have
to refuse, in the national interest, information to the House of Commons. ¶ But it has to be done from
time to time" (Lloyd 1978, ¶ 250). If democratic government officials believe that ¶ the national interest is at
stake, they will sacrifice dis- ¶ closure to military necessity. Similarly, Israel achieved ¶ surprise through deception in
launching the Six Day ¶ War (1967). Dayan, then the defense minister, publicly ¶ stated that Israel was in no
position to reply to the ¶ blockade of the Strait of Tiran, that the Israeli army ¶ could not remain mobilized for an
extended period, ¶ that the army could fight successfully after suffering a ¶ first strike, and that diplomacy must be given a chance, ¶ all in a
successful attempt to lull the Arabs into a false ¶ sense of security. Only 38 hours later Israel attacked ¶
(Betts 1982, 65-68; Van Evera 1999, 66-67). Nor does ¶ the ability of democratic governments to maintain secrecy appear to be restricted to
extreme cases of sur- ¶ prise attack. The
United States kept its decisions for ¶ war from the British before the
War of 1812, Lord ¶ Grey did not publicize his agreement to defend French ¶ Channel ports prior to
World War I, and Roosevelt did ¶ not reveal his agreements with Churchill prior to World ¶ War II. ¶
Democratic politics are typically marked by the open ¶ discussion of differing opinions in multiple
public forums, but this characterization does not appear to hold ¶ when democratic leaders perceive a
threat to the national interest. In such circumstances the requirement ¶ for transparency and
consensus can be decisively subordinated to the twin requirements of military success: ¶ secrecy and
speed.
Their discourse naturalizes zones of peace as only possible among democracies.
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
[Kyle, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal
Representations of War and Peace”, http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf,
accessed 7/1/13]
Given that I have argued that war serves an ontological as well as strategic purpose in international
relations, the converse should also hold true. In other words, there must also be an ontological
component to peace. For example, The Great Law of Peace (the constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy codified in wampum belts
and an oral tradition) was as much about the affirmation of a knowledge system and way of life as it was about ‘institutionalizing’
cooperation among the people of the Six Nations. Accordingly, David Bedford and Tom Workman have argued that although the Great Law
is a text about international relations, it is also a document about living well and how the relations between nations form an integral part of
living well. Its seemly oddities and peculiarities are therewith absorbed into a complete notion of what it means to live properly.64 Currently,
one can see the research and references to supposed ‘zones of peace’ attributed to liberal democracy in much the same light. Zones
of
peace help to reinforce the notion that liberal democracy is good and just.65 Furthermore, little
research is undertaken to determine if other forms of political organization might also enjoy
‘zones of peace’. Thus, zones of peace are naturalized as only being possible among liberal
democratic states not by ‘fact’ but by the propagation of silence in conformity to the hegemonic
Western ontology. Therefore, Oren and Hayes present a compelling argument when they state that the virtual law of the
democratic peace is not so special. If we were to classify states by categories borrowed from nonWestern cultural or socio-economic settings, we might discover cross-national variations in
conflict propensity that are no less substantial than those uncovered by studies of democratic
foreign policy.66
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Democratic peace theory is used to justify war against the non-democratic other
Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general, 08
Michael J. Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general. He served as Assistant
Commandant of the Marine Corps, 3-26-08, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 49th
ANNUAL CONVENTION, BRIDGING MULTIPLE DIVIDES, “Democracy and Democratization: The Problem
with Using the Democratic Peace Theory as a Principle of Foreign Policy”, P. 3-4,
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p253419_index.html,accessed 7-1-13, JF
Using democracy and democratic concepts has provided several countries¶ justification for wars over
the past two centuries. Western imperial or quasi-imperial¶ powers have used the spread of
democratic or republican virtues to support foreign policy¶ initiatives. The United States, in its war
with Mexico in 1846-1848, as well as during the¶ Indian Wars of the 19th Century, told its citizens that these
peoples needed to be¶ conquered because they were not civilized and needed to learn the American
style of¶ government. The efforts of France and the United Kingdom in Africa were supported by¶ their
citizens because their leaders told them that the spread of liberty and “Christian¶ culture” was needed in these
societies. William McKinley told the United States¶ Congress that the Philippines should be taken over in order to bring the blessings of¶
Christianity to the islands, notwithstanding that the Philippinos at the time were over 80%¶ Roman Catholic.4 Ido Oren5 and David Kennedy6
describe how American views of¶ Germany’s political system changed during the Great War. After World War I the
British¶ and French
governments divided the bulk of the Ottoman Empire among themselves,¶ telling their people that the goal
was to create a peace-loving democratic society in these¶ territories. This effort failed to provide for stable
governments because the European¶ powers in the Middle East were not interested in self-governing
peoples opposing¶ European economic and strategic interests. Woodrow Wilson at the Versailles Peace¶ Conference
attempted to carry out his proposals concerning self-determination but was¶ stunned by how many different “nations” there were. He then
accepted the idea of¶ “mandates” to provide guidance for these groups while they learned the nuances of¶ democracy from their new masters.
Democracy can’t solve the causes of conflict and leads to endless intervention
Jahn, Professor of International Relations, 2007
Beate Jahn, Professor of International Relations @ Sussex, march 2007, “The Tragedy of Liberal
Diplomacy: Democratization, Intervention, Statebuilding (Part I)”, Journal of Intervention and
Statebuilding, volume: 1, p. 87-88, JF
The end of the Cold War, Fukuyama famously argued, removed the last major¶ alternative to ‘liberal democracy as the final form of human
government’¶ (Fukuyama 1989: 4). And yet, he also noted, this
triumph of liberalism ‘has¶ occurred primarily in the
realm of ideas ... and is as yet incomplete in the real or¶ material world’ (1989: 4). Hence, there still were some
‘crackpot messiahs’ with¶ ‘strange thoughts’ in that ‘real and material world’ (1989: 9). If somewhat¶ flamboyantly, Fukuyama had certainly
expressed the Zeitgeist. ‘With the end of¶ the Cold War came a period of massive and profound optimism concerning the¶ prospects for
democracy in the Third World’ (Sørensen 2000: 287). Only the¶ ‘crackpot messiahs’, while they did not constitute a major challenge to¶
liberalism, could well generate local conflicts and certainly slowed down the¶ expected universal realization of liberal democracy. Hence, all
that was needed¶ was the promotion of democracy in general and the occasional military removal¶ of some ‘nasty, tin-pot, small-time, thug
dictators and war lords’ (Von Hippel¶ 2000: 99). ‘Democratic enlargement’ or the ‘spread of freedom’, in protracted¶ cases accompanied by
intervention and statebuilding, thus became explicit¶ features of American foreign policy (Cox et al 2000).¶ Policies of
democracy
promotion, intervention, and statebuilding, however,¶ are less innovative features of the post-Cold
War period than is often assumed¶ (Cox et al 2000: 10). They played a role in the foreign policies of Wilson,
Reagan,¶ Clinton and Bush. Indeed, with the exception of national security, democracy¶ promotion is
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
the most frequently cited goal of United States’ interventions from¶ the Mexican-American war
onwards (Meernik 1996: 391; S. Smith 2000);¶ intervention has been a standard feature of American foreign
policy even from¶ before independence / first on the American continent and later abroad (Westad¶ 2005;
Williams 1972); and statebuilding was to become a crucial part of the¶ modernization policies of the Cold
War era (Latham 2000).¶ Until recently, however, and despite their long historical pedigree, these¶ policies have not attracted
much attention from IR scholars. Perhaps this is¶ because, on the one hand, realists and radicals alike
view talk about democracy¶ promotion as just so much window dressing veiling the real motives of
American¶ foreign policy: national security and economic interests (Cox et al 2000: 4f). And¶ on the other hand,
liberals take democracy promotion at face value and thus may¶ be more inclined to propagate than to analyze it.¶ Still, having moved to the
centre of post-Cold War US foreign policy,¶ democracy promotion is now quite widely discussed, with many writers rejecting¶ the traditional
juxtaposition between realist/materialist and idealist interpretations (Cox 2000: 221; S. Smith 2000: 77; T. Smith 2000: 85; Nau 2000: 127;¶
Robinson 2000: 312f, 321). And yet, this familiar juxtaposition has proven¶ difficult to overcome. Despite proclaiming a linkage between politics
and¶ economics, Steve Smith holds that the latter is in the ‘driving seat’ (2000: 78).¶ For Robinson and Gills, it is recent developments in the
world economy which¶ explain the promotion of ‘polyarchy’ (Robinson 2000: 313; Gills 2000). From the¶ other side, Tony Smith argues that
while ideas have material origins, they¶ nevertheless have an ‘independent logic of their own’ and ‘make history’ (2000:¶ 101). And for
Schweller, while
democracy and shared values and interests may¶ well lower threat perceptions, the
fundamental causes of international conflict¶ lie in human nature and cannot be transcended (2000: 43).
In all these cases,¶ then, despite the authors’ best intentions, a distinction between security,¶ economy and politics
reasserts itself in practice and one of these aspects is seen¶ as more fundamental than the others.
Their claims of peace are misattributed—liberal peace creates violence through
nondemocracies
Scott, polsci professor @ the University of Florida, 8
[Kyle, “A Girardian Critique of the Liberal Peace Theory,” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and
Culture,” Volume: 15/16, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/contagion/v015/15.scott.html, p. 53-54,
accessed 7/10/13, YGS]
Girard writes that “Two desires converging on the same object are bound to clash. . . . In human
relationships words like ‘sameness’ and ‘similarity’ evoke an image of harmony. If we have the same
tastes and like the same things surely we are bound to get along. But what will happen when we share
the same desires?”47 Societies with stratified social structures are able to keep mimetic desire peaceful,
because S and M are kept at a greater distance than in societies that have greater amounts of equality.
In this respect, Girard and Thomas Hobbes appear to be on common ground, in that equality can lead to
an increased hope of attaining our desired ends.48 Girard emphasizes this point when he argues that
erosion of differences breeds fear of sameness, which then triggers violence. Girard uses Troilus and
Cressida to show how the destruction of social differentiation can only lead to mimetic violence.49
While Hobbes relies on a Leviathan to quell violence, Girard sees the scapegoat fulfilling the same
purpose (remember: Girard is not a proponent of the scapegoat), but for Girard, the scapegoat
mechanism is much more likely to be used, given the unlikelihood that barbarians will take time away
from killing one another to draw up a contract.
The most common examples outside of literature and theology that have been explained in Girardian
terms are events such as the Holocaust and the Salem witch trials. Such events lend themselves to an
obvious application of Girard’s theory. In each instance, the chosen victim has nothing to do with the
current disorder experienced in the community. In each instance, the blame for the disorder is put on
the scapegoat, who then suffers atrocious levels of violence. Communities then attribute the original
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
disturbance and subsequent [End Page 53] peace to the scapegoats. In each instance, the first lie and
the incontestable claims are easily identified by later commentators but are not seen by those living
through the events.
The Girardian critique of the LDPT is obvious. Nondemocracies are scapegoats for democracies, thus
allowing for a democratic peace. Once all nondemocracies are turned into democracies, the LDPT will
crumble, because there will be no scapegoat available. Since the LDPT does not understand the
sources of violence, it cannot adequately account for peace and it cannot create peace. Moreover, the
LDPT has done damage to our pursuit of an understanding of violence, as it has drawn attention away
from the original question. I do not think that Girard’s theory of violence in the international arena is
above criticism, and I do not think that it should be accepted without further analysis—to suggest
otherwise would be dogmatic. The value of Girard is that he forces us to address the source of violence
before we can come up with a solution to violence. He gives us a theory of violence that can be applied
to the LDPT so that we can better understand the empirical phenomenon. For some, the LDPT has found
a solution without an understanding of why peace exists between democracies or an understanding of
why violence persists between democracies and nondemocracies. Therefore, a Girardian might say, it is
premature to say democratization can lead to peace.
Representations of the democratic peace ignore intra-state warfare, legitimizing
violence against domestic populations and indigenous actors.
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
[Kyle, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal
Representations of War and Peace”, http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf,
accessed 7/1/13]
The second nodal point around which the democratic peace is anchored is a conception of war.
In democratic peace theory, war is strictly an inter-state exercise.21 Intra-state warfare does not
appear on the democratic peace theory radar screen.22 Therefore, the use of force against
domestic populations (e.g., the American ‘War on Drugs’) or collective groups not recognized as
state actors (e.g., the Canadian Armed Forces versus Mohawk warriors at Oka, Quebec) are not problematic to the
mainstream idea of a democratic peace. In addition, democratic peace theory conceptions only
recognize formal declarations of war. As Tarek Barkawi and Mark Laffey argue: US covert action to
overthrow Third World elected governments shows that force is often used by democracies
against the extension of democracy. It is not seen as invalidating the democratic peace because
the US did not use its national military forces openly, but instead relied on clients, mercenaries,
and covert operatives. In this way, sovereign juridical conceptions obscure the actual constitution of
force, through imperial advice and support, and its use in projects of informal empire.23 Moreover,
because war is typically defined in the democratic peace theory literature by the dictates of the
Correlates of War (CoW) database (which requires 1000 battle deaths), many possible instances of war (and
definite uses of force) such as the US invasion of Grenada can be easily ignored. It is also important to
note that democratic peace theory perceives war as the physical use of force for the
acquisition/maintenance of a strategic possession.24 Therefore attacks against ideology, religion,
identity, and culture that have typically been directed against minority and indigenous actors
are not acknowledged.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
AT: Public means democracies don’t go to war
The public won’t outcry against federal action – the government will use nationalism
Rosato, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, 3
[Sebastian, 11/03, “The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,” The American Political Science
Review, Vol. 97, pp. 594-595, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3593025, LV]
Pacific public opinion does not appear to place a fundamental constraint on the willingness of
democracies ¶ to go to war. If it did, then democracies would be more ¶ peaceful in their relations with
all types of states, not ¶ just other democracies. However, instead of being more ¶ peaceful, on
average democracies are just as likely to ¶ go to war as nondemocracies (Farber and Gowa 1995). ¶ There are three
reasons why publics are unlikely to ¶ constrain democratic war proneness. First, the costs of ¶ war typically fall on a small
subset of the population that will likely be unwilling to protest government policy. Excluding the two World
Wars, democratic fatalities in war have exceeded 0.1% of the population in ¶ only 6% of cases. In 60% of
cases, losses represented ¶ less than 0.01% of the population or one in 10,000 ¶ people. Most democratic citizens, then, will
never be ¶ personally affected by war or know anyone affected ¶ by military conflict. Adding the many
militarized disputes involving democracies strengthens this finding. ¶ Both the United States and Britain have suffered fewer ¶ than 100 battle
casualties in approximately 97% of the ¶ militarized disputes in which they have been involved ¶ (Singer and Small 1994). Moreover, modern
democracies have tended to have professional standing armies. ¶ Members of the military, then, join
the armed forces ¶ voluntarily, accepting that they may die in the service ¶ of their countries. This in
turn means that their families ¶ and friends, that is, those who are most likely to suffer ¶ the costs of
war, are unlikely to speak out against a ¶ government that chooses to go to war or are at least ¶ less likely to do
so than are the families and friends of ¶ conscripts. In short, the general public has little at stake ¶ in most wars and those most likely to suffer
the costs ¶ of war have few incentives to organize dissent. ¶ Second, any
public aversion to incurring the costs of ¶ war
may be overwhelmed by the effects of nationalism. ¶ In addition to the growth of democracy, one of the most ¶ striking
features of the modern period is that people ¶ have come to identify themselves, above all, with the ¶ nation
state. This identification has been so powerful ¶ that ordinary citizens have repeatedly demonstrated
a ¶ willingness to fight and die for the continued existence ¶ of their state and the security of their conationals. ¶ There are, then, good reasons to believe that if the ¶ national interest is thought to be at
stake, as it is in ¶ most interstate conflicts, calculations of costs will not ¶ figure prominently in the
public's decision process. ¶ Third, democratic leaders are as likely to lead as to ¶ follow public opinion.
Since nationalism imbues people with a powerful spirit of self-sacrifice, it is actively ¶ cultivated by
political elites in the knowledge that only ¶ highly motivated armies and productive societies will ¶
prevail in modern warfare (e.g., Posen 1993). Democratically elected leaders are likely to be well placed ¶ to cultivate nationalism,
especially because their governments are often perceived as more representative ¶ and legitimate than authoritarian regimes. Any call to ¶
defend or spread "our way of life," for example, is likely ¶ to have a strong resonance in democratic
policies, and ¶ indeed the historical record suggests that wars have often given democratic leaders
considerable freedom of ¶ action, allowing them to drum up nationalistic fervor, ¶ shape public opinion, and suppress dissent
despite the ¶ obligation to allow free and open discussion. ¶ Events in the United States during both World Wars ¶
highlight the strength of nationalism and the ability ¶ of democratic elites to fan its flames. Kennedy (1980,
¶ 46) notes that during the First World War, President ¶ Wilson lacked "the disciplinary force of quick
coming ¶ crisis or imminent peril of physical harm" but turned ¶ successfully to "the deliberate
mobilization of emotions ¶ and ideas." At the same time his administration turned ¶ a blind eye to, or actively encouraged, the
deliberate ¶ subversion of antiwar groups within the United States. ¶ The Roosevelt administration was equally successful
¶ at generating prowar sentiment during World War II. ¶ Early in the war the president spoke for the nation in ¶ asserting
that the German firebombing of population ¶ centers had "shocked the conscience of humanity," and ¶ yet, remarkably, there was no
sustained protest in the ¶ United States against the bombing Japanese of cities ¶ that killed almost a
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
million civilians a few years later. ¶ This abrupt transformation, notes Dower (1986), was ¶ made possible by a massive propaganda
campaign, con- ¶ doned by the political elite, describing the Japanese as ¶ subhuman and untrustworthy "others." In stark contrast, America's
allies were forgiven all their faults ¶ "Russian Communists were transformed into agrarian ¶ reformers, Stalin into Uncle Joe..." (Ambrose 1997,
¶ 150). ¶ Sentiments like these are not aroused only in the ¶ victims of aggression. Although Lord Aberdeen's gov- ¶ ernment was reluctant to go
to war with Russia over the ¶ Crimea in 1854, "There was no doubt whatever about ¶ the enthusiasm of British public opinion, as expressed ¶ by
every conduit open to it." The protests of Cobden ¶ and Bright, leaders of the British Peace Movement, ¶ "were howled down in the House of
Commons, in the ¶ Press, and at meeting after public meeting.... [They] ¶ were thus the first liberal leaders, and by no means the ¶ last, to
discover that peace and democracy do not go ¶ hand in hand; that public opinion is not an infallible ¶ specific against war; and that 'the people,'
for whatever ¶ reasons, can be very bellicose indeed." The next gener- ¶ ation of pacifists, the opponents of the Boer War, "were ¶ vilified in the
popular press, had their meetings broken ¶ up, [and] were subjected to physical attack" (Howard ¶ 1978, 45-46, 68). ¶ These are not isolated
examples.
The world's most ¶ militarily active democracies-Britain, France, India, ¶ Israel, and the United
States-have gone to war 30 ¶ times since 1815. In 15 cases, they were the victims of ¶ attack and therefore we should not be
surprised that ¶ publics reacted in a nationalistic fashion or were per- ¶ suaded to support decisions for war. There are, how- ¶ ever, 15 other
cases in which one could plausibly argue ¶ that it was not obvious to the public that war was in ¶ the national interest because there was no
immediate ¶ threat to the homeland or vital national assets.
In 12 ¶ of these cases, the outbreak of war was greeted by
a ¶ spontaneous and powerful nationalistic response or, ¶ in the absence of such a reaction,
policymaking elites ¶ successfully persuaded a previously unengaged public ¶ to acquiesce to, and in
some cases support, the use of ¶ force. In only three cases-the French and British at- ¶ tack on Egypt (1956) and the Israeli attack
on Lebanon ¶ (1982)-did publics not spontaneously support the war ¶ and remain opposed to it despite policymaking elites' ¶ best efforts to
influence their opinions. One way to try and rescue the public constraint ¶ mechanism would be to combine constraints with re- ¶ spect for
fellow democratic polities (e.g., Mintz and ¶ Geva 1993). This new argument would hold that ¶ democracies have formed a separate and joint
peace ¶ because democratic citizens are only averse to costs ¶ in their relations with other democracies. There are, ¶ however, several cases
that belie this claim.16 ¶ There are, then, good reasons to believe that pacific ¶ public opinion does not significantly reduce the likelihood that
democracies will go to war. In
the majority ¶ of cases, the public is likely to be unaffected by war ¶ and
therefore adopt a permissive attitude towards the ¶ use of force. Moreover, in those cases where the
national interest or honor is at stake, democratic publics ¶ are as likely as any other to disregard the
costs of war ¶ and democratic leaders have considerable opportunities both to encourage and to
exploit nationalistic fervor.
Governmental constraint is false – pro-war groups can control and influence
government
Rosato, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, 3
[Sebastian, 11/03, “The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,” The American Political Science
Review, Vol. 97, pp. 596-597, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3593025, LV]
Capturing the State. States are "representative insti- ¶ tution[s] constantly subject to capture and recapture, ¶ construction and reconstruction
by coalitions of so- ¶ cietal actors" (Moravcsik 1997, 518). Moreover, they ¶ are imperfect representative institutions, more likely ¶ to represent
those groups that are better organized ¶ and have more at stake in a given issue. Based on this ¶ insight, there is no reason to believe that
pacific interest groups will generally win out over prowar groups. ¶ While
liberal elites, for example, may be well
organized ¶ and have a powerful incentive to avoid war with other ¶ democracies, other more bellicose
actors such as the ¶ military industrial complex are likely to have just as ¶ much at stake and be equally
proficient at furthering ¶ their own interests. ¶ Indeed, the historical record suggests that proponents
of foreign aggression can often prevail in domestic debates. Owen (1997) examines four cases of the ¶ United
States going to war in the nineteenth century. ¶ In three of his cases, one of the two major political ¶
parties was opposed to war but failed to avert it. In the ¶ fourth case, the antiwar group was smaller
and also lost ¶ out to the prowar group. Similarly, Snyder (1991) finds ¶ that both Britain and the United States
have adopted ¶ aggressive foreign policies in the past as prowar groups ¶ have effectively captured the
state. Britain's expansionist policy in the middle of the nineteenth century ¶ owed much to the fact
that imperialist groups were able ¶ to influence policymaking: "Imperial ideologists were ¶ able to have a large impact
because of their apparent ¶ monopoly on expertise and effective organization, and ¶ because of the ambivalent interest of the audience." ¶ In
the American case, despite a Cold War consensus ¶ against involvement in "high-cost, low benefit
endeavors," the United States became involved in both Korea ¶ and Vietnam as a result of coalitional
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
logrolling (Snyder ¶ 1991, 206, 209).17 In sum, there are good reasons to ¶ believe that pacific interest groups may not generally ¶ influence
the foreign policies of democratic states. ¶ Autocratic Constraint. Autocratic leaders typically ¶ represent themselves or
narrow selectorates and these ¶ groups have powerful incentives to avoid war. ¶ The first reason for
avoiding war is that wars cost ¶ money and solving the problem of war finance ultimately poses a
threat to an autocrat's hold on power. ¶ The argument here is straightforward. The costs of war ¶ have risen exponentially since
the middle of the nine- ¶ teenth century and governments have had to figure out ¶ how to meet these costs. Although the money can theo- ¶
retically be raised with or without the consent of those ¶ from whom it is demanded, in practice "non-consensual ¶ sources of revenue have
generally proved less elastic ¶ than taxation based on consent."
Participation in war ¶ has, therefore, tended to go hand
in hand with expansion of the franchise (Ferguson 2001, 32-33, 77, 80; see ¶ also Freeman and Snidal 1982). This being
the case, ¶ autocrats have a powerful incentive not to go to war ¶ for fear of triggering social and
political changes that ¶ may destroy them. ¶ The nature of civil military relations in civilian- ¶ led
authoritarian states provides another incentive for ruling groups to avoid war. Since civilian control of
the ¶ military is often more tenuous in autocracies than in ¶ democracies, nonmilitary leaders of
autocratic states ¶ have a powerful incentive to maintain weak militaries ¶ for fear of domestic coups.
The problem, from a foreign ¶ policy standpoint, is that states with weak militaries are ¶ vulnerable to
foreign aggression. Thus an absolute ruler ¶ faces a "dual problem" according to Gordon Tullock ¶ (1987, 37): "[H]e may be overthrown
by his neigh- ¶ bor's armies, or by the armies he organizes to defend ¶ him against his neighbors." Because they recognize this ¶
problem, civilian authoritarian leaders will generally ¶ prefer to avoid rather than wage war. ¶ A
different set of factors can inhibit the war proneness of military dictators. First, since they must
devote ¶ considerable time and energy to repressing popular ¶ dissent at home, they have fewer
military resources to ¶ devote to external wars. Second, because the military ¶ is used for internal
repression it is unlikely to have a ¶ great deal of societal support and will be ill equipped ¶ to deal with
external enemies. Third, leaders who assume control of the army run the risk of being held ¶
personally responsible for any subsequent failures and ¶ may not be prepared to take that risk. Finally,
time ¶ spent organizing military campaigns is time away from ¶ other governmental duties on which a
dictator's tenure ¶ also depends (Andreski 1980; Tullock 1987, 37; see also ¶ Dassel 1997). ¶ In sum, it is not clear that states
behave as the group ¶ constraint mechanism suggests. Although democracies ¶ and autocracies have selectorates of differing size and ¶ allow
social groups different levels of access to the poli- ¶ cymaking process, they may nevertheless adopt similar ¶ policies. Not only are democratic
governments able to ¶ resist the influence of antiwar groups, but they are in ¶ fact subject to capture by prowar groups. Autocracies, ¶ on the
other hand, often represent groups that have ¶ a vested interest in avoiding foreign wars (see, e.g., ¶ Peceny, Beer, and Sanchez-Terry 2002).
Information won’t be listened to or might be misinterpreted, and public or opposition
opinion doesn’t shape action
Rosato, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, 3
[Sebastian, 11/03, “The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,” The American Political Science
Review, Vol. 97, pp. 598-599, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3593025, LV]
The available evidence suggests that democracies cannot clearly reveal their levels of resolve in a
crisis. ¶ There are two reasons for this. First, democratic processes and institutions often reveal so much
information that it is difficult for opposing states to interpret ¶ it. Second, open domestic political
competition does ¶ not ensure that states will reveal their private information. ¶ Transparency may
contribute little to peace because a lot of information is not always good information. Simply because
democracies provide a substantial ¶ amount of information about their intentions from a ¶ variety of
sources does not mean that their opponents ¶ will focus on the appropriate information or that the ¶
information will be interpreted correctly. In a crisis ¶ with a democracy, the other state will receive
signals ¶ not only from the democracy's appointed negotiators ¶ but also from opposition parties,
interest groups, public ¶ opinion, and the media. Deciding which signal is truly ¶ representative is a
difficult task. Moreover, individuals ¶ faced with an overwhelming amount of information are ¶ likely to
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
resort to mental shortcuts based on existing ¶ views of the adversary or analogous situations in the ¶
past to make sense of it. Information contradicting the ¶ accepted wisdom is likely to be ignored and
confirmatory evidence will be highlighted. Additional information may, then, have a limited impact on
perceptions ¶ (e.g., Jervis 1976). In short, the mistake has been to ¶ equate plentiful information with perfect information. ¶ If the
information is plentiful, there is no reason to ¶ believe that states will come to a mutually acceptable ¶ agreement. On the other hand, if the
information is ¶ perfect, then states may avoid war. There is good evidence for these claims. Bernard ¶ Finel and Kristin Lord (1999) have
highlighted the ¶ negative effects of transparency in seven case studies ¶ of interstate crises between 1812 and 1969. They find ¶ that open
political systems do indeed provide a great ¶ deal of information, but its sheer volume either has ¶ confused those who observe it or has merely
served to ¶ reinforce their prior misperceptions. In
1967, for example, Nasser was "overwhelmed by the 'noise' of
Israeli ¶ domestic politics" and "had enough information to see ¶ whatever he wanted and confirm
existing misperceptions about Israeli intentions" (Finel and Lord 1999, ¶ 334-35). Democracies may not be
better at signaling ¶ their intentions, and even if they are, these intentions ¶ may be prone to
misperception. ¶ In response, proponents of the informational story ¶ argue that it is the signal sent by opposition parties ¶ that provides
the most credible evidence of a state's ¶ intent: If they support the administration, then the state ¶ is committed, otherwise it is not (Schultz
2001, 95- ¶ 97). There are two problems with this argument. First, ¶ there is powerful support for the claim that the general ¶ public and
opposition generally "rally round the flag" ¶ and support governments during crises. Kenneth Waltz ¶ neatly summarizes this finding: "The
first effect of an ¶ international crisis is to increase the President's popular standing. One may wonder if this is
so only when the ¶ response of the President is firm or he otherwise gives ¶ the impression of being able to deal with the situation ¶
effectively.... It is, in fact, not necessary to add such ¶ qualifications to the statement" (Waltz 1967, 272).22 In- ¶ deed, Schultz notes that
democratic governments that ¶ have issued deterrent threats have received opposition ¶ support 84% of the time (Schultz 2001, 167). More- ¶
over, democratic
leaders can lead rather than follow ¶ public opinion during international crises by
controlling what information reaches the public and by exploiting the media. Reaching high office in a democ- ¶
racy rests, to a large degree, on persuading voters, and ¶ one would therefore expect democratic government ¶ officials to be especially adept
at shaping public opin- ¶ ion. What this means is that democracies may often ¶ not be able to signal their private information. Since
¶
publics and oppositions generally rally to the govern- ¶ ment's side or are persuaded to support the
adminis- ¶ tration during crises, and hostile states know this to ¶ be the case, opposition support is not
an informative ¶ signal. ¶ Second, in the few cases where opposition par- ¶ ties have spoken out against
military action, demo- ¶ cratic governments have been prepared to take ac- ¶ tion nonetheless. In other
words, when opposition ¶ statements should lead us to expect that a govern- ¶ ment would not be resolved on war, they have instead ¶ been
prepared to escalate disputes. Examples
are not ¶ hard to find: (1) The Federalists opposed war with ¶ Britain in
1812, but Madison went to war nonetheless; ¶ (2) Truman went to war in Korea despite the protests ¶
of Senate Republicans; (3) the British Labour Party ¶ publicly opposed action against Egypt in 1956, but
the ¶ Eden government plotted and executed an attack on ¶ Egypt with the governments of France and
Israel; and ¶ (4) several Democrats publicly opposed the Gulf War in ¶ 1990-91, but the Bush
administration was determined ¶ to act. In short, there does not appear to be a strong ¶ correlation between declarations by
opposition parties ¶ and decisions to avoid war.23 ¶ In sum, the purported informational properties of ¶ democratic institutions are unlikely to
improve the ¶ prospects for peace. It is not clear that democracies ¶ can reveal private information or that it will be inter- ¶ preted correctly,
and even in cases where signaling and ¶ interpretation are accurate there are reasons to doubt ¶ that this will remove the cause of war.
Democratic checks fail-- Presidents have historically bypassed them in self interest
Rosato, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, 3
[Sebastian, 11/03, “The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,” The American Political Science
Review, Vol. 97, pp. 597, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3593025, LV]
The historical record offers scant support for the claim ¶ that the complexity of mobilizing diverse groups in ¶ democracies slows decisions to
use force. ¶ American
presidents have often circumvented or ig- ¶ nored checks and balances, thereby
speeding up the war ¶ decision process.18 The United States has taken military ¶ action abroad more
than 200 times during its history, ¶ but only five of these actions were wars declared by ¶ Congress,
and most were authorized unilaterally by the ¶ president (Rourke 1993, 11). Circumventing the democratic
process has taken several forms. Some presidents ¶ have simply claimed that matters of national
security ¶ are more important than observing the constitution. ¶ Jefferson was the first to assert that
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
obeying the con- ¶ stitution was the mark of a good president, but that ¶ "the law of necessity, of selfpreservation, of saving our ¶ country when in danger, are of the higher obligation" ¶ (75). Another
common tactic has been to redefine the ¶ action as anything but a war, thereby obviating the ¶ need
for consultation or debate. Washington added hot ¶ pursuit and preemption to the president's
prerogatives, ¶ Jackson popularized reprisals, and Wilson unilaterally ¶ authorized interventions, most
notably in Russia af- ¶ ter World War I. Alternatively, presidents have used ¶ their powers to put troops in
harm's way in order to ¶ precipitate wider conflicts. Both Polk's actions prior ¶ to the Mexican
American War and Roosevelt's tactics ¶ prior to America's official entry into World War II fit ¶ this
pattern. Finally, incumbents of the White House ¶ have often simply ignored Congress. Truman
ordered ¶ forces into Korea without even asking Congress for ¶ retroactive support, and at the height
of the "Imperial ¶ Presidency," Nixon rejected the need for congressional ¶ authority when he invaded
Cambodia. ¶ While efforts have been made to ensure that choices ¶ for war and peace are subject to open debate- ¶ notably with
the passage of the War Powers Resolution ¶ (1972)-checks and balances have generally failed to ¶
operate and there have been frequent violations of the ¶ spirit if not the letter of the Resolution (Rourke
1993, ¶ 119-38). The Gulf War provides a recent example. Bush ¶ administration officials decided to launch
Operation ¶ Desert Shield without consulting Congress and repeatedly put off a congressional vote
fearing that it might ¶ go against them. The decision for Desert Storm was ¶ also made unilaterally. Bush argued that he
did not ¶ need a congressional resolution and was determined ¶ to avoid asking for authorization lest
this imply that ¶ the Executive did not have the final say on matters of ¶ war. His reaction to Congress's
authorization of the ¶ use of force is instructive: "In truth, even had Congress ¶ not passed the resolution I would
have acted and ordered our troops into combat. I know it would have ¶ caused an outcry, but it was
the right thing to do. I was ¶ comfortable in my own mind that I had constitutional ¶ authority. It had to be done" (Bush and
Scowcroft ¶ 1998, 446). ¶ In sum, the slow mobilization mechanism does not ¶ appear to function as claimed. Democratic leaders
frequently decide that protecting what they deem to be ¶ the national interest requires swift and
decisive action. When they believe such situations have arisen ¶ they have been able and willing
simply to bypass the ¶ democratic imperative of open debate and consensus ¶ decision making.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
AT: Framework
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
K2 Policy
Interrogating liberal peace discourse is a prerequisite to effective peacebuilding policy
Richmond, Professor of International Relations, and Franks, Research Fellow in the
School of International Relations, 9
[Oliver and Jason, “Liberal Peace Transitions: Between Statebuilding and Peacebuilding”, Page 4-5, VJ]
The liberal peace framework has emerged through a complex evolution within a very specific political,
economic, social, conceptual and methodological environment, which has universal ambitions,
nevertheless.4 As the Cold War ended, UN peacebuilding, humanitarian and donor assistance, the role
of the World Bank and other international financial institutions, the UN Development Programme, and
the role of national institutions and experts began to expand toward a broader project of engaging
with conflict through the construction of the liberal state. Wildly ambitious and normatively more
sensitive than what had preceded it, problems soon emerged in locations as diverse as Somalia and
Cambodia in the early 1990s. Yet, this optimism in the face of emerging difficulties and even rejection
led to the liberal peace being conceptualised as being predicated upon the cornerstones of
democratisation, the rule of law, human rights, free and globalised markets, and neoliberal
development. The response to any subsequent problems that have emerged has tended to focus on
better integration of, and efficacy in, these areas, rather than a broader questioning of the liberal
peace model itself, or of its assumptions. The liberal peace is a discourse, framework and structure
with a specific ontology and methodology. It provides a liberal epistemology of peace and its
projected reform of governance entails a communicative strategy on which depends its viability and
legitimacy with its recipients. This operates both at a social and a state level and cannot be achieved
without significant resources. The allocation of those resources, the power to do so, and their control,
has become the new site of power and domination in post-conflict societies. Thus, it must be asked
how this can be so while at the same time remaining true to the emancipatory claims of the liberal
peace for its subjects or citizens within liberal states. Paradoxically, it is the case that the NGO and
agency personnel, those in the UN and World Bank, diplomats and officials, generally show great
commitment to the countries they are working in (often in difficult, uncomfortable and dangerous
conditions) and are to a large degree implicitly, if not explicitly, aware of the problems of the liberal
peace model.5 Many of the peacebuilding ‘international civil service’ are thoroughly committed to the
idea of ‘peace’ as both desirable and theoretically and practically possible. They are also careful to avoid
the creation of external dependency, they endeavour to be sensitive to the needs of local ownership
and to local conditions, and are very careful not to upset sensitive local political and social customs or
arrangements where these are deemed to be viable within the liberal peace. Sometimes they may also
feel that interests and politics are blocking their progress but are reluctant to intervene directly. They
are sensitive to such problems while also recognising that their professional roles or the projects they
are part of are in many ways inadequate and create forms of peace that are far from ideal, or even what
they consider to be within the realms of what is possible. What little is done is normally better than
nothing in such terms. They may adhere to the injunction ‘do no harm’,6 written into the mandates of
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) or the World Bank for example, in order to protect the
sanctity of the notion of peace, to protect the fragile balance that might already exist in a given postconflict location, and also to protect the integrity of legitimacy of the liberal peace framework. Often,
though, the priority is the international or regional dynamics of the liberal peace rather than its local
quality.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Kritik First
The institutionalization of liberal peace theory pervades policy and thinking—our role
as organic intellectuals is to problematize it
Parmar, Professor of Government, 08
[Inderjeet, December, “The ‘Knowledge Politics’ of Democratic Peace Theory”,
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/about/themes/cip/publications/docum
ents/SSRC%20Think%20Tanks%20paper%20Sept%202008%20NEW.pdf, page 2-4, accessed 7/10/13, VJ]
How do academic ideas influence US foreign policy and under what conditions? This article addresses
these questions by tracing the transformation of democratic peace theory in the United States from an
obscure social scientific finding to arguably the "most productive" IR/political scientific theory and even
to the basis of an anti-intellectual president's national security strategy. The argument is advanced in
two ways, first by considering political circumstances, 'paradigm* compatibility, and the 'machinery'
(networks) for ideas' mobilisation and articulation with state policymakers' and, secondly, by
considering the varying forms of influence that academic ideas might exercise. Ideas influence US
foreign policy when political circumstances change and the policy environment is permissive of 'new
thinking',7 especially during and after crises: when ideas have been developed and politically
mobilised through respected elite knowledge networks linked with the state:' when those new ideas
arc or can be made to appear as paradigmatically congenial lo dominant thinking in general and to US
foreign policy-makers* mindsets in particular (though those ideas may be transformed beyond their
originators' recognition when executed in the real world).4 Finally, ideas may be said to be truly
influential when they become embedded in institutional norms and practices.5 The forms of influence
of ideas also vary: some ideas gain conceptual influence (they change mindsets and thereby create the
intellectual conditions for policy change),6 others may be used directly in policy-making and thereby
exercise instrumental influence, while still others may be said to display symbolic influence, used by
policymakers broadly to legitimise predetermined mindsets and policies.7 Of course, some scholarly
ideas, such as democratic peace theory, may be influential in all three ways - which is the argument
below. Further, democratic peace theory may have emerged as the central cohering intellectual basis
of exercising America's global role since 1989. The role of organic intellectuals in each of the above
processes- interpreting and successfully promoting to and with policy communities that a new
historical circumstance represents a crisis/opportunity requiring new thinking, developing and
elaborating ideas through dense political-intellectual knowledge networks, within paradigms that
define and consider problems congenial to policy-maker mindsets, and which work institutionally to
embed and more broadly to disseminate ideas - is fundamental.8 The social function of organic
intellectuals is to elaborate a dominant ideology - or critical elements of it that appear to be in crisis in order belter to cohere, stabilise and reproduce the capitalist order and political system. To be sure,
the production, elaboration and mobilisation of ideas is difficult and not without robust debate and
intense lobbying of policy-makers and their 'communities*. That is, it is a political process that has
built-in conflict, especially at the level of tactical advantage- seeking behaviour vis a vis ideologicalpolitical tendencies among 'mainstream* elite knowledge institutions, but also at effectively setting
the agenda so as to prevent the formation of radical challenges to 'mainstream* thinking and
'debates*.9 Who promotes an idea or theory is important, therefore, as are when, how and to whom
those ideas arc
stated.10
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
The political sphere and political agents are mutually reinforcing—failure to
problematize the liberal peace results in violence and torture
Steele, associate professor of political science, 10
[Brent J., March, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Vol. 23, Num. 1, “Of ‘witch’s brews’ and
scholarly communities: the dangers and promise of academic parrhesia”, EBSCO, accessed 7/12/13,
emphasis in original]
In short, Isocrates concludes, the people ‘can’t handle the truth’. This problematizes, then, the notion of a
reasonable public sphere where parrhesia could be practised. Both Robert Keohane (2009) and Piki IshShalom (2008), in somewhat similar fashions, have advocated a practice in which the scholar enters
the public arena to express the findings of their research for public consumption. Keohane calls for
the scholar who enters such an arena to maintain ‘the epistemic commandment [not to] falsify or distort our
interpretations of social reality, and we must continue to indicate how much uncertainty we attach to our
estimates’ (Keohane 2009, 128). Ish-Shalom proposes a ‘democratic imperative’, which he defines as
the ‘political responsibility to participate in the political process of policy-shaping’ (Ish-Shalom
2008, 690). Although well argued, such proposals ‘amongst the masses’ are problematic because they
fail to take into account the constraints of the public sphere.2 In other words, no matter how much
clarity we intend to bring to bear, we are the political agents who enter a sphere (politics) that we
may change, but that political sphere also changes us (Lang 2008, 54). In order for our ‘message’
to resonate in such a sphere, we will, necessarily, need to amend it so that it is also ‘edible’ to a
democratic public—and in the case of the post-9/11 United States (US) public, one that might be
very supportive of the use of violence. So if US academics had heeded Ish-Shalom’s democratic
imperative in the recent past, they would have been ‘truth-tellers’ towards the same community
that endorsed the Iraq War and which supported or abetted torture—all in the name of protecting
democracy. The status that gives purchase to the academic in their own scholarly community has an inverse
quality in the political sphere.3 Further, even if we get into this ‘arena’, and cautiously advise those
who might use our theories for their policies by issuing caveats clarifications and drawing out
nuance—even if we somehow can convince the public officials of this—we still must assume that they
will execute our prescriptions (1) competently and (2) for purposes other than increasing their
own power and control.4
Their assertion of the “democratic peace” makes them part of a network of organic
intellectuals who use their academic ideas to reproduce and stabilize capitalist order.
Our criticism is excluded from the marketplace of ideas by an appeal to expertism and
denial of material resources in the same way as they try to rule it out of hand with
their supposedly objective framework.
Parmar, Professor of Government, 08
[Inderjeet, December, “The ‘Knowledge Politics’ of Democratic Peace Theory”,
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/about/themes/cip/publications/docum
ents/SSRC%20Think%20Tanks%20paper%20Sept%202008%20NEW.pdf, page 2-4, accessed 7/10/13]
How do academic ideas influence US foreign policy and under what conditions? This article addresses
these questions by tracing the transformation of democratic peace theory in the United States from an obscure social scientific finding to
arguably the “most productive” IR/political scientific theory and even to the basis of an anti-intellectual president’s national security strategy.
The argument is advanced in two ways, first by considering political circumstances, ‘paradigm’ compatibility, and the ‘machinery’
(networks) for ideas’ mobilisation and articulation with state policymakers1 and, secondly, by considering the varying forms of influence
that academic ideas might exercise. Ideas influence US foreign policy when political circumstances change and the policy environment is
permissive of ‘new thinking’,2 especially during and after crises; when ideas have been developed and politically mobilised through
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
respected elite knowledge networks linked with the state;3 when those new ideas are or can be made to appear as paradigmatically congenial
to dominant thinking in general and to US foreign policy-makers’ mindsets in particular (though those ideas may be transformed beyond
their originators’ recognition when executed in the real world).4 Finally, ideas may be said to be truly influential when they become
embedded in institutional norms and practices.5 The forms of influence of ideas also vary: some ideas gain conceptual influence (they
change mindsets and thereby create the intellectual conditions for policy change),6 others may be used directly in policy-making and thereby
exercise instrumental influence, while still others may be said to display symbolic influence, used by policymakers broadly to legitimise
predetermined mindsets and policies.7 Of course, some scholarly ideas, such as democratic peace theory, may be influential in all three ways
– which is the argument below. Further, democratic
peace theory may have emerged as the central cohering
intellectual basis of exercising America’s global role since 1989. The role of organic intellectuals
in each of the above processes – interpreting and successfully promoting to and with policy communities that a new historical
circumstance represents a crisis/opportunity requiring new thinking, developing and elaborating ideas through dense political-intellectual
knowledge networks, within paradigms that define and consider problems congenial to policy-maker mindsets, and which work
institutionally to embed and more broadly to disseminate ideas – is
fundamental.8 The social function of organic
intellectuals is to elaborate a dominant ideology – or critical elements of it that appear to be in
crisis – in order better to cohere, stabilise and reproduce the capitalist order and political
system. To be sure, the production, elaboration and mobilisation of ideas is difficult and not without robust debate and intense lobbying of
policy-makers and their ‘communities’. That is, it is a political process that has built-in conflict, especially at the
level of tactical advantageseeking behaviour vis a vis ideological-political tendencies among
‘mainstream’ elite knowledge institutions, but also at effectively setting the agenda so as to
prevent the formation of radical challenges to ‘mainstream’ thinking and ‘debates ’.9 Who
promotes an idea or theory is important, therefore, as are when, how and to whom those ideas
are stated.10 Though there is often very heated ‘competition’, bargaining, and struggle, the
process is hardly pluralistic – there is a severely limited ‘free market of ideas’ due to unequal
distribution of material resources and intellectual/scholarly prestige.11 The struggle is a facet of
elite or class politics aimed at social reproduction, a process inextricably associated with the
state and elite private institutions bound together by underlying shared interests and national
mission. This neo-Gramscian argument is challenged by those who argue that expertise, sometimes mobilised as group power within a
system of pluralistic competition - is the basis of any influence ideas may exercise over foreign policy, and that such expertise is apolitical,
neutral and scientific. Pragmatic policymakers turn to certified experts to evaluate new situations and propose policy options.12 At most,
‘expertise’ is challenged if it is too closely associated with political or ideological forces – ‘liberal’, conservative, or ‘neo-conservative’. This
article challenges the notion that there is authentic political debate between such tendencies and argues that they are aspects of an underlying
ideo-political unity.13
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Democratic peace theory is completely saturated in modern politics, policy, and
knowledge production institutions—the alternative is a prerequisite to policies that
move away from democratic peace theory’s violence
Parmar, Professor of Government, 08
[Inderjeet, December, “The ‘Knowledge Politics’ of Democratic Peace Theory”,
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/about/themes/cip/publications/docum
ents/SSRC%20Think%20Tanks%20paper%20Sept%202008%20NEW.pdf, page 2-4, accessed 7/10/13,
chip]
Democratic peace theory is perhaps the most significant political science theory today; indeed it has
been declared an empirical law.18 The theory is considered by significant proportions of political
scientists and international relations scholars to be the “most productive” research programme in
recent years.19 The ‘democratic peace’ is also the underlying theoretical basis of the foreign and
national security policies of President-elect Barack Obama and of his defeated Republican rival,
Senator John McCain. There is an emerging consensus – visible in both party camps around the need
for a “League” or “Concert of Democracies” as the principal source of American national security and
world peace.20 The presidencies of the Democratic Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and Republican George W.
Bush (2001-2009) were powerfully influenced by the tenets of democratic peace theory. Clinton
championed “democratic enlargement” and “democratic engagement” in the 1990s, while promoting
freedom and democracy is pivotal to the Bush doctrine.21 Clearly, democratic peace theory is an
enduring and central pillar of post-Cold War US national security strategy. It is remarkable that, at a
time when US foreign policy – in the hands of George W. Bush - has been at its most controversial, a
liberal academic theory should exert such influence on Republicans and Democrats alike. This is also
worthy of note in the context of academics’ complaints that their rigorous and often policy-oriented
work is ignored even as policy-makers flock to recruit think tank personnel from inside the
Washington beltway. What the rise and influence of democratic peace theory shows is that academic
knowledge can be, and is, a significant power in political life and the affairs of state, and provides an
opportunity to investigate the role of knowledge institutions responsible for its elevation to social
scientific law. Specifically, this paper tracks the recent origins, development and rise of the democratic
peace thesis to bi-partisan political commonsense over the course of a few decades. This paper argues
that knowledge develops and spreads through a powerful technology of power – the knowledge
network – which incorporates a range of institutions and actors, including the state and main political
parties, philanthropic foundations, universities, think tanks, and journals. Consequently, it is important
not only to study the role of specific knowledge institutions but also their relations with each other and
with the state, within a broader changing ecology of knowledge.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
AT: Alt doesn’t solve
Alternative solves—fosters a post-liberal form of peacebuilding
Richmond, Professor of International Relations, and Franks, Research Fellow in the
School of International Relations, 9
[Oliver and Jason, “Liberal Peace Transitions: Between Statebuilding and Peacebuilding”, Page 209-211,
VJ]
Against the background of our case studies, we conclude that what is needed is the development of a
praxis of post-liberal peacebuilding (potentially utilising the eirenist approaches to IR and to
peacebuilding that Richmond has detailed elsewhere).13 These would be designed to capitalise on the
core of the original conflict resolution and peacebuilding agendas, addressing needs and root causes,
connecting the new liberal state or polity with older, locally recognisable and contextual, customary,
political, social and economic traditions, and engaging with grass roots and the most marginalised
members of post-conflict polities. This would require a mediation between the local and the
international over peacebuilding praxis and social, political and economic practices that both deem
plausible and acceptable, rather than a wholesale top-down imposition of an only putatively universal
liberal model – the virtual liberal peace. This would enable the development of a post-liberal form of
peacebuilding that would counterbalance the core of liberal peacebuilding with the local as well as its
needs and cultural patterns. But this would not be to romanticise the local and its capacity for conflict
resolution or its dysfunctionality, but rather to enable it to engage in ‘unscripted conversations’ about
what peacebuilding might entail.14 Rather than representing either an international or even a local
bias towards the interests of local elites, this would instead be predicated upon an intimate
understanding of everyday life and individual political agency and needs in each context, and what a
peaceful everyday life might be facilitated by. This might involve liberal peacebuilders facing up to
some unpalatable truths about how bias towards geopolitical interests and limited understandings of
peace undermine peacebuilding and replicate violence, and would entail some radical shifts of
emphasis, not least from a blind faith in the power of political rights and the market for the provision for
everyday needs and a better understanding of customary practices.15 This post-liberal peace,
representing a liberal-local hybrid and an interface between the two, would also be constantly called
upon to reflect on its own interests and assumptions, and rather than to distance itself ethically and
materially from the local, to do quite the reverse.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Representations First
Placing representations first is necessary to escape dominant modes of thinking.
Doty, Professor of Poli Sci, 96
[Roxanne Lynn, Imperial Encounters, p 171]
By examining the ways in which structures of meaning have been associated with imperial practices, I
have suggested that the construction of meaning and the construction of social, political, and
economic power are inextricably linked. This suggests an ethical dimension to making meaning and an
ethical imperative that is incumbent upon those who toil in the construction of structures of meaning.
This is especially urgent in North-South relations today: one does not have to search very far to find a
continuing complicity with colonial representations that ranges from a politics of silence and neglect
to constructions of terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, international drug trafficking, and Southern
immigration to the North as new threats to global stability and peace. The political stakes raised by this
analysis revolve around the question of being able to "get beyond" the representations or speak
outside of the discourses that historically have constructed the North and the South. I do not believe
that there are any pure alternatives by which we can escape the infinity of traces to which Gramsci
refers. Nor do I wish to suggest that we are always hopelessly imprisoned in a dominant and allpervasive discourse. Before this question can be answered-indeed, before we can even proceed to
attempt an answer—attention must be given to the politics of representation. The price that
international relations scholarship pays for its inattention to the issue of representation is
perpetuation of the dominant modes of making meaning and deferral of its responsibility and complicity in dominant representations.
Reality is a discursive construct – our understanding of the world is shaped by the way
we describe it
Chia, PhD in Organizational Studies, 2k
[Robert, August, Organization, Vol. 7, No. 3, page 200, “Discourse Analysis as Organizational Analysis,”
http://geocities.ws/visisto/Biblioteca/Chia_Discourse.pdf, accessed 7/10/13)
The question of discourse, and the manner in which it shapes our epistemology and understanding of
organization, are central to an expanded realm of organizational analysis. It is one which recognizes that
the modern world we live in and the social artefacts we rely upon to successfully negotiate our way
through life, are always already institutionalized effects of primary organizational impulses. Social
objects and phenomena such as ‘the organization’, ‘the economy’, ‘the market’ or even ‘stakeholders’
or ‘the weather’, do not have a straightforward and unproblematic existence independent of our
discursively-shaped understandings. Instead, they have to be forcibly carved out of the
undifferentiated flux of raw experience and conceptually fixed and labelled so that they can become
the common currency for communicational exchanges. Modern social reality, with its all-too-familiar
features, has to be continually constructed and sustained through such aggregative discursive acts of
reality-construction. The idea that reality, as we know it, is socially constructed, has become an
accepted truth. What is less commonly understood is how this reality gets constructed in the first place
and what sustains it. For the philosopher William James, our social reality is always already an
abstraction. Our lifeworld is an undifferentiated flux of fleeting sense-impressions and it is out of this
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
brute aboriginal flux of lived experience that attention carves out and conception names: . . . in the sky
‘constellations’, on earth ‘beach’, ‘sea’, ‘cliff’, ‘bushes’, ‘grass’. Out of time we cut ‘days’ and ‘nights’,
‘summers’ and ‘winters’. We say what each part of the sensible continuum is, and all these abstract
whats are concepts. (James, 1948: 50, emphasis original) It is through this process of differentiating,
fixing, naming, labelling, classifying and relating—all intrinsic processes of discursive organization—
that social reality is systematically constructed. Discourse, as multitudinal and heterogeneous forms of
material inscriptions or verbal utterances occurring in space–time, is what aggregatively produces a
particular version of social reality to the exclusion of other possible worlds. It is therefore
inappropriate to think of ‘organizational discourse’, for instance, as discourse about some pre-existing,
thing-like social object called ‘the organization’. To do so is to commit what the mathematician-turnedphilosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1926/1985) called the ‘Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness’ (p. 64)
whereby our socially constructed conceptions of reality are unreflexively mistaken for reality itself. It
is this fallacy which has led to either the rejection of the study of discourse as being inappropriate to
organizational analysis, or the more popular formulation of ‘Organizational Discourse’ as discourse
about organizations or about what goes on within organizations. Both claims miss the true significance
of discourse analysis as a central feature of organizational analysis. Such formulations miss the essential
point that discourse acts at a far more constitutive level to form social objects such as ‘organizations’
by circumscribing selected parts of the flux of phenomenal experiences and fixing their identity so
that it becomes possible to talk about them as if they were naturally existing social entities. This
‘entitative’ form of thinking, which is widespread in organizational theorizing, conveniently forgets the
fact that organizational action is first and foremost an ontological activity. Viewed from this perspective,
the apparent solidity of social phenomena such as ‘the organization’ derives from the stabilizing
effects of generic discursive processes rather than from the presence of independently existing
concrete entities. In other words, phrases such as ‘the organization’ do not refer to an extra-linguistic
reality. Instead they are conceptualized abstractions to which it has become habitual for us to refer as
independently existing ‘things’. ‘Organizational Discourse’, therefore, must be understood, not in the
narrow sense previously discussed, but in its wider ontological sense as the bringing into existence of an
‘organized’ or stabilized state. Discourse works to create some sense of stability, order and
predictability and to thereby produce a sustainable, functioning and liveable world from what would
otherwise be an amorphous, fluxing and undifferentiated reality indifferent to our causes. This it does
through the material inscriptions and utterances that form the basis of language and representation.
Through the regularizing and routinization of social exchanges, the formation and institutionalization
of codes of behaviour, rules, procedures and practices and so on, the organizational world that we
have come to inhabit acquires its apparent externality, objectivity and structure. The study of
organizational discourse, and the way it shapes our habits of thought, by legitimizing particular objects
of knowledge and influencing our epistemological preferences, is crucial for a deeper appreciation of the
underlying motivational forces shaping the decisional priorities of both organizational theorists and
practitioners alike. For, by organizing our preferred modes of thought, organizational discourse works
as a relatively unconscious force to restrict vision and to thereby inhibit the exploration of genuinely
alternative modes of conception and action. But since language itself, as a form of discourse, is
quintessentially a modern method for organizing thought, we can only begin to fully appreciate the
fundamental character of organization by first examining the workings of language itself. Thus, the
formation of discursive modalities, the legitimating of objects of knowledge and the shaping of
meanings and their attachment to social objects all form part of that wider organizational concern which
we call ‘discourse analysis’, and which we argue here is a legitimate form of organizational analysis in
the wider sense defined earlier. Since language is that prevailing means for codifying and hence
rendering ‘articulable’ that realm of sense-experience which actively resists codification and
representation, it must logically be our first port of call in our search for a deeper understanding of the
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
meaning and effect of discourse as organization. But this poses a problem since we can only use
language to express our understanding of the organizational character of language itself. As such, the
study of discourse as organization needs to be approached elliptically rather than in the traditional
direct and assertive manner. We need to begin by referral to that ‘pristine experience, unwarped by the
sophistication of theory’ (Whitehead, 1929: 240) in order to rediscover the meaning and effect of
organizational action. This, in turn, demands that we start off with a strategy of analysis which
acknowledges the primacy of vagueness or undifferentiatedness as the aboriginal ‘stuff’ of reality. The
long-held Aristotelian belief that language in general and linguistic categories in particular are fully
adequate to the task of describing reality as it is in itself must be set aside if we are to begin to fully
appreciate the workings of discourse as organization. By way of a kind of metaphorical explanation,
Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Ambassadors, which was painted in 1533, provides a convenient
leitmotif for the kind of oblique strategy required for approaching this ontological issue of organizational
discourse. The painting depicts two finely clad gentlemen in traditional ambassadorial attire standing on
either side of a display shelf containing books, scrolls, the globe, geometrical instruments, musical
instruments and so forth. The two figures appear frozen, stiffened in their magnificent adornment. In
front, cutting diagonally across the painting, as if put there as an afterthought, is a strange, oblique and
unidentifiable object which interrupts and distracts our attention from the main contents of the
painting. This painting has aroused endless controversies regarding its meaning and significance. One
explanation which has been offered (Lacan, 1979: 92) and which suits our illustrative purpose here is
that the ‘ambassadors’ are not ambassadors in the ordinary sense. Instead, the artefacts displayed
suggests that the artist intended them to represent the triumph and vanity of formal, scientific
knowledge. These are ambassadors of the Enlightenment. There is, however, the odd-shaped figure in
the front which interrupts our visual field. The interesting thing about this particular unidentifiable
object is that it can only be seen obliquely by positioning oneself at an angle of about twenty seven
degrees from the surface of the painting. At this position, the object becomes immediately recognizable
as a human skull. It is what, in art, is called an anamorphic figure. It cannot be seen frontally, but only
from a side glance. The significance of the anamorphic skull cutting across the triumphal achievements
of order, rationality and progress is a reminder that beneath all these achievements lie the murky
depths of the unknown, the uncertain and the unpredictable. There is an intrinsic and essential
vagueness which haunts our every achievement and which refuses to go away. This is the
undifferentiated flux of our pre-linguistic experience. And it is out of this undifferentiated potentiality
that discourse acts to produce the pattern of regularities that constitutes what we call organization. The
claim that discourse is essentially performative is indisputable. We need discourse to order our world
and to make it more predictable and hence more liveable. Yet, beneath this appearance of
organizational orderliness lie material resistances which we have to constantly find ways of temporarily
overcoming. These are areas of our pure experiences which language and discourse are not able to
reach. It is this vague awareness which circumscribes our every attempt at organization. This awareness
of the limitations and incompetence of discourse or utterance as the defining mode of being have been
common tenets in philosophical thought and in the works of artists, poets and mystics in the West as
well as ‘throughout Indian Brahaminism, Chinese Taoism and Japanese Shinto’ (Nishitani, 1982: 31).
Bergson (1903/1955: 22–4) for one insists that all intellectual analysis reduces the phenomenon
apprehended into pre-established symbols which necessarily place us ‘outside’ the phenomenon itself.
Analysis thus leaves us with a relative kind of knowledge. On the other hand, absolute knowledge can
only be given in an intuition which is necessarily ‘inexpressible’ in symbolic terms because of the
uniqueness of that experience. Likewise, in the East, there is a long history of scepticism regarding the
adequacy of language and discourse. Chuang Tzu, for instance, urges us to grasp that which lies beyond
words when he says: Symbols are to express ideas. When ideas have been understood, symbols should
be forgotten. Words are to interpret thought. When thoughts have been absorbed, words stop . . . Only
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
those who can take the fish and forget the net are worthy to seek the truth. (Chuang Tzu, in Chang,
1963: 43) Whitehead (1933) also recognized the inadequacies of language in communicating deeper
truths. He writes: Language delivers its evidence in three chapters, one on the meanings of words,
another on the meanings enshrined in grammatical form, and the third on the meanings beyond
individual words and beyond grammatical form, meanings miraculously revealed in great literature.
(Whitehead, 1933: 263) In consequence the more intuitively and aesthetically minded have opted to
privilege as more fundamental and profound that which lies beyond the ordinary grasp of language and
logic and which they deemed to be only approachable through a complex, spiralling form of oblique
utterances which merely point to or allude to an ultimate reality beyond the realms of intellection.
There is a general antipathy to overly direct and assertive language in everyday discourse and in place of
the insistence on straight-line clarity and distinctiveness in logical argumentation, there is a preference
for circumnavigating an issue, tossing out subtle hints that permit only a careful listener or observer to
surmise where the hidden or unspoken core of the question lies. Communication of thought is often
indirect, suggestive, and symbolic rather than descriptive and precise. This cautious indirectness, as a
deliberate intellectual strategy of communication, is exemplified by Holbein’s ‘ambassadors’. Yet,
despite the basic inadequacies of discourse to communicate deeper truths, there is little doubt that it
serves a purposeful role in our lives by transforming a difficult and infrangible reality into a resource at
our disposal. Through its strategy of differentiation and simple-location, identification and classification,
regularizing and routinization, discursive action works to translate the difficult and the intransigent, the
remote or resistant, the intractable or obdurate into a form that is more amenable to functional
deployment. This is the fundamental role of discourse as organization. Discourse is what constitutes our
social world. The etymological meaning of the term ‘discourse’ is ‘to run, to enter, to and fro’. In other
words, to discourse is to run to and fro and in that process create a path, a course, a pattern of
regularities out of which human existence can be made more fixed, secure and workable. So discourse is
first and fundamentally the organizing of social reality. From this perspective, the idea of a discourse
about organizations is an oxymoron. Discourse itself is a form of organization and, therefore,
organizational analysis is intrinsically discourse analysis. Organization should not be thought of as
something performed by pre-existing ‘agents’. Instead the agents themselves, as legitimized objects of
knowledge, must be understood as effects in themselves. The identity of the individual agent is
constructed in the very act of organizing. The tendency to construe individuals as somehow prior to or
free from organizational forces overlooks the ontological role of acts of organizing. From the point of
view emphasized by this paper, we ourselves are organized as we engage in acts of organizing. My
identity is established in the very act of differentiating and detaching myself (i.e. the process of
individuation) from my surroundings through material inscriptions and verbal utterances. If we begin to
think in these terms rather than the conventional preoccupations of organizational analysis, then
instead of thinking about a theory of organizations, it might be more meaningful, with this postrepresentational understanding, to think about a social theory of organizing which would be actually
practically useful and relevant to practising managers. It would help practitioners understand better
how they have come to develop deeply entrenched habits of thought which unnecessarily
circumscribed the possibilities for action. If discourse analysis helps us understand how societies
construct their social worlds, how the flux and flow of the world is arrested and regularized and then
translated into pragmatic use, how societal/global trends shift and so on, isn’t that eminently,
instrumentally usable?
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Indicts
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
AT: Diamond 95
Larry Diamond was the key figure in securitizing democratic peace theory. He pushed
the idea on policy-makers via his state supported think tanks, and forcefully promoted
aggressive US action to reshape the global order in our image, laying the ground work
for crusades like Iraq. And he did much of this with the very card they read as their
impact evidence.
Parmar, Professor of Government, 08
[Inderjeet, December, “The ‘Knowledge Politics’ of Democratic Peace Theory”,
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/about/themes/cip/publications/docum
ents/SSRC%20Think%20Tanks%20paper%20Sept%202008%20NEW.pdf, page 2-4, accessed 7/10/13]
It is clear that democratic
peace theory became influential only after the cold war – with the Clinton administration had been legitimized by elite policy-oriented knowledge institutions. In the process of
moving from academic theory to foreign policy, however, the ‘peace’ theory was ‘securitised’. This
claim is further evidenced below. Larry Diamond and the Clinton administration Larry Diamond, a liberal hawk at the
Hoover Institution and long-associated with the Reagan-founded and congressionally-funded
National Endowment for Democracy (NED), is a key figure in the migration of democratic peace
theory from academia to policy-makers during the late 1980s and early 1990s. A professor of sociology and political
and only after it
science at Stanford, he has been co-editor of NED’s Journal of Democracy since its founding in 1990, closely associated with the
Progressive Policy Institute of the Democratic Party, and contributor of an important study on democracy promotion to the Carnegie
Commission on the Prevention of Deadly Violence in 1995. He coordinates the democracy program of the Center on Democracy,
He is a leading
member of the Council of the Community of Democracies, an organisation founded in 2000 with
active support from the US State Department. Finally, Diamond served the Bush administration in
Iraq as a Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad (January to April 2004). He is
the author of numerous books including The Spirit of Democracy in which he champions the export of “liberation technology”. Larry
Diamond appears to have introduced democratic peace theory to the Democratic Party’s think tank, the
Progressive Policy Institute, and through that to the Clinton administration’s democratic enlargement and
engagement programme. Diamond wrote a Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) Policy Report, An
American Foreign Policy for Democracy, in July 1991, that enunciated the basic principles of democratic
peace theory: democracies do not fight wars against each other, terrorise each other, etc. More
positively, democracies are more reliable as trading partners, offer more stable “climates for
investment… honor international treaties…” He argues that the United States had entered a
“democratic moment”, a golden opportunity “to reshape the world we live in” (emphasis added) and
transform US public opinion to be less attached to global “order and stability” and more open to
reshaping national sovereignty to enable American interventions abroad to promote democracy
and freedom. Democracy in many nations, however, is “shallow, fragile, and in need of support… [to] cope with the painful and
potentially explosive dislocations that accompany the process of economic restructuring.” Evidently euphoric and optimistic
upon the collapse of Soviet socialism, Diamond emphasised America’s “scope to shape the
political character of the entire world for generations to come.” (Emphasis added). Linking idealism with
Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), within the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI).
realism, Diamond claims that America’s own security is protected by democratising other nations, providing a strategically compelling
reason to make democracy “the central focus, the defining feature, of our foreign policy…” Indeed, Diamond argues that democracy
promotion offered a viable alternative to President George HW Bush’s “New World Order”. The latter, Diamond argues in words that do not
look out of place in post-9-11 US foreign policy, “too often resembles the old obsession with order, stability, and ‘balance of power’ – often
at the expense of freedom and self-determination…” Diamond
urged the Democrats to “encourage a long-term
process of democratic change” in the Middle East. Finally, Diamond argued that the US should institutionalise
democracy promotion by taking the lead in forming a new “association of democratic nations… committed to acting in concert…”; “a ready
vehicle for mobilizing rapid collective action on behalf of democracy”. Calling
on party leaders to emulate their
erstwhile communist opponents, Diamond urged US Democrats to take seriously ideas and
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
symbols and to work and struggle relentlessly to achieve their aims: “we must likewise prepare
for a long struggle… Let us be aggressive about promoting what we believe in,” he exhorted.
Diamond introduced democratic peace theory to the Clinton administration, leading
to a securitized division of the world into autocratic and democratic zones. This
worldview imposed a duty to interfere in non-liberal/democratic states.
Parmar, Professor of Government, 08
[Inderjeet, December, “The ‘Knowledge Politics’ of Democratic Peace Theory”,
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/about/themes/cip/publications/docum
ents/SSRC%20Think%20Tanks%20paper%20Sept%202008%20NEW.pdf, page 2-4, accessed 7/10/13]
What Diamond had introduced was the democratic peace theory element to Clintonite thinking;
that seems to have been his unique contribution from his experience of democracy promotion in NED. The PPI think tank gave
him a platform to do this, thereby harnessing academic ideas and attaching them to political
leaders like Clinton. This is well demonstrated by a speech of Clinton’s in December 1991 important parts of which
appear to paraphrase Diamond’s PPI report. For example, Clinton noted President Bush’s attachment to “political
stability… over a coherent policy of promoting freedom, democracy and economic growth…” The
Democrats, he continued, are committed to “not to resist change, but to shape it…” Democracy
does not merely reflect our “deepest values; … [it] is vital to our national interests. Global
democracy means nations at peace with one another, open to one another’s ideas and one
another’s commerce.”60 But even more than Diamond, Clinton stressed the dangers of the “new
security environment” in which to build on “freedom’s victory in the Cold War,” which required restructuring US
military forces, democracy promotion and economic leadership. Clinton more sharply
“securitized” democratic peace theory; the world was now divided into democratic and
autocratic zones, the latter as new threat to the former. As Buger and Villumsen argue, “Creating the certainty of
democratic peace …increased the uncertainty about the relations between democratic and non-democratic states…. thinking in terms of a
Clinton’s national security adviser, Tony
Lake, noted in 1993, Americans should now “visualise our security mission as promoting the
enlargement of the ‘blue areas’ [of the world] of market democracies.”62 In the same securitising vein,
zone of democratic peace also created a vision of a ‘zone of turmoil’…”61 As
deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbot told an Oxford University audience that America operated in “The new geopolitics: defending
democracy in the post-cold war era.”63 Joseph Kruzel notes, democratic peace theory provided a basis for a proactive policy for the US
Department of Defense: rather
than preparing to defend against threats, it was better to make the
threat go away by turning a country into a democracy.”64 In 1993, the future Senior Director for Democracy at the
National Security Council, Morton Halperin, argued in an article in Larry Diamond’s journal, that “a true
world order requires that all constituent states be ruled by governments that both derive their
legitimacy from the consent of the people and are limited in their power,” i.e., American-style
regimes. Additionally, as international law already had moved to incorporate the idea that state legitimacy in the eyes of the international
community depended on “meeting a normative expectation of the community of states”, Halperin suggested that the global
community respond to any attempts to usurp democracy by adopting a “duty of interference in
the internal affairs of a state…”65 (Emphasis added).
Diamond merged democratic peace theory with aggressive democracy promotion,
thereby securitizing the concept of the democratic peace.
Parmar, Professor of Government, 08
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
[Inderjeet, December, “The ‘Knowledge Politics’ of Democratic Peace Theory”,
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/about/themes/cip/publications/docum
ents/SSRC%20Think%20Tanks%20paper%20Sept%202008%20NEW.pdf, page 2-4, accessed 7/10/13]
Diamond brought the two theories together through his work for the Carnegie Commission on
Preventing Deadly Conflict, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York (over $3
million). In December 1995, he published Promoting Democracy in the 1990s: Actors and
Instruments, Issues and Imperatives. Here Diamond added a second major contribution to an
increasingly democracy-promotion oriented foreign and national security policy by suggesting
that democratic transitions need not be hamstrung by “historical traditions, value systems, class
structures, and embedded power distributions that are profoundly hostile to democracy.”
Indeed, he went on, “there are numerous grounds to resist an emphasis on societal
preconditions. Democratization is triggered mainly by political factors,” a claim that was at
odds with his own work in the 1980s. Diamond now argued that the fluidity and volatility – “the
precarious balance of political and social forces in many newly democratic and transitional
countries” – provided “international actors… real scope to influence the course of political
development.” The precedents were there to see in Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, and
Japan.67 Diamond urged western governments to think more strategically about democracypromotion and to coordinate their activities. Using the language of security, he suggested that
democratic states prioritise democratic transitions in countries of “strategic importance… to
their own security and to regional and global security more generally…” In addition, he
suggested selecting countries for transition that could “serve as a model, a point of diffusion, a
‘beachhead’ for democratic development (and even a stabilizing anchor) within a region”
[emphasis added].
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
AT: Pinker and Goldstein
Pinker and Goldstein’s study is flawed- laundry list of reasons
Tott, Harvard Kennedy School, Public Policy Professor, 12
(Monica, author of Securitizing the Peace: Durable Settlement of Civil Wars and co-author of God’s
Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics, 2-2-12, Power and Policy, “The peace bubble,”
http://www.powerandpolicy.com/2012/02/02/the-peace-bubble/, accessed 7-2-12, LH)
Steven Pinker and Joshua Goldstein have produced impressive and important books on the decline of
violence and war across time and space. Whereas Pinker discusses violence in more general terms and
Goldstein limits his analysis to war, both scholars make the argument that violence has declined over
the past 100 years, but in particular since WWII. Pinker attributes this decline to the success of the
modern state and the imposition of order across multiple levels in society. Not only has war across
societies declined as a result, but so too has criminality and violence among individuals. Goldstein tracks
similar trends in war; but for him peacekeeping and the United Nations are critical in helping to usher in
this period of peace. The books offer us an optimistic view of contemporary history: both essentially
reduce to the claim that the world is getting more peaceful, and as a result, better. Sadly, I remain
unconvinced by their characterization (peace),and its implications (a better world), but even if they are
each right, I think what they have described is a bubble: a peace bubble. First, their analyses hinge
largely on data and trends in these data. In looking at their data however, a critical question emerges:
are they sampling on the extreme? In statistical terms this would amount to sampling bias. One of
their responses might be “what about the Thirty Years’ War?” which was responsible for killing one in
five Europeans. But this begs a different question: if it happened before, what is to assure us the trend
they have identified is uni-directional? Again, what if we are witnessing a kind of “peace bubble”? In
addition to this sampling bias and the possibility of extremes, could it be the case that the decline in
violence is not an artifact of the main sources of data? We have excellent data of the wars fought
among European powers, for instance, but even these are subject to considerable debate both on
empirical (how many Europeans were there and how many died in battle?) and definitional grounds
(do victims of war-induced famine count, were they counted by some scholars?). In more
contemporary terms, we still don’t know, for example, how many Chinese died during the Chinese
Revolution or Cultural Revolution, or even the more recent 1994 Rwandan genocide. Body counts
themselves are notoriously difficult to assess, yet each author relies (Pinker to a lesser extent) on these
data to support his respective arguments. This last point highlights the scholars’ understanding of
violence in only its most physical manifestation; its implications for death or life. Consider Pinker’s
discussion of bullying. Pinker makes the case that bullying has been one of the forms of violence
targeted for elimination, and I agree this is a good thing. But the subject of bullying opens the door to a
very penetrating question: what if it is possible to be more cruel yet less violent? Most people tend to
think of bullying as physical intimidation, which is easier to identify than the much more destructive
(and painful) psychological intimidation which often follows successful efforts to halt physical bullying.
When researchers looking at schoolyard bullying, for example, broadened the definition of
“aggression” to include psychological cruelty, they found that girls were just as “aggressive” as boys.
Moreover, internet bullying is psychologically and emotionally devastating and on the rise, but only
rarely results in any physical injury. So again, harm is increasing even as physical violence is declining.
Rape is yet another example: in most cases it does not result in a death, and because it is systematically
under-reported, it is possible that rape could increasing globally even as violence and war both decline
(Pinker admits he has weak data on the global front). Such a narrow indicator of violence may cause us
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
to overlook critical areas where harm is still done, just not physically. And Pinker is not alone here.
Goldstein too relies on physical harm—death—as his critical indicator. What about the psychological
impact of war (e.g. post traumatic distress disorder)? Due to advances in the organization of war from
medical technology (e.g. surgery, antibiotics) and mobility (e.g. the helicopter) and to the relatively
much smaller scale of wars nowadays, many soldiers who would have died in earlier wars have
survived physically (and not been counted), but been shattered emotionally and psychologically. Many
cannot work and cannot love. Consider brain injuries. According to one estimate, mortality from brain
injuries was 75 percent greater in Vietnam than in the most recent Iraq war. Although some soldiers
recover, many do not, suffering both the physical trauma and psychological stress of war far beyond
the battlefield.[1] In neither case would the harm sustained be counted in Pinker’s and Goldstein’s
analyses. Making the argument that “all that is true, but it still matters that deaths are fewer” is akin to
responding to a critic of the US war in Iraq by saying “aren’t you better off with Saddam Hussein dead?”
The point of each argument is that the world is getting better; whereas if we decouple physical
violence—and death—from harm, such a line of argumentation is called into question. More generally,
most people in the West believe violent death is a universal empirical indicator of harm (and so it is).
But what if the harm that is being done to people today cannot be captured by physical violence? This
is a major part of the fight between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews: the Arabs say a Jewish settlement
is, in and of itself, an act of violence, which then justifies a violent response (say, a suicide bomb). But in
this interaction the Israelis have had the easier argument, because they can (and do) claim that their
settlements are non-violent. We in the West have arrogated to ourselves the very definition of what
counts as violence and what does not, and this leaves us vulnerable to lethal blind spots when we
attempt to bargain with or coerce people who do not share our axiomatic connection of harm to death.
Consider how advances in technology make it possible to cause grave injury without killing, by say,
deliberately creating refugees. This raises the question of whether the number of peoples left
homeless by war has risen in proportion as the number of violent deaths has declined. If so, we would
have another example of decreasing violence masking increased harm. I say this to remind us all that
forced mass expulsion is considered a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions of 1948 and 1949, and to
remind us of Slobodan Milosevic’s strategy in Kosovo: rape and kill a few in order to cause the bulk of
the population to flee. Again, relatively few corpses would result, but the harm would be grave.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Studies Flawed
Their studies are false and use short observation periods
Weede, political scientist and professor at the University of Bonn, 84
[Erich, December 1984, “Democracy and War Involvement,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Volume:
28, p. 660, YGS]
Summarizing all of the evidence in Tables 2 and 3, findings for the ¶ entire 1960-1980 period, as well as
for the 1960-1974 subperiod, replicate ¶ Rummel's (1968) earlier conclusion that regime type and war
involvement are unrelated. By and large, the findings for the 1975-1980 ¶ subperiod replicate
Rummel's (1983a) more recent conclusion that democracies successfully stayed out of war in the late
1970s. Results for ¶ longer periods of observation deserve much more credibility than do ¶ those for
shorter periods. My analysis does not support the lawlike ¶ relationship claimed by Rummel (1983a: 52):
"The more libertarian a ¶ state, the less its foreign violence."Rummel's (1983a) finding that democracies tend to be involved in
¶ war less often than other states is entirely due to his period of ¶ observation. In the post-World War II
period, Americans, British, ¶ French, Belgians, Israelis, and Indians were fairly often involved in ¶
interstate or extrasystemic or colonial wars, while simultaneously ¶ enjoying reasonably good
democratic performance. In the late seventies, however, all of these democracies succeeded in avoiding involvement in interstate
wars, surpassing the Singer and Small (1972, 1982) ¶ casualty threshold, and most of them also succeeded in avoiding ¶ involvement in lesser
Although there are periods of ¶ observation where libertarianism or democratic performance
is nega-tively correlated with war involvement, such periods of observation ¶ have been short in
duration.
military conflicts.
Liberal perpetual peace is illusionary—lacks evidentiary support
Layne, IR theorist, 94
[Christopher, Autumn 1994, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace,” International Security,
Volume: 19, p. 48, YGS]
Democratic peace theory is dangerous in another respect, as well: it is an¶ integral component of a new (or
more correctly, recycled) outlook on international politics. It is now widely believed that the spread of
democracy and¶ economic interdependence have effected a "qualitative change" in international
politics, and that war and serious security competitions between or¶ among democratic great powers are now
impossible.147 There is therefore, it¶ is said, no need to worry about future great power challenges
from states¶ like Japan and Germany, or to worry about the relative distribution of power¶ between
the United States and those states, unless Japan or Germany were¶ to slide back into authoritarianism.143 The reason the United
States need not¶ be concerned with the great-power emergence of Japan and Germany is said¶ to be simple: they are democracies and
democracies do not fight democracies.¶ Modern-day
proponents of a liberal theory of international politics have¶
constructed an appealing vision of perpetual peace within a zone of democracy and prosperity. But
this "zone of peace" is a peace of illusions. There is¶ no evidence that democracy at the unit level
negates the structural effects of¶ anarchy at the level of the international political system. Similarly, there
is¶ no evidence that supports the sister theory: that economic interdependence¶ leads to peace. Both ideas have been around for a long time.
The fact that¶ they are so widely accepted as a basis for international relations theory shows¶ that for some scholars, "theories" are confirmed
by the number of real-world¶ tests that they fail. Proponents of liberal international relations theory may¶ contend, as Russett does, that liberal
approaches to international politics¶ have not failed, but rather that they have not been tried.149 But this is what¶ disappointed adherents of
ideological worldviews always say when belief is¶ overcome by reality.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Liberal peace theory is flawed—no causal relationship can be derived from studies
Scott, polsci professor @ the University of Florida, 8
[Kyle, “A Girardian Critique of the Liberal Peace Theory,” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and
Culture,” Volume: 15/16, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/contagion/v015/15.scott.html, p. 47-48,
accessed 7/10/13, YGS]
Even the staunchest supporters of the LDPT recognize that the causal link has yet to be uncovered.7
“Despite substantial variation and healthy debate over the specific causal mechanism linking
democracy and peace, there appears to be an emerging, if heady, consensus at least on the empirical
existence of a ‘democratic peace’ or an absence of war among democracies.”8 Without a causal
explanation, we cannot responsibly say that democracy causes peace, but only that war is absent
between democracies.9
Of course there are those who argue for a causal explanation, and these explanations fall into two,
though not mutually exclusive, categories: one says the democratic peace is a result of institutional
constraints, and the other says the peace is a result of democratic norms and culture.10 From an
institutional perspective, the system of checks and balances and the responsibility to an electorate
constrain decisions, making decisions slow. And because democracies perceive other democracies as
similarly constrained, they anticipate that leaders of other democracies will be more likely to deliberate
and not strike unexpectedly. Also, the institutions that characterize democracies lead to optimism about
the success of nonviolent resolutions.11 But the success of the institutional explanation partially rests
on the assumption of perception. This point is contested by Ido Oren, who states that nations do not
always perceive democracies as democratic.12 Moreover, the institutional perspective fails to account
for situations when institutional barriers are compromised, when wars against nondemocracies have
been initiated in a quick fashion, or when unpopular wars have been waged and sustained for lengthy
periods of time. Democratic institutions are treated as the panacea for preventing war, but this assumes
that democratic institutions function as theory dictates they should, and the assumption is not always
correct.
The second assumption that the institutional perspective is based upon is that the members of
democratic societies have certain norms that are naturally peaceable. This is also the second causal
explanation that some in the LDPT tradition use to explain the democratic peace. However, this
explanation, like the other, fails to satisfactorily account for why democracies go to war with
nondemocracies, or why they are just as war prone as nondemocracies. A peace-loving people ought
to be peace loving, and if they are not so in all situations, why not? The root of a democracy’s
animosity toward a certain group should [End Page 47] be focused upon, just as much as its peaceful
nature with regard to another group. If the causal mechanism associated with the LDPT cannot address
both scenarios, then the accuracy of the causal mechanism should be reexamined. Also, the basic
premise of the norms/culture argument should be reexamined. The basic premise is that democracies
share a respect for human rights, dignity, and equality. This premise obviously ignores the United
States’s treatment of Native Americans, slavery, institutionalized discrimination based upon race and
gender, and the popularity of violent movies, music, and video games.
The causal mechanisms typically associated with the LDPT fail to account for a number of anomalies
and rest upon premises that are tentative at best. This article looks to René Girard for a theory of
violence so that we can better understand why violence occurs and apply that theory to international
relations. It is only with a sound understanding of violence that one can hope to create peace.13
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Specifically, the Venezuela Crisis wasn’t resolved because of the peace theory, but
rather geopolitical realist concerns
Layne, IR theorist, 94
[Christopher, Autumn 1994, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace,” International Security,
Volume: 19, p. 26-28, YGS]
There is virtually no evidence that supports a democratic peace theory¶ explanation of the Venezuela
crisis's outcome. Although the crisis ended¶ before either London or Washington could make war-like
threats, both the¶ United States and Britain began planning militarily for a possible conflict.67¶ This
suggests that both British and American policymakers considered that¶ war, or at least the
preparation for it, was a legitimate component of their¶ diplomatic strategies.¶ It does not appear,
either, that public opinion affected policy on either side¶ of the Atlantic. In Britain, the Cleveland administration's
demands initially¶ were greeted with hostility. Nevertheless, even before January 1896, British¶ public opinion overwhelmingly favored a
peaceful settlement of the Anglo-¶ American crisis. There
is, however, no evidence in the historical record that¶ public
opinion had any effect on the Cabinet's January 11 decision to resolve¶ the crisis peacefully. Indeed,
during the Venezuela crisis, Britain's policy-¶ making elite had a different view of Anglo-American
relations than did the¶ British public. At the time of the Venezuela crisis there was still "an enormous¶ gulf"
between the advocates of an Anglo-American rapprochement based on¶ racial kinship "and the hard-headed
realism of the school of professional¶ politicians and strategists headed by Salisbury."68¶ On the American side of the
Atlantic, Cleveland's bellicose December 17¶ message elicited widespread public support. As Walter LaFeber notes, "Expansionist-minded
Americans heartily endorsed the President's message,¶ though most of them also fully shared his hopes that no war would result."69¶ However
the public's enthusiasm rather quickly subsided, and important¶ groups, especially the churches and some elements of the financial and¶
manufacturing sectors, recoiled at the prospect of an Anglo-American war.¶ Nevertheless, if war had occurred, the public would probably have
united¶ behind the Cleveland administration. American
public opinion viewed the¶ prospect of war with England
"not with enthusiasm but as, though regrettable, necessary if there were no other way of establishing the paramount¶ position of the
United States in the western hemisphere."70¶ Recent generations have come to regard the Anglo-American "special relationship" as an
immutable fact of international life. Indeed, in some ways¶ it is considered an archetype of relations between democratic states. The¶ "great
rapprochement" upon which the special relationship was built was¶ the epilogue to the Venezuelan crisis. But whatever Anglo-American
relations¶ arguably have become, the
impetus for the rapprochement between London¶ and Washington (like the
in geostrategic concerns and¶
not in the considerations that underlie democratic peace theory.71¶ By 1898, the effects of Britain's by then not-soimpetus for the settlement of the Venezuelan crisis¶ itself) was, as C.S. Campbell points out, rooted
splendid isolation were¶ being painfully felt, and London's overtures to Washington must be viewed¶ as part of the dramatic "end of isolation"
process of strategic and diplomatic¶ readjustment that London undertook after the Boer War.72 The British
did¶ not welcome the
rapid expansion of American power; rather they reconciled¶ themselves to something they could not
prevent and which, unlike the¶ German, Russian and French challenges, did not seem immediately threatening to vital British interests.
The Anglo-American rapprochement was¶ possible because on every issue in dispute between them,
London yielded¶ to Washington's demands. As Bourne dryly observes, "AH this was not¶ simply or even perhaps at all
significant of any special goodwill towards the¶ United States."73 Britain could not afford to make any more enemies,
and¶ least of all could London afford to incur the enmity of the United States,¶ with which the British
knew they could no longer compete geopolitically.¶ For London, the "special relationship" was a myth
devised "to enable Britain to withdraw gracefully" from those areas where British interests clashed
with Washington's, and its function was to make the "pill" of appeasing the United States "more
palatable to swallow."74¶ The outcome of the Venezuelan crisis is better explained by realism than by
democratic peace theory. Consistent with realist expectations, both Britain and the United States
began planning for war. Although, as democratic peace theory would predict, there was no war fever
in either Britain or the United States, there is no evidence that public opinion played any role in
London's decision-making process. It was London's decision to reverse its initially uncompromising
stance and instead seek an amicable diplomatic solution with Washington that allowed Britain and
the United States to avoid war. All available evidence supports the realist explanation that London made this decision solely for
strategic reasons.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
The peace theory is flawed—studies aren’t comprehensive and democratic détentes
increase the likelihood of war
Weede, political scientist and professor at the University of Bonn, 84
[Erich, December 1984, “Democracy and War Involvement,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Volume:
28, p. 650-653, YGS]
But the
consensus has been broken by one of its founding fathers, ¶ Rummel (1979: 292-293; 1983a). Reading Rummel's (1979)
joint freedom ¶ proposition claims that libertarian (democratic)
states do not go to war ¶ against one another. Even if this were true, the joint freedom proposition ¶
says little about war involvement of democratic states. It refers to the ¶ regime of their opponents
rather than to their own frequency of ¶ resorting to arms. But Rummel (1979: 292) added a freedom proposition
¶ which claims that "freedom inhibits violence." Rummel's elaboration of ¶ the freedom proposition, however, poses
some problems of interpretation. On the one hand, Rummel (1979: 292) argues: "The more ¶ libertarian a state,
the less it tends to be involved in violence." On the ¶ other hand, he argues on the very same page: "I
do not expect that there ¶ will be a correlation between libertarianism and the frequency of ¶
involvement in war or violence." This latter quote sounds as if Rummel ¶ were still part of the consensus he helped to create 15
years ago. ¶ Whatever Rummel's message was in 1979, in 1983 it is as clear as it ¶ was back in 1968, but it differs radically in substance. Now
Rummel ¶ (1983a: 55) writes that "we also would expect that the more libertarian ¶ states are, the less
they have wars. The data support this, significantly." ¶ If true, this would constitute good news about
the otherwise often ¶ dismal field of politics. If the freedom proposition were true, then a ¶ nation may reduce
the risk of getting involved in war by becoming more ¶ libertarian or democratic. For once, desirable means
would serve ¶ desirable ends. But there remain two kinds of doubts. First, how ¶ compelling is the evidence
that libertarian or democratic regimes are ¶ involved in war less often than other regimes? Second, how
convincing is ¶ the underlying theoretical argument? ¶ Before answering these questions, a conceivable objection against
War, ¶ Power, Peace was not too disturbing at first. His
my ¶ description of Rummel's (1979, 1983a) recent views has to be dealt with. ¶ Rummel's theorizing refers to libertarianism instead of
democracy and ¶ to the intensity of foreign conflict or violence instead of the frequency of ¶ war involvement. But the concepts of
libertarianism and democracy are ¶ fairly similar, as Rummel's (1983a: 27-28) description of libertarian ¶ states is one I could accept as a
definition of democracy: "'those ¶ emphasizing individual freedom and civil liberties and the rights ¶ associated with a competitive and open
election of leaders." Elsewhere Rummel extends his concepts of libertarianism and freedom to cover ecomonic [sic] freedom (free markets) as
well as political freedom. Still, ¶ democracy and libertarianism remain similar concepts. Moreover, ¶ Rummel (1983a: 55) himself maintains that
his freedom proposition is ¶ supported whether one applies the narrower, purely political definition ¶ or the wider definition of freedom that
includes economic freedom. ¶ Given that war is a rare and the most extreme form of foreign conflict ¶ and violence, the intensity of foreign
conflict and violence and the ¶ frequency of war involvement have to be related. Again, Rummel ¶ (1983a: 55) himself claims that his freedom
proposition is supported, ¶ whether one uses his foreign conflict intensity scale or war data only. ¶ Given Rummel's assertions, I feel entitled to
treat democracy and libertarianism, war involvement and foreign conflict involvement as closely ¶ related, if not equivalent, concepts. If,
however, my article induces ¶ Rummel to claim again that a negative correlation between libertarianism and the intensity of foreign conflict
need not imply a negative ¶ correlation between democracy and war involvement-as Rummel ¶ (1979: 292) did before-then it would have
served its purpose of ¶ defending yesterday's consensus on democracy and war involvement. ¶ But I would then find it difficult to imagine the
meaning and relevance of ¶ Rummel's freedom proposition.2 ¶ In
my view, Rummel's (1983a) new evidence seems fairly
weak. ¶ Although conflict data to support his joint-freedom proposition refer to ¶ various periods
between 1816 and 1980, conflict data to support his ¶ freedom proposition, which is the topic of this research
note, refer to ¶ 1976-1980 only. At most, Rummel's (1983a) new evidence seems to ¶ support the idea that
democracies were less often involved in war in the late seventies. But Rummel's (1968) old evidence
says that democracies ¶ were about as likely to become involved in war as were other regimes in ¶ the
late fifties. Rummel refers to a survey of the literature (Rummel ¶ 1979: 293),3 but its results seem ambiguous: There are 25 relevant
analyses, all but two of which are direct. Thirteen analyses ¶ support the proposition with 10 opposed; four are strongly for, six strongly ¶
opposed. The proportions change more in favor of the proposition when only ¶ important studies are considered, or when limited to those
which are not ¶ inconsistent with Model II distance-vector assumptions of field theory. Except for the last sentence of this quote, one might
well interpret it as ¶ supporting the absence of any relationship between democracy or ¶ libertarianism and violence. The reference to field
theory and Model II in ¶ the last sentence of the quote is disquieting. In my view, the simple issue of ¶ whether or not democracies tend to be
involved in war less often than ¶ other states should be answerable without the more difficult task of ¶ achieving a preliminary consensus on
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
field theory and Model II. Rummel's (1979: 293) survey
of the literature contradicts other ¶ attempts at
summarizing results (McGowan and Shapiro, 1973: 94; ¶ Russett and Starr, 1981: 204; Zinnes, 1980). Rummel's (1983a) recent ¶
empirical findings contradict his own earlier findings (Rummel, 1968). I ¶ find no explanation for these
contradictory results in Rummel's (1983a) ¶ more recent writing. Nor do I see any reason why the more
recent study ¶ should be regarded as superior to the older one. The conflict data base ¶ seems
regrettably weak, because of short periods of observation, in both ¶ studies. ¶ Theoretically, I always found
the argument fairly convincing that ¶ democratic governments are more concerned with the avoidance of war ¶
than are other governments. Such concern, however, may contribute ¶ little to peace. Although the
disinclination of the citizenry to pay for war ¶ with money, life, and limb puts pressure on democratic
governments to ¶ avoid war involvement, such pressure need not succeed. First, the very ¶ same citizenry that
objects to military action may on occasion simultaneously object to the concessions required for
maintaining peace. ¶ Second, even if citizen pressure on democratic government is devoid of ¶ such
internal contradictions, peace-loving peoples and democratic ¶ governments may try a policy of
appeasement, thereby projecting animage of weakness and indecision that invites exploitation by
more ¶ ruthless decision makers abroad and therefore possibly increasing the ¶ risk of war. Among
contemporaries, Podhoretz (1980, 1983) is an ¶ important spokesman for such worries. Moreover,
Rummel's (1976, ¶ 1979: 22) criticism of detente seems to be very close to Podhoretz's: Our foreign and
defense policies were the opposite of that which would preserve ¶ nuclear peace with freedom ... the
results showed the foreign policy of detente to be ¶ based on false premises about international
relations and conflict; and that this ¶ policy and associated military trends were in fact increasing the
likelihood of war. ¶ And time then seemed critical and still does. Rummel's (1983a: 55) recent empirical findings assert
that libertarianism reduces violence and that democracies are less likely to ¶ become involved in war.
Yet Rummel (1976, 1979) worries about ¶ detente increasing the risk of war, although detente
commanded ¶ considerable support among Western democracies for quite some time ¶ and still does
in many of them. How can the democratic penchant for ¶ dangerous policies and the expectation of
happy results be reconciled? ¶ In my view, the most elegant way to overcome the contradiction ¶ between
Rummel's (1968, 1983a) old and new findings, between ¶ Rummel's (1979: 293) and other readings of the evidence (McGowan ¶
and Shapiro, 1973: 94; Russett and Starr, 1981: 204; Zinnes, 1980), and ¶ between Rummel's (1983a) recent findings and his harsh criticism of ¶
policies that have been popular in many democracies and still are in ¶ some of them, is
simply to demonstrate that Rummel's (1983a)
recent ¶ findings constitute nothing more than an abberration from the close-to- ¶ zero relationship
between democracy and war involvement.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Authors Bias
Democratic peace theory has become influential because of its support by elite
knowledge networks- it has become securitized and fits into predetermined policy
orientations across the political spectrum, justifying aggression and regime change.
Parmar, Professor of Government, 08
[Inderjeet, December, “The ‘Knowledge Politics’ of Democratic Peace Theory”,
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/about/themes/cip/publications/docum
ents/SSRC%20Think%20Tanks%20paper%20Sept%202008%20NEW.pdf, page 2-4, accessed 7/10/13]
The influence of ideas on policymaking is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to pin down. As Don Abelson argues, policymaking is a
convoluted process; tracking ideas’ influence is inherently problematic as ideas cannot be contained, patented or locked away until ready for
deployment: they are in the air, subtly working their way in the media, the universities, the broadsheets and periodicals.14 Yet, ideas are also
mobilisable once developed into packaged policy devices, stressing the need for researching the extent to which policymakers draw on
academic studies to advance specific agendas.15 Many ideas may be in the air but few go beyond faddish adherence to become central to
peace theory became influential –
symbolically, instrumentally, and conceptually – because of certain key conditions:
circumstance, compatibility, and knowledge network power. Central to the process of the
theory’s rise to prominence is the power of elite knowledge networks, explored below, to mobilise
knowledge and to articulate it with the state and elite opinion. The influence of democratic peace
theory, then, may be discernable through the activities of key knowledge creation and
mobilisation agencies such as think tanks, policy-oriented university research institutes,
philanthropic foundations – such as Ford and Carnegie – interested in US foreign policy, and key
publications that circulate and cohere around key issues, questions and debates, various sub-sets
of America’s organic intellectuals.17 The influence of elite knowledge networks that mobilised
democratic peace theory may be recognised in a number of ways: conceptual and instrumental influence may be
discerned, for example, in evidence suggesting or showing changes to policymakers’ thinking and
actual policy innovation. To test the argument, this paper examines the uses of democratic peace theory by the Clinton
policymakers’ world-views.16 This paper, then, argues that democratic
administration, especially its promulgation of ‘democratic enlargement’ and, later, ‘democratic engagement’. It is argued here, however, that
democratic peace theory is compatible with most, if not all, of the major ideo-political tendencies
in elite political circles in the United States. Therefore, its influence may be seen in the activities
of liberal internationalists (Michael Doyle, Larry Diamond, the latter being close to the Clinton
administration and its think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute) but also neo-conservatives
(like Francis Fukuyama) and conservative nationalists like President George W. Bush and his secretary of
state, Condoleeza Rice. Symbolic influence – the use of an idea to justify predetermined policy
orientations – may be discerned in this case by the transformation or transmutation of an idea
into a policy or policies that are strongly at variance with the ultimate aims of the idea’s
originators. In this regard, it is clear that a ‘peace’ theory has been ‘securitised’, transmutated into a
theory that justifies military intervention and forcible regime change. An idea’s influence may also be
discerned by considering the degree to which it has become institutionalised; this will be explored by examining democratic peace theory’s
apparent embeddedness in democracy promotion institutions, offices and agencies, suggesting the likely continuing policy influence of the
theory.
Their sources are part of a cottage industry which has grown to empirically prove the
democratic peace theory- they rely solely on subjectively chosen criteria for
democracy and war.
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
[Kyle, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal
Representations of War and Peace”, http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf,
accessed 7/1/13]
Because democratic peace adherents are firmly rooted in the positivist tradition of international relations scholarship, providing
empirical proof of the democratic peace has become a cottage industry in many prominent
American universities and research centres. Vast databases have been constructed of historical dyadic relationships
between states of the world as well as detailed breakdowns of incidents of inter-state war. The conclusions reached are best
signified in the work of Bruce Russett who has argued that alleged wars between democracies
(most of which took place in the 19th century) do not meet ‘rigorous’ criteria for a democracy and/or for war.8
These criteria of course are those subjectively chosen by Russett. He defines a democracy as a system of government
with a voting franchise for a substantial fraction of citizens.9 War is defined by Russett as an interstate activity with one thousand battle
fatalities.10 Furthermore, Russett’s data claims to show that since the end of World War II, democratic dyads have not only been able to
avoid war, but are less likely to threaten to use force in the settlement of their disputes.11
Their authorship is self-serving—normally democratic states are deemed nondemocratic to avoid inconsistency
Layne, IR theorist, 94
[Christopher, Autumn 1994, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace,” International Security,
Volume: 19, p. 40-42, YGS]
WARS BETWEEN DEMOCRACIES: BIG EXCEPTIONS IN A SMALL-N WORLD. The¶ size of the N is an important question. If
the effective
universe of cases from¶ which democratic peace theory can be tested is a small N, the importance of ¶
exceptions to the rule that democracies do not fight each other is heightened.¶ Here, by their own
admissions, democratic peace theorists are on thin ice.¶ For example, referring specifically to the
classification of the War of 1812 as¶ one not involving two democracies, Bruce Russett acknowledges
that this¶ decision "may seem like a cheap and arbitrary escape" but asserts it is not.119¶ It is only
intellectual suppleness—the continual tinkering with definitions¶ and categories—that allows
democratic peace theorists to deny that democratic states have fought each other.120¶ An important
example of this is the War Between the States, which the¶ democratic peace theorists generally rule
out on the grounds that it was an¶ internal conflict within a state rather an international conflict
between sovereign states.121 Yet the events of 1861-65 seem especially relevant because¶ the theory is
based explicitly on the premise that the norms and culture that¶ operate within democracies are
externalized by them in their relations with¶ other democratic states.122 Democratic peace theory itself makes
relevant the issue of whether democratic norms and culture do, in fact, result in the¶ peaceful resolution of disputes within democracies. The
War Between the¶ States cuts to the heart of the democratic peace theory's causal logic: if¶ democratic
norms and culture fail to prevent the outbreak of civil war within¶ democracies, what reason is there to believe that they will prevent the out-¶
break of interstate wars between democracies?¶ In
the case of the Union and the Confederacy, the characteristics at
the¶ heart of democratic peace theory—the democratic ethos of respect for other¶ democracies, a
political culture that emphasizes the non-violent dispute resolution, the shared benefits of
cooperation, the restraining effect of open¶ debate and public opinion—failed conspicuously to assure
a peaceful result.¶ Indeed, if a democracy as tightly knit—politically, economically, culturally—¶ as the United States was in 1861 could
split into two warring successor states,¶ we should have little confidence that democracy will prevent great power¶ conflicts in an anarchic,
competitive, self-help realm like international politics.¶ An
even more important example is the issue of whether
Wilhelmine¶ Germany was a democracy. Even if World War I were the only example of¶ democracies
fighting each other, it would be so glaring an exception to¶ democratic peace theory as to render it
invalid. As even Michael Doyle¶ concedes, the question of whether Wilhelmine Germany was a
democracy¶ presents a "difficult case."123 Indeed, it is such a difficult case that, in a¶ footnote, Doyle
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
creates a new category in which to classify Wilhelmine Germany—that of a bifurcated democracy: pre1914 Germany was, he says,¶ democratic with respect to domestic politics but not in the realm of foreign¶ policy.124 Doyle does not consider
Imperial Germany to have been a democracy for foreign policy purposes because the executive was not responsible¶ to the Reichstag and,
consequently, the foreign policy making process remained, he argues, autocratic. In fact, however, with respect to foreign policy,
Wilhelmine Germany was¶ as democratic as France and Britain. In all three countries, aristocratic or¶ upper-middle-class
birth and independent wealth were prerequisites for service in the diplomatic corps and the key political staffs of the foreign office.125¶ In all
three countries, foreign policy was insulated from parliamentary control¶ and criticism because of the prevailing view that external affairs were
above¶ politics.
[N represents a number of cases under democratic peace theory study]
Liberal peace was built off the elitist knowledge creation of policy making institutions.
Be skeptical of their evidence- both sides of the political spectrum write to uphold the
system because of a political tendency to justify military intervention for peace.
Parmar, Professor of Government, 08
[Inderjeet, December, “The ‘Knowledge Politics’ of Democratic Peace Theory”,
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/about/themes/cip/publications/docum
ents/SSRC%20Think%20Tanks%20paper%20Sept%202008%20NEW.pdf, page 2-4, accessed 7/10/13,
chip]
The influence of ideas on policymaking is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to pin down. As Don
Abelson argues, policymaking is a convoluted process; tracking ideas’ influence is inherently
problematic as ideas cannot be contained, patented or locked away until ready for deployment: they
are in the air, subtly working their way in the media, the universities, the broadsheets and periodicals.14
Yet, ideas are also mobilisable once developed into packaged policy devices, stressing the need for
researching the extent to which policymakers draw on academic studies to advance specific agendas.15
Many ideas may be in the air but few go beyond faddish adherence to become central to policymakers’
world-views.16 This paper, then, argues that democratic peace theory became influential –
symbolically, instrumentally, and conceptually – because of certain key conditions: circumstance,
compatibility, and knowledge network power. Central to the process of the theory’s rise to
prominence is the power of elite knowledge networks, explored below, to mobilise knowledge and to
articulate it with the state and elite opinion. The influence of democratic peace theory, then, may be
discernable through the activities of key knowledge creation and mobilisation agencies such as think
tanks, policy-oriented university research institutes, philanthropic foundations – such as Ford and
Carnegie – interested in US foreign policy, and key publications that circulate and cohere around key
issues, questions and debates, various sub-sets of America’s organic intellectuals.17 The influence of
elite knowledge networks that mobilised democratic peace theory may be recognised in a number of
ways: conceptual and instrumental influence may be discerned, for example, in evidence suggesting or
showing changes to policymakers’ thinking and actual policy innovation. To test the argument, this
paper examines the uses of democratic peace theory by the Clinton administration, especially its
promulgation of ‘democratic enlargement’ and, later, ‘democratic engagement’. It is argued here,
however, that democratic peace theory is compatible with most, if not all, of the major ideo-political
tendencies in elite political circles in the United States. Therefore, its influence may be seen in the
activities of liberal internationalists (Michael Doyle, Larry Diamond, the latter being close to the Clinton
administration and its think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute) but also neo-conservatives (like
Francis Fukuyama) and conservative nationalists like President George W. Bush and his secretary of
state, Condoleeza Rice. Symbolic influence – the use of an idea to justify predetermined policy
orientations – may be discerned in this case by the transformation or transmutation of an idea into a
policy or policies that are strongly at variance with the ultimate aims of the idea’s originators. In this
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
regard, it is clear that a ‘peace’ theory has been ‘securitised’, transmutated into a theory that justifies
military intervention and forcible regime change. An idea’s influence may also be discerned by
considering the degree to which it has become institutionalised; this will be explored by examining
democratic peace theory’s apparent embeddedness in democracy promotion institutions, offices and
agencies, suggesting the likely continuing policy influence of the theory.
Democratization is just propaganda – self-interest is how geopolitics works
Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general, 08
Michael J. Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general. He served as Assistant
Commandant of the Marine Corps, 3-26-08, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 49th
ANNUAL CONVENTION, BRIDGING MULTIPLE DIVIDES, “Democracy and Democratization: The Problem
with Using the Democratic Peace Theory as a Principle of Foreign Policy”, P. 4-5,
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p253419_index.html,accessed 7-1-13, JF
The difficulty with these possibly laudable objectives was that the governments¶ were acting in the
economic and strategic self-interests. Whether the goal was for land for¶ a growing population, gold,
diamonds, oil, or the spread of one religion over another,¶ 4 In “First Great Triumph” Warren Zimmermann describes
how imperialist aspirations of prominent¶ political leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge
were justified by convincing¶ Americans that Spain was not really a friendly power. After the war with Spain,
many members of¶ Congress opposed any territorial gains by the United States. Lodge, Roosevelt and President McKinley¶ argued forcefully
about the necessity to spread the American way of life to “backwards” countries.¶ 5 Oren describes how the United States government of
Woodrow Wilson demonized the system of¶ government of Imperial Germany. Before the war, many looked upon Germany as having many
admirable¶ attributes but the efforts of Wilson’s supporters argued that instead of admiring the system of democratic¶ participation of the
German people electing their representatives in the Reichstag, that militaristic dictators¶ of the Kaiser’s government should be hated and
forcefully opposed.¶ 6 David M. Kennedy provides a detailed description of how Americans were encouraged to change their¶ views of the
Germans in preparation for war in his book “Over Here.”¶ 4¶ these
governments acted to advance their individual
strategic interests. The idea of¶ spreading democracy was usually a propaganda tool. Until the period after
World War II,¶ little real effort was expended to establish functional democratic forms of government.¶ The United States imposed a mostly
democratic constitution on Japan during the¶ occupation after the war. Germany formed its new constitution with an eye to the¶ response of
its occupiers. The Soviet Union imposed constitutions on the countries of¶ Eastern Europe that were consistent with its own security interests.
The United States¶ encouraged constitutions similar to its own in various countries in Europe, Asia and¶ South America. The United Kingdom
and France did the same thing in Africa and Asia¶ when they relinquished imperial control of various colonies.
All of these new¶
governments were expected to act in supporting the interests of their former, or current,¶ political
masters. When they did not behave in a supportive “democratic” character, there¶ were unexpected
consequences. The governments of Guatemala, Iran and¶ Czechoslovakia (twice) among innumerable
others, were overthrown. Others were¶ invaded by the leading powers, despite the democratic
election of governments that were¶ not to the liking of the leading powers. The United Nations, having been set
up to provide¶ for peaceful resolution of these conflicts, has been stymied in many instances by the veto¶ powers of the Security Council.
Philanthropic foundations engage in self-replicating and self-perpetuation in an
attempt to legitimize their knowledge and advocate self-serving policy
Parmar, Professor of Government, 08
[Inderjeet, December, “The ‘Knowledge Politics’ of Democratic Peace Theory”,
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/about/themes/cip/publications/docum
ents/SSRC%20Think%20Tanks%20paper%20Sept%202008%20NEW.pdf, page 2-4, accessed 7/10/13,
chip]
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Philanthropic foundations build networks for their own sake. Why? The answer may lie in the fact that
foundation networks produce results by virtue of merely being constructed (i.e., due to a range of
‘internal’ functions they perform); and secondly, because networks achieve ends other than those
publicly stated (their ‘external’ functions). Foundation networks – carefully crafted after extensive
internal discussion and external reviews by “excellent” and “respectable” individuals - create frames
of thought that govern and cohere the network; they generously finance spaces for the production
and legitimisation of particular types of knowledge; networks build careers and reputations; they
cohere and finance key scholars, policy-makers, universities, journals, professional societies and
associations, connecting scholars from the ‘core’ metropolitan centres with those in the ‘periphery’;
networks provide sources of employment for intellectuals within a system of “safe” ideas,
strengthening some ideas, combatting others and, merely through generating and disseminating ideas
and empirical research preventing, or at least making a lot less likely, “other thoughts”; networks
identify, nurture and develop pro-US hegemony elite cadres that back and benefit from neo-liberal
globalisation strategie s. Foundation networks are system-maintenance systems that, usually after a
sufficient period of patronage, self-perpetuate (as most organisations try to do). Their self perpetuation
becomes a vested interest of the networks’ key constituencies: universities, foreign affairs
departments, think tanks, professional societies, and so on. Networks produce legitimate scholars,
linked with legitimate ideas and policies endorsed or at least engaged with by legitimate organisations
such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, US Treasury, US Department of State, among
others. They help either to maintain the status quo or, more frequently, act as intra-systemic reformers,
i.e., identifiers of problems and solutions within a relatively narrow range of policy-oriented choices.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Democracy Promoting Think Tanks
Elite knowledge networks are incestuously connected to the apparatus of state
power- their think tank’s celebration of the supposed democratic peace is a
hegemonic project built to justify the extension of US power and marginalize those
who disagree.
Parmar, Professor of Government, 08
[Inderjeet, December, “The ‘Knowledge Politics’ of Democratic Peace Theory”,
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/about/themes/cip/publications/docum
ents/SSRC%20Think%20Tanks%20paper%20Sept%202008%20NEW.pdf, page 2-4, accessed 7/10/13]
To better understand knowledge networks, their overall development and modalities, and the political utilisation of their ideas and theories,
however, it is important to recognise the contexts within which they operate. In particular, there are five sets of separate but related
developments that influence and have been influenced by knowledge institutions: first, the fact that the United States is characterised by a
capitalist economy, the power and wealth of its global corporations (the source of a great deal of the funding and leadership of knowledge
institutions), and attendant economic and other inequalities; secondly, the
US is characterised by an “elitist
democracy” albeit with several important popular elements, which privileges certified expert knowledge from
recognised elite institutions (‘ivy league’ universities, elite think tanks and foundations) which,
even more significantly, favour ‘top-down’ strategies for development and reform; thirdly, the US is characterised
by the growth of a powerful federal state apparatus – national security state - over the course of the past century, which has increased demand
for expert knowledge in all areas, but with a general interest in the development of a particular kind of state and society that favours the
market; fourthly, America’s rise to globalism was built upon and influenced knowledge institutions, especially increasing demand for expert
knowledge of “foreign areas” or the “international”; and finally, catalytic events play a key role in opening space for new thinking to enter
the corridors of political power. Knowledge
institutions evolve and develop in the dynamic environments
created by the capitalist-democratic character of America’s political system and so on, due to their own
leaders’ predispositions, aspirations, ideologies and politics, and their ability to take advantage of policy opportunities in the wake of a
catalytic event. Their
own perceptions of what is desirable and possible for the United States in the
world make a major difference to how they behave and relate to political parties, interest groups, the
mass media, the federal government and its agencies, as well as to other knowledge institutions. Knowledge
production is deeply implicated in the organised knowledge and power structures of American
society. The processes of developing America’s national security state and global superpower
have transformed, and been influenced by, the university, philanthropic foundation and think
tank. These processes have placed at the centre of attention the significance of knowledge to power, scientific and social scientific alike.
As Christopher Simpson argues, social science is no less important than military technologies to American
power, interweaving the social scientist with the coercive state.22 Knowledge-makers are historymakers, according to Gramsci:23 they do not revere knowledge for its own sake but as a key component
of a hegemonic project – a master plan for economic prosperity, security, and political stability
underpinned by powerful ideas, morality and commonsense. History-makers build on firm politicaleconomic
foundations a structure of society that ‘works’ and which mobilises behind it a wide-ranging alliance – an historic bloc – comprising many
strata and classes in society. History-makers
build a consensus through struggling against opponents,
by marginalising those who fundamentally disagree
with their programmes. Knowledge networks, therefore, are fundamental to political and state power.24 By network, I am
referring to an empirically observable set of relationships that in the case of the major US
foundations, elite universities and think tanks – Ford, and Carnegie, for example, Harvard, and the
Council on Foreign Relations - have yielded many benefits to American hegemony promotion.
building alliances, making compromises and bargains, and
International or global knowledge network refers to “a system of coordinated research, disseminated and published results, study and often
graduate level teaching, intellectual exchange, and financing, across national boundaries.”25 Elite
frequently connected with the state.
knowledge networks are
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Their evidence has been produced from within a knowledge network which operates
as a gigantic academic circle-jerk. It is part of a self-perpetuating system of vested
interests which reinforce the legitimacy of their own ideas via employment within
universities and think tanks, and connections to political power.
Parmar, Professor of Government, 08
[Inderjeet, December, “The ‘Knowledge Politics’ of Democratic Peace Theory”,
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/about/themes/cip/publications/docum
ents/SSRC%20Think%20Tanks%20paper%20Sept%202008%20NEW.pdf, page 2-4, accessed 7/10/13]
Philanthropic foundations build networks for their own sake. Why? The answer may lie in the fact that foundation networks produce results
by virtue of merely being constructed (i.e., due to a range of ‘internal’ functions they perform); and secondly, because networks achieve ends
other than those publicly stated (their ‘external’ functions). Foundation
networks – carefully crafted after extensive internal
frames of thought that govern and
cohere the network; they generously finance spaces for the production and legitimisation of
particular types of knowledge; networks build careers and reputations; they cohere and finance
key scholars, policy-makers, universities, journals, professional societies and associations,
connecting scholars from the ‘core’ metropolitan centres with those in the ‘periphery’; networks
provide sources of employment for intellectuals within a system of “safe” ideas, strengthening
some ideas, combatting others and, merely through generating and disseminating ideas and
empirical research preventing, or at least making a lot less likely, “other thoughts”; networks
identify, nurture and develop pro-US hegemony elite cadres that back and benefit from neoliberal globalisation strategies. Foundation networks are system-maintenance systems that, usually
after a sufficient period of patronage, self-perpetuate (as most organisations try to do). Their selfperpetuation becomes a
vested interest of the networks’ key constituencies: universities, foreign affairs departments,
think tanks, professional societies, and so on. Networks produce legitimate scholars, linked with
legitimate ideas and policies endorsed or at least engaged with by legitimate organisations such
as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, US Treasury, US Department of State, among others. They help
either to maintain the status quo or, more frequently, act as intra-systemic reformers, i.e.,
identifiers of problems and solutions within a relatively narrow range of policy-oriented choices.
discussion and external reviews by “excellent” and “respectable” individuals - create
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
No definition of democracy
A nation cant base a foreign policy off democratic Peace theory because of a lack of a
stable definition of “democracy”
Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general, 08
Michael J. Williams, retired United States Marine Corps 4-star general. He served as Assistant
Commandant of the Marine Corps, 3-26-08, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 49th
ANNUAL CONVENTION, BRIDGING MULTIPLE DIVIDES, “Democracy and Democratization: The Problem
with Using the Democratic Peace Theory as a Principle of Foreign Policy”, P. 2-3,
http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p253419_index.html,accessed 7-1-13, JF
To base a foreign policy on the idea that a nation’s security can be enhanced by¶ creating democracies
in other countries is fallacious at best and dangerous in the extreme.¶ Since foreign policy consists of all
of the goals a nation’s officials seek to reach to¶ enhance the nation’s position in the world, the nature
of other governments tend to be¶ secondary concerns. As noted by Henry Kissinger, “Western-style democracy¶
presupposes a consensus that sets limits on partisanship.”1¶ The problem with this thesis is not that democratic
institutions do not encourage¶ nonmilitary resolution of conflicts, but rather a failure to understand
what democracy¶ actually is. Karl Popper wrote that democracy is a system whereby governments can be¶ changed peacefully.2
Robert Dahl defined democracy as a system in which the people¶ participate in the selection of their political leaders. Both definitions
are incomplete. The¶ lack of a generally recognized definition of democracy has led to false lessons
and¶ disastrous policy choices by political leaders in many states. Also, different political¶ leaders have
often simply redefined which countries were democracies when it was¶ convenient. During the SpanishAmerican War members of the United States government¶ persuaded themselves, for better or worse, that the government in Madrid was not¶
democratic.3 For the Democratic Peace Theory to be a legitimate tool of political theory¶ and a useful tool in foreign policy, we must
democracy has been used by many countries to justify
policies to¶ advance strategic interests and to ensure popular support among their domestic ¶
populations. I will conclude with a broad outline for a working definition of democracy¶ while illustrating why democratization
cannot be used as a foundation for foreign policy¶ actions. Without a good definition of democracy,
policy makers of the 21st century cannot¶ hope to achieve peace and the Democratic Peace Theory is
an empty hope.
understand what democracy really is. This¶ paper discusses how
It’s impossible to define democracy and war – cultural shifts in its meaning means it’s
impossible to analyze
Barkawi and Laffey, Associate Professor in the Department of Politics - New School for
Social Research, 99
[Tarak, Mark, is lecturer in international relations, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London, “The Imperial Peace: Democracy, Force, and Globalization,
http://ejt.sagepub.eom/cgi/content/abstract/5/4/403, date accessed: 07/01/13, LV]
The claim that the democratic peace is a transhistorical phenomenon implies that the meanings of
‘democracy’ and ‘war’ can be fixed. If the terms enabling this claim are unstable, the notion that
across time 'democratic' states do not 'war' with one another is undermined, as what such states are
and the forms of violent conflict they engage in change.' This is no quibble about the meaning of words — as Macpherson
noted, 'people's beliefs about a political system are not something outside it, they are part of it' (1977: 6; cf.
Rummel, 1997: 12, on ‘x-ocracy'). What a political system is depends in part on people's beliefs about it. As
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
those beliefs and the discourses that make them possible change, the political systems they are part
of change too. Shifts in discourse — in the meaning of 'democracy' and 'war' — both express and
participate in shifts in social relations and practices (Laffcy and Weldes, 1997).¶ Democracy and war arc nor
the same thing in all times and places, nor do they have fixed relations to other social institutions and
processes. Democracy is a contested concept — adopting a fixed, procedural definition renders
analysis insensitive to the ways in which democracy is shaped by processes of social and political
change (Held, 1987; Zolo, 1992). War too has changed over time — adopting a fixed, quantitative definition
of war means that analysis is insensitive to transformations in the nature and meaning of war, or to
historically evolving forms of militarism and their impact on democracy (Shaw, 1988, 1991; van Creveld, 1991).
Analysis of relations between democracy and war necessitates attention to their historical location and to their embeddedness in particular
social contexts.¶ The mutual embeddedness of social and conceptual change raises the question of the appropriate social context for analysis of
the international relations of democracy and war. For the democratic peace debates, the relevant context is relations among sovereign
territorial states in an anarchic international system (e.g. Doyle, 1996). The basic unit of analysis is the territorial and sovereign state. There is
little or no attention to globalization, either as the relevant context for the phenomenon under investigation or as the source of potential
explanations of it (but see Huntington, 1991). Ahistorical and state-centric definitions of democracy and war reinforce this blindness to
processes of global social change. This is a significant oversight. The
processes of social change responsible for and
bound up with the changing nature of democracy and war are not internal to nation-states — they are
global processes that transform both the nature of the units in the international system and the
relations between them (e.g. Ruggie, 1993; cf. Panitch, 1996). Indeed, the very notion of a democratic peace depends on the prior
extension of democratic practices across sovereign spaces. We therefore locate the social context of the 'zone of peace' in the core in processes
of globalization.¶
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
AT: Ojakangas (Biopower impact defense)
Ojakangas is wrong—governmentality’s care for all living causes adjudication of life
and death
Dillon, Professor of Politics and International Relations, 5
[Michael, May, Foucault Studies, No. 2, pp. 37-46, “Response to Ojakangas: “Cared to Death: The
Biopoliticised Time of Your Life,”]
The key point of dispute with Ojakangas concerns the self-immolating logic of biopolitics. “Not bare
life that is exposed to an unconditional threat of death,” he says in the introduction to his paper, “but
the care of ‘all living’ is the foundation of biopower.” (emphasis in the original). Ojakangas says:
“Foucault’s biopower has nothing to do with that [Agamben] kind of bare life.” I agree. Foucault’s
biopolitics concerns an historically biologised life whose biologisation continues to mutate as the life
sciences themselves offer changing interpretations and technical determinations of life. This
biologised life of biopolitics nonetheless also raises the stake for Foucault of a life that is not a biologised
life. So it does for Agamben, but differently and in a different way.24 For Foucault, the biologised life of
biopolitics also raises the issue of a life threatened in supremely violent and novel ways. So it does for
Agamben, but again differently and for the same complex of reasons. 25In contesting Agamben in the
ways that he does, Ojakangas marks an important difference, then, between Foucault and Agamben.
That done, perhaps the difference needs however to be both marked differently and interrogated
differently. I have argued that there is a certain betrayal in the way Agamben reworks Foucault. There is
however much more going on in this ‘betrayal’ than misconstruction and misinterpretation. There is a
value in it. Exploring that value requires another ethic of reading in addition to that of the exegesis
required to mark it out. For Agamben’s loathing of biopolitics is I think more ‘true’ to the burgeoning
suspicion and fear that progressively marked Foucault’s reflections on it than Ojakangas’ account can
give credit for, since he concentrates on providing the exegetical audit required to mark it out rather
than evaluate it. In posing an intrinsic and unique threat to life through the very ways in which it
promotes, protects and invests life, ‘care for all living’ threatens life in its own distinctive ways.
Massacres have become vital. The threshold of modernity is reached when the life of the species is
wagered on its own (bio) political strategies. Biopolitics must and does recuperate the death function.
It does teach us how to punish and who to kill.26 Power over life must adjudicate punishment and
death as it distributes live across terrains of value that the life sciences constantly revise in the cause
of life’s very promotion. It has to. That is also why we now have a biopolitics gone geopolitically global
in humanitarian wars of intervention and martial doctrines of virtuous war.27 Here, also, is the reason
why the modernising developmental politics of biopolitics go racist: “So you can understand the
importance – I almost said the vital importance – of racism to such an exercise of power.”28 In racism,
Foucault insists: “We are dealing with a mechanism that allows biopower to work.”29 But: “The
specificity of modern racism, or what gives it its specificity, is not bound up with mentalities, ideologies
or the lies of power. It is bound up with the techniques of power, with the technology of power.”30
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
2NC Links/Impacts/Alt
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Links
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Topic Link
Economic engagement is rooted in liberal international relations—it attempts to
secure order through democratization and regional economic integration
Hurrell, professor of international relations, 98
[Andrew, July, International Affairs, Volume 74, Issue 3, “Security in Latin America”,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2624967, page 529-530, accessed 7/10/13, VJ]
The second assumption, which also reflects a deep-rooted strand of liberal thinking on international
relations, is that economic liberalization and regional integration feed naturally and positively into the
creation of a stable and secure regional order. In contrast to the strong claims of democratic peace
theory, the links between economic interdependence and peace have always been more elusive and
difficult either to demonstrate or to refute with any precision. The argument here is that, while there
are certainly cases, most notably within Mercosur and the Southern Cone, where economic integration
appears to have reinforced rapprochement between erstwhile rivals and assisted the creation of a more
stable regional environment, at the same time successful economic regionalization can also be a
significant potential problem for regional order and a source of negative security externalities which,
if unmanaged, are likely to become more serious. The third assumption is that the agenda of regional
security should be broadened to include issues such as drug trafficking, drug-related violence and
criminality, migration and refugees, environmental degradation, and worsening public order in the face
of different forms of internal violence. It is certainly the case that the most serious security problems
and threats to regional order are domestic and transnational in nature. And yet the increasingly
pervasive rhetoric of the new security agenda disguises or even obscures many complex and
contested issues. Divergent understandings of the meaning, nature and implications of the new security
agenda have important policy implications and are likely to impede effective regional responses. Since
the end of the Cold War regional order and security have increasingly come to be defined in terms of
the collective defence of democracy and the promotion of liberal economic reform and regional
integration. These processes will, it is hoped, provide the foundations for the creation of a stronger
sense of regional community and the establishment of a set of political structures within which specific
security threats, both traditional (e.g. old-style border conflicts) and non-traditional (e.g. the
privatization of violence, drugs, migration) can be tackled.2 I do not argue here that this liberal
orthodoxy is wholly wrong. But I do suggest that it needs to be subjected to a much more critical
analysis than has been common hitherto.
Engagement is a form of liberal peacebuilding that institutionalizes peace
Richmond, Professor of International Relations, 9
[Oliver, October 20th, “Becoming Liberal, Unbecoming Liberalism The Everyday, Empathy, and PostLiberal Peacebuilding”, http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/intrel/media/becoming_liberal.pdf, page 5-7,
accessed 7/10/13, VJ]
The standard policy response is to say. here are the institutions, including democracy, human rights,
rule of law. free markets, development, and the liberal economy, and this will eventually engage the
everyday- if security can be provided first. The top-down will trickle down to the bottom, and the
bottom up will then engage in a democratic process, which will bring to life a dormant a social
contract in classic liberal fashion. Then there will come into existence a tightly bound built liberal
state. Yet. The main conceptual and practical blockage in the experience of the last fifteen years or so
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
of peacebuilding has been precisely that the engagement with the everyday of this nascent liberal
state has been marginalised to the extent that the liberal state can never come into being. If liberal
peacebuilding is to create a liberal state which has to have a social contract, the governors have to be
bound to the governed, the governed have to be represented, and they give up some of their lights in
order for resources to be redistributed by the state. This framework also has to provide the everyday
resources that local communities, peoples, groups, and individuals require in order to play their role
in the liberal state- their democratic role, respecting human rights, protected by the rule of law.
engaging in the free markets, in neoliberal reforms development and so on. It is at this everyday level
that liberal peacebuilding has been least successful, but also more hopefully where a local-liberal hybrid
might be more plausible. First conceptual and practical ways of overcoming this blind spot are required.
There is a general and easy assumption that the local and the everyday follows on automatically from
the institutional: this needs to be investigated and opened up. I suggest the development of an
approach I call ;eirenism\ Eirenism. as I am trying to constitute it is a method of analysis of theory, of
policy, and of methodology, which involves asking the question, what does a particular theory, concept,
method, and policy contribute to an everyday form of peace, locally contextualised and not merely seen
as a negative peace between states. This is drawn from the Greek word for peace (eirene) and also from
the implications of the work of a body of thinkers who have referred to it. including Erasmus.19 Because
of such a noble intellectual heritage it is very perplexing as to why liberal peacebuilding has taken the
course it has. and that such approaches have not yet become more mainstream. This means asking
what type of peace are we reproducing in our peacebuilding discourse and praxis and what does this
mean for the everyday, for the local? So this my conceptual packaging through which one can challenge
a policymaker, official, academic or a student who is talking about security, democratization, or
institutionalization, or any other aspect of peacebuilding to examine the consequences of their praxis
for peace, what type of peace is produced, and what kind of impact it has on the ground.. This is also a
way of producing safeguards against another eighteen years of intellectual and policy development
which does not really engage with the local, identity, with hybridity. with jobs, with welfare, and
other vital social, cultural or economic dynamics that are not on the current liberal peace agenda.
Critical scholars have long noted such strategies and their absence in discussions about the liberal
peace." This does not necessarily mean that this is a call for the replacement of the liberal peace, which
after all is relevant to its own "local" at least. It means the introduction of modifications to the way its
framework engages with non-liberal others, or with other contexts, to introduce subtleties and
sensitivities, to bring back the local voices which are supposed to be a part of the social contract upon
which the liberal state is built. This will show that those voices are not only important but are legitimate.
The state cannot be legitimate without those voices being present and without their views being part
not just of a democratic process but also a social and economic discussion of what the state is there
for. what type of peace it produces locally, regionally and internationally This means the emergence of
some type of liberal local hybrid, which can act as the focus for peacebuilding (note, not just liberal
peacebuilding).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Democracy
The aff perpetuates the theory that democracy can do no harm—it engages in
violence through non-democratic third parties and victimizes non-democracies—only
the alternative is able to realize change
Scott, polsci professor @ the University of Florida, 8
[Kyle, “A Girardian Critique of the Liberal Peace Theory,” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and
Culture,” Volume: 15/16, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/contagion/v015/15.scott.html, p. 52-53,
accessed 7/10/13, YGS]
Once mimetic desire has turned into mimetic rivalry and the actualization¶ of violence between M
and S is imminent, the violent tendencies of M and S can¶ be redirected onto a scapegoat (the
scapegoat mechanism).37 Through scapegoating,¶ a community38 succeeds in organizing and directing
violence away¶ from itself. The community attributes the cause and the resolution of the crisis¶ to the
surrogate victim (scapegoat): this is the first lie.39 It is called the first lie¶ because the scapegoat is not
the true source of violence, nor will its eradication¶ provide a lasting solution. The first lie is followed
by incontestable claims about¶ the surrogate victim, claims that are advanced in order to perpetuate
the first¶ lie. In most instances, an incontestable claim centers on the fantastic abilities¶ of the
surrogate victim to create a crisis, and through its destruction, it brings¶ about peace.¶ While
somewhat random, the selection of a scapegoat is generally the selection¶ of someone or something
easily identifiable by the group as being different.¶ For example, in literature, this person may have
some birth defect. In an international¶ conflict, it may be a country characterized by a different
ideology or religious¶ allegiance. Whatever the case may be, the scapegoat receives the violence;¶ the
collective violence against the scapegoat relieves the tension in the relationship¶ between the subject
and the model.40 In this way, the scapegoat is able to¶ bring about social cohesion. Interestingly, the
cohesion and peace that is brought¶ about through the attack on the scapegoat is not lost on the
community. The¶ scapegoat mechanism is understood by the community as having brought about¶ a
profound change, in that fighting the scapegoat has brought peaceful order¶ instead of what was
once violent disorder. This is known as double-attribution.41¶ The community sees the scapegoat as the
origin of violence and the source of¶ peace. The scapegoat’s existence is the reason why violence and
disorder exist,¶ and through its destruction, peace is restored. For Girard, double-attribution¶ impedes
our ability to understand the true source of violence. While the community¶ is not aware of the
psychology at play, it does recognize that peace can¶ be achieved by attacking the scapegoat.42
“What the mob fails to understand is¶ (1) the source of the crisis that led to the violence, and (2) the
source of the peace¶ resulting from the violence. The mob naturally interprets that the victim was¶
the source of disorder and the resulting peace, although both of those factors¶ originate with the
mob.”43Therefore, what began in mimesis is resolved through mimesis, with one¶ person identifying
the scapegoat followed by another and then another until the¶ whole group is able to victimize the
scapegoat and accuse the scapegoat of being¶ the source of the conflict. The scapegoat mechanism is
problematic in that it¶ never allows the group to see the mimetic mechanism at work, and it therefore¶
covers up the true source of violence and distances the group from discovering¶ the true source of
peace.44 The search by society for the true origin of violence¶ is sidetracked by its misattribution to
the scapegoat of the source of violence¶ and peace. “We know already that the principle of mimetic
desire, its rivalries,¶ and the internal divisions it creates are identical with the equally mimetic principle¶
that unifies the society: the scapegoat.”45 But this is not an inescapable¶ cycle, since “once the basic
mechanism is revealed, the scapegoat mechanism,¶ that expulsion of violence by violence, is
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
rendered useless by the revelation.”46¶ So while the scapegoat makes it more difficult to understand
the true source of¶ violence, we can end its effect by exposing the scapegoat for what it is.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Nonliberal other—Reps
The aff embraces a liberal peace that naturalizes a dichotomy between the self and
other—nonliberal state actors are deemed as inferior, justifying conquest and
imperialism
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
[Kyle, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal
Representations of War and Peace”, http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf,
accessed 7/1/13, VJ]
According to Doty, the hegemonic dimension of global politics is inextricably linked to
representational practices, as hegemonic practices, are those which seek to create a fixedness of
meaning (in identity) that ultimately is impossible.15 What then are the hegemonic representational
practices of democratic peace theory? Doty has divided practices of representation into seven crucial
elements which help to produce and reproduce difference: nodal points, naturalization, classification,
surveillance, negation, positioning, and the logic of difference. These will each be explored below in
relation to democratic peace theory and its two constitutive concepts, ‘democracy’ and ‘war’.16 As a
representational practice, democratic peace theory needs nodal points around which to fix meaning
and establish positions to make predication possible.17 In other words, nodal points help to affirm the
identity of the ‘self’ in relation to the ‘other’, while negating the identity of the ‘other’ in relation to
the ‘self’.18 Two nodal points are of significance for democratic peace theory. First is the conception
of democracy that is common to democratic peace theory discussions. It emphasizes procedural rather
than substantive characteristics including elections and constitutions. When substantive characteristics
are discussed, the focus is on the negative freedoms of early liberal thought and first generation
human rights (e.g., freedom of religion, freedom from arbitrary authority, freedom of opportunity).
Most importantly, the conception of democracy being used as a nodal point is inherently an American
conception. It does not reflect how democracy is practiced in other states, and these differences in
practice tend to be ignored in the literature unless the practice is considered ‘illiberal’.19 Thus, when
Harvey Starr asks ‘how does one separate doves (unlikely to use force) and non-doves’ in foreign
relations, he responds by arguing that there is no reliable method other than dividing states on the basis
of whether they are a liberal democracy (i.e., American/Western) or not (i.e., non-American/nonWestern).20 The second nodal point around which the democratic peace is anchored is a conception
of war. In democratic peace theory, war is strictly an inter-state exercise.21 Intra-state warfare does
not appear on the democratic peace theory radar screen.22 Therefore, the use of force against
domestic populations (e.g., the American ‘War on Drugs’) or collective groups not recognized as state
actors (e.g., the Canadian Armed Forces versus Mohawk warriors at Oka, Quebec) are not problematic
to the mainstream idea of a democratic peace. In addition, democratic peace theory conceptions only
recognize formal declarations of war. As Tarek Barkawi and Mark Laffey argue: US covert action to
overthrow Third World elected governments shows that force is often used by democracies against
the extension of democracy. It is not seen as invalidating the democratic peace because the US did not
use its national military forces openly, but instead relied on clients, mercenaries, and covert
operatives. In this way, sovereign juridical conceptions obscure the actual constitution of force,
through imperial advice and support, and its use in projects of informal empire.23 Moreover, because
war is typically defined in the democratic peace theory literature by the dictates of the Correlates of
War (CoW) database (which requires 1000 battle deaths), many possible instances of war (and definite
uses of force) such as the US invasion of Grenada can be easily ignored. It is also important to note that
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
democratic peace theory perceives war as the physical use of force for the acquisition/maintenance of a
strategic possession.24 Therefore attacks against ideology, religion, identity, and culture that have
typically been directed against minority and indigenous actors are not acknowledged. Naturalization
is a powerful aspect of the representational aspects of democratic peace theory by making certain
presuppositions beyond the realm of legitimate inquiry. In other words, democratic peace theory has
created background knowledge that is taken as true which entails an implicit theorization of how the
world works and the characteristics of all its inhabitants.25 First, liberal democracies are naturalized
so that they can be objectively differentiated from non-liberal/democracies.26 Second, the fact that
there is a relationship between the type of domestic political system and state character is naturalized.
More to the point though, the framework of this relationship shapes our thinking to naturally view
liberal democracies as predisposed towards peaceful interactions with each other and inherently
trustworthy within their relationships with other liberal democratic states. Therefore, liberal
democracies (read Western states) are peaceful towards all states except those who are ‘objectively’
determined to be non-liberal/democratic regimes.27 The use of force against these types of states is
justified because nonliberal/ democratic states are aggressive towards all states and completely
untrustworthy. Therefore, these states are not legitimate global actors. Third, and perhaps most
disturbingly, democratic peace theory naturalizes peace as an aberration in international relations
that must be explained rather than seeing ‘zones of peace’ as natural entities and war as the deviant
circumstance. The irony here is that even the democratic tradition within mainstream international
relations has a Hobbesian impulse which trumps its Lockean counterpart. According to Doty, techniques
of classification serve to reinforce that which has been naturalized by placing things into categories in
which they ‘naturally’ belong, often through the construction of stereotypes which facilitate quick and
easy differentiation/assimilation.28 Therefore, the creation of classification categories which
distinguish between liberal democracy and non-liberal democracy as well as war and peace by their
‘natural’ characteristics are not merely tools designed to make the analysis of complex phenomena
easier, but also serve deeper ontological purposes. It is of little wonder, as Doty contends, that these
classifications are often hierarchical in nature with liberal democratic states at the top of scale and
other states in descending order depending on how many liberal democratic characteristics they are
perceived to exhibit.29 Thus states that emphasize the political and civil rights of liberal thought rank
higher than those who emphasize equally important social and economic rights. As a part of
representational practices, surveillance operates to make subjects known and visible objects of
disciplinary power.30 From a Foucaultian perspective, procedures of observation and examination
enable states to be ‘known’ as democratic or non-democratic, placed within the appropriate
classificatory scheme, and acted upon in a prudent manner.31 Therefore, other states are monitored by
pro-democratic peace academic and policy-making circles to gauge their levels of liberal democracy.32
Furthermore, intensive case studies in democratic peace theory research enable ‘historical’
surveillance of the liberal democratic nature of other states.33 Negation is another fundamental
aspect of representational practices. In the case of democratic peace theory, negation focuses on
erasing the histories of non-Western regions that create ‘spaces’ that are later filled by the West
through processes of facilitating ‘democratization’. Thus, the democratization crusade is viewed as a
mission of “deliverance and salvation rather than conquest and exploitation”.34 Barkawi and Laffey
wisely remind their readers that: …it is forgotten that democracy became one of the major organizing
principles of core states during the creation of a global system of empires, forged and maintained by
colonial wars. Imperial power was pitted against local communities and peoples defending or seeking
forms of rule often more democratic than those imposed on them.35 It is these silences that help to
maintain Western national identities as ‘democratic, civilized, and enlightened’, while at the same
time, reaffirming the corresponding ontology of a naturally hierarchical international system based on
these ‘objectively’ definable qualities.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Civil+military action
The aff conflates civil and military action—global liberal peace creates interventionism
that recreates its problems and ignores local politics and culture
Dillon and Reid, Professors of Politics and International Relations, 2K
[Michael, Julian, Jan-March, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 25, Issue 1, “Global Governance,
Liberal Peace, and Complex Emergency”, accessed 6/30/13, VJ]
Complex emergencies are intimately related to the liberal peace of global governance.[ 1] They are
said to occur at the boundaries of liberal peace, where that regime of power encounters institutions,
norms, and practices that violently differ from its own. Global liberal governance does not, however,
simply encounter other so-called rogue states--such as Iraq, Libya, Serbia, or Iran--at the frontiers of
the peace that it celebrates. There has been a widely acknowledged weakening and dissolution of the
state form in those regions of Africa and Eurasia where complex emergencies are said to arise. That is
among the reasons why liberal peace encounters what it calls "complex emergencies" there. Here,
liberal peace finds itself deeply implicated in a terrain of disorder in which some states are powerful,
some states are in radical dissolution, traditional societies are collapsing and civil conflict is endemic,
where international corporations and criminal cartels are also deeply involved, and where
international organizations and nongovernmental organizations are inextricably committed as well.
The authors of this article prefer to call these circumstances "emerging political complexes," because
they are comprised of dynamic power relations that have long, often convoluted, and poorly
understood histories that are social and cultural as well as political and economic and that are
simultaneously undergoing significant reformulation and change. The term complex emergency tends
to elide these dynamics, often simplifying the vexed political character of them. It does so typically by
masking the complex implication of global liberal governance in them. The violent conflicts associated
with such emerging political complexes are not simply the persistent recurrence, as so many
contemporary analysts are inclined to argue, of fixed and irresolvable historical hatreds. They are very
much a function of the ways in which societies in dissolution, since they are at the turbulent
confluence of local and global dynamics excited by the diverse military, political, and economic practices
of global liberal governance itself, are in consequence thereby subject to violent disorder and change.
It is that change that engenders emerging political complexes. While radically reformulating old
identity myths and inventing new ones is a typical feature of such complexes, so giving the appearance
of unchanging historical form, these are devices by which political and economic forces are mobilized
everywhere in the face of change. That is why they are also an active part of the political processes by
which emerging political complexes coalesce. It is however quite simplistic to think of them as peculiar
to those regions where complex emergencies are said to occur or the mere recurrence of unchanging
historical truths there. These practices are part of the common currency of political mobilization in the
domain of liberal peace as well. It therefore seems obvious that the radical and continuous
transformation of societies that global liberal governance so assiduously seeks must constitute a
significant contribution to the very violence that it equally also deplores. The disorder of emerging
political complexes is of course fueled by local factors. In a world that has always been more or less
interdependent, however, it would be grossly naive to think that local factors were ever permanently
or totally isolated historically from global developments.[ 2] Much less so now, then, in an age of
virulent globalization. Global liberal governance is not, of course, a neutral phenomenon, indifferent
to local cultures, traditions, and practices. Neither is it benignly disposed toward them. Rather, it has
always been virulently disruptive of them and aggressively related to them as much in moral as in
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
economic and military terms. Much of the disorder that borders the domain of liberal peace is clearly
also a function, therefore--albeit a fiercely contested function--of its very own normative, political,
economic, and military agendas, dynamics, and practices, and of the reverberations these excite
throughout the world. It seems increasingly to be a function, specifically, of the way in which
development is now ideologically embraced by all of the diverse institutions of liberal peace as an
unrelenting project of modernization.[ 3] The chief economist of the World Bank (Joseph Stiglitz)
attacks the Washington Consensus on liberalization, stabilization, and privatization in the world
economy, for example, as too technical and too narrowly framed a development strategy. He espouses
instead a new intensive as well as extensive policy committed to the unqualified and comprehensive
modernization and "transformation of traditional societies."[ 4] "Honesty, however requires me to add
one more word. In calling for a transformation of societies, I have elided a central issue," Stiglitz had the
candor to conclude, "transformation to what kind of society and for what ends?" The impact of
modernization on modern as well as traditional societies is, of course, as violent as the impact on
global resources and global ecology. The values, practices, and investments that propel such
development nonetheless, however, are precisely what protect it from pursuing the key question,
locally as well as globally, that Stiglitz posed in terms other than those that underwrite his very
problematization of it. Pursued as a deliberate policy of comprehensive social transformation, and of
power projection, development becomes allied in novel ways via global liberal governance with
geopolitical military and economic institutions and interests. The transformation is therefore to be
effected according to the current efficiency and performance criteria of good governance--economically
and politically--set by the varied institutions of global liberal peace. In the process, sovereignty, as the
traditional principle of political formation whose science is law, is being supplemented by a networkbased account of social organization whose principle of formation is "emergence" and whose science
increasingly is that of complex adaptive systems.[ 5] These ensure that the political issue posed by
Stiglitz rarely progresses beyond an afterthought. This incendiary brew is currently also fueled by a
resurgent liberal moralism. That moralism generates its own peculiar forms of liberal hypocrisy. These
include: the calling for intervention by the international community against Indonesian actions in East
Timor while liberal states furnished Indonesian armed forces with the very means of carrying out
those actions; and seeking to proscribe child soldiers while failing to address the global arms economy
that furnishes the children with their weapons. The vexed relation between liberalism and capitalism is
also at issue once more since clearly, too, the globalization of markets and of capitalism is intimately
involved in the "complex emergencies" that global liberal governance seeks to police. While the formula
complex emergency arose in the general context of the dissolution of the politics of bipolarity and the
advent of liberal peace, it did so in the specific context of the dramatic weakening of state structures
and the exaggerated ideals of sovereign statehood, together with the advent of intractable development
problems and civil conflicts as well as adaptation to the structural-adjustment programs of the 1980s
and 1990s, which impacted on the fringes of liberal internationalism. The conflation of established
distinctions between civil and military as well as between the humanitarian and the geopolitical that has
taken place as a result has proved confusing and disturbing to all participants in global governance and
liberal peace.[ 6] Liberal humanitarians have, for example, become politicized, geopolitically
ambitious, and sometimes warlike in pursuit of liberal peace. They have also found themselves in
alliance with the institutions of international political economy and governance as well as with
branches of the military. Increasingly, the policies and practices of "political conditionality" are also
suborning them. Deals and contracts have inevitably to be struck with local political groupings in order
that aid might be delivered to the needful in areas of political turbulence. Political conditionality is,
however, more than this local pragmatism. At a policy level, it refers to the ways in which government
and international-aid agencies are increasingly making the delivery of aid conditional on the recipients
meeting the good governance criteria that global liberal politics specifies for them. At a local level, it
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
means calibrating the delivery of aid to effect the internal politics and maneuvering of warring groups so
that political settlements sought by international coalitions--such as the one, for example, that currently
manages Bosnia--might be secured. In order both for policy-level practices and local political arm
twisting to work, governments and international organizations must secure the compliance of the large
number of nongovernmental organizations that populate the zones of "complex emergency." These of
course provide many significant conduits for aid. The vast majority of them are, however, effectively the
subcontractors of governmental organizations and of international agencies. Their prized independence
is problematic, and their classification as nongovernmental is sometimes equally so. Effecting political
conditionality requires their participation. To the extent, however, that they comply--and their very
capacity to resource themselves and operate may be intimately dependent upon their good standing
with these governmental and international agencies--their "impartiality" and humanitarian ideals are
compromised. In such circumstances, they run the deadly risk of becoming identified as active
participants in conflicts rather than impartial ministers to the needy and afflicted that are created by
them. But many NGOs are not mere passive victims of this development, as it were, squeezed by the
demands of political conditionality. They themselves also actively promote political conditionality
inasmuch as they, too, pursue a liberal agenda of promoting human rights, accountability, and the
formations and practices of civil society. In this, then, they are willing allies of political conditionality
rather than suborned humanitarians. The distinction between the political and the humanitarian that
has created the space for humanitarian action is often thus conflated by the actions and ambitions of
NGOs as much as it is by the good-governance policies and political conditionality pursued by
governments. Needless to add, the distinction between civil and military that helps underwrite the
category humanitarian is one that has also been conflated by the theory and practice of modern war.
Much is made of the ways in which the insurgency and counterinsurgency conflicts and ethnic
violence of the developing world do this. But the process began in the developed world--with the
introduction, for example, of total war, strategic bombing, the deployment of weapons of mass
destruction, and the adoption of (nuclear) deterrent strategies. Some of these continue to determine
the formulation of official defense and strategic policies there. In sum, bipolarity once allowed
subscription to the liberal distinctions of civil/military, humanitarian/political, and
governmental/nongovernmental to effect a "humanitarian" position that eschewed the political
realism of the ideological conflict of the Cold War. Humanitarianism claimed then to be a space that
was itself a kind of zone of indistinction. That is to say, here relief was on offer irrespective of religious,
political, or other distinctions. The advent of global liberal governance now represents the official
propagation, however, of such distinctions, together with their allied governmental practices and
institutions. These have become one of the principle means by which global power currently circulates
and operates. In doing so, global liberal governance quite literally threatens nongovernmental and
humanitarian agencies with recruitment into the very structures and practices of power against which
they previously defined themselves. Where once they practiced and enjoyed the space afforded by the
claim that they were without power--specifically, power politics--it is evident now that they are not.
Major nongovernmental humanitarian relief and development agencies are often also structured more
like and operate more like multinational corporations than voluntary workers. Their spokesmen and
women act and sound like the senior international diplomats and policymakers that they are. As
humanitarian NGOs increasingly devote themselves to the promotion of liberal governmental policies-for example those of transparency and accountability--they, too, have to meet penetrating questions
about the legitimacy, accountability, and transparency of their own practices. Doing good, especially by
insisting on following the Hippocratic injunction to do no harm--the classic governmental maneuver of
effecting power by denying one's own politicality--is a fiction now increasingly difficult to sustain in
the context of global liberal governance.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Hegemony
American hegemony enforces the economic liberal peace—causes Cold War
interventionism and infinite security commitments
Layne, PhD in Intelligence and National Security, and Schwarz, foreign policy analyst,
93
[Christopher, Benjamin, Fall, Foreign Policy, no. 92, “American hegemony--without an enemy”,
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~volgy/LayneSchwarzAmericanHegemony.html, accessed 7/10/13, VJ]
Underpinning U.S. world order strategy is the belief that America must maintain what is in essence a
military protectorate in economically critical regions to ensure that America's vital trade and financial
relations will not be disrupted by political upheaval. This kind of economically determined strategy
articulated by the foreign policy elite ironically (perhaps unwittingly) embraces a quasi-Marxist or, more
correctly, a Leninist interpretation of American foreign relations. Such views surprisingly echo the radical
``open door school'' view of American foreign policy advanced by William Appleman Williams and other
left-wing historians. Williams argued that because American statesmen believed that U.S. economic
welfare, and ultimately the survival of American democracy, depended upon exports and overseas
financial relationships, Washington needed to impose an informal empire of ``virtuous omnipotence''
that guaranteed a secure and stable environment conducive to profitable and expanding trade relations.
As Williams argued, for liberal internationalists the American government has always had a critical
responsibility: ``the protection and extension of the market in which the principle of free competition
could operate. As with mercantilism, classical liberal economics led to an expansionist foreign policy.''
The view that economic interdependence compels American global strategic engagement puts an
ironic twist on liberal internationalist arguments about the virtues of free trade, which held that
removing the state from international economic transactions would be an antidote to war and
imperialism. The nineteenth-century Manchester school of liberalism held that free trade would
increase prosperity worldwide and thus contribute to peace by giving states a vested interest in
cooperative political and economic regimes. In some respects, the American foreign policy elite's vision
of world order springs from the Manchester school's outlook. Today, proponents of ``complex
interdependence'' argue that America's economic links with Western Europe and East Asia are crucial
to the prosperity of the United States and its partners and that war among or affecting them would be
too economically costly to contemplate. The champions of this ``trading state'' outlook assert that war
does not pay because commercial intercourse affords the best means for increasing a country's wealth
and power. But the American foreign policy community turns Manchesterism on its head by accepting
the economic but not the political logic of free trade theory. Instead of subscribing to the classical
liberal view that free trade automatically creates a natural harmony of interests among states that
leads to peace, the foreign policy community looks to American military power to impose harmony so
that free trade can take place. Thus, U.S. security commitments are viewed as the indispensable
precondition for economic interdependence. In that respect, Cheney's, Lugar's, and Odom's all too
candid comments reveal that modern Manchesterism is a fraud. Rather than being the stimulus to
peace that it is touted to be, economic interdependence--and the need to protect America's stakes in
it--is invoked to justify a post Cold War U.S. military presence in Europe and East Asia and military
intervention in the Balkan conflict. The strategy dictates that the United States be prepared to risk
war, if necessary, to ensure that the markets and raw material sources with which it is linked are not
closed by ``renationalized'' economic and foreign policies that will result from regional instability. In
effect, the foreign policy establishment has embraced the proposition that wars (or at least continuous
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
preparations for war) are necessary for the American economy to prosper. So much for the peaceful
effects of interdependence. What is most frightening about the economic rationale of the strategy of
preponderance is its open-endedness; the logic of economic interdependence leads inevitably to the
exhausting proliferation of American security commitments. The late-nineteenth century English
statesman Lord Rosebery recognized such an effect, and he warned that commitments must be made
discriminatingly: ``Our commerce is so universal and so penetrating that scarcely any question can arise
in any part of the world without involving British interests. This consideration, instead of widening
rather circumscribes the field of our actions. For did we not strictly limit the principle of intervention we
should always be simultaneously engaged in some forty wars.''
Democracy promotion and the democratic peace are code for the extension of US
hegemony- these ideas have become academically influential because they appeal to
a bipartisan ideological unity which celebrates American power.
Parmar, Professor of Government, 08
[Inderjeet, December, “The ‘Knowledge Politics’ of Democratic Peace Theory”,
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/about/themes/cip/publications/docum
ents/SSRC%20Think%20Tanks%20paper%20Sept%202008%20NEW.pdf, page 2-4, accessed 7/10/13]
Democratic Peace and Democracy Promotion: compatible paradigms Democracy promotion, which is the heavy implication of democratic
peace theory, is a liberal American value that has its origins deep in US history and culture, most famously in the thought of President
Woodrow Wilson. However, crusaders
for democracy promotion overseas have used the concept and
mobilised the value for different reasons (at least rhetorically): some have used democracy promotion to combat
‘communism/socialism’ and thereby backed right-wing dictators who support market economies
but not political democracy. Others have tended to use democracy promotion as a form of ‘soft
power/hegemony promotion’ in order to generate pro-US outcomes. Often the two strategies have been
combined. In practice, democracy promotion is both a Democratic and Republican ‘policy’, especially strong
among the non-realist or rather less-realist wings of each party; but it hardly ever fully disappears from either party’s
leadership because its goals are in essence US power, implicitly supported by both main political parties.
Democracy promotion – and therefore democratic peace theory – are, or can be made to appear –
paradigmatically compatible with American values. The most problematic element of deploying ‘values’ and ‘ideals’
in US foreign and national security policy is, and has been, the anxiety of appearing ‘soft’ (as opposed to hardheaded) and idealistic (as
opposed to ‘realistic’, pragmatic and practical). The
role of key policy entrepreneurs involved in mobilising
democratic peace theory was precisely to present the theory as both idealistic and realistic:
America’s values and strategic interests as unified, a position shared by liberal internationalists,
neo-conservatives and conservative nationalists, as this paper shows.28
Democratic peace theory is the new legitimating rhetoric for America’s mission in the
world, and is really code for the consolidation of American hegemony. In this
instance, political power and knowledge networks are co-productive; their evidence
has been produced by a knowledge network which is given legitimacy and credibility
because it celebrates America’s power and responsibility to reshape the world.
Parmar, Professor of Government, 08
[Inderjeet, December, “The ‘Knowledge Politics’ of Democratic Peace Theory”,
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/about/themes/cip/publications/docum
ents/SSRC%20Think%20Tanks%20paper%20Sept%202008%20NEW.pdf, page 2-4, accessed 7/10/13]
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
What does this tell us about the American ecology of knowledge and of the political utilisation of academic ideas? This paper has shown that
knowledge networks are a vital aspect of power in the United States, managing to elaborate and
mobilise a “peace” theory that ultimately and, contrary to the intentions of its exponents, was
transformed into a technology of aggressive ‘democracy’ promotion/imposition within a threatoriented and threat-confronting policy-orientation; the confident public rhetoric inspired by the
theory played a key role in justifying the Iraq War. Policy was justified by, and public opinion
influenced, by democratic peace theory.101 The paper also shows that despite the relatively distinct
sources of the theory and its reasonably distinct lines of development, there was always a certain
level of ‘unity’ and coherence in the underlying motivation of the actors and institutions: a sense
that US power is a force for good, that responsibility comes with power, and a sense of
America’s mission. This sense of shared mission of American global responsibility – actually an imperial creed 102 – was
strengthened in practical terms by a vitally important specialisation of functions or a division of labour among the key organisations of the
knowledge network. As Brown argues, there are truth-seekers and engineers; but there are also mediating organisations or hybrids (such as
Belfer, a university-based policy-oriented think tank, that are composed of both groups). Inside
the network, there are key
nodes between which there are overlaps and interlocks such as universities, journals (International
Security; National Interest; Journal of Democracy; Foreign Affairs), think tanks (CFR, PPNS, CCD, Brookings, PPI), foundations
(Ford, Carnegie). There is a revolving door among many of the organisations in part due to the key
mind-set among engineers and creators – US power as a force for good, the transferability of US
values, US power will eliminate threats: a sense of shared mission. This has fostered intellectual
capital production through a sense of a shared mission among like-minded but differently positioned and qualified individuals. The
knowledge ecology is diverse and tends to pivot on the balance between “spontaneity and structure” – a balance between space for creativity
within a structure of goals related to a mission ie US power. Therefore, milieu are fostered that encourage creativity and innovation. That is
how to build “a research or a marketing strategy, and how to build a knowing community,” as Brown argues.103 To some extent, universities
provide loose structures for spontaneity – the space for curiosity to be pursued and for unexpected discoveries and insights. Doyle’s insights
were a spin-off from a Ford-funded scholarly study of international (North-South) economic relations, an ‘accidental’ by-product of the
space for curiosity to follow its own course. Yet, the ‘success’ of democratic peace theory was in large part dependent on the relatively agile
structures composed of the Belfer Center at Harvard and its Ford-funded journal, International Security which, at that time, was not a peer
reviewed journal and, therefore, better able to set its own agenda.104 The production and elaboration of DPT in the universities was also
predicated on funding from liberal internationalist foundations like Ford and Carnegie, a further unifying factor. The status bestowed upon
democratic peace theory by its ‘adoption’ by Belfer and International Security, as recognised by the Carnegie Corporation, both elevated the
standing of Doyle in the scholarly community but also brought him policy-community recognition, from which he has added to his
credentials.105 This suggests that there
is a key element of knowledge networks that is social: a social
process of ideas’ acceptance due to their elitist and therefore respectable provenance, based on
credible, i.e., widely accepted theoretical and methodological bases, which gains positive
responses from other scholars, policy entrepreneurs (think tanks, foundations, opposition party) and
policymakers (Clinton, Albright, Bush). Acceptance by policymakers feeds back to scholars and scholaractivists, encouraging them further to continue working on and refining the theory, with the
promise that their ideas might be taken seriously and, in turn, scholars stood to gain recognition
and prestige through ‘knowledge transfer’ and also, therefore, further foundation-funding.
Propelled by curiosity in its earliest forms, democratic peace theory became politically viable and conceptually and instrumentally influential
principally because of catalytic events: the sudden cessation of the cold war and the crisis in foreign policy thinking that ensued provided a
permissive environment for ‘new’ thinking. The
theory’s refinement and mobilisation led to its adoption in the
securitisation – that is,
“peace” theory was transmutated into a vital policy technology to confront external threats from
non- democratic/rogue/failing/ and failed states by military and other coercive means.
Designating zones of peace simultaneously delineated zones of turmoil, defining the latter as a
threat to the former. Liberal hawks and neocons alike were involved in this transformative process. The latter were joined after
1990s by differing tendencies – liberal hawks and neoconservatives - and, most importantly, its
another catalytic event - 9-11 - by conservative nationalists who went on to justify the Bush doctrine in part by democratic peace theory. The
Iraq War of 2003, and the failure to suppress quickly resistance to the US occupation, created a “crisis” seized upon by the bi-partisan
Princeton Project on National Security. PPNS advanced their own, slightly more nuanced, version of democratic peace theory proposed for
use to confront threats to security through democracy promotion and military intervention, among other things. According to the Princeton
Project’s final report, as “the world seems a more menacing place than ever”,106 “it means safeguarding our alliances and promoting
security cooperation among liberal democracies, ensuring the safety of Americans abroad as well as at home, avoiding the emergence of
hostile great powers or balancing coalitions against the United States, and encouraging liberal democracy and responsible government
worldwide.”107 The weight here rests a little more on developing ‘liberal’ institutions and, perhaps, leaving the ‘democracy’ till later.
Interestingly, PPNS was led by Clinton’s former national security adviser Tony Lake and Reagan’s former secretary of state, George Shultz;
Francis Fukuyama was a key figure on the Project’s steering committee. A liberal hawk, a conservative nationalist and a neoconservative: a
perfect example of post-9-11 fusion. Democracy promotion based on democratic peace theory is now effectively a non-issue as both main
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
political parties have adopted it. The final point to be made is that democratic
peace theory is an easy theory to
promote in the United States given the deeply-held character of democratic values. It has great
symbolic resonance and reaffirms positive ideas about American national identity and as a force
for doing good in world affairs. It also serves as an excellent rationalizing device for
Establishment forces that wish to promote the consolidation of American power using the cover
of promoting democracy and eliminating brutal dictatorships. That is, democratic peace theory
has also exercised symbolic influence, a new legitimating rhetoric for American hegemony.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Impacts
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Indigenous Peoples
The assault on the Grand River Iroquois nation is a powerful counter-example to their
hypothesized democratic peace. Their representations of democratic peace theory
assume only Western, liberal, American-style democracy, and are an ontological
affirmation of superiority over indigenous peoples. This discourse fixes national
identity by legitimizing self and delegitimizing other, ensuring alternate cultures are
eradicated.
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
[Kyle, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal
Representations of War and Peace”, http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf,
accessed 7/1/13]
According to Ronald Wright, the
Canadian government has been waging a hidden war against the
Iroquois since 1867.47 One the most important battlegrounds has been over the sovereign control of the Grand River territory which
is located on the Grand River, just south east of Brantford in Ontario. The Canadian government has long considered
Grand River to be a ‘reservation’ while the Grand River Iroquois consider the territory to be an
independent nation-state.48 Grand River was among one of the four regions along Lake Ontario given to the Iroquois by the
British in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War.49 Historians note that not only did the Grand River territory
serve as a symbol of British gratitude to the Iroquois for their support, but it also played a
strategic role as a buffer state between the United States and British North America.50 Although
often a source of dispute with Britain over its size and political status, Grand River emerged in the eyes of the Iroquois as a sovereign
political state run in the tradition of the Great Law of Peace.51 Slowly , due to land agreements with private farmers that became interpreted
as legal annexations, the Grand River state began to shrink.52 What started out as a 1200 sq mile territorial state was reduced to 90 sq miles
in less than one hundred years.53 With
the threat of American invasion greatly reduced by the late
nineteenth century, government officials realized that Canada no longer needed any ‘Indian’
(sic) buffer states. Anxious to exercise complete control over Iroquois territory, the Canadian government
embarked upon a ‘civilizational’ process that amounted to replacing democratic indigenous selfgovernments with ‘elected’ band councillors who were puppets of the Indian Affairs
Department. Iroquois territories tried to resist against the Canadian government; however, most efforts proved to be futile. For
example, in 1899, Akwesasne was overrun by the RCMP leaving one dead. Seven chiefs were imprisoned and a puppet council was
established. By contrast, Grand River was able to resist and remained independent. During World War I, Grand River even provided troops
(not under Canadian control) to its old ally England.54 Well
aware of its precarious position after World War I,
Grand River expressed its desire to become a British protectorate. The Grand River Council argued that such a
move did not threaten Canadian interests and would only serve to reinforce sovereign control over the Grand River territory. But in order to
receive protectorate status, the Grand River state would have to clarify their political status with the Canadian government. In 1920, the
Canadian Supreme Court refused to hear the Iroquois case. When the Grand River council took its grievances to the British Colonial Office,
Winston Churchill, the colonial secretary, said that it was a Canadian matter. As a result, Grand
River entered negotiations
with the Department of Indian Affairs. In 1922, despite on-going talks, Grand River was raided.
Shots were fired by police and further discussions were cancelled. Moreover, an Royal Canadian Mounted
Police detachment was placed within yards of the Grand River Council House.55 By 1923, it was clear to the Grand River Council that the
newly formed League of Nations was the only remaining venue in which to have its sovereignty formally recognized. The council had a very
strong case including written treaties and wampum belts but needed a League member to act as a sponsor. The Netherlands, Persia, Ireland,
Estonia, and Panama all expressed an interest but Britain, on behalf of Canada, threatened dire repercussions to anyone who would dare
sponsor the Grand River claim. Needless to say, the appeal was never heard.56 In
1924, armed police once again invaded
Grand River. This time, the Six Nations parliament was dissolved. Moreover, police seized treaty
documents and sacred wampum belts by raiding wampum keepers homes. Important evidence for the
Grand River claim was thus rendered inaccessible. After storming and taking control of the Council Long House,
Indian Affairs appointed a new council; however, to this day, this puppet-council has not been recognized by the majority of Grand River
residents. Instead, Iroquois sachems have sat as a government exiled in their own country.57 The
illegal annexation of Grand
River is a result of a multi-faceted war waged by the Canadian government on the Iroquois. It is
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
often thought that the forced dissolution of native self-governments was a part of grander strategy to eliminate the Iroquois and other Native
closer examination also
reveals an ontological imperative devoid of any (geo)strategic imperative.58 Therefore, the Grand
River situation should also be seen as an assault on Iroquois culture through the delegitimation
of the Grand Peace and the seizing of wampum belts. To return to the early discussion of
democratic peace theory, Grand River represents one example of the efforts that liberal
democracies will go to in order to remove a system of governance (and the accompanying
ontology) that is in any way different. Furthermore, Grand River demonstrates that this is even the
case when a state exhibits similar (though not identical) democratic principles. Some historians claim that
Duncan Campbell Scott, head of the Indian Affairs Department from 1913-1932, viewed himself as
“Canada’s Kipling’ and strongly believed natives were in fact ‘lesser breeds without the law”.59
Shapiro argues that such views at the time were “less an observation than an ontological
affirmation” of the superiority of European peoples over Native Americans.60 Moreover, he argues that
“the erasure of indigenous peoples, in fact and in representation, has been part of the selfrecognition by which state societies have territorialized and stabilized their identities”.61 Therefore,
the policy of assimilating the Iroquois was far more than a strategy to reap (geo)strategic gain. If
we take Shapiro’s argument to its logical conclusions, it becomes clear that wars do not necessarily have to be
fought with weapons; words are also powerful means of destruction. The verbal attacks of Limbaugh,
Bork, and others of the same ilk seek to delegitimize and render the Iroquois (and other Native Americans
and Native Canadians) invisible through a discourse with its own representational practices much
like the writings of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill did in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.62 Denial of the influence of
the Iroquois Confederacy serves to fortify the national identity and ontology of the United States
(and other Western states) by reaffirming the ‘uniquely’ American/Western contribution to
modern liberal democracy. The intensity of the denials is not surprising, for as Campbell has argued, representational practices
become more overt during periods of crisis.63 Therefore, as a theory and as a practice, the notion of a
democratic peace is able to fix the American national identity at a time when increases in levels
of non-Western immigration to the United States and the rise of multiculturalism contribute to
an identity crisis that is subjectively perceived by American conservatives like Limbaugh and Bork who
fear that the line between the domestic and the foreign is blurring. Therefore, the old saying about ‘sticks and
stones’ does not necessarily hold true in international relations. The construction of discourse and the
representational practices that sustain it can be a powerful weapon in the waging of war by
legitimizing the ‘self’ and delegitimizing the ‘other’. Alternate cultures and their corresponding
ontologies can be wounded or even killed.
Canadians through processes of assimilation in order to preclude future land claims actions; however,
The history of Grand River and other intra-state wars waged on indigenous peoples
are silenced by the discourse of democratic peace. Giving voice to these forgotten
struggles helps expose the contingent and constructed nature of their logic of
difference, enabling progressive transformation of the self.
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
[Kyle, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal
Representations of War and Peace”, http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf,
accessed 7/1/13]
Even when non-Western state systems are examined such as in the work of Neta Crawford on the
Iroquois Confederacy, it is only to transpose current democratic peace theory understandings in order
to demonstrate their universality.67 For example, Crawford constructs the Iroquois Confederacy as a
‘security regime’ in order to offer new lessons for current security regime theory . The conclusion
reached in the article that “the Iroquois League experience suggests that peace among nations may be
best secured over the long term if both democracy and the institution of a league/security regime are
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
present” demonstrates a fundamental violence of current international relations theory.68 ‘Our IR’
becomes ‘their IR’ in situations where it can reaffirm current ontological presuppositions . Perhaps a far
more beneficial practice for the current study of international relations would be to map instances where ‘our IR’ demonstrates a close likeness
to ‘their IR’ while at the same time respecting the important differences between them.69 Although the ontological nature of war and peace
and the discursive method of waging war are important insights into current international relations practices, we cannot forget one of the most
important aspects of the Iroquois struggle in Grand River. It
is important to note how the history of Grand River has
been effectively silenced in past and current international relations discourses. For example, I find it fascinating
that Serbian actions in Kosovo generated a huge international debate, interest, and action, while a
similar situation (i.e., Grand River) remains unknown to most within Canada, let alone the rest of the world. Thus,
according to Shapiro, the Iroquois, like other groups considered by mainstream international relations to be
non-state nations, “have not had a place in the history and cartography of warfare”.70 Furthermore, the
discourse on war, like that of political economy, has reinforced the geopolitical state centric map. As a
result, Shapiro asserts that “within the historical cartography of war, indigenous struggles still do not
appear”.71 It is of little wonder that Grand River is a forgotten site of struggle except in the Native
American/Canadian communities. First, it undermines the credibility of democratic peace theory by illustrating
that at best the democratic peace is selective in its operation through representational practices that
presuppose what political forms are ‘democratic’ and what assumptions can be made about them. Not
only does democratic peace theory limit the types of states that can be considered democratic, but
more importantly, it limits democratic characteristics to those political entities it recognizes as states.
At worst, Grand River clearly demonstrates that liberal democracies can be aggressive even towards
other democracies.72 Second, to give Grand River (and other similar historical circumstances) a voice in the study and
practice of international relations would severely undercut our perceptions of liberal democracies as
civilized, predisposed towards peace in inter-democratic relations, and naturally reasonable, thereby
presenting clear challenges to conventional thinking. Therefore, one of the roles of the critical international relations
scholar should be to expose these injustices and the representational practices that make them
possible; it is quite likely that there are many ‘Grand Rivers’ and each should be given a voice. As Doty has
argued, it is only by revealing “the contingent and unstable nature of the systems of difference” and
exposing the “foundational essences as arbitrary constructions made possible by the
power/knowledge nexus” that these kinds of practices can be overcome.73 By simply being prepared to
actively listen to the ‘other’, to engage in processes that will foster intersubjectivity, progressive
transformation both inside and outside the ‘self’ can be achieved.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Otherization+war (Grayson)
That makes war inevitable—Liberal Peace is used as an excuse for crusade and
affirmation of a violent national identity and ontology
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
[Kyle, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal
Representations of War and Peace”, http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf,
accessed 7/1/13, VJ]
Given the representation practices embodied within the democratic peace theory discourse, it is
best to view the interactions that it fosters as ‘imperial encounters’. According to Doty, ‘the term
imperial encounters is meant to convey the idea of asymmetrical encounters in which one entity has
been able to construct ‘realities’ that were taken seriously and acted upon and the other entity has
been denied equal degrees of kinds of agency’.39 The ‘reality’ of democratic peace theory has been
defined by Western representational practices outlined above. These representations have shaped
the production of knowledge and identities as well as making particular courses of action appear
possible/impossible/inevitable.40 Furthermore, to borrow a term from David Campbell, democratic
peace theory has constructed a new ‘geography of evil’ that (re)produces national identity while
dictating what courses of action are apt (i.e., conversion/force) when confronting the supposedly nonliberal/democratic ‘other’.41 To reiterate this point in a slightly different fashion, “the context of the
democratic peace, then, includes not only the advent of a zone of peace among core states, but also
international relations of domination and subordination in the periphery…”.42 As a result of this
analysis, the answers to the questions of ‘for whom and for what purpose’ is democratic peace theory
designed are now evident but not surprising. Democratic peace theory and its associated discourse is
for the people of the US/West. Its purpose is to fix the American/Western national identity as
civilized, peacefully inclined, and democratic with the non-West by definition being considered
uncivilized, war-mongering, and authoritarian. Democratic peace theory also aids in the justification
of the American/Western world-view which perceives both democracy and war in a particular fashion.
In turn, these conceptions of democracy and war help to hide much of the sordid past and present of
the international relations of western liberal democratic states. They help to justify the unjustifiable
and to legitimate the illegitimate. Of utmost importance is the ontological basis of these international
relations practices sanctioned by democratic peace theory and its associated discourse within the
popular political realm. This is the focus of the following section which examines the existence of one of
the empirical silences within democratic peace theory research and the consequences of ignoring these
important events. Democratic Peace Theory and the Ontology of War and Peace In Violent
Cartographies: Mapping Cultures of War, Michael Shapiro tries to examine “the ways that enmityrelated global geographies and ethnoscapes emerge as collectivities, and how they try to achieve,
stabilize, and reproduce their unity and coherence”.43 Historically, the practice of war has emerged as
one the most enduring methods to attempt to fix national identities and ontological foundations.
Victory in war confirms all the positive subjective views of the ‘self’ while at the same time providing
‘proof’ of the subjectively perceived inferior nature of the ‘other’. Conversely, defeat not only leads to
(geo)strategic losses, but also to a reappraisal of the national identity and deep questioning of the
foundations that helped define national identity. The American defeat in the Vietnam War provides
an excellent example of these identity/foundation casualties. Therefore, Shapiro argues that war is not
just (geo)strategic, but is also about the confrontation between competing ontologies. As mentioned
earlier, democratic peace theory and its surrounding discourse views war as an activity waged by state
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
actors in pursuit of (geo)strategic spoils (e.g., territory, resources, wealth), as well as an activity arising
over disputes of ‘ownership’ of spoils and/or perceived violations of sovereignty. As John Vasquez has
argued, “the situation that states in the modern global system are most likely to deal with by the use
of force and violence is one in which their territory is threatened....territorial disputes provide the
willingness to go to war”.44 Democratic peace theorists believe that liberal democracies can
peacefully manage these kinds of disputes amongst themselves; however, in circumstances of dispute
between a liberal democracy and a non-liberal/democracy, war is seen as almost inevitable.
Conventionally, this has been attributed to the inherently aggressive nature of the ‘authoritarian’
state, which prevents liberal democracies from trusting these states to adhere to peacefully
negotiated settlements. Yet, when democratic peace theory is viewed as a representational practice,
war becomes inevitable between disputing liberal democratic states and non-liberal/democratic
states not because of the aggressive nature of authoritarian regimes but because these situations are
viewed as an opportunity for liberal democratic states to engage in a ‘civilizing’ mission and reaffirm
their national identity and ontology by demonstrating their superiority in battle. This imperative
becomes especially clear if we abandon the traditional view of war contained within democratic peace
theory and look at democratic non-state/liberal democratic state disputes and the underlying
ontological contestations that fuelled them.45 Barkawi and Laffey have argued that currently “force is
used in the service of defending and expanding economic and to a lesser extent political liberalism (in
the guise of democracy) beyond the liberal capitalist core”.46 From a historical perspective, the dispute
between the Iroquois Six Nations and the Canadian government over the Grand River territory during
the first decades of the twentieth century, provides an excellent example of the ontological impetus
behind international relations practices and how warfare can also be directed towards the
annihilation of culture.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Biopower
The liberal peace disseminates power globally and intensifies it locally—the result is
bare life
Dillon and Reid, Professors of Politics and International Relations, 2K
[Michael, Julian, Jan-March, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 25, Issue 1, “Global Governance,
Liberal Peace, and Complex Emergency”, accessed 6/30/13, VJ]
It is our contention, then, that the liberal peace of global governance has to be distinguished as a
certain form of liberal peace comprised in turn of a complex hybrid form of power. The varied use of
the term governance signals this. In its Kantian variants, it means the rule of law and endorses the
proliferation of nongovernmental organizations, associations, and groups at a global level with the
ambition of establishing a global civil society. In its technocratic-capitalist variants, it means deregulated
processes and practices of enterprise management and accountability. The liberal peace of global
governance is therefore one in which the pacifying effects of Kantian cosmopolitan law obeyed by
sovereign states, combined with an extension of civil society, are heavily reliant also on the
dissemination globally of practices that are premised upon a conception of order and management
that Foucault called governmental. As Foucault's early accounts of governmentality indicate, and as
the extension and application of it subsequently have also shown, the genealogy of global liberal
governance is thus much more varied and diverse than its public claims to a Kantian heritage especially
would imply.[ 14] To say that it is capitalist economically as much as it is liberal politically and
corporately technocratic scientifically, and that this presents a powerful brew of social, political,
economic, and military forces that radically exceed the liberal account of both power and of politics, is
to pose more questions than these phrases answer. Neither capitalism, liberalism, nor science are
simply what they proclaim themselves to be, or what they were once said to be. Each has mutated
locally and globally in dramatic fashion as studies in the history of science, the history of economics,
and the genealogy of governance indicate. Neither are such dynamic enterprises effectively held to
account through the application and operation of the classic liberal distinctions between public-private,
civil-military, national-international, scientific-industrial, and knowledge-power. Rather, they are
obscurely combined in the globally dynamic military-industrial-scientific complexes of the so-called
network societies and knowledge-based economies of contemporary liberal societies that problematize
the democratizing claims of global civil society as much as they do the pacifying effects of cosmopolitan
law.[ 15] Together, these liberal complexes now comprise an extraordinary regime of
power/knowledge that has been disseminated as much globally as it has been intensified locally. It
constitutes a regime of global power that significantly exceeds the Kantian heritage ontologically as
much as it does epistemologically. To the extent that it does so, that tradition is an increasingly
unreliable guide to global liberal governance's operation politically and economically. No longer
exclusively or even primarily legislative in their form, the politics of the elite, the media, and money
also dominate civil institutions in ways that systematically undermine liberalism's standards of
disinterestedness epistemologically, as much as they do its claim to effect representative and
accountable government politically. Just as governance is a specific feature of liberalism, so also liberal
peace is therefore a specific form of liberal governmental power. Hence the peace of global liberal
governance differs from other forms of liberal peace inasmuch as its liberalism differs from earlier and
other forms of liberalism in respect, specifically, of the increasing emphasis placed on its networks of
global governance. It does not, for example, aspire to the ideal of world government. It does not rely
exclusively upon the juridical power of international law. Neither does it problematize the
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
foundational question of order by premising it exclusively on the sovereign power of states alone. It is
also a combative and heavily armed peace deeply reluctant to forgo its own military advantages in the
cause of restraining the dissemination of weapons of mass destruction or the effective control of the
conventional-arms economy globally. What is of primary interest here, however, is not the historically
well-documented propensity of liberal peace to make war against authoritarian regimes. Nor are its
extremely powerful military-industrial-scientific dynamics immediately at issue. We are concerned,
for the moment, with exploring theoretically the ways in which it problematizes the question of order
itself, and with the correlate strategizing of power relations, locally and globally derived from the
ways in which it does so. We argue that these depend upon notions of immanent emergency.
Specifically, they depend upon its twin cognates, exception and emergence, to which the phenomenon
of complex emergency draws our attention. We argue in addition that each such "emergency" reduces
human life to a zone of indistinction in which it becomes mere stuff for the ordering strategies of the
hybrid form of sovereign and governmental power that distinguishes the liberal peace of global
governance. Interpreted this way, complex emergencies not only draw attention to the operation of a
specific international political rationality--that of global liberal governance--but also to certain key
distinguishing features of it as a hybrid order of power. The global governance of liberal peace is a
composite order of power that "lies between traditional images of domestic and international
politics."[ 16] Combining the strategic operations of both sovereign and governmental power, this
composite order produces manifold differentiations between inside and outside that are fluid and
contingent rather than fixed and permanent. It simultaneously both territorializes and deterritorializes,
producing dynamic and adaptive contingent assemblages as much as it does fixed systems and
regimes. It thus requires theorizations of power not exclusively bound by the now widely discredited
juridical international categories of inside/outside.[ 17] These theorizations of power have therefore to
be ones sensitive to all the different practices by which power assemblages of many distinctive forms
are continuously generated and regenerated through various strategic operations of power. Initially, we
find a critical approach to the operation of power as a strategic phenomenon in the work of Michel
Foucault. Where Foucault's sensibility to the manifold strategic ordering of power nonetheless requires
supplementing, specifically in respect of sovereignty, we draw on Giorgio Agamben's postmetaphysical
analytic of sovereignty as itself another strategic ordering of power.[ 18] By strategy of power we mean
with Foucault that power is an active ordering of relations in certain specific ways according to
different operational principles of organization. It is a modus operandi. It works its effects by
establishing relationalities between units whose very constitution as the units that they are is a
function of the principles that govern the strategic dissemination and organization that constitutes
the operation of power itself. Moreover, all power as strategy presupposes a certain account of life,
one that will in fact bear the ordering work of power itself. It is only inasmuch as it does in fact
presuppose such a life that power as strategy institutes itself as a specific and manifest productive
ordering of life. The operation of power as strategy is therefore one that reproduces a life that is
amenable to its sway. It must do so in order continuously to be instituted as the strategic ordering of
life that it is. Power as a strategic ordering of life therefore always effects its own distinctive kind of
biopower. Although we owe this insight to Foucault, we intend to show how its range of reference
extends also to the operation of sovereign power as well. However, in order to do that we have to
theorize sovereign power in a way that Agamben does, and Foucault never quite did, as a strategic
mode of power as well. While drawing attention to the relevance that this Foucauldian-inspired account
of power has for an analysis of the global governance of liberal peace, we do not, therefore, intend to
add to the chorus of those who insist that we are witnessing the simple demise of sovereignty.
Sovereignty remains an important aspect of the organization and operation of international power,
including that of contemporary liberal peace, because liberal states especially, but others to the
extent also that they effect structural adjustments economically and sign-up to good governance
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
criteria politically, are deeply implicated as key nodes in the networks of global governance. Hence
the state form--whose strategic principle of formation is sovereignty--becomes just one form of
subjectification upon which global liberal governance relies. It may not enjoy the exclusivity that
traditional accounts of international relations once said that it enjoyed, but it nonetheless remains a
key mode of subjectification. However, it is now supplemented by many others. "Thus even as the
state remains the primary actor in global politics, the results of interdependence are to create new
networks and associations, many of which are attempting to guide the state's activities in the
domestic and international sphere.
Bare life makes life disposable and a tool to reify governmental sovereignty
Dillon and Reid, Professors of Politics and International Relations, 2K
[Michael, Julian, Jan-March, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 25, Issue 1, “Global Governance,
Liberal Peace, and Complex Emergency”, accessed 6/30/13, VJ]
Since "there is no rule that is applicable to chaos," chaos must first be included in the juridical order
through the creation of indistinction between inside and outside, chaos and the normal situation."[
28] And yet sovereign power is precisely the power that maintains itself as deciding on these binary
political distinctions, to the very degree that sovereign power renders them indistinguishable from
each other. Sovereign power--as a principle of formation that institutes a strategic ordering of
relationships, thereby instituting itself through that very maneuver as the arbitrator of the play of the
relations thus established--is simultaneously premised, then, both "on the violence that posits law and
the violence that preserves it."[ 29] The point has been well made also by Derrida.[ 30] For our
purposes, Agamben's analysis discloses a certain comparability in the operation of sovereign power
and the power/ knowledge that Foucault termed governmentality. Not only are they both a strategic
form of power, they each operate by effecting a kind of "phenomenological" reduction. Both claim to
reduce life to its bare essentials in order to disclose the truth about it, but in so doing actually reduce
it to a format that will bear the programming of power to which it must be subject if the power of
sovereignty (or, as we shall see, that of governance as well) is to be inscribed, instituted, and operated.
Life here is not of course "natural" life, whatever that may be. It is in every sense the life of power. But
since we are talking different operations of power, we are also talking different forms of life;
modalities formed by the different exercises of reduction through which each operation of power
institutes and maintains itself. Each form of life is the "stuff" of power, but in dissimilar ways. That is
what we mean when we say that sovereignty and governmentality reproduce life amenable to their
sway. It is not uncommon for a form of life thus reproduced to desire the processes that originate it.
Sovereign and governmental powers alike each also therefore work their own particular powers of
seduction on the subjects of power that they summon into being. Seduction, as well as imposition, is
thus integral also to their very modus operandi.[ 31] Nationalism might be said to be one form of such
seduction, consumerism another. In respect of sovereignty, Agamben calls the life of sovereign power
"bare life." Bare life is thus life without context, meaning, or history--the state of nature--so that
sovereignty may be installed as the power that orders it. In being abandoned, that which is excluded is
cast into a condition that places it at the mercy of the sovereign power that institutes itself through
instituting this relation. The formal structure of sovereign power understood as a strategic principle of
formation rather than as a metaphysical point of origin is therefore precisely this: "the excluded
included as excluded." By virtue of that inclusion as excluded, bare life is simultaneously both produced
by the exercise of sovereign power and subject to it in a particular way. As excluded life, bare life
under the strategic ordering of sovereign power is life exposed to death--life available to be killed.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Mundanely, it is life that is disposable. In either instance--irrespective of the different rationales
advanced for it--the bare life effected by the strategic ordering of life instituted by the operation of
sovereign power is a life-form available ultimately to serve the interest of continuously preserving the
institution of sovereign power itself. Consider the classical nature of sovereign warfare, the discourse of
political realism that articulates it, and the fictions of political subjectivity and interest that are said to
fuel it. Bare life is included in the political order "solely through an exclusion"[ 32] and on the basis of
the reduction of life that such exclusion effects: "The production of bare life is the originary activity of
sovereignty."[ 33] In effect, only by effecting a zone of indistinction between nomos and physis--inside
and outside--does sovereignty come to power as the power of the command that is capable of making
the differentiations for which the specific indistinction it has created calls. in fact repeated in the
governance-related vocabulary of networks and its allied science of complex adaptive systems. The
problematization of inside and outside--nomos/physis--is repeated there, too, albeit in respect of
"systems," "species," and "populations" rather than between peoples, nations, and states. Equally, a
form of life is presupposed that is capable of bearing the inscription of a correlate form of power. The
same maneuver, then, but one effected by a different principle The same maneuver is of formation.
Similarly, there is a biopower effect, but the form of life presupposed and reproduced is also different.
The affirmative’s extension of state control wholesale slaughter of populations
Dean, Professor of Sociology, 01
[Mitchel, Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State, p. 55-58 “Demonic Societies: Liberalism,
Biopolitics, and Sovereignty”]
Consider again the contrastive terms in which it is possible to view biopolitics and sovereignty. The final
chapter in the first volume of the History of Sexuality that contrasts sovereignty and biopolitics is titled "Right
of Death and Power over Life." The initial terms of the contrast between the two registers of government is
thus between one that could employ power to put subjects to death, even if this right to kill was conditioned
by the defense of the sovereign, and one that was concerned with the fostering of life. Nevertheless, each
part of the contrast can be further broken down. The right of death can also be understood as "the right to
take life or let live"; the power over life as the power "to foster life or disallow it." Sovereign power is a power
that distinguishes between political life (bios) and mere existence or bare life (zoe). Bare life is included in the
constitution of sovereign power by Its very exclusion from political life. In contrast, biopolitics might be
thought to include zoe in bios: stripped down mere existence becomes a matter of political reality. Thus, the
contrast between biopolitics and sovereignty is not one of a power of life versus a power of death but
concerns the way the different forms of power treat matters of life and death and entail different
conceptions of life. Thus, biopolitics reinscribes the earlier right of death and power over life and
places it within a new and different form that attempts to include what had earlier been sacred
and taboo, bare life, in political existence. It is no longer so much the right of the sovereign to put
to death his enemies but to disqualify the life—the mere existence—of those who are a threat to
the life of the population, to disallow those deemed "unworthy of life," those whose bare life is
not worth living. This allows us, first, to consider what might be thought of as the dark side of biopolitics
(Foucault 1979a: 136—37). In Foucault's account, biopolitics does not put an end to the practice of
war: it provides it with new and more sophisticated killing machines. These machines allow
killing itself to be reposed at the level of entire populations. Wars become genocidal in the
twentieth century. The same state that takes on the duty to enhance the life of the population
also exercises the power of death over whole populations. Atomic weapons are the key weapons
of this process of the power to put whole populations to death. We might also consider here the aptly
named biological and chemical weapons that seek an extermination of populations by visiting
plagues upon them or polluting the biosphere in which they live to the point at which bare life
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
is no longer sustainable. Nor does the birth of biopolitics put an end to the killing of one's own
populations. Rather, it intensifies that killing—whether by an "ethnic cleansing" that visits
holocausts upon whole groups or by the mass slaughters of classes and groups conducted in the
name of the Utopia to be achieved. There is a certain restraint in sovereign power. The right of death
is only occasionally exercised as the right to kill and then often in a ritual fashion that suggests
a relation to the sacred. More often, sovereign power is manifest in the refraining from the right to kill.
The biopolitical imperative knows no such restraint. Power is exercised at the level of populations and
hence wars will be waged at that level, on behalf of everyone and their lives. This point brings us to
the heart of Foucault's provocative thesis about biopolitics: that there is an intimate connection between the
exercise of a life-administering power and the commission of genocide: "If genocide is indeed the dream of
modern powers, this is not because of a recent return of the ancient right to kill: it is because power is
situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of
population" (1979a: 137). Foucault completes this same passage with an expression that deserves more
notice: "massacres become vital." There is thus a kind of perverse homogeneity between the power
over life and the power to take life characteristic of biopower. The emergence of a biopolitical
racism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can be approached as a trajectory in which this
homogeneity always threatened to tip over into a dreadful necessity. This racism can be
approached as a fundamental mechanism of power that is inscribed in the biopolitical domain
(Stoler 1995: 84—85). For Foucault, the primary function of this form of racism is to establish a
division between those who must live and those who must die, and to distinguish the superior
from the inferior, the fit from the unfit. The notion and techniques of population had given rise, at the
end of the nineteenth century, to a new linkage among population, the internal organization of states, and
the competition between states. Darwinism, as an imperial social and political program, would plot the
ranking of individuals, populations, and nations along the common gradient of fitness and thus measure
eflicienqp6 However, the series "population, evolution, and race" is not simply a way of thinking about the
superiority of the "white races" or of justifying colonialism, but also of thinking about how to treat the
degenerates and the abnormals in one's own population and prevent the further degeneration of the race.
The second and most important function for Foucault of this biopolitical racism in the nineteenth century
is that "it establishes a positive relation between the right to kill and the assurance of life " (Stoler
1995: 84). The life of the population, its vigor, its health, its capacities to survive, becomes necessarily linked
to the elimination of internal and external threats. This power to disallow life is perhaps best
encapsulated in the injunctions of the eugenic project: identify those who are degenerate,
abnormal, feeble*minded, or of an inferior race and subject them to forced sterilization:
encourage those who are superior, fit, and intelligent to propagate. Identify those whose life is but
mere existence and disqualify their propagation: encourage those who can partake of a sovereign existence
and of moral and political life. But this last example does not necessarily establish a positive justification for
the right to kill, only the right to disallow life. If we are to begin to understand the type of racism engaged in
by Nazism, however, we need to take into account another kind of denouement between the biopolitical
management of population and the exercise of sovereignty. This version of sovereignty is no longer the
transformed and democratized form founded on the liberty of the juridical subject, as it is for liberalism, but a
sovereignty that takes up and transforms a further element of sovereignty, its "symbolics of blood" (Foucault
1979a: 148). For Foucault, sovereignty is grounded in blood—as a reality and as a symbol—just as one might
say that sexuality becomes the key field on which biopolitical management of populations is articulated.
When power is exercised through repression and deduction, through a law over which hangs the sword,
when it is exercised on the scaffold by the torturer and the executioner, and when relations between
households and families were forged through alliance, "blood was a reality with a symbolic function." By
contrast, for biopolitics with its themes of health, vigor, fitness, vitality, progeny, survival, and race, "power
spoke of sexuality and to sexuality" (Foucault 1979a: 147). For Foucault (1979a: 149—50), the novelty of
National Socialism was the way it articulated "the oneiric exaltation of blood," of fatherland, and of the
triumph of the race in an immensely cynical and naive fashion, with the paroxysms of a disciplinary and
biopolitical power concerned with the detailed administration of the life of the population and the regulation
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
of sexuality, family, marriage, and education.' Nazism generalized biopower without the limitcritique posed by the juridical subject of right, but it could not do away with sovereignty. Instead, it
established a set of permanent interventions into the conduct of the individual within the
population and articulated this with the "mythical concern for blood and the triumph of the race." Thus, the
shepherd-flock game and the city-citizen game are transmuted into the eugenic ordering of biological
existence (of mere living and subsistence) and articulated on the themes of the purity of blood and the myth
of the fatherland. In such an articulation of these elements of sovereign and biopolitical forms of power, the
relation between the administration of life and the right to kill entire populations is no longer
simply one of a dreadful homogeneity. It has become a necessary relation. The administration of
life comes to require a bloodbath. It is not simply that power, and therefore war, will be exercised at the
level of an entire population. It is that the act of disqualifying the right to life of other races
becomes necessary for the fostering of the life of the race. Moreover, the elimination of other races is
only one face of the purification of one's own race (Foucault 1997b: 231). The other part is to expose the
latter to a universal and absolute danger, to expose it to the risk of death and total destruction. For Foucault,
with the Nazi state we have an "absolutely racist state, an absolutely murderous state and an absolutely
suicidal state" (232), all of which are superimposed and converge on the Final Solution. With the Final
Solution, the state tries to eliminate, through the Jews, all the other races, for whom the Jews were the
symbol and the manifestation. This includes, in one of Hitler's last acts, the order to destroy the bases of bare
life for the German people itself "Final Solution for other races, the absolute suicide of the German
race" is inscribed, according to Foucault. in the functioning of the modern state (232).
Liberal peace is an extension of the security apparatus—the societies targeted for
liberal intervention become biopolitical masses to be rescued
Jabri, Professor of International Politics, 10
[Vivienne, “Peacebuilding: Critical Developments and Approaches”, edited by: Oliver Richmond, page
54-55, VJ]
The argument formulated in this chapter is that the liberal peace project might be conceived as
constitutive of a 'matrix of war' wherein war as a practice is simply another technology in the
government of popula- tions. Such interventions, while varying in the degree to which mili- tary force
is used, seek precisely the governmentalisation of the state in the service of 'humanity' and are
premised on the operationalization of an extended apparatus of security that, in late modernity, has
global manifestations. The limits of the state, and indeed of political commu- nity as such, are no longer
limits to the imperatives of security and its multiform agencies, but might be called forth in the name of
practices of government. If the liberal peace project is interpreted as a project of governmentalisation, it becomes complicit in the banishment of politics and political agency, so that societies
targeted for liberal intervention come to be reduced, in discourses and institutional practices, to a
division between culprits and victims, where the former come to be defined as the enemy while the
latter constitute the biopolitical mass to be pro- tected or rescued. The liberal peace therefore
presents a particular con- ception of cosmopolitanism based on particular epistemological and
ontological commitments that assume a universal consensus over the causes of conflict and remedies
based on liberal renditions of self and of governance. As argued above, such commitments are
generative of a hierarchical conception of subjectivity that places primacy with the liberal European
self, the author and adjudicator of knowledge systems on populations, how these might be
categorised and recorded, and what constitutes acceptable institutional frameworks for government.
There is in this scheme of things not so much a right to politics, which assumes agency and distinct
subjectivity framed in the contingencies of social and political life, but a life lived as mass, simply one
element in a category inscribed elsewhere and bv others.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Representations of the democratic peace serves an ontological function- it classifies
states by type to be surveilled and appropriately acted upon.
Grayson, PhD in Political Science, 03
[Kyle, March, YCISS, “Democratic Peace Theory as Practice: (Re)Reading the Significance of Liberal
Representations of War and Peace”, http://yciss.info.yorku.ca/files/2012/06/WP22-Grayson.pdf,
accessed 7/1/13]
According to Doty, techniques
of classification serve to reinforce that which has been naturalized by
placing things into categories in which they ‘naturally’ belong, often through the construction of
stereotypes which facilitate quick and easy differentiation/assimilation.28 Therefore, the creation of
classification categories which distinguish between liberal democracy and non-liberal democracy
as well as war and peace by their ‘natural’ characteristics are not merely tools designed to make
the analysis of complex phenomena easier, but also serve deeper ontological purposes. It is of
little wonder, as Doty contends, that these classifications are often hierarchical in nature with liberal
democratic states at the top of scale and other states in descending order depending on how many liberal democratic
characteristics they are perceived to exhibit.29 Thus states that emphasize the political and civil rights of liberal thought rank higher than
those who emphasize equally important social and economic rights. As
a part of representational practices,
surveillance operates to make subjects known and visible objects of disciplinary power.30 From a
Foucaultian perspective, procedures of observation and examination enable states to be ‘known’ as
democratic or non-democratic, placed within the appropriate classificatory scheme, and acted
upon in a prudent manner.31 Therefore, other states are monitored by pro-democratic peace
academic and policy-making circles to gauge their levels of liberal democracy.32 Furthermore, intensive
case studies in democratic peace theory research enable ‘historical’ surveillance of the liberal democratic nature of other states.33
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Colonialism
Liberal peace building is locked in colonial logic
Liden, Coordinator at the Research School in Peace and Conflict, 09
[Kristoffer, February 14th-18th, working paper prepared for the ISA convention, New York, “Peace, SelfGovernance and International Engagement: A Postcolonial Ethic of Liberal Peacebuilding”,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/1/2/0/6/pages312060/p312060
-1.php, accessed 7/1/13, VJ]
With regard to peacebuilding, the parallel to colonialism is old news (Paris, 2002). In Enforcing the
Peace: Learning from the Imperial Past (2004), for instance, Kimberly Z. Marten seeks strategic lessons
from colonial times, although concluding that liberal peacebuilding is an unrealistic venture due to a
lack of resources and international commitment. It is first when this colonial resemblance is celebrated
(Ignatieff, 2003), or when peacebuilding is rejected on its basis (Chandler, 2006) that it becomes
controversial. If not a privilege, the temporary transfer of governance to international agencies is
commonly regarded as a lesser evil when compared to the re-emergence of civil war. The transitional
UN trusteeships in Kosovo and East Timor are the most obvious examples of this idea in recent times.
Rather than being exceptions, these trusteeships are symptomatic for a general colonial logic in liberal
peacebuilding, reflected to various degrees in the whole span of operations since the end of the Cold
War (Escobar, 1995; Jahn, 2007; Kapoor, 2008; Paris, 2002). The impact of this logic is not as ‘colonial’ as
one might expect from the policy discourse, however. Before we turn to these ‘realities on the ground,’
it is still worthwhile to dwell at the discursive level for a while in order to better understand the distance
between theory and practice, intention and impact. The icon of ‘the liberal peace,’ Immanuel Kant,
regarded political and economic liberalization as a source of peace within and among states (Doyle,
1997: 257; Kant, [1795] 1996b: First Definitive Article). This assertion underpins the logic of liberal
peacebuilding in war-torn countries (Paris, 2004; Richmond, 2005). With one exception: that these
operations actively expand the peace that Kant expected to naturally grow out political communities
due to the moral constitution of humanity. There is just a slight problem with Kant’s political vision
when it goes global. It is premised on a fundamental association of non-liberal cultures with moral
inferiority and uncivil strife (Behnke, 2008). As will be demonstrated below, this premise is usually
implicit and unintended in liberal political theory. But it sometimes mounts to the surface, as in the
following passage from Kant’s Toward Perpetual Peace: Just as we now regard with profound
contempt, as barbarous, crude, and brutishly degrading to humanity, the attachment of savages to
their lawless freedom, by which they would rather struggle unceasingly than subject themselves to a
lawful coercion to be instituted by themselves, thus preferring a mad freedom to a rational freedom, so,
one would think, civilized peoples (each united in a state) must hasten to leave such a depraved
condition, the sooner the better… (Kant, [1795] 1996b: 326) This outlook of liberalism frames the
subjects of peacebuilding in the South as lacking in capacity to build their own peace. They are
therefore rendered as pawns in a predefined political game. In the next section it will even be
suggested that liberal peacebuilding actually creates ‘the illiberal other’ in its wake by acting upon the
liberal notion of underdevelopment (see also Darby, 2004: 14; Duffield, 2001). On the other hand, this
criticism is unmistakably ‘Kantian’ in its insistence on that all human beings should be treated as moral
subjects and not reduced to a means for realizing the subjective ends of others (Gray, 2000; Kant, [1795]
1996a). It is rather Kant’s anthropology, his ontology of humanity, that is criticized for failing to
recognize the moral value of a- modern life forms. This ontology is still marring the premises of liberal
political thought, although in a more subtle form. Liberal peacebuilding theory is structured by a series
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
of binary oppositions – liberal-illiberal, peace-war, modern-traditional, developed-underdeveloped,
civilized-barbaric – oppositions with a long history in modern thought (Abrahamsen, 2000; Derrida,
1981; Habermas, 1984; Jabri, 1996; Milliken, 1999: 227; Richmond, 2005; Said, 1978). ‘Liberal
internationalism,’ the political theoretical foundation of liberal peacebuilding, is concerned with the
implications of this outlook for international politics – in broad terms a project of global
modernization (Doyle, 1997; Matthew & Zacher, 1995). Peacebuilding is per definition supposed to
address the root causes of civil war, and in liberal theory these are presented as repression, grievances
and opportunities resulting from a lack of functioning or legitimate political and economic institutions
(Duffield, 2001; ICISS, 2001: §3.19, e.g.). As long as a civil war takes place in a ‘developing country,’ the
remedy is therefore pre-given and context only matters to its implementation (Darby, 2004: 7-8). The
political objective is of course not to colonize. To the contrary, it is to build states that are capable of
protecting the rights and security of their citizens. Echoing the agenda of decolonization rather than
colonization, it is this aim that calls for a transitional mission civilisatrice to prepare the population for a
particular form of civilized self-governance (Paris, 2002: 651). The parallel to liberal justifications of
colonialism is striking. For instance, John Stewart Mill justified British imperialism in India as a way of
building the capacity of the Indian nation to govern itself in a civilized manner (Mill, 1973 [1867]: 376).
The premise of this argument is a combination of an analysis of the Indians as uncivilized and liberal
governance as the path to enlightened freedom. Today, negative notions like ‘uncivilized,’ ‘barbaric’
and ‘primitive’ are banned from liberal discourse. All human beings are regarded as equal, and when
societies are underdeveloped or at war it is because they are burdened by unfavourable political,
economic and cultural conditions rather than a primitive human nature. In the words of John Rawls:
Burdened societies, while they are not expansive or aggressive, lack the political and cultural
traditions, the human capital and know-how, and often, the material and technological resources
needed to be well- ordered. The long-term goal of (relatively) well-ordered societies should be to bring
burdened societies, like outlaw states, into the Society of well-ordered Peoples. (Rawls, 1999: 106)
According to this view, all individuals should be treated as potentially modern, civilized, rational,
peaceful and developed – no matter what their histories, traditions, norms and values are. The same
political principles should therefore abide everywhere, and development becomes a question of the
progress of political institutions rather than human nature. By clinging to Western institutional
representations of the positive end of the binary oppositions that constitute liberal political thought
(summed up in the notion of ‘liberal market democracy’), the discourse is nonetheless still locked in a
colonial logic. ‘Sustainable peace’ remains dependent upon a transitional cure of liberal governance. In
other words, the people affected are represented as the building blocks of a dream house built by
international personnel and foreign moral engineers. While the political objective of peacebuilding
therefore shares certain features with the liberal version of colonial imperialism, the pretexts of these
practices are clearly very different. Whereas colonialism was driven by economic interest, geopolitical
competition and racism, peacebuilding is a costly reaction to civil war, based on concerned identification
with the victims and their situation. Hence, Jarat Chopra, himself a strong critic of the lack of local
ownership and participation in peacebuilding, harshly denounces the description of peace operations as
neo-colonial or imperialistic and characterizes it as an academic exercise in disastrous ignorance
(Chopra, 1999: 11-12). Although it can be argued that it promotes Western interests in a larger political
perspective, which allows for a merger of benevolence and high politics, liberal peacebuilding is not a
conscious alternating motive for imperialist strategy. In general, the intentions are not the problem.
Nonetheless, as we have seen, these intentions are built on flawed representations of the societies to
be helped, which produce a biased political space for benevolent reaction. Instead of what liberal
peacebuilding actually promotes, it is therefore rather what it does not address that turns out to be
the main ethical problem. As Phillip Darby writes with regard to democratization in postcolonial
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
countries: ‘The problem is that prescription from above pays little regard to practices on the ground’
(2004: 18).
Peacebuilding dichotomizes the cultured and the barbaric—legitimizes
interventionism, cultural whitewash, and never ending expansion
Liden, Coordinator at the Research School in Peace and Conflict, 09
[Kristoffer, February 14th-18th, working paper prepared for the ISA convention, New York, “Peace, SelfGovernance and International Engagement: A Postcolonial Ethic of Liberal Peacebuilding”,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/1/2/0/6/pages312060/p312060
-1.php, accessed 7/1/13, VJ]
local meanings of liberal peacebuilding practices are not in accordance with their discursive
representations in liberal peacebuilding policy (Debrix, 1999; MacGinty, 2006; Paris, 2004; Richmond, 2005). A range of case
studies reveal a deep gap between how international actors perceive of peace and how it is
experienced by the local population. ii The meaning of peace is contingent upon the way peacebuilding
practices play into the existing political, social, economic and cultural landscape. It is therefore crucial
to ‘identify and address the shortfall between idealised and experienced versions of peace’ (MacGinty, 2006:
102). The distance between external political agendas and their local reception resonates with a central concern in postcolonial theory: that ‘cultural
messages’ from external actors are received and interpreted in a great variety of ways, often involving
an element of active resistance beyond the control of the ‘sender’ (Appadurai, 1990; Bhabha, 1994; Robertson, 2006; Smith,
1990; Tomlinson, 1991). This entails a critique of the ‘cultural globalization’ thesis of a streamlined
Westernization of local culture. The possibility of justifying liberal peacebuilding by reference to a preexisting global(ized) culture is thereby undermined. However, this critique also calls for a revisiting of
the thesis of a clear-cut repression of local political culture by global liberal governance (Duffield, 2001).
The
International agencies depend upon the contingent local meanings of their practices in order to succeed in transplanting external moral and political agendas. As
Homi Bhabha argues with regard to colonialism, the colonial subject has always been a ‘hybrid,’ never identical to its self-representation (Bhabha, 1994). ‘While
colonial power presents itself as muscular and incontrovertible, it simultaneously betrays its
instabilities, fractures, or contradictions’ (Kapoor, 2008: 118). In their study of the liberal experiment of peacebuilding in Cambodia, Oliver
Richmond and Jason Franks describe the fragility of the result, in line with this diagnosis, as a ‘virtual liberal peace hybrid’ upheld by ‘a
superficial overlay of the liberal governance of politics, economy and society controlled by
internationally induced conditionality and dependency, above local indigenous norms, culture and
tradition in both negative and positive forms’ (Richmond & Franks, 2007: 46) If misunderstood, this description could
lead us imagine the state of war-torn societies before liberal peacebuilding operations as indigenous
and ‘pre-modern’. This is obviously not the case in postcolonial countries with a recent history of
colonial presence and modernization. Liberal peacebuilding should rather be seen as exacerbating an
existing social condition. How is this condition to be understood if not as indigenous and traditional? In a discussion of the contemporary conditions
of nation-building in developing countries, Partha Chatterjee vividly illustrates the persistent hybridity of postcolonial societies and warns against interpreting this as
a constellation of the modern and the pre-modern: It is possible to cite many examples from the postcolonial world that suggests the presence of a dense and
heterogeneous time. In those places, one could show industrial capitalists delaying the closing of a business deal because they hadn’t yet heard from their
respective astrologers, or industrial workers who would not touch a new machine until it had been consecrated with appropriate religious rites, or voters who
would set fire to themselves to mourn the defeat of their favourite leader, or ministers who openly boast of having secured more jobs for people from their own
clan and having kept the others out. To
call this the co-presence of several times – the time of the modern and the
times of the pre-modern – is only to endorse the utopianism of Western modernity. Much recent ethnographic
work has established that these “other” times are not mere survivors from a pre-modern past: they are new products of the encounter with modernity itself
(Chatterjee, 2004: 7). This
condition is not necessarily confined to the South. In social theory, the liberal notions of
‘the modern’ and ‘the liberal society’ are frequently exposed as illusions that require non- modern
and non-liberal measures for their apparent realization (e.g. Bauman, 1989; Bourdieu, 2008; Foucault, 1997). Rather than
seeing the hybridity of the modern and the non-modern as a problem of the postcolonial condition
per se, it can therefore be seen as springing from the core of modernity. Historically, the modern state was
established through territorial conquest, not a liberal ‘social contract’, and ideologically it was
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
constituted through discipline and increased control of the citizenry rather than through individual
liberation from the state (Agamben, 1998; Foucault, 1997). Furthermore, as Edward Said portrays in Orientalism, the dichotomy between the
modern and the pre-modern world rests upon the projection of the ‘non-modern’ upon ‘the orient’, thereby confirming the image of ‘the occident’ as truly modern
(Said, 1978). Through
colonialism and globalization, the South has been placed in the ambivalent position
of both being embraced by modernity and constructed as the non-modern other. This ‘double bind’ is constitutive
of modernism itself, and modernization should therefore not be conceived as a historical transition from ‘the pre-modern’ to ‘the modern’ as self-contained
conditions. Instead modernization produces the non-modern as well as the modern. Consider these words by Zygmunt Bauman, connecting modernization with
globalization and civil war: The growing
volume and intensity of local and segmental conflicts cannot be played
down as the feature of ‘the state of transition’ that leads to something variously ... called ‘global
culture, ‘global society’, or even ... global community. It should be seen instead as a permanent, perhaps constitutive, attribute of a fast globalizing ‘liquid
modern’ world – its staple and massive product rather than a side- effect of a preliminary, yet unfinished but finite and transient stage of globalization. Just as
continuous ... modernization is not a process leading to modernity, but the substance of modernity itself, so
the incessant and permanently
unfinished globalization is the essence of the new globality of human condition (Bauman, 2001: 138) As discussed
in the former section, there is an assumption in liberal peacebuilding policies that civil war represents the
return to pre-modern disorder. Hence, liberal state- building is the answer. It is this policy-framework
that gives rise to the dichotomy between the liberal peace as externally induced and indigenous
culture as the condition before intervention. According to the accounts above, however, liberal modernization does not replace ‘the nonliberal other’ but radically transforms societies and culture in ways that both give rise to replications of ‘the liberal’ and its contextual ‘other’ as an inherent
reaction. When
liberal peacebuilders intervene, they seek to tip the balance in favour of the liberal by
institutionalizing it and creating incentives for getting rid of its other which is associated with war. As
we have seen, postcolonial theory renders the prospects for such a ‘purification process’ rather dim.
Several analyses of the virtual character of the liberal peace in peacebuilding affected societies confirm this assessment (Debrix, 1999; Duffield, 2007; MacGinty,
2006; Richmond, 2005)
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Security
US policy is locked in securitizing logic—it will always forcefully impose itself upon
non-democratic nations
Layne, IR theorist, 94
[Christopher, Autumn 1994, “Kant or Cant: The Myth of the Democratic Peace,” International Security,
Volume: 19, p. 45-47, accessed 7/1/13, YGS]
The validity of democratic peace theory is not a mere academic concern.¶ Democratic
peace theory has been widely
embraced by policymakers and¶ foreign policy analysts alike and it has become a lodestar that guides America's
post-Cold War foreign policy. Michael Doyle's 1983 conception of a¶ democratic "zone of peace" is now
routinely used in both official and unofficial U.S. foreign policy pronouncements. Following the Cold
War, a host¶ of commentators have suggested that the export or promotion of democracy¶ abroad
should become the central focus of American's post-Cold War foreign¶ policy.140 From Haiti to Russia,
America's interests and its security have been¶ identified with democracy's success or failure. National
Security Adviser¶ Anthony Lake said that America's post-Cold War goal must be to expand¶ the zone of
democratic peace and prosperity because, "to the extent democracy and market economics hold sway
in other nations, our own nation will¶ be more secure, prosperous and influential."141¶ Those who
want to base American foreign policy on the extension of¶ democracy abroad invariably disclaim any intention to
embark on a "crusade," and profess to recognize the dangers of allowing policy to be based¶ on excessive
ideological zeal.142 These reassurances are the foreign-policy¶ version of "trust me." Because it links
American security to the nature of¶ other states' internal political systems, democratic peace theory's
logic inevitably pushes the United States to adopt an interventionist strategic posture. ¶ If democracies
are peaceful but non-democratic states are "troublemakers"¶ the conclusion is inescapable: the
former will be truly secure only when the¶ latter have been transformed into democracies, too.¶ Indeed,
American statesmen have frequently expressed this view. During¶ World War 1, Elihu Root said that,
"To be safe democracy must kill its enemy¶ when it can and where it can. The world cannot be half
democratic and half¶ autocratic."143 During the Vietnam War, Secretary of State Dean Rusk claimed¶
that the "United States cannot be secure until the total international environment is ideologically
safe." These are not isolated comments; these views¶ reflect the historic American propensity to seek
absolute security and to define security primarily in ideological (and economic) terms. The political¶ culture
of American foreign policy has long regarded the United States,¶ because of its domestic political system, as a singular nation. As a
consequence, American policymakers have been affected by a "deep sense of being¶ alone" and they have regarded the United States as
"perpetually beleaguered."144 Consequently, America's foreign and defense policies have been¶ shaped by the belief that the United States
must create a favorable ideological¶ climate abroad if its domestic institutions are to survive and flourish.145¶ Democratic
peace
theory panders to impulses which, however noble in¶ the abstract, have led to disastrous military
interventions abroad, strategic¶ overextension, and the relative decline of American power. The latest
example of the dangers of Wilsonianism is the Clinton administration's Partnership for Peace. Under this plan, the asserted American interest in
projecting democracy into East Central Europe is advanced in support of NATO¶ security guarantees and eventual membership for Poland,
Hungary, and the¶ Czech Republic (and some form of U.S. security guarantee for Ukraine). The¶ underlying argument is simple: democratic
governments in these countries¶ will guarantee regional peace in the post-Cold War era, but democracy cannot¶ take root unless these
countries are provided with the "reassurance" of U.S.¶ or NATO security guarantees.¶ In fact, however, East Central Europe is bound to be a
highly volatile¶ region regardless of whether NATO "moves east." The extension of NATO¶ guarantees eastward carries with it the obvious risk
that the United States¶ will become embroiled in a future regional conflict, which could involve¶ major powers such as Germany, Ukraine, or
Russia. There is little wisdom¶ in assuming such potentially risky undertakings on the basis of dubious¶ assumptions about the pacifying effects
of democracy.146
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Imperialism
Democracy has been used for imperialist invasions
Barkawi, lecturer in international relations, and Laffey, Associate Professor of Politics,
99
[Tarak, Mark, European Journal of International Relations, Volume 5, Issue 4, “The Imperial Peace:
Democracy, Force, and Globalization”, date accessed: 07/01/13, LV]
For example, democracy
became one of the major organizing principles of core states during the creation
of a global system of empires, forged and maintained by colonial wars. Global processes of
colonization and decolonization had a direct impact on the development of democracy as a form of
social and political organization, both in former colonial territories and in metropolitan states.
Imperial power was pitted against local communities and peoples defending or seeking forms of rule
often more democratic than those imposed on them. The emergence in former colonies of modern
forms of political and social organization such as the territorial state, capitalist or command
economies, and democratic or bureaucratic-authoritarian politics is unintelligible apart from the
experience of colonization and decolonization.13 Mass parties in one-party systems and authoritarian
forms of state, for instance, were often the side-effects of organizational imperatives stemming from
the prosecution of anti-colonial war (e.g. Fidel Castro's Cuba; Ho Chi Minn's Vietnam). In this and other ways, forms
of organization adopted in the context of struggle structure postcolonial political forms in profound
ways (Ahmad, 1995). Significantly, one-party systems were often articulated as 'democratic'. If democracy is
about rule by the people, there is nothing inherently undemocratic in rule being carried out by a single
party. What is important, at least rhetorically, is the relationship between 'the people' and the party as a
vehicle through which 'the people', viewed as a collective subject rather than an aggregation of rightsbearing individuals, struggle and exercise rule (Mann, 1999). States and peoples fashion democratic claims and institutions
according to their histories and position within a changing international system. Wars of decolonization shaped the colonizers
too, contributing to social and political upheaval in the US and Britain, and to political transformation in France and Portugal. Resistance to
imperialism in the periphery led to transformation in the core. The US experience in Indochina had direct consequences for the practice and
meaning of US democracy and its relation to war. New
forms of military manipulation of the media, for example,
were developed in the wake of the Vietnam War, forms designed to limit the kind of criticism that
plagued the US military in Vietnam and to build 'support for the troops' in future conflicts (Klare, 1991,
1995). The conflict in Vietnam had consequences also for the US way of waging war. US efforts to militarize Third World states were stepped
up, as specified in the Nixon Doctrine, in order to shift further the burdens of containment strategy on to client armies. Moreover, the
employment of US forces themselves was rethought, for example in the Weinburger Doctrine, which sought to use them only in situations of
overwhelming superiority and with adequate public support. To maintain this support, considerable effort was put into minimizing US
casualties, as evidenced by the preference for air power in post-Cold War conflicts. As a result, die nature of war changed, both for the US
public and for the objects of US military action. For
the vast majority of the US civilian population war took on the
character of a 'spectator sport' (Mann, 1988: 183 ff.) in which nationalist and militarist sentiments could be
safely expressed. Meanwhile, the Iraqi and Serb populations were subjected to prolonged aerial
bombardment designed to minimize Western military casualties. The dynamics of these relations are global; they
cannot be reduced to 'internal' and 'external' spheres nor can causation be located exclusively in one or the other. Analyzing the relationship
between democracy and war thus requires explicit attention to processes of global social change.¶ Locating
the context of
democracy and war in globalization reveals how misleading is analysis that takes the categories that
enable the democratic peace hypothesis as fixed. It leads to recognition of the integral relations between developments in
the (liberal democratic) core and elsewhere and so prompts analysis of the international system not as divided into zones of peace and war but
as a structured whole (Held and McGrew, 1998: 222—4). It also forces us to rethink the centrality of the sovereign territorial state in analysis of
the international relations of democracy and war.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Alternatives
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Eirenism
The alternative is to reject the aff’s corrupt epistemology—the 1AC’s
institutionalization ignores the violent discourses of the liberal peace
Richmond, Professor of International Relations, 09
[Oliver, July, Review of International Studies, Volume 35, Issue 03, “A Post Liberal Peace: Eirenism and
the Everyday”, page 563-565, accessed 7/10/13, VJ]
Such a search, via critical research agendas for peace77 termed here eirenism. indicates the need for
an ethical re-evaluation of the liberal peace.71 'Eirenism* was used by Erasmus as a call against
religious chauvinism after the Reformation.74 In a modem context it provides a lens through which
one can evaluate the claims, apparent or hidden of a particular epistemology, concept, theory,
method, or ideology. The failure to apply such a tool has led liberal peacebuilding approaches into a
paradoxical situation. They have reinstated social and economic class systems, undermined
democracy, and caused downward social mobility (as explained in the examples of East Timor and
Afghanistan below). Yet. liberal peace's Renaissance and Enlightenment underpinnings make clear that
the states-system of territorial sovereignty, the approximation of democracy, of human rights and free
trade, also carries a humanist concern with social justice and wide-ranging pluralism (often to be
guaranteed by an international organisation).75 Ironically, this is where its failings are most obvious.
Its focus has remained on security and institutions, rather than developing an engagement with the
everyday life of citizens. It has sometimes been built on force rather than consent, and more often
conditionally, and it has failed to recognise local cultural norms and traditions. It has created a 'virtual
peace' in its many theatres.76 This is not to say that narrow security issues have not been somewhat
assuaged and that this has not been without benefit, of course. Experience and data from a range of UN
and UNDP thematic or country focused reports has shown liberal peacebuilding to have less impact on
everyday life than is often claimed by its institutional proponents, the donor and development
communities, and particularly the International Financial Institutions. One example among many can be
found in the context of East Timor after the crisis of 2006. A UN report conceded that despite a lengthy
and costly UN involvement there since 1999: |.. | poverty and its associated deprivations including high
urban unemployment and the absence of any prospect of meaningful involvement and employment
opportunities in the foreseeable future, especially for young people have also contributed to the crisis.''
Vet there is little sense of a need to reflect on the underlying liberal peace paradigm that allowed a
'peace' to be built in East Timor which ignored these issues. In a more recent example, a report on
Afghanistan by the UN Secretary General ignored any direct engagement with such issues in favour of
traditional political and security concerns, with the exception of one telling reference: The failure of
development actors to ensure that quieter provinces in the north and west receive a tangible peace
dividend has played into the latent north-south fault line within Afghanistan [...f* This report's later
sections on development, human rights, and humanitarian issues or human security, focus on orthodox
issues relating to institution-building or 'emergency' issues.79 In the conclusion to the report the full
litany of liberal peacebuilding discourse is repeated in seeming ignorance of the lessons of East Timor,
or indeed of Afghanistan itself. Accordingly, the transition in Afghanistan is under *[.. .| increasing
strain owing to insurgency, weak governance and the narco-economy'. The government needs to *|...]
restore confidence to the popu- lation in tangible ways* but this is conceptualised as being derived
from: |.. .| stronger leadership from the Government, greater donor coherence - including improved
coordination between the military and civilian international engagement in Afghanistan - and a strong
commitment from neighbouring countries, (without which) many of the security, institution-building
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
and development gains made since the Bonn Conference may yet stall or even be reversed.10 This list of
priorities, focusing on security, terrorism, narcotics, and then the orthodoxy of the liberal peace as a
subsequent priority (governance, development, reconciliation, and human rights abuses in this order)
effectively places a local peace dividend for communities and individuals as a distant and lesser priority,
and disconnects its importance from the conduct of democratic politics and the legitimacy of the
state.11 This is because the liberal peace's primary goal in its intervention into the local or domestic is
actually on an international order between sovereign states. This is to be achieved ideally through the
construction of a liberal social contract to produce domestic and international order. In practice, what
has been achieved in post-conflict environments are the shells of liberal states, reproducing
international order, but achieving a virtual peace in a domestic context - at least in the short to medium
term, as the examples above, and of Cambodia and Bosnia aptly illustrate. The ethical and policy
metanarratives about liberal peace derive from the founding myths of Westphalia, its state-centric
elitism, its focus on territorial boundaries and sovereignty, and its disciplinary nature. Walker has
described this as a 'moment of exclusion" The concept of peace has generally been subject to Utopian
or dystopian assumptions, and the notion of the liberal peace has emerged as an 'auto-ambivalent'
compromise." It has been imbued with a specific set of interests, partly through the decontextualisation
of classical political theory to support inherency arguments about conflict, or confirm liberal norms of
market- democracy, and propensity to reshape rather than engage with non-liberal others. This also
validates territorial state sovereignty and a social contract skewed in favour of the slate, free markets,
and the eradication of the indigenous or locally more authentic (often through property rights).34
among other tendencies.33 This has been used to promote a culture of governmental and securitised
institution- alism rather than a broad peace (often by rejecting Kant's peace federation or by
confirming territorial sovereignty).i6rather than promoting an everyday peace.37 It has supported the
classical liberal view that liberal stales and peoples are effectively superior in rights and status to
others, and extended these arguments to allow for the justification of direct or subtle forms of
colonialism, interventionism. and local depoliticization to occur.38 A civil and emancipatory peace
might arise through liberalism, as Foucault argued, but more often it leads to violence of a structural or
direct nature in non-liberal contexts.39 In practice it also may have negative effects on selfdetermination and agency.40 In this context an ethical evaluation of the liberal peace underlines its
tendency to be flimsy, denying self-determination and self-government, and depoliticising. This is as
opposed to the potential of peace being empathetic. emancipatory, and resting upon an ontological
agreement and hybridity (meaning the development of an ontology that is not exclusive but is open to
difference).41 These latter qualities imply that the agents and recipients of the liberal peace are able
to relate to each other on an everyday, human level, rather merely through problem-solving
institutional frameworks that dictate or negate lived experience. They indicate the need for a deep
negotiation of peace even by the agents of the liberal model, and for a willingness to see the Western
liberal model itself modified by its engagement with its own 'others' - meaning conflict and postconflict, especially non-Western, non-liberal, and 'developmental', polities.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
***AFF***
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Perms
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Perm Solvency
Perm solves- foreign influence and locality are not mutually exclusive, and the
alternative fosters anti-westernism that is more dangerous than the link.
Liden, Coordinator at the Research School in Peace and Conflict, 09
[Kristoffer, February 14th-18th, working paper prepared for the ISA convention, New York, “Peace, SelfGovernance and International Engagement: A Postcolonial Ethic of Liberal Peacebuilding”,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/1/2/0/6/pages312060/p312060
-1.php, accessed 7/2/13, VJ]
The postcolonial condition is not native, indigenous, traditional, pre-modern or pre-colonial. It is an
irreversible state of hybridity; heterogeneous mixtures of the modern and a-modern, liberal
and a-liberal, indigenous and foreign, local and global. The political response to the critique of
liberal peacebuilding should therefore not be the denial of international agency but engagement
based on a better conception of the conditions of legitimate and efficient action that furthers
rather than compromises local autonomy. In this connection, the conceptualization of ‘local
autonomy’ makes a political difference. First, the presence of the global in the local ought to be
recognized in postcolonial contexts (Dirlik, 1997). This is the key to the dependence of ‘local
autonomy’ upon ‘international engagement’. The extent and character of this presence is
obviously an empirical matter, but the theoretical point that ‘local’ and ‘global’ should not be
treated as mutually exclusive terms is not. To quote Roland Robertson ‘...we should consider the local
as a ‘micro’ manifestation of the global – in opposition, inter alia, to the implication that the
local indicates enclaves of cultural, ethnic, or racial homogeneity’ (Robertson, 2006: 480). Nor should
the local be defined exclusively as the sphere of the traditional, as has already been argued. If
international policy is framed as supporting traditional culture, it will be an example of the very
orientalism that Edward Said criticizes (Said, 1978). An orientalism based on the idea of the nonWestern other. The implications of oriental peacebuilding would probably be worse than
continuing on the occidental governance track. Imposing the same models everywhere at least
leaves room for local interpretation and resistance. Furthermore, one should not equate the global
with domination and the local with resistance. There is actually such a tendency of romanticizing
the local in some postcolonial theory as well as in literature on indigenous peacemaking. The
local is no less a source of repression and exclusion than the global, and locally constituted
hegemonies are no more acceptable than their global counterparts from a postcolonial
perspective. Furthermore, the global can be a sphere of resistance as well as the local. For
instance, mass media and globalized networks of communication and political organization can
be used to promote resistance as well as exploitation (Darby, 2004: 10).
Perm solves- peacebuilding isn’t inherently bad—reform is key to effectuate change
Liden, Coordinator at the Research School in Peace and Conflict, 09
[Kristoffer, February 14th-18th, working paper prepared for the ISA convention, New York, “Peace, SelfGovernance and International Engagement: A Postcolonial Ethic of Liberal Peacebuilding”,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/1/2/0/6/pages312060/p312060
-1.php, accessed 7/2/13, VJ]
Nor should one, of course, resort to the opposite extreme – associating the local with oppression,
disorder, malfunction and ethnic violence, as is often the case in international policy discourse.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Darby rightly points out that the way this common assumption passes over ‘the role of external
involvement – imperial or global – in reconfiguring local identities and introducing new axes of
difference…’ (ibid.: 10-11) has political implications: ‘Having thus settled for a selective history,
local disorder serves to legitimise contemporary external intervention in the name of
humanitarian relief, good governance or stamping out of terrorism’ (ibid.). While these
interventions, including peacebuilding missions, rightly address grave situations of human
suffering, their negation of the global from the local provokes reactions that only partially
address the root causes of the problem. This claim introduces the reform of regional and global
political, economic, military and cultural systems and institutions as directly relevant to
peacebuilding. One would think that a change of focus from ‘liberalization’ to ‘local autonomy’ would
entail the denial of global premises of peacebuilding, but it actually has the opposite effect. What,
then, is the meaning of non-colonial peacebuilding on these conceptual premises? Well, the
point is exactly to resist the temptation of coming up with an alternative miracle drug, a universal
recipe that assumes a global homogeneity in the ingredients of peace. On the other hand, as
long as we stick to the term of ‘peacebuilding’ it is impossible completely to ignore our general
ideas of what it means. Some would argue that the concept is too loaded with imprecise or
hegemonic connotations to be rescued at all. It is not evident, however, that leaving
peacebuilding discourse in peace would solve this problem. One should rather engage with the
concept, challenge its current meanings and seek to redefine it. This is in line with the ‘hybridization
strategy’ that Kapoor prescribes as an implication of the contingency of colonial discourse (Kapoor,
2008: 136-145).
Perm solves- Peacebuilding can be reformed
Martin, Senior Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political
Science, and Moser, Senior Policy Officer at Friedrich Ebert Foundation, 12
[Mary, Stefanie, Friedrich Ebert Foundation, “Exiting Conflict, Owning the Peace
Local Ownership and Peacebuilding Relationships
in the cases of Bosnia and Kosovo”, http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/id-moe/09181.pdf, accessed 7/2/13,
VJ]
The key challenge for peacebuilding missions, identified by this research, is to be able to gauge from the bottom- up,
and more accurately than at present, what local populations want and need from peacebuilding
policies, whoever ultimately delivers them. Relationships between internationals and locals need to recognise that gatekeepers among
local elites and ›organized‹ civil society are likely to be poor filters for policy preferences, in the
absence of robust democratic institutions, and will reflect self-interest, often ethnically framed, that is disconnected or even opposed to the interests of a
broader society, unrepresented either by NGOs or political parties. Equally internationals alone cannot unilaterally, or as a result of shady alliances with selective local constituencies, deliver
acceptable policy reforms. Consequently, peace operations must disaggregate the local political landscape, paying particular attention to those whose voices have not been heard in the
process, and define new instruments for understanding the needs and aspirations of different constituencies in the reform process. Peacebuilding operations must frame relationships within
the reform process which can adapt and respond continuously and more effectively to the ever changing landscape of long term interaction between multiple local and international groups.
Concretely, consideration should be given to supplementing mission mandates after a certain period with peacebuilding compacts. Although these compacts would not replace mandates as
they would be an additional means by which to regulate the relationship between different
groups within the peacebuilding process. There are various models of ›compacts‹ in Sierra Leone, Burundi, Afghanistan, Iraq and Timor Leste, and scholarly
legal documents,
literature on this aspect of peacebuilding. They attempt to provide a public framework for engagement between externals and locals on the basis of mutual accountability and joint
commitment. Going beyond ›compacts‹, we propose the idea of a human security contract to supplement mission mandates (or indeed follow on from them where these run out and are not
renewed once formal missions end). Human security contracts would represent a two-way political agreement, to rebuild the diminishing legitimacy of outside interveners in mature peace
operations, reset peacebuilding relationships and address the affective deficits noted in extended interventions (such as trust, respect, dignity). Human security contracts would be context
specific, negotiated in a transparent process, at regular pre-determined intervals, and generate a formal sense of responsibility and accountability. The process of developing such a HS
contract is as important as the outcome, initiating a broad dialogue in between all stakeholder groups with a focus on arguing, convincing and negotiating instead of bargaining, commanding
or squeezing. Their principal aim should be to promote public dialogue on the objectives and priorities of peacebuilding, and to define the roles and relationships of external and local actors.
Their ongoing functioning would necessarily also include a consultative process, including the possibility of participation by all stakeholder groups and unaffiliated individuals; soft
accountability mechanisms such as benchmarking, two-way (local-external) monitoring and evaluation, mechanisms for agenda setting and prioritisation and a platform for co-opting
To redress the asymmetry of power relations attention could be paid to processes
of mutual learning and shared experiences as part of peacebuilding dialogues. A human security
contract could help to institutionalise such a new type of interaction between multiple local and
additional donors and stakeholders.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
international groups, while making it clear that all groups have something to gain (and to learn) from
more intense co-operative interactions. However the main point about human security contracts as successors to mission mandates is that they are not just
ceremonial or symbolic on the one hand, nor largely unilateral, on the other – both characteristics which define current peacebuilding arrangements. In order to counter the complexity and
dysfunctionality of existing relationships which this research has observed, and to address the emotional and psychological hazards which long-term intervention produces, a new relationship
has to emerge which is performative, verifiable and which offers dignity to all parties.
The perm solves—institutions already account for the critique and the idea of
sovereign autonomy is a self-serving construct
Chandler, IR professor at the University of Westminster, 10
[David, October 2010, “The Uncritical Critique of ‘Liberal Peace,’” Review of International Studies,
Volume: 36, p. 10-13, YGS]
It would appear that the
assumptions held to be driving liberal peace approaches¶ are very much in the eye
of their critical beholders. The most obvious empirical¶ difficulty is that international policy regarding intervention and statebuilding
seems¶ to have little transformative aspiration: far from assumptions of liberal universalism, it would appear that, with the failure of postcolonial development, especially¶ from the 1970s onwards, international policymakers have developed historically¶ low expectations about
what can be achieved through external intervention and¶ assistance. The lack of transformative belief is highlighted by one of the key¶
concerns of the policy critics of the liberal peace – the focus on capacity-building¶ state institutions and intervening to construct ‘civil’ societies.
The focus on institutional solutions (at both the formal and informal levels) to the problems of¶ conflict and
transition is indicative of the narrowing down of aspirations from¶ transforming society to merely
regulating or managing it – often understood¶ critically as the ‘securitising’ of policymaking. This is a long way from the
promise¶ of liberal transformation and the discourse of ‘liberating’ societies economically¶ and
politically.¶ In fact, it is the consensus of opinion on the dangers of democracy, which has¶ informed
the focus on human rights and good governance. For the policy and¶ radical critics of liberal peace, liberal rights
frameworks are often considered¶ problematic in terms of the dangers of exclusion and extremism. Today’s ‘illiberal’¶ peace approaches do not
argue for the export of democracy – the freeing up of the¶ political sphere on the basis of support for popular autonomy. The language of¶
illiberal institutionalist approaches is that of democratisation: the problematisation ¶ of the liberal subject, held to be incapable of moral,
rational choices at the ballot¶ box, unless tutored by international experts concerned to promote civil society and¶ pluralist values. In these
frameworks, the holding of elections serves as an¶ examination of the population and the behaviour of electoral candidates, rather¶ than as a
process for the judgement or construction of policy (which it is assumed¶ needs external or international frameworks for its production).¶ The
focus on institutionalism does not stem from a critique of liberal peace¶ programmes; institutionalist
approaches developed from the 1970s onwards and¶ were rapidly mainstreamed with the end of the
Cold War.36 From 1989 onwards,¶ Western governments and donors have stressed that policy
interventions cannot¶ just rely on promoting the freedoms of the market and democracy, but need to
put¶ institutional reform and ‘good governance’ at the core.37 Even in relation to¶ Central and Eastern
Europe it was regularly stressed that the people and elected¶ representatives were not ready for freedom
and that it would take a number of¶ generations before it could be said that democracy was ‘consolidated’.38
The¶ transitology literature was based on the critique of liberal assumptions – this was¶ why a
transitional period was necessary. Transition implied that markets and¶ democracy could not work
without external institutional intervention to prevent¶ instability. While markets needed to be carefully managed
through government policymaking it was held that civil society was necessary to ensure that the¶ population learnt civic values to make
democracy viable.39¶ It
was through the engagement with ‘transition’ and the problematic negotiation of
EU enlargement that the discursive framework of liberal institutionalism –¶ where human rights, the
‘rule of law’, civil society, and anti-corruption are¶ privileged over democracy – was programmatically
cohered. It was also through¶ the discussion of ‘transition’ that the concept of sovereign autonomy
was¶ increasingly problematised, initially in relation to the protections for minority¶ rights and then
increasingly expanded to cover other areas of domestic policymaking.40 It would appear that the key
concepts and values of the ‘liberal peace’¶ held to have been promoted with vigour with the ‘victory of
liberalism’ at the end¶ of the Cold War were never as dominant a framing as their radical and policy¶
critics have claimed.41¶ Rather than attempting to transform non-Western societies into the liberal¶
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
self-image of the West, it would appear that external interveners have had much¶ more status quo
aspirations, concerned with regulatory stability and regional and¶ domestic security, rather than
transformation. Rather than imposing or ‘exporting’¶ alleged liberal Western models, international
policy making has revolved around¶ the promotion of regulatory and administrative measures which
suggest the¶ problems are not the lack of markets or democracy but rather the culture of society¶ or
the mechanisms of governance. Rather than promoting democracy and liberal¶ freedoms, the discussion has been how
to keep the lid on or to manage the¶ ‘complexity’ of non-Western societies, usually perceived in terms of fixed ethnic¶ and
regional divisions. The solution to the complexity of the non-liberal state and¶ society has been the
internationalisation of the mechanisms of governance,¶ removing substantive autonomy rather than
promoting it.¶ While it is true that the reconstruction or rebuilding of states is at the centre¶ of external projects of intervention, it
would be wrong to see the project of¶ statebuilding as one which aimed at the construction of a
liberal international¶ order.42 This is not just because external statebuilding would be understood as a
contradiction in liberal terms but, more importantly, because the states being¶ constructed in these
projects of post-conflict and failed state intervention are not¶ liberal states in the sense of having selfdetermination and political autonomy. The¶ state at the centre of statebuilding is not the
‘Westphalian state’ of classical¶ International Relations (IR) theorising. Under the internationalised regulatory¶ mechanisms of
intervention and statebuilding the state is increasingly reduced to an¶ administrative level, in which
sovereignty no longer marks a clear boundary line¶ between the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’.43 Whether we
consider European Union¶ (EU) statebuilding, explicitly based on a sharing of sovereignty, or consider other¶ statebuilding interventions, such
as those by the international financial institutions¶ in sub-Saharan Africa, it is clear that the
state is central as a mechanism for¶
external coordination and regulation rather than as a self-standing actor in¶ so-called ‘Westphalian’
terms.
Only the permutation is able to realize productive change—the critique already
informs policy
Chandler, IR professor at the University of Westminster, 10
[David, October 2010, “The Uncritical Critique of ‘Liberal Peace,’” Review of International Studies,
Volume: 36, p. 17-1, YGS]
The more ostensibly conservative critics of the liberal peace, drawn largely to¶ the policymaking
sphere, have much clearer political aims in their critique of the¶ liberal peace. This is manifest in their
focus on institutional reform, understood as a way of reconciling non-liberal states and societies both to the
market and to¶ democratic forms. This, like the transitology discourse before it, is a radical¶ critique of classical liberal assumptions. In
their advocacy of these frameworks,¶ discursively framed as a critique of the ‘liberal peace’, they have
a clear point of¶ reference. Although, as highlighted above, this point of reference is a fictional one:¶ a
constructed narrative of post-Cold War intervention, which enables them to¶ ground the scaling-back
of policy expectations against a framework of allegedly¶ unrealistic liberal aspirations.¶ This critique of
liberalism is not a critique of interventionist policymaking but¶ rather a defence of current practices
on the basis that they have not been properly¶ applied or understood. Institutionalist approaches, which have informed
the¶ interventionist frameworks of international institutions and donors since the early¶ 1990s, are explicit in their denunciation of the basic
assumptions of classical¶ liberalism. This critique of liberalism is however an indirect one, inevitably so, as¶ the institutionalist critique
developed at the height of the Cold War.65 This is why,¶ while the
classical concepts of the liberal rights framework
remain – ‘sovereignty’,¶ ‘democracy’, ‘rule of law’, ‘civil society’ – they have been given a new
content,¶ transforming the universal discourse of the autonomous liberal rights-holder from¶ that of the subject
of rights to the object of regulation.66 This new content has¶ unfortunately been of little interest to the
more radical ‘power-based’ critics of the¶ ‘liberal peace’. But, in understanding the content of institutionalist approaches,
it¶ is possible to tie together the superficial nature of external engagement with the¶ fact that it has a non-liberal content
rather than one which is too liberal. The institutionalist discourse of intervention and regulation is not one of liberal¶
universalism and transformation but one of restricted possibilities, where democracy and development are hollowed out and, rather than
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
embodying the¶ possibilities of the autonomous human subject, become mechanisms of control and¶ ordering. Institutionalisation
reduces law to an administrative code, politics to¶ technocratic decision-making, democratic and civil
rights to those of the supplicant¶ rather than the citizen, replaces the citizenry with civil society, and
the promise of¶ capitalist modernity with pro-poor poverty reduction.67 To conceptualise this¶
inversion of basic liberal assumptions and ontologies as ‘liberalism’ would be to¶ make the word
meaningless at the same time as claiming to stake everything on the¶ assumed meaning and stakes involved in the critique of the ‘liberal’
peace.68
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Alt=perm
Default aff—the distinction between the alternative and the permutation is virtually
non-existent
Chandler, IR professor at the University of Westminster, 10
[David, October 2010, “The Uncritical Critique of ‘Liberal Peace,’” Review of International Studies,
Volume: 36, p. 14-16, YGS]
Where this critical discourse becomes problematic is in the confidence with¶ which its proponents assert that the reasons for these policy
failings can be located¶ in the liberalism of the interveners or the illiberalism of the subjects of intervention.¶ Roland Paris, for example, argues
that ‘there is no logical requirement for¶ international agencies to resurrect failed states as states, rather than [as] some other¶ type of polity’,
and argues that this is the ‘latest chapter in the globalisation of the¶ Westphalian state’, where this state form is being propped up despite its
failings.48¶ Paris argues that just as the non-liberal Other cannot deal with the liberal state¶ form, they are similarly ill-suited to handle
electoral democracy, warning particularly against the holding of elections in post-conflict situations. It is asserted that¶ holding elections when
societies are still divided or segmented will be counterproductive, often giving enhanced legitimacy to warring parties and bolstering the¶
legitimacy of the forces successful in conflict.
Often the solutions advocated by the¶ policy critics are along similar
lines with regard to both sovereignty and¶ democracy: the need for greater international engagement
in the state institutions,¶ under the guise of guaranteeing that no voices are ‘excluded’ and the need
to¶ constrict the autonomy of elected authorities. Under the rubric of the critique of¶ the liberal peace,
these critics of the liberal peace often advocate the reform of¶ policy interventions away from the
focus on liberal rights frameworks and electoral¶ democracy.¶ Dominik Zaum, for example, through a series of case
studies, argues that the¶ aspirations of the technocratic approach of international statebuilding fails to¶ appreciate that the liberal discourse of
self-government undermines the authority of¶ external interveners and enables local elites to assert pressure and influence.49¶ These liberal
normative commitments mean that international interventions are¶ limited both in time and scope and therefore find it difficult to resist
compromising¶ their initial goals through giving greater authority to local actors.50 Other authors ¶ have a similar perspective, explaining the
failures of international intervention as¶ a product of external actors assuming that liberal models can merely be exported,¶ rather than
understanding the contradictions involved in bringing liberalism to¶ non-liberal societies. Michael Barnett and Christopher Zürcher, for
example, have sought to analyse why liberal interventions tend to be no more than surface, on the¶ basis that elites at both national and
subnational levels can ‘capture’ and¶ ‘compromise’ peacebuilding leading to the reproduction of state-society relations¶ and patrimonial
politics.51¶ Some of the policy critics argue not merely that these Western models are¶ perverted by the power of the non-liberal Other but
that the attempt to export¶ Western models to non-liberal societies is inevitably going to fail to bridge the gulf¶ between liberal and non-liberal
state-society forms. Noah Feldman, for example,¶ suggests that these non-Western states and societies are so alien to Western liberal¶
interveners that ‘the high failure rate strongly supports the basic intuition that we¶ do not know what we are doing’.52 Feldman suggests that
we need to continue to¶ provide external assistance but should reject the idea that ‘our comparative¶ advantages of wealth and power [give]
us any special ability to identify the¶ institutional structures that will succeed in promoting democracy’.53 Michael¶ Ignatieff similarly argues
that ‘we do not actually know how to make states work¶ in non-liberal societies that are poor, divided on religious or ethnic lines or lacked¶ a
substantial state tradition in the first place’.54 The
work of Roland Paris and¶ Timothy Sisk, supports this view,
suggesting that, in dealing with the non-liberal¶ Other, the issues are so complex and dilemma-laden
that pragmatic ‘muddling¶ through’ is the only solution.55¶ Discursively, the alleged ‘voice’ of the non-liberal Other has
also been central¶ to the shifting discourse of development. While some commentators suggest that¶ little substantive has changed in the shift
from the modernising frameworks of the¶ liberal ‘Washington Consensus’ to the post-liberal, post-conditionality, ‘New York¶ Consensus’ focus
on pro-poor policy making, sustainable development and poverty¶ reduction strategy papers,56 there
is little doubt that the
aspirations for social and¶ economic transformation have been scaled back.57 It is quite clear that broad
frameworks of development intervention have much lower horizons than during¶ the Cold War
period;58 for example, the replacement of Cold War desires for¶ modernisation with the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs¶ focus not on social and economic transformation but on the
situation of the¶ poorest in society with the aspiration that, by 2015, people will be able to live on¶ $1 a day.59 The view
that there is a universalising transformative liberal agenda is¶ a peculiar way to understand the focus
on sustainable development, small and¶ medium enterprises and the shift away from large development
projects.60 With¶ regard to the critique of universal liberal aspirations for progress, it is often¶ difficult
to tell the policy perspectives apart from the viewpoints of some of the¶ more radical critics of the
liberal peace. There is a danger that liberalism is¶ criticised not for its inability to universalise economic growth and overcome the¶
problems of combined and uneven development, but for the aspirations of¶ development itself. For example, Michael Pugh asserts that rather
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
than the¶ ‘economic rationalism of (capitalistic) entrepreneurship’, other, ‘non-liberal’,¶ values need to be taken into account. Following the
work of those critical of¶ liberal development models, such as Amartya Sen,61 he argues
that in non-liberal¶ societies:¶
Inequalities and non-physiological needs are considered more significant than either¶ absolute
poverty or, beyond a survival point, physiological needs. This means that provided¶ people are not destitute [.
. .] they may choose to live humbly in order to be fulfilled. Such¶ an approach recognises that the paths
to modernisation may not be convergent at all, and¶ the marginalised peoples of the world are
entitled to choose the extent to which, and how,¶ they integrate in the global economy.62¶ It would seem that
at the core of the policy and radical critiques of the liberal¶ peace is a critique of liberal aspirations
rather than a critique of international¶ interventionist policies and practices. The critique reflects the ease
with which¶ liberalism has become a ‘field of adversity’, through which both policy reform¶ and critical
claims for theoretical advance can both be made. The construction¶ of a liberal ‘field of adversity’ seems to have little
relation to policy realities.¶ This is reflected in the fact that, while there is a consensus on the view that¶ Western
policies are problematic in that they are too liberal, there is much less¶ attention to how the problems
of the post-colonial world might be alternatively¶ addressed. Here, as discussed below, the discursive critique of the
liberal peace¶ unfortunately has very little to offer in ways that go beyond present policy¶ perspectives.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Alt
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
No solvency
The alt fails and links to the criticism—their methodology focuses on the inability of
the Other to realize Western aspirations and will always be assimilated into the state
structure
Chandler, IR professor at the University of Westminster, 10
[David, October 2010, “The Uncritical Critique of ‘Liberal Peace,’” Review of International Studies,
Volume: 36, p. 8-10, YGS]
This article seeks to argue that the
radical intent of the critics of interventionist¶ Western policies has been
blunted by their articulation within the problematic of¶ a ‘liberal peace’, enabling their critique to be
assimilated into the policy discourse¶ of how policy might be reformed and legitimated in the wake of the
discrediting¶ of the claims of Western policymaking after the debacles of Iraq and Afghanistan.¶ The two fairly distinct critical framings of the
‘liberal peace’ stem from very¶ different methodological perspectives and political and policy intents. While
the¶ ‘ideas-based’
critics tend to seek to defend and legitimate regulatory external¶ intervention, the ‘power-based’
critics tend to challenge and oppose these frameworks as the projection of Western power and interests.
Nevertheless, in critiquing¶ Western policy interventions, developed since the end of the Cold War, within the¶
problematic of ‘liberal peace’ it seems that there is often much less distance¶ between the radical approaches
and the policy approaches than might be assumed¶ on the basis of political intent and occasionally there is
a surprisingly large area¶ of confluence.¶ It seems that both sides of the divide, regarding the dynamics driving¶
frameworks of liberal peace, start from the basis that the liberal peace (in its¶ various framings) is actually an adequate description of the policy
framework being¶ devised and implemented in international intervention and external statebuilding¶ approaches since the end of the Cold
War. This would, of course, appear to make¶ intuitive sense if we understood the post-Cold War period as one in which there¶ was a new
confidence in the power of liberal frameworks, with assumptions that¶ the collapse of non-market alternatives meant the ‘End of History’ and
the end of¶ any political or ideological challenge to the ascendency of liberal perspectives and¶ discursive judgements [sic] on the economic,
political and social frameworks of states¶ and societies. This article seeks to make the counterintuitive point that the
rise of¶ critiques
of liberal peace is, in fact, indicative of a lack of confidence in classical¶ liberal assumptions about
human behaviour and the political and socio-economic¶ institutions needed for human flourishing.¶ In
the critiques of the liberal peace, this growing consensus on the problematic¶ nature of liberalism appears
to cross the political and policy spectrum. The¶ fundamental and shared claim of the critics is that the
lack of success of external¶ interventions, designed not only to halt conflict but to help reconstruct the peace,¶ is down to
the liberalism of the interveners. If only they were not, in various ways,¶ so liberal, then it is alleged
external intervention or assistance may potentially be¶ much less problematic. It can appear that the main
academic and political matter¶ of dispute is whether the liberal peace discourse is amenable to policy
change.¶ Here the divide seems to roughly approximate to the division highlighted above, in¶ terms of the heuristic
categories of ‘power-’ and ‘ideas-based’ liberal peace critics. The more radical, ‘power-based’, critics, with a more
economically deterministic¶ approach to the structural dynamics or the needs of ‘neo-liberalism’ are less¶ likely to be optimistic of
reform. On the ‘ideas-based’ side, those critics of liberal¶ peace frameworks who tend to be more engaged in
policy related work are¶ more optimistic with regard to a shift away from the policy emphasis of liberal¶ peace.¶ In a recent
article, Endre Begby and Peter Burgess argue that the majority of¶ the critics of the liberal peace seem to share two key
assumptions about external¶ intervention: firstly, that external Western intervention (of some kind) is
necessary,¶ and secondly, that the goal of this intervention should be the liberal one of human¶
freedom and flourishing.33 They state that, in which case, the problem is not so¶ much with the aspirations or goals of ‘liberal peace’
but with the practices of¶ intervention itself. They have a valid point regarding the limited nature of much¶ of this ‘critical’ discourse, but do not
reflect adequately on the diminished content¶ of the ‘liberalism’ of the policy interventions themselves nor the ‘liberal’ aspirations¶ of those
who advocate for the reform of practices of external intervention. It seems¶ that the
common ground in the broad and
disparate critiques of the liberal peace,¶ is not the critique of the external practices of intervention as
much as the classical¶ assumptions of liberalism itself.¶ The critique of liberalism as a set of
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
assumptions and practices seems to be¶ driving the approach to the study of post-Cold War interventions
in ways which¶ have tended to produce a fairly one-sided framework of analysis in which the¶ concept
of liberalism is ill-equipped to bear the analytical weight placed upon it¶ and appears increasingly emptied of
theoretical or empirical content. Liberalism¶ appears to be used promiscuously to explain a broad range of
often contradictory¶ policy perspectives and practices across very differing circumstances and with very¶
differing outcomes. In this sense, it appears that liberalism operates as a ‘field of¶ adversity’34 through which a coherent narrative of
post-Cold War intervention has¶ been articulated both by critical and policy orientated theorists. The promiscuous¶ use of liberalism to explain
very different policy approaches is, of course, facilitated¶ by the ambiguous nature of the concept itself.¶ It
is this ambiguity which
enables liberalism to be critiqued from opposing¶ directions, sometimes by the same author at the same time. Good
examples of this¶ are Roland Paris and Timothy Sisk who criticise ‘liberal’ peacebuilding for being¶ both too laissez-faire and too interventionist
in its approach to the regulation and¶ management of conflict. In the peacebuilding literature today, the experience of the¶ early and mid1990s and the ‘quick exit’ policies of the ‘first generation’¶ peacebuilding operations in Nambia, Nicaragua, Angola, Cambodia, El Salvador,¶
Mozambique, Liberia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia and Guatemala has been repackaged as evidence that Western interveners had too much faith
in the liberal¶ subject.35 Similarly, the ad hoc responses to the problems of the early 1990s in the¶ development of ‘second generation’
peacebuilding with protectorate powers in Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor, has been criticised as liberal hubris, on the¶ assumption that
international overlords could bring democracy, development and¶ security to others. It seems that, rather than adding clarity, the critique of
the¶ ‘liberalism’ of intervention tells us very little.¶ The
mechanism through which these liberal framings have been
facilitated and¶ critiqued is that of the discursive centring of the non-liberal Other; on whose behalf¶ the policy critics
assert the need for different policy practices. In this way, the¶ policy critics of past policy approaches evade a direct
critique of liberal¶ assumptions about equality, autonomy, and transformative capacity, instead,¶
arguing that the non-liberal Other (in various ways) invalidates, challenges or¶ resists (passively as well as actively)
policy practices which may otherwise have¶ been less problematic.¶ Rather than a critique of liberalism for its
inability to overcome social,¶ economic and cultural inequalities, both the policy, ‘ideas-based’, critique of the¶ liberal peace
and the more radical, ‘power-based’, critiques argue that social,¶ economic and cultural inequalities and
differences have to be central to policy¶ practices and invalidate universalising liberal attempts to
reconstruct and rebuild¶ post-conflict societies. In this context – in which the dichotomy between a
liberal¶ policymaking sphere and a non-liberal sphere of policy intervention comes to¶ the fore – there
is an inevitable tendency towards a consensual framing of the¶ problematic of statebuilding or
peacebuilding intervention as a problem of the¶ relationship between the liberal West and the nonliberal Other.¶ The rock on which the liberal peace expectations are held to crash is that of the¶ non-liberal Other. The non-liberal
Other increasingly becomes portrayed as the¶ barrier to Western liberal aspirations of social peace
and progress; either as it lacks¶ the institutional, social, economic and cultural capacities that are
alleged to be¶ necessary to overcome the problems of liberal peace or as a subaltern or resisting¶ subject,
for whom liberal peacebuilding frameworks threaten their economic or¶ social existence or fundamental values or
identities. The ‘critique’ becomes apology¶ in that this discursive focus upon the non-Western or nonliberal Other is often¶ held to explain the lack of policy success and, through this, suggest that democracy¶ or
development are somehow not ‘appropriate’ aspirations or that expectations¶ need to be substantially lowered or changed to account for
difference.
There’s no alternative—the renunciation of power provides no basis by which to
formulate a solution
Chandler, IR professor at the University of Westminster, 10
[David, October 2010, “The Uncritical Critique of ‘Liberal Peace,’” Review of International Studies,
Volume: 36, p. 17, YGS]
It would appear that the
ostensibly more radical critics, those who draw out the¶ problematic nature of power relations – the
very little to offer as a critical alternative to the current policies of¶
intervention and statebuilding, other than a scaling back of the possibilities of¶ social change. The
leading critics of the liberal peace, like Mark Duffield, Michael¶ Pugh and Oliver Richmond – working through critical theoretical
frameworks¶ which problematise power relations and highlight the importance of difference –¶ suggest that the difference
‘power-based’ critiques above – in fact,¶ have
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
between the liberal West and the non-liberal Other¶ cannot be bridged through Western
policymaking. For Pugh, as we have seen¶ above, taking critical theory to its logical conclusion, capitalist rationality is itself¶ to be
condemned for its universalising and destabilising impulses. Similarly, for¶ Duffield, it seems that the problem of
hegemonic relations of power and knowledge¶ cannot be overcome, making any projection of the ideals of
development or¶ democracy potentially oppressive.63 Oliver Richmond, has systematised this perspective, highlighting the
problems of the disciplinary forms of knowledge of¶ ‘liberal peace’ approaches and suggesting that while it may be possible to
go¶ beyond them through the use of post-positivist and ethnographic approaches –¶ enabling external
interveners to have a greater access to the knowledge of¶ ‘everyday life’ in non-liberal societies being intervened in – any attempt to
know,¶ rather than merely to express ‘empathy’, is open to hegemonic abuse.64¶ It would appear that,
without a political agent of emancipatory social change,¶ the radical ‘power-based’ critics of liberal
peace who draw upon the perspectives¶ of critical theory, cannot go beyond the bind which they have
set themselves, of¶ overcoming hegemonic frameworks of knowledge and power. In fact, it could be¶ argued
that these critical approaches, lacking the basis of a political subject to give ¶ content to critical
theorising, ultimately take an uncritical approach to power.¶ Power is assumed rather than theorised,
making the limits to power appear merely¶ as external to it. It is assumed that there is an attempt to
transform the world in¶ liberal terms and that the failure to do so can therefore be used to argue that¶
liberal forms of knowledge are inadequate ones. The critique is not essentially of¶ power or of
intervention but of the limited knowledge of liberal interveners. The¶ alternative is not that of
emancipatory social transformation but of the speculative¶ and passive search for different, nonliberal, forms of knowledge or of knowing.¶ This comes across clearly in the conclusions reached by Duffield, Richmond and¶
others, and highlights the lack of a critical alternative embedded in these¶ approaches.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
AT: Dillon and Reid Biopower
The alternative doesn’t solve—power is fluid, impossible to capture, and nonconfrontational.
Dillon and Reid, Professors of Politics and International Relations, 2K
[Michael, Julian, Jan-March, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 25, Issue 1, “Global Governance,
Liberal Peace, and Complex Emergency”, accessed 6/30/13, VJ]
To conclude: This confluence of sovereign and governmental power has no center that might be
captured. It has no single source that might be located and cut off. Neither does it have a defensive
curtain wall that might be fatally breached. It is subject to no historical law that will guarantee its
success or bring about its end. It operates according to no historical teleology that will result in a just
and equitable order for all. It is a viral, self-reproducing, hybrid strategic operation of power that poses
new challenges to political and democratic thought because of the ways in which it threatens to
exhaust what politics and democracy might be about. "If you want to help people in the disaster zone,"
John Ryle advises in the epigraph to this article, "you have to think politically." The problem is, How
does one think politically now in respect of this novel hybrid terrain of power that is radically
productive of bodies-in-formation rather than comprised of a fixed universe of preformed bodies
transacting mechanical exchanges of intersubjectivity? Where states, too, are nodes in networks of
power operating as the switching mechanisms that command the zone of indistinction between
inside/outside, nomos/physis, so that the changing fitness criteria of the politics and economics of our
current liberal peace may effect the rugged landscapes that populations, as complex adaptive lifeforms, must negotiate? Here an order that newly poses the question of the political and all its cognate
issues--power, freedom, equity, justice, and the "good society"--operates. Bidding to resolve or replace
these with the imperatives of performativity demanding disposability on behalf of territorialized political
sovereignty, intimately if often also conflictually allied with a more generically utile adaptability, such
abiding human questions are in fact all powerfully reinvigorated once more.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Liberal Peace True
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Generic—Liberal Peace True
Criticisms of the liberal peace are misplaced and flawed—the institution is no longer
based in Cold War framing and the critique only serves to entrench the binary
between the West and the Other
Chandler, IR professor at the University of Westminster, 10
[David, October 2010, “The Uncritical Critique of ‘Liberal Peace,’” Review of International Studies,
Volume: 36, p. 19, YGS]
The critique of the liberal peace is based upon the assumption that Western¶ intervention is too
‘liberal’. The fact that it is too liberal is alleged to be revealed¶ in its lack of success on the ground; in its failure to
achieve liberal outcomes. For¶ the policy critics, the sources of this failure are held to be located in the
non-liberal¶ nature of the societies intervened upon. In the dominant policy framing of¶ interventionist agendas, this
failing is because of the lack of capacity of domestic¶ societies and political elites; for more radical readings, the problematic impact of¶
external policymaking is often re-read as the resistance of indigenous ways of life¶ and knowledges, which should instead be understood and
empathised with.¶ If
the critique of intervention is for its liberalism, then it suggests that the¶ self-image of
the West is being projected where it cannot work. The critique can¶ easily flatter the selfunderstanding of liberal interveners that if they are incapable¶ of transforming the post-conflict
societies and failing states, that they are engaged¶ with, it is merely because they cannot easily be anything
other than liberal and that¶ the societies being intervened in are not ready for liberal frameworks of¶
governance. This critique, can, in fact, result in the reproduction of the ideological¶ binary of the
civilisational divide between the interveners and the intervened in,¶ which is seen to be confirmed the more
interventionist approaches appear to have¶ little impact and to have to be scaled back.¶ There are a number of problems with
the critical construction of ‘liberal peace’.¶ These stem not merely from the fact that the
interventionist policies being critiqued¶ seem to be far from ‘liberal’. Of greater concern is the way
that the term ‘liberal’¶ appears to have become an easy and unproblematic assertion of critical intent.
The¶ critique of the ‘liberal peace’ – and its ability to encompass both policy advocates¶ and radical critics of intervention –
appears to reveal much more about the¶ problematic state of radical and liberal thought than it does
about the policies and¶ practices of intervention and statebuilding. The ostensible framework of the
‘liberal¶ peace’ – of the transformative dynamic ontology of the universal rational subject¶ – had already long since been
critiqued and displaced by the framework of¶ governance and regulatory power. It is peculiar, in these
circumstances, that the¶ dominant policy discussion and the radical discursive framing of post-Cold War¶ intervention
should both therefore take this form.¶ While apologetic intent can perhaps be reasonably applied to some critics working¶
within policymaking circles and attempting to justify the continuation and revamping¶ of current policy framings, this charge cannot so easily be
placed at the feet of those¶ articulating more ‘power-based’ critiques of the liberal peace. That the radical critique¶ of the ‘liberal peace’ should
reproduce similar framings to that of the policy¶ orientated institutionalist critique of liberal peace, highlights the use of the liberal¶ paradigm
as a ‘field of adversity’ to give coherence to radical frameworks of critique. ¶ However, in
focusing on the target of liberalism
rather than on the policy practices¶ and discourses themselves, there is a danger that radical criticism
can be enlisted in¶ support of the institutionalist project, which seeks to rewrite the failures of postCold¶ War intervention as a product of the universalising tendencies of a liberal approach¶ and
suggests that we should give up on the liberal aspirations of the past on the¶ basis of an appreciation
of the irreconcilable ‘difference’ of the non-liberal subject.
Dissent against war proves liberal peace
MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
John MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003, “Beyond the Separate
Democratic Peace” , Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Mar., 2003), pp. 233-243, JSTOR,
accessed 7/1/13, JF
Weart's (1998) study is an ambitious ¶ survey of cases ranging from ancient Greece ¶ through to the present day. A novel finding ¶ is
the extension of the democratic peace ¶ claim to 'oligarchic' republics, distinguished ¶ from democratic
republics through the sup- ¶ pression of a crucial domestic 'enemy' group ¶ by the ruling elite (1998: 30,
121). Both ¶ democratic and oligarchic republics tend to ¶ maintain peace among other democratic and ¶ oligarchic republics respectively, so
long as ¶ the ruling elites recognize the other as of their ¶ own kind. Peace among republics requires ¶ (1) the drawing of a boundary around
one's ¶ in-group to include everyone who shares ¶ one's political culture and (2) republican ¶ political culture itself, 'with its predilection ¶ for
nonviolent negotiation and accommo- ¶ dation within the in-group' (Ray, 1995: ¶ 117). However, Weart's reliance
upon the ¶
protagonists' own perceptions of the other's ¶ regime type (and in-group/out-group ¶ categorizations) is vulnerable
to Oren's ¶ (1995) charge that such perceptions will be ¶ determined more by interest-based consider- ¶
ations than by neutral, independent indi- ¶ cators. Further, there is a long tradition of ¶ dissent within
liberal states against wars with ¶ non-liberal regimes, indicating that republi- ¶ can political culture is
itself contested, not ¶ settled, and that there are strong determi- ¶ nants of a war's legitimacy
independent of the other party's regime type (see also Robin- ¶ son, 2001a,b; Weart, 2001).
Democratic peace theory has broad statistical support
MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003
John MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003, “Beyond the Separate
Democratic Peace” , Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Mar., 2003), pp. 233-243, JSTOR,
accessed 7/1/13, JF
It is now time to move beyond the separate ¶ peace position towards the view that, while ¶ liberal
states are especially peace prone among ¶ themselves, their peace proneness is not ¶ limited to interliberal state relations but is ¶ manifest more widely. Certainly, this is an ¶ interim, under-specified
position but one that ¶ is indicative of the current state of democratic ¶ peace research and at the
same time a pointer ¶ towards its future direction. For now at least, ¶ the claim of inter-liberal state peace is
widely ¶ accepted by scholars as empirically valid ¶ (which is not the same as saying that it is per- ¶ manent or perpetual),
even if there remains ¶ some debate surrounding the nature of the ¶ causal relationships at work. By
contrast, the ¶ liberal/non-liberal realm remains much less ¶ explored and much less understood. The war ¶ and peace proneness of
relationships within ¶ this realm are likely to prove more complex ¶ than represented either by the 'Hobbesian ¶ state of war' of the separate
peace theorists or ¶ the undifferentiated peace proneness of ¶ Rummel. While liberal states do display peace ¶ proneness beyond the interliberal realm, ¶ they are also often involved in war or other ¶ forms of international violence. Making sense ¶ of this realm is an important area
for future ¶ research on the democratic peace. ¶ Existing
approaches have much to offer ¶ such research, and will
benefit from the ¶ integration of monadic and dyadic factors ¶ that becomes possible when one does
not ¶ have to theorize the restriction of the liberal ¶ peace to the inter-liberal realm. At the same ¶
time, however, theorists will have to devise ¶ an alternative to separate peace theory's ¶ reliance upon
regime type to differentiate ¶ between those circumstances in which ¶ liberal states do and do not
fight. Besides a ¶ norm against inter-liberal state violence, ¶ further work on the existence and power
of ¶ a norm against aggression will be of inter- ¶ est, as will work on weaker, secondary ¶ norms such as
those against the unilateral ¶ use of force, preventive war or inflicting ¶ civilian casualties. Part of this
exercise ¶ would also involve consideration of circum- ¶ stances in which liberalism may com- ¶ mission rather than constrain the use of ¶ force,
such as in halting mass violations of ¶ human rights. Democratic peace research ¶ looks set to continue to develop - and ¶ indeed needs to if it is
to make sense of this ¶ complex but compelling topic.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Solves War
New evidence indicates democracies are broadly less prone to war
MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003
John MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003, “Beyond the Separate
Democratic Peace” , Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Mar., 2003), pp. 233-243, JSTOR,
accessed 7/1/13, JF
At the core of the democratic peace debate ¶ are the twin claims that liberal states (1) tend ¶ not to go
to war against other liberal states ¶ but (2) are just as - or even more - war prone ¶ in relations with
non-liberal states as are non- ¶ liberal states among themselves. However, ¶ the empirical basis of this
conventional ¶ 'separate peace'l position is challenged by a ¶ growing body of recent research, and ¶
attempts to explain it are shown here to be ¶ theoretically flawed. Accordingly, it is time to ¶ develop the emergent
view that while liberal ¶ states are especially peace prone in relations ¶ with other liberal states, they are
not only ¶ peace prone with other liberal states, but also ¶ more broadly. As such, the inter-liberal ¶
(dyadic) peace is not an isolated pacifism, but ¶ part of a broader liberal state peace prone- ¶ ness. While
the shift within democratic peace ¶ research is marked, there is no generally ¶ accepted understanding of this broader
or ¶ more general peace proneness among ¶ scholars, and its bases, extent and limitations ¶ remain only partially understood. ¶ I begin
by considering the initial debates ¶ of the 1980s: how one accounts for the war ¶ proneness of liberal
states and how the limits ¶ of the democratic peace are to be established. ¶ The article reviews the
recent empirical turn ¶ identifying the broader peace proneness of ¶ liberal states and then shows that
theories of ¶ separate peace have in fact failed to explain ¶ the position's central claim that the liberal ¶
peace extends 'as far as, and no further than, the relations among liberal states' (Doyle, ¶ 1983: 223).
Recent evidence suggests democracies have a decreased likelihood of conflict with
non-democracies
MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003
John MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003, “Beyond the Separate
Democratic Peace” , Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Mar., 2003), pp. 233-243, JSTOR,
accessed 7/1/13, JF
The first tenet of separate peace theory - that ¶ democracies tend not to fight each other - ¶ remains
robust. It has withstood a critical ¶ debate with realists and statistical challenges ¶ (see Chan, 1997; but also
Lemke & Reed, ¶ 1996; Gartzke, 1998; Russett & Oneal, ¶ 2001: 228-237; Henderson, 2002) and has ¶ recently been deepened to
include the claim ¶ that 'pairs of democracies are much less likely ¶ than other pairs of states to fight or
to ¶ threaten each other in militarized disputes ¶ less violent than war' (Russett & Oneal, ¶ 2001: 46).2 But the
second tenet - that ¶ liberal states are peace prone only in relations ¶ with other liberal states - is
increasingly challenged. The significance attached to the ¶ 'frequency' of war involvement has dimin- ¶
ished as studies have turned to other aspects ¶ and indicators of war proneness. The balance ¶ of
empirical research increasingly supports the ¶ view that liberal states are more generally ¶ peace prone.
Indeed, two literature reviews of ¶ the mid-1990s (Ray, 1995: 11-21,33; Elman, ¶ 1997: 15-18; see also Russett & Starr, 2000) ¶ find that
'much of the aggregate data on the ¶ democratic peace phenomenon suggest that ¶ democracies are
less war prone in general, and ¶ that it is not only in their relations with each ¶ other that the pacifying
effects of democracy ¶ emerge' (Elman, 1997: 16).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Statistics proves that liberal states are less likely to initiate conflicts
MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003
John MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003, “Beyond the Separate
Democratic Peace” , Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Mar., 2003), pp. 233-243, JSTOR,
accessed 7/1/13, JF
The basis for this shift lies in the trend to ¶ look beyond the scope of the 'frequency' ¶ measure to
consider the willingness and ¶ circumstances of liberal state war involve- ¶ ment (Maoz & Abdolali, 1989: 18-20;
¶ Bueno de Mesquita &
Lalman, 1992: 157; ¶ Bremer, 1992: 329; Benoit, 1996: 654; ¶ Gleditsch & Hegre, 1997: 295, 302; ¶ Russett & Oneal,
2001: 276; see also Chan, ¶ 1997).
While these authors all point to a ¶ broader or more general peace
proneness, ¶ there are considerable differences in their ¶ precise claims. ¶ However, one point on which a
consensus ¶ does appear to be consolidating is that liberal ¶ states have a lower propensity to initiate ¶
violence. Rousseau et al. (1996: 512-513) ¶ suggest 'that democracies are less likely than ¶ non-democracies to
initiate crises against all ¶ states', but that once a democracy is involved ¶ in an international crisis, the
regime type of ¶ its opponent will influence its bargaining ¶ behaviour. Gleditsch & Hegre (1997: 295) ¶ note problems of
interpretation but find that ¶ in the modern era 'democracies would appear ¶ to initiate violence very rarely, except in pro- ¶ tracted conflicts'.
Rioux (1998: 282) also ¶ finds that democracies initiate fewer crises ¶ than non-democracies, as does Schultz ¶ (2001:
137). Russett, a leading proponent of ¶ the separate peace position, is increasingly ¶ inclined towards this revisionist position ¶ (Russett &
Oneal, 2001: 50).3 ¶ Reinforcing these statistically based ¶ studies are a number of recent historically ¶ grounded works. One
such group
extrapo- ¶ lates the policy positions of liberals or parlia- ¶ mentary socialists within the state and finds ¶
that these groups tend to be more peace ¶ prone in foreign policy relative to other ¶ mainstream
domestic political positions ¶ (although there may be circumstances, such ¶ as humanitarian intervention, when liberals ¶ may be
more willing to use force than those ¶ on their Right). Avineri's (1986) dated but ¶ suggestive study of Israel's foreign policy, ¶ MacMillan's
(1998) studies of the Anglo- ¶ Boer Wars and of British and German ¶ liberalism prior to World War I, and ¶ Keohane's (2000) study of British
security ¶ policy since 1945 all find a positive corre- ¶ lation between liberalism/socialism in ¶ domestic politics and greater constraints on ¶ the
use of force in foreign policy. They
ground this greater constraint in the charac- ¶ ter of liberal/socialist values
and ideologies. ¶ Central to these studies is the analysis of the ¶ way in which liberalism and socialism
influ- ¶ ence perceptions of the legitimacy of the use ¶ of force.4 These studies place greater empha- ¶ sis
upon monadic (that is, nation-state) level ¶ factors than does separate peace scholarship ¶ and are concerned
to trace not only foreign ¶ policy preferences but also international out- ¶ comes. ¶ The preferences/outcomes
¶
distinction is ¶ considered in detail by Gaubatz's (1999) ¶ study of the relationship between the domes- ¶ tic electoral cycle and war
involvement. His discussion stresses the
need to distinguish ¶ between foreign policy preferences and inter- ¶
national outcomes and also to develop ¶ explanatory frameworks able to synthesize ¶ the operation of
monadic (nation-state level) ¶ factors and dyadic (international) level ¶ strategic interactions. Gaubatz
argues that ¶ (the monadic factor of) elections and the ¶ public debate that these encourage incline ¶ democracies
'consistently toward the avoid- ¶ ance of war even when the public mood is ¶ quite belligerent' (1999: 78,
15). He also ¶ finds that democracies enter more wars in the ¶ early stages of their electoral cycles and fewer ¶ wars in the later stages (1999:
142).
Even if they go to war – democracies resolve them faster
MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003
John MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003, “Beyond the Separate
Democratic Peace” , Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Mar., 2003), pp. 233-243, JSTOR,
accessed 7/1/13, JF
Goemans (2000) focuses upon how ¶ regime type influences decisions regarding ¶ the appropriate point at which
to end a war. ¶ He finds that non-repressive (that is, demo- ¶ cratic) regimes and repressive regimes (dicta- ¶
torships) modify their minimum terms of ¶ settlement in line with new information ¶ about the outcome
and costs of the war. ¶ Thus, if new information appears unfavour- ¶ able, the minimum terms of
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
settlement will ¶ decrease, and vice versa. However, semi- ¶ repressive, semi-exclusionary regimes (ano- ¶ cratic,
mixed) will not act in this way, and ¶ may even increase the minimum terms of ¶ settlement upon receiving unfavourable new ¶
information. The rationality of this appar- ¶ ently perverse behaviour becomes clear once ¶ the factor of
anticipated punishment is taken ¶ into account. In a democracy, political ¶ leaders are likely to lose power even if
they ¶ lose the war moderately, but they are unlikely ¶ to face additional punishment (death, ¶ imprisonment, exile).
Dictators who lose ¶ office are likely to face additional punish- ¶ ment, but they are less likely to lose office if ¶ they
only lose the war moderately. This is ¶ because they continue to possess the neces- ¶ sary repressive apparati to suppress attempts ¶ to remove
them. However, in a semi-repres- ¶ sive state, the leadership can expect to lose ¶ power and face additional punishment if it ¶ loses a war,
hence the incentive to avoid that ¶ day of reckoning through continuing the war ¶ - gambling for
resurrection - even in the face ¶ of deteriorating prospects of victory The early focus, then, upon the frequency ¶ of
war involvement blinkered researchers ¶ from recognizing indicators of a greater peace ¶ proneness that became apparent when one ¶
considers the willingness and circumstances ¶ of liberal state war involvement. This
shift in ¶ opinion is reinforced by a
significant body of ¶ recent work, employing different method- ¶ ologies. However, the strength of the separ- ¶ ate
democratic peace rests not solely on ¶ empirical findings, but also on the power of ¶ its theoretical underpinnings. A critique of ¶ the separate
peace position will be much ¶ strengthened if it can demonstrate the failure ¶ of its theoretical foundations.
Democratic peace is just US hegemony which has solved global conflicts
Rosato, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, 3
[Sebastian, 11/03, “The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,” The American Political Science
Review, Vol. 97, pp. 599-600, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3593025, LV]
One potential explanation is that the democratic ¶ peace is in fact an imperial peace based on American ¶ power.
This claim rests on two observations. First, the ¶ democratic peace is essentially a post-World War II ¶
phenomenon restricted to the Americas and Western ¶ Europe. Second, the United States has been
the dominant power in both these regions since World War II ¶ and has placed an overriding emphasis
on regional ¶ peace. ¶ There are three reasons we should expect democratic ¶ peace theory's empirical
claims to hold only in the post-1945 period. First, as even proponents of the democratic peace have
admitted, there were few democracies in the international system prior to 1945 and even fewer ¶ that
were in a position to fight one another. Since 1945, ¶ however, both the number of democracies in the
international system and the number that have had an ¶ opportunity to fight one another have grown
markedly ¶ (e.g., Russett 1993, 20). Second, while members of double democratic dyads were not significantly
less likely to ¶ fight one another than members of other types of dyads ¶ prior to World War II, they
have been significantly ¶ more peaceful since then (e.g., Farber and Gowa 1997). ¶ Third, the farther back we go in
history the harder it ¶ is to find a consensus among both scholars and policymakers on what states
qualify as democracies. Depending on whose criteria we use, there may have been ¶ no democratic
wars prior to 1945, or there may have ¶ been several (see, e.g., Layne 1994; Ray 1995; Russett ¶ 1993; Spiro 1994). Since then,
however, we can be fairly ¶ certain that democracies have hardly fought each other ¶ at all. ¶ Most of the purely democratic dyads since World ¶ War II can be
found in the Americas and Western ¶ Europe. My analysis includes all pairs of democracies ¶ directly or indirectly contiguous to one another or sep- ¶ arated by less
than 150 miles of water between 1950 and ¶ 1990 (Przeworski et al. 2000; Schafer 1993). This yields ¶ 2,427 double democratic dyads, of which 1,306 (54%) ¶ were
comprised of two European states, 465 (19%) ¶ were comprised of two American states, and 418 (17%) ¶ comprised one American state and one European state. ¶
American
preponderance has underpinned, and continues to underpin stability and peace in both of these ¶
regions. In the Americas the United States has successfully adopted a two-pronged strategy of driving
¶ out the European colonial powers and selectively intervening either to ensure that regional conflicts
do ¶ not escalate to the level of serious military conflict or ¶ to install regimes that are sympathetic to
its interests. ¶ The result has been a region in which most states are ¶ prepared to toe the American
line and none have pre- ¶ tensions to alter the status quo. In Europe, the expe- ¶ rience of both World
Wars persuaded American poli- ¶ cymakers that U.S. interests lay in preventing the con- ¶ tinent ever
returning to the security competition that ¶ had plagued it since the Napoleonic Wars. Major ini- ¶
tiatives including the Marshall Plan, the North Atlantic ¶ Treaty, European integration, and the
In short, 90% of purely democratic dyads have been ¶ confined to two geographic regions, the Americas and ¶ Western Europe. ¶
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
forward deploy- ¶ ment of American troops on German soil should all ¶ be viewed from this
perspective. Each was designed ¶ either to protect the European powers from one an- ¶ other or to
constrain their ability to act as sovereign ¶ states, thereby preventing a return to multipolarity ¶ and
eliminating the security dilemma as a factor in ¶ European politics. These objectives continue to pro- ¶
vide the basis for Washington's European policy today ¶ and explain its continued attachment to
NATO and its ¶ support for the eastward expansion of the European ¶ Union. In sum, the United States
has been by far the ¶ most dominant state in both the Americas and Western ¶ Europe since World
War II and has been committed, ¶ above all, to ensuring that both regions remain at ¶ peace.24 ¶ Evaluating
whether the democratic peace finding is ¶ caused by democracy or by some other factor such ¶ as American preponderance has implications far be- ¶ yond the
academy. If peace and security are indeed a ¶ consequence of shared democracy, then international ¶ democratization should continue to lie at the heart of ¶
American grand strategy. But if, as I have suggested, ¶ democracy does not cause peace, then American poli- ¶ cymakers are expending valuable resources on a
policy ¶ that, while morally praiseworthy, does not make ¶ America more secure.
Interdependence means we don’t go to war
Doyle, Harold Brown Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Political Science at
Columbia University, 3
[Michael W., “Three Pillars of the Liberal Peace,” The American Political Science Review , Vol. 99, No. 3
(Aug., 2005), pp. 463-466, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30038953, date accessed: 07/02/13, LV]
Third and last, material incentives sustain interliberal normative commitments. The "spirit of commerce" ¶
spreads widely and creates 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 when the ¶ parties can expect to be governed by a rule
of law ¶ that respects property and that enforces legitimate exchanges. 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. But, because keeping ¶ open markets rests on an assumption that the next ¶ set of transactions will
also be determined by 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. ¶
In this same regard, 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 cross-cutting transnational ¶ ties that serve as lobbies for mutual accommodation. ¶ 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.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Indicts of studies
“Separate peace” theory lacks solid logical explanation – no warrant why peace
doesn’t extend beyond the “liberal zone”
MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003
John MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003, “Beyond the Separate
Democratic Peace” , Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Mar., 2003), pp. 233-243, JSTOR,
accessed 7/1/13, JF
Rummel's 'general' and Doyle's 'separate ¶ peace' variants of the democratic peace each ¶ generated a
distinct theoretical or explana- ¶ tory task. Rummel's general pacifism simply ¶ required the
identification of certain factors ¶ at the monadic level that increase the peace ¶ proneness of liberal
states, and he adopted ¶ fairly conventional tenets of liberal inter- ¶ nationalism and pluralism for this purpose. ¶
Separate peace theorists had to explain, ¶ simultaneously, why liberal states rarely if ¶ ever go to war against one another and why ¶ they are as
(or more) war prone in relations ¶ with non-liberal states as are any other type ¶ of state. To
reconcile these two aspects, separ¶ ate peace theorists had to demonstrate how ¶ any specific explanatory factor manifests ¶ itself so as
to (1) promote peace when a ¶ liberal state engages with another liberal state ¶ and (2) be either
inoperational or promote ¶ conflict when a liberal state engages with a ¶ non-liberal state. This
requirement led separ- ¶ ate peace theorists to neglect or discount ¶ monadic factors, as in principle
these would ¶ operate in relations with non-liberal as well ¶ as other liberal states, thereby
undermining ¶ the theory's core claims, and to focus instead ¶ on dyadic (or interactive) factors
manifest in ¶ terms of the liberal-to-liberal state relation- ¶ ship itself. As one leading scholar put it, 'the ¶ rarity
of lethal violence between democracies ¶ [is due to] something in the nature of the ¶ democratic-todemocratic state relationship ¶ itself' rather than the characteristics of ¶ democracies or liberal states
themselves ¶ (Russett, 1993: 22). However, while theorists ¶ have produced numerous insights of value, ¶ they
have not been able to explain why liberal ¶ peace proneness does not extend beyond the ¶ liberal 'zone
of peace'. ¶
The claim that non-democracies – democracy conflict exists in liberal peace relies on
flawed study.
MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003
John MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003, “Beyond the Separate
Democratic Peace” , Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Mar., 2003), pp. 233-243, JSTOR,
accessed 7/1/13, JF
The claim that non-democracies may ¶ 'exploit' peace-prone democracies does ¶ remain relevant as it
potentially accounts for ¶ some instances of the diplomatic-political ¶ interactions between nondemocracies and ¶ democracies - Hitler's foreign policy being ¶ an archetypical example. Saddam
Hussein ¶ had apparently also learnt the 'lesson' of ¶ Vietnam - that democracies don't have the ¶
stomach for a fight - just as the United States ¶ gained the military sophistication and ¶ political will to
put this 'lesson' behind it. ¶ Also, if Milosevic had not reckoned on the ¶ 'exploitability' of democracies (in terms of ¶ lacking the will
to fight) at the start of the ¶ 1990s, then one could well forgive him for ¶ developing such a view subsequently given ¶ the vacillation and
confusion of Western ¶ policy up until the 1999 NATO bombing. ¶ However, and despite the anecdotal illustra- ¶ tions offered here, as
Russett himself is aware, ¶ being right on occasion does not mean that ¶ an argument is correct as a
general thesis. ¶ Quite simply, the extensive case-study work ¶ necessary to establish the accuracy and
reach ¶ of this claim has not been undertaken. ¶ Hence, while this is an interesting con- ¶ tention, it remains underdeveloped
and ¶ requires much greater historical grounding ¶ before its measure is known. Linked to this ¶ is the second criticism that the notion that ¶
democracies are somehow 'victims' of the ¶ aggressive actions or intent of others will ¶ always remain dubious in the absence of an ¶ integrated
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
account of the extensive record of ¶ war, intervention and imperialism initiated ¶ by democracies themselves against weaker ¶ parties. Third,
the method of identifying (or ¶ sourcing) norms in this argument has been ¶ criticized by Bueno de
Mesquita et al. as 'ad ¶ hoc'; that is to say, norms seem to feature in ¶ the explanation solely by
reference to the ¶ outcomes of conflict between democratic ¶ states. 'In order to qualify as an
explanation ¶ of the observation, however, that assertion ¶ must be derived independently of the
obser- ¶ vation, either from prior axioms or from ¶ unrelated empirical evidence' (Bueno de ¶ Mesquita et al.,
1999: 792).
Critics of liberal peace relied on massively flawed methodology
MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003
John MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003, “Beyond the Separate
Democratic Peace” , Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Mar., 2003), pp. 233-243, JSTOR,
accessed 7/1/13, JF
Owen's (1994, 1997) focus upon 'liberal- ¶ ism' as the peace-generating independent ¶ variable valuably
connects democratic peace ¶ scholarship to political philosophy. Theor- ¶ etically, this is important for
understanding ¶ the moral context and orientation of actor ¶ preferences and is important also in facili¶ tating analysis of different domestic ideo- ¶ logical strands and political traditions ¶ within the state.
However, in Owen's ¶ account, the price for satisfying the explana- ¶ tory requirements of the separate peace ¶
position is a highly selective, if not distorted, ¶ reading of the liberal tradition itself. Owen ¶ (1997: 5) remains
on fairly solid ground ¶ when he argues that liberal states 'contain ¶ elites who believe that peace is intrinsically ¶ good [and] that liberal states
are more pacific ¶ and trustworthy ... Conversely, they believe ¶ that illiberal states are belligerent and that ¶ close ties with them may corrupt
their own ¶ state.' It
is a mistake, however, to confound ¶ liberal analyses of the causes of war in the ¶
international system with liberal ethics, or ¶ thinking upon the legitimacy of the use of ¶ force. For sure,
liberals have long regarded ¶ non-liberal regimes as more war prone than ¶ other liberal regimes, but
liberals have not ¶ inferred from this a general, wide-ranging ¶ right to go to war against them, which is ¶
how Owen appears to represent the tra- ¶ dition. ¶ His political-philosophical grounding of ¶ the separate peace in the work of Kant, Paine ¶ and
Condorcet does not bear scrutiny. ¶ Owen's
method of identifying certain ¶ instances or passages in which
liberals lend ¶ support to the use of force would be valuable ¶ if it were a comprehensive review of the
¶ circumstances when specific liberals did and ¶ did not support the use of force, but a ¶ snippet here
and there does not do this. ¶ Running throughout Kant's work, for ¶ example, is the strong disapproval of the use ¶ of force as a way
of pursuing one's rights, let ¶ alone for conquest or direct political gain ¶ (see, for example, Reiss, 1991: 105, 174; ¶ MacMillan, 2002). In the
case of Thomas ¶ Paine, Owen's representation of the pam- ¶ phleteer as an apologist for France's anti- ¶ British policies fails to acknowledge
the ¶ strong war aversion in his thought. One ¶ would not know it from Owen's account, but ¶ Paine 'usually opposed [France's] expansion- ¶ ist
warfare', and while he was a supporter of ¶ civil wars of national liberation against ¶ despotic governments (unlike Kant, who ¶ forbade
rebellion), 'he felt that it would be ¶ immoral for liberal republics to intervene in ¶ such conflicts' (Fitzsimons,
1995: 578). ¶ Similarly, the political biography of Con- ¶ dorcet that Owen himself uses is notable for ¶ emphasizing the reluctance with which
he ¶ supported the use of force and the need to ¶ devise institutional mechanisms that circum- ¶ scribe the state's ability to use military power
1963: 92, 146). ¶ Certainly, there are tensions in liberal ¶ thinking and inconsistencies in practice, but ¶ the bulk of liberal
thinking is far more peace ¶ prone than Owen would have one believe. ¶ While the existence of nonliberal regimes ¶ presents liberals with a whole series of moral ¶ and practical dilemmas, their
existence does ¶ not of itself sanction the use of force. Owen ¶ is, however, largely accurate in stating that, ¶ generally,
liberals 'believe that peace is intrin- ¶ sically good' as liberals (including the ¶ philosophes) realize that war and preparation ¶
for war jeopardizes the pursuit of liberty and ¶ the development of a just political com- ¶ munity. This danger, however, is not
depen- ¶ dent upon the regime type of the other state, ¶ and as such is one fundamental reason why ¶
many liberals have been disinclined from war ¶ in general, not only war against other liberal ¶ states.
¶ (Schapiro,
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Proponents of “separate peace” ignore massive amounts of evidence to the contrary
MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003
John MacMillan, research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, 2003, “Beyond the Separate
Democratic Peace” , Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Mar., 2003), pp. 233-243, JSTOR,
accessed 7/1/13, JF
Bueno de Mesquita et al. (1999) develop ¶ a rational choice model in an attempt to ¶ explain a number of
empirical findings pertaining to the democratic peace.6 The dis- ¶ cussion here is concerned only with the ¶ mechanism
through which their analysis ¶ limits democratic peace proneness to the ¶ inter-democratic state realm. They argue that ¶ political leaders
generally are motivated by ¶ the desire to stay in office but that the ¶ strategies required in order to do this are ¶ determined by the
institutional context. In ¶ an autocracy, the small size of the winning ¶ coalition, as a proportion of the (s)electorate, ¶ provides incentives for
the leader to channel ¶ resources as private goods to her/his support ¶ base as the optimal strategy by which to stay ¶ in power. Success in
public policy, including ¶ in war, is actually secondary (as a means of ¶ staying in power). In contrast, the high pro- ¶ portion of the (s)electorate
required for a ¶ winning coalition in a democracy means that ¶ the leaders in democracies are likely to ¶ remain in power through the successful
pro- ¶ vision of public goods, measured in terms of ¶ policy success. The opportunity to make a ¶ significant difference to the prospects of ¶
remaining in office through channelling ¶ resources as private goods is minimized as, ¶ given the large winning coalition, resources ¶ would
need to be divided between too many ¶ people and thereby spread too thinly to ¶ ensure continued loyalty. ¶ The
authors infer from
this that, during ¶ wartime, leaders in a democratic institutional ¶ context will commit a higher
proportion of ¶ national resources to the war, as winning is ¶ vital to their continued position. By
contrast, ¶ in an autocratic institutional context, the key ¶ to remaining in power is to maintain the
satis- ¶ faction of their winning coalition, and hence ¶ there will be a lower commitment to the war ¶
effort, as this requires what would be regarded ¶ as the diversion of resources from their ¶ 6 Gelpi &
Griesdorf (2001) review and test several insti- ¶ tutional theories of the democratic peace and advocate a ¶
synthesis of the work of Bueno de Mesquita and Fearon. ¶ The study does not, however, consider
Bueno de Mesquita's ¶ most recent (1999) work discussed here. ¶ primary function. From this, the
authors ¶ declare that democracies will be unlikely to ¶ fight each other, as both parties recognize that ¶
their adversary will commit a high proportion ¶ of their national resources and energies to ¶ war. The
exception, however, will be when ¶ there is a great disparity of power between ¶ democracies, in which case the stronger may ¶ seek to exploit
the weaker. By contrast, when ¶ a democracy is in dispute with an autocracy, ¶ the assumption is that the autocrat will not ¶ fight as hard as the
democracy. Hence, while ¶ a democracy may use force, an autocracy will ¶ not attack a democracy. Through this chain ¶ of logic, which turns
many regular demo- ¶ cratic peace assumptions on their head, the ¶ authors maintain the existence of the separate ¶ peace. ¶ The
lack of
supporting historical evidence ¶ makes it difficult to know how the authors ¶ would confirm their
explanation, but a ¶ preliminary examination of one of their key ¶ assumptions does not encourage
confidence. ¶ At the heart of their defence of the separate ¶ peace is the claim that autocrats will not
try ¶ hard in war, as an autocrat's 'survival is not ¶ strongly influenced by the war outcome' ¶ (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 1999: 800).
This, ¶ however, will be news indeed to the great ¶ majority of autocrats who have been defeated ¶ in a
war against a democracy, for they have ¶ lost power either at the implicit or explicit ¶ insistence of the
democratic victor or at the ¶ hands of their own people. The cases of ¶ President Kruger, General Huerta, Emperor ¶
Wilhelm, Mussolini, the Nazi leadership, ¶ Emperor Hirohito, General Galtieri, General ¶ Noriega and Slobodan Milosevic provide ¶ ample
evidence from which to reject the ¶ authors' assumption. Saddam Hussein, in ¶ having remained in
power after a war with a ¶ democracy, appears more the exception than ¶ the rule but, in fact, he
himself faced a ¶ widespread revolt after the 1990-91 Gulf ¶ War. Indeed, given that a defeated autocrat ¶
often loses a lot more than the presidential limousine, there is in fact a very strong incen- ¶ tive for
such leaders to win, if they choose to ¶ fight (note also the contrast with Goemans, ¶ 2000, discussed above). Whatever
other ¶ merits the authors' argument has, it fails, ¶ along with other theories of the separate ¶ peace, to
explain why liberal or democratic ¶ peace proneness should extend only to ¶ relations with other
liberal or democratic ¶ states. Individually, these theories are flawed ¶ through internal problems, lack
of systematic ¶ verification, distortions of the liberal ¶ political-philosophical tradition or high ¶
incidence of counter-examples. Ultimately, ¶ however, the underlying reason for their ¶ failure is that as indicated by the empirical ¶ turn outlined above- the 'separate' demo- ¶ cratic peace is a phantom,
and it is time to ¶ give up the chase.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
AT: Rosato
Rosato is wrong about democratic representation not preventing war
Doyle, Harold Brown Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Political Science at
Columbia University, 3
[Michael W., “Three Pillars of the Liberal Peace,” The American Political Science Review , Vol. 99, No. 3
(Aug., 2005), pp. 463-466, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30038953, date accessed: 07/02/13, LV]
Once combined, however, the three sources do help ¶ explain why liberal states maintain peace with
each ¶ other and are, nonetheless, and for explicable reasons ¶ prone to war and imperialism with nonliberal states. ¶ Given the
absence of this explanation in Mr. Rosato's ¶ (2003) critique, it is worth briefly summarizing the three ¶
hypotheses here. Each emphasizes one aspect of what ¶ characterizes a liberal republic. ¶ First,
republican representative democratic govern- ¶ ments tend to create an accountable relationship be- ¶
tween the state and the voters, particularly median voters. They preclude monarchs or dictators
turning their ¶ potentially aggressive interests into public policy while ¶ assuming that the costs will be
borne by a subordinate ¶ public. Democratic representation introduces republican caution, Kant's (1970)
"hesitation," in place of ¶ autocratic caprice. Representative government allows ¶ for a rotation of elites.
This encourages a reversal of ¶ disastrous policies as electorates punish the party in ¶ power with
electoral defeat. Legislatures and public ¶ opinion further restrain executives from policies that ¶
clearly violate the obvious and fundamental interests ¶ of the public, as the public perceives those
interests. ¶ As importantly, representation together with transparency (what Kant [1970] called "publicity") may
provide for effective signaling, assuring foreign decision ¶ makers that democratic commitments are
credible because rash acts and exposed bluffs will lead to electoral ¶ defeat. Able to make more
credible commitments than ¶ regimes with more narrow electorates, democracies ¶ would thus be less
likely to stumble into wars.3
Rosato is also wrong on the information question
Doyle, Harold Brown Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Political Science at
Columbia University, 3
[Michael W., “Three Pillars of the Liberal Peace,” The American Political Science Review , Vol. 99, No. 3
(Aug., 2005), pp. 463-466, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30038953, date accessed: 07/02/13, LV]
Second, liberal principles add the prospect of international respect. Liberal principles, or norms, involve ¶
an appreciation of the legitimate rights of all individuals. Connecting these principles to public policy
requires publicity. Domestically, publicity helps ensure ¶ that the officials of republics act according to
the principles they profess to be just and according to the interests of the electors they claim to
represent. In- ¶ ternationally, free speech and the effective communication of accurate conceptions of
the political life of ¶ foreign peoples are essential to establish and preserve ¶ the understanding on
which the guarantee of respect ¶ depends. ¶ These principles begin the differentiation of policy ¶
toward liberal and nonliberal states, requiring trust of ¶ and accommodation toward fellow liberals
and producing distrust of and opposition toward nonliberals. ¶ Domestically just republics, which rest
on the consent ¶ of free individuals, presume foreign republics to be ¶ also consensual, just, and
therefore deserving of the accommodation that the individuals that compose them ¶ deserve. 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 ¶ nonliberal
states, which do not rest on free consent, ¶ are not just. Because nonliberal governments are per- ¶ ceived to be in a state of aggression with
their own peo- ¶ ple, their foreign relations become, for liberal govern- ¶ ments, deeply suspect. In short, fellow liberals benefit ¶ from a
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
presumption of amity; nonliberals suffer from ¶ a presumption of enmity. Both presumptions may be ¶ accurate. Each, however, may also be
self-fulfilling.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Liberal Peace Good
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Diamond ‘95
Global democratic consolidation prevents many scenarios for war and extinction
Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, 95
[Larry, December, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s,
http://carnegie.org/fileadmin/Media/Publications/PDF/Promoting%20Democracy%20in%20the%201990s%20A
ctors%20and%20Instruments,%20Issues%20and%20Imperatives.pdf, accessed 7/12/13]
OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former
Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through
increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the
institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear,
chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate.
The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of
these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the
weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty,
and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries
that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not
aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not
ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not
sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one
another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more
stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to
their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties
since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because,
within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable
foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
War
US protection of the liberal peace order smoothes democratic transitions and is
empirically correlated to perpetual great-power peace
Barnett, Former Senior Strategic Research at the US Naval War College, 11
(Thomas P.M March 7th 2011, “The New Rules: Leadership Fatigue Puts U.S., and Globalization, at
Crossroads,” http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/8099/the-new-rules-leadership-fatigue-putsu-s-and-globalization-at-crossroads accessed 7/10/12) ZLH
Events in Libya are a further reminder for Americans that we stand at a crossroads in our continuing
evolution as the world's sole full-service superpower. Unfortunately, we are increasingly seeking
change without cost, and shirking from risk because we are tired of the responsibility. We don't know
who we are anymore, and our president is a big part of that problem. Instead of leading us, he explains
to us. Barack Obama would have us believe that he is practicing strategic patience. But many experts
and ordinary citizens alike have concluded that he is actually beset by strategic incoherence -- in effect,
a man overmatched by the job. It is worth first examining the larger picture: We live in a time of
arguably the greatest structural change in the global order yet endured, with this historical moment's
most amazing feature being its relative and absolute lack of mass violence. That is something to
consider when Americans contemplate military intervention in Libya, because if we do take the step to
prevent larger-scale killing by engaging in some killing of our own, we will not be adding to some
fantastically imagined global death count stemming from the ongoing "megalomania" and "evil" of
American "empire." We'll be engaging in the same sort of system-administering activity that has marked
our stunningly successful stewardship of global order since World War II. Let me be more blunt: As the
guardian of globalization, the U.S. military has been the greatest force for peace the world has ever
known. Had America been removed from the global dynamics that governed the 20th century, the
mass murder never would have ended. Indeed, it's entirely conceivable there would now be no
identifiable human civilization left, once nuclear weapons entered the killing equation. But the world
did not keep sliding down that path of perpetual war. Instead, America stepped up and changed
everything by ushering in our now-perpetual great-power peace. We introduced the international
liberal trade order known as globalization and played loyal Leviathan over its spread. What resulted
was the collapse of empires, an explosion of democracy, the persistent spread of human rights, the
liberation of women, the doubling of life expectancy, a roughly 10-fold increase in adjusted global
GDP and a profound and persistent reduction in battle deaths from state-based conflicts. That is what
American "hubris" actually delivered. Please remember that the next time some TV pundit sells you the
image of "unbridled" American military power as the cause of global disorder instead of its cure. With
self-deprecation bordering on self-loathing, we now imagine a post-American world that is anything but.
Just watch who scatters and who steps up as the Facebook revolutions erupt across the Arab world.
While we might imagine ourselves the status quo power, we remain the world's most vigorously
revisionist force. As for the sheer "evil" that is our military-industrial complex, again, let's examine
what the world looked like before that establishment reared its ugly head. The last great period of
global structural change was the first half of the 20th century, a period that saw a death toll of about
100 million across two world wars. That comes to an average of 2 million deaths a year in a world of
approximately 2 billion souls. Today, with far more comprehensive worldwide reporting, researchers
report an average of less than 100,000 battle deaths annually in a world fast approaching 7 billion
people. Though admittedly crude, these calculations suggest a 90 percent absolute drop and a 99
percent relative drop in deaths due to war. We are clearly headed for a world order characterized by
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
multipolarity, something the American-birthed system was designed to both encourage and
accommodate. But given how things turned out the last time we collectively faced such a fluid structure,
we would do well to keep U.S. power, in all of its forms, deeply embedded in the geometry to come.
To continue the historical survey, after salvaging Western Europe from its half-century of civil war, the
U.S. emerged as the progenitor of a new, far more just form of globalization -- one based on actual free
trade rather than colonialism. America then successfully replicated globalization further in East Asia over
the second half of the 20th century, setting the stage for the Pacific Century now unfolding.
Democracy has been key to global peace and hegemonic stability, multiple factors
prove
Owen, Professor of Politics at University of Virginia , 11
(John M. February 11th 2011, “Don’t Discount Hegemony” http://www.catounbound.org/2011/02/11/john-owen/dont-discount-hegemony/ accessed 7/11/12) ZLH
Andrew Mack and his colleagues at the Human Security Report Project are to be congratulated. Not only
do they present a study with a striking conclusion, driven by data, free of theoretical or ideological bias,
but they also do something quite unfashionable: they bear good news. Social scientists really are not
supposed to do that. Our job is, if not to be Malthusians, then at least to point out disturbing trends,
looming catastrophes, and the imbecility and mendacity of policy makers. And then it is to say why, if
people listen to us, things will get better. We do this as if our careers depended upon it, and perhaps
they do; for if all is going to be well, what need then for us? Our colleagues at Simon Fraser University
are brave indeed. That may sound like a setup, but it is not. I shall challenge neither the data nor the
general conclusion that violent conflict around the world has been decreasing in fits and starts since
the Second World War. When it comes to violent conflict among and within countries, things have
been getting better. (The trends have not been linear—Figure 1.1 actually shows that the frequency of
interstate wars peaked in the 1980s—but the 65-year movement is clear.) Instead I shall accept that
Mack et al. are correct on the macro-trends, and focus on their explanations they advance for these
remarkable trends. With apologies to any readers of this forum who recoil from academic debates, this
might get mildly theoretical and even more mildly methodological. Concerning international wars, one
version of the “nuclear-peace” theory is not in fact laid to rest by the data. It is certainly true that
nuclear-armed states have been involved in many wars. They have even been attacked (think of Israel),
which falsifies the simple claim of “assured destruction”—that any nuclear country A will deter any kind
of attack by any country B because B fears a retaliatory nuclear strike from A. But the most important
“nuclear-peace” claim has been about mutually assured destruction, which obtains between two
robustly nuclear-armed states. The claim is that (1) rational states having second-strike capabilities—
enough deliverable nuclear weaponry to survive a nuclear first strike by an enemy—will have an
overwhelming incentive not to attack one another; and (2) we can safely assume that nuclear-armed
states are rational. It follows that states with a second-strike capability will not fight one another.
Their colossal atomic arsenals neither kept the United States at peace with North Vietnam during the
Cold War nor the Soviet Union at peace with Afghanistan. But the argument remains strong that those
arsenals did help keep the United States and Soviet Union at peace with each other. Why non-nuclear
states are not deterred from fighting nuclear states is an important and open question. But in a time
when calls to ban the Bomb are being heard from more and more quarters, we must be clear about
precisely what the broad trends toward peace can and cannot tell us. They may tell us nothing about
why we have had no World War III, and little about the wisdom of banning the Bomb now. Regarding
the downward trend in international war, Professor Mack is friendlier to more palatable theories such
as the “democratic peace” (democracies do not fight one another, and the proportion of democracies
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
has increased, hence less war); the interdependence or “commercial peace” (states with extensive
economic ties find it irrational to fight one another, and interdependence has increased, hence less
war); and the notion that people around the world are more anti-war than their forebears were.
Concerning the downward trend in civil wars, he favors theories of economic growth (where commerce
is enriching enough people, violence is less appealing—a logic similar to that of the “commercial peace”
thesis that applies among nations) and the end of the Cold War (which end reduced superpower support
for rival rebel factions in so many Third-World countries). These are all plausible mechanisms for
peace. What is more, none of them excludes any other; all could be working toward the same end.
That would be somewhat puzzling, however. Is the world just lucky these days? How is it that an array
of peace-inducing factors happens to be working coincidentally in our time, when such a magical array
was absent in the past? The answer may be that one or more of these mechanisms reinforces some of
the others, or perhaps some of them are mutually reinforcing. Some scholars, for example, have been
focusing on whether economic growth might support democracy and vice versa, and whether both
might support international cooperation, including to end civil wars. We would still need to explain how
this charmed circle of causes got started, however. And here let me raise another factor, perhaps even
less appealing than the “nuclear peace” thesis, at least outside of the United States. That factor is what
international relations scholars call hegemony—specifically American hegemony. A theory that many
regard as discredited, but that refuses to go away, is called hegemonic stability theory. The theory
emerged in the 1970s in the realm of international political economy. It asserts that for the global
economy to remain open—for countries to keep barriers to trade and investment low—one powerful
country must take the lead. Depending on the theorist we consult, “taking the lead” entails paying for
global public goods (keeping the sea lanes open, providing liquidity to the international economy),
coercion (threatening to raise trade barriers or withdraw military protection from countries that cheat
on the rules), or both. The theory is skeptical that international cooperation in economic matters can
emerge or endure absent a hegemon. The distastefulness of such claims is self-evident: they imply that
it is good for everyone the world over if one country has more wealth and power than others. More
precisely, they imply that it has been good for the world that the United States has been so
predominant. There is no obvious reason why hegemonic stability theory could not apply to other areas
of international cooperation, including in security affairs, human rights, international law, peacekeeping
(UN or otherwise), and so on. What I want to suggest here—suggest, not test—is that American
hegemony might just be a deep cause of the steady decline of political deaths in the world. How could
that be? After all, the report states that United States is the third most war-prone country since 1945.
Many of the deaths depicted in Figure 10.4 were in wars that involved the United States (the Vietnam
War being the leading one). Notwithstanding politicians’ claims to the contrary, a candid look at U.S.
foreign policy reveals that the country is as ruthlessly self-interested as any other great power in history.
The answer is that U.S. hegemony might just be a deeper cause of the proximate causes outlined by
Professor Mack. Consider economic growth and openness to foreign trade and investment, which (so
say some theories) render violence irrational. American power and policies may be responsible for
these in two related ways. First, at least since the 1940s Washington has prodded other countries to
embrace the market capitalism that entails economic openness and produces sustainable economic
growth. The United States promotes capitalism for selfish reasons, of course: its own domestic system
depends upon growth, which in turn depends upon the efficiency gains from economic interaction with
foreign countries, and the more the better. During the Cold War most of its allies accepted some degree
of market-driven growth. Second, the U.S.-led western victory in the Cold War damaged the credibility
of alternative paths to development—communism and import-substituting industrialization being the
two leading ones—and left market capitalism the best model. The end of the Cold War also involved an
end to the billions of rubles in Soviet material support for regimes that tried to make these alternative
models work. (It also, as Professor Mack notes, eliminated the superpowers’ incentives to feed civil
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
violence in the Third World.) What we call globalization is caused in part by the emergence of the
United States as the global hegemon. The same case can be made, with somewhat more difficulty,
concerning the spread of democracy. Washington has supported democracy only under certain
conditions—the chief one being the absence of a popular anti-American movement in the target state—
but those conditions have become much more widespread following the collapse of communism. Thus
in the 1980s the Reagan administration—the most anti-communist government America ever had—
began to dump America’s old dictator friends, starting in the Philippines. Today Islamists tend to be antiAmerican, and so the Obama administration is skittish about democracy in Egypt and other authoritarian
Muslim countries. But general U.S. material and moral support for liberal democracy remains strong.
Democratization decreases war—the best models prove
Ward and Gleditsch 98
[Michael D. Ward, Professor of Political Science, University of Washington, and Kristian S. Gleditsch,
graduate research trainee in the Globalization and Democratization Program, at University of Colorado,
Boulder, March 1998, The American Political Science Review]
As Figure 1 details, democratization-whether in mild or strong degrees-is accompanied by
reduction, not increase, in the risk of war. Though we do not present graphs of the converse, changes
toward autocracy and reversals of democratization are accompanied by increased risks of war
involvement. These risks are proportionally greater than the decline or benefits of further
democratization. Thus, there is strong evidence that democratization has a monadic effect: It reduces the
probability that a country will be involved in a war. Although the probability of war involvement does not
decrease linearly, it does decrease monotonically, so that over the entire range of democracy minus autocracy
values, there is a reduction of about 50%. During the democratic transition, at every point along
the way as well as at the end points, there is an attendant reduction in the probability of a polity
being at war. We also find that reversals toward greater levels of autocracy (not shown) not only increase the
probability of war involvement. Apparently, it is more dangerous to be at a given level of democracy if that
represents an increase in the level of authoritarianism than it is to be at the same level of democracy if that
represents a decrease in the authoritarian character of the regime. Stated differently, reversals are riskier
than progress.ll It has been argued that institutional constraints are theoretically important in translating the
effect of democracy into foreign policy (Bueno de Mesquita, Siverson, and Woller 1992; Siverson 1995). If the
idea of democracy is separated into its major components, then the degree of executive constraints empirically
dominates the democracy and autocracy scales (Gleditsch and Ward 1997). Accordingly, we demonstrate that
moving toward stronger executive constraints also yields a visible reduction in the risk of war. CONCLUSION
Our results show that the process of democratization is accompanied by a decrease in the
probability of a country being involved in a war, either as a target or as an initiator. These results
were obtained with a more current (and corrected) database than was used in earlier work, and
our analyses also focus more clearly on the process of transition. In comparison to studies that look only
at the existence of change in authority characteristics, we examine the direction, magnitude, and
smoothness of the transition process.
Democratization decreases the chance of war
Ward and Gleditsch 98
[Michael D. Ward, Professor of Political Science, University of Washington, and Kristian S. Gleditsch,
graduate research trainee in the Globalization and Democratization Program, at University of Colorado,
Boulder, March 1998, The American Political Science Review]
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
The argument that democratization can bring about war is a powerful critique suggesting limits to the linkage
between democracy and peace. This research examines this claim. Our findings demonstrate that
democratizing polities are substantially less war prone than previously argued. By focusing on the
characteristics of the transition process, we show that as contemporary polities become more
democratic they reduce their overall chances of being involved in war by approximately half. We also
find that rocky or especially rapid transitions or reversals are associated with a countervailing effect; namely,
they increase the risk of being involved in warfare. Both in the long term and while societies undergo
democratic change, the risks of war are reduced by democratization and exacerbated by
reversals in the democratization process. To reach these conclusions, we developed and applied a logit
model linking authority characteristics and war involvement using Polity III and Correlates of War databases.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Democracy solves great power war – more likely to negotiate, and when they do fight
they choose easy targets
Tarzi 7
[Shah, Professor of Economic Affairs @ Bradley, Democratic Peace, Illiberal Democracy and Conflict
Behavior, International Journal on World Peace, vol 24]
Bueno de Mequita, Morrow, Siverson, and Smith are among the few who have sought to overcome the
conceptual dilemmas noted above. Specifically they have provided insights on the link between institutions and
foreign policy choices with reference to international disputes and conflicts. They find that democratic leaders,
when faced with a choice, are more likely to shift greater resources to war efforts than leaders of the autocratic
governments because political survival of the elected democratic regime demands successful policy
performance, especially as the winning coalition grows. Thus, democratic regimes tend to have a military edge
over autocratic regimes in war because of the extra efforts required. Also, " democratic leaders only choose
to fight when they are confident of victory. Otherwise they prefer to negotiate." (22) Bueno de
Mequita and his colleagues conclude, Democrats make relatively unattractive targets because
domestic reselection pressures cause leaders to mobilize resources for the war effort. This
makes it harder for other states to target them for aggression. In addition to trying harder than
autocrats, democrats are more selective in their choice of targets. Defeat typically leads to
domestic replacement for democrats, so they only initiate war when they expect to win. These
two factors lead to the interaction between polities that is often termed the democratic peace. Autocrats
need a slight expected advantage over other autocratic adversaries in devoting additional
resources to the war effort. In order to initiate war, democrats need overwhelming odds of
victory, but that does not mean they are passive. Because democrats use their resources for the war effort
rather than reserve them to reward backers, they are generally able, given their selection criteria for fighting,
to overwhelm autocracies, which results in short and relatively less costly wars. Yet, democracies find it
hard to overwhelm other democracies because they also try hard. In general, democracies
make unattractive targets, particularly for other democracies. Hence, democratic states rarely
attack one another. (23)
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Environment
Democracy solves environment – accountability, information flow and markets.
Li, Prof of poli sci at Penn State, and Reuveny, prof of public and environmental affairs
@ Indiana U 07
(Quan and Rafael, “The Effects of Liberalism on the Terrestrial Environment”
http://cmp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/24/3/219)
Moving to the view that democracy reduces the level of environmental degradation, one set of considerations
focuses on the institutional qualities of democracy. The responsiveness argument is that democracies are
more responsive to the environmental needs of the public than are autocracies due to their very
nature of taking public interests into account (Kotov and Nikitina, 1995). It is also argued that
democracies comply with environmental agreements well, since they respect, and respond to, the
rule of law (Weiss and Jacobsen, 1999). The freedom of information channel is offered by Schultz and
Crockett (1990) and Payne (1995). They theorize that political rights and greater freedom for
information flows help2 to promote the cause of environmental groups, raise public awareness of
problems and potential solutions, and encourage environmental legislation to curtail environmental
degradation. Democracies also tend to have market economies, which further promotes the flow
of information as economic efficiency and profits requires full information. Hence, unlike the above
argument, this channel expects that profit-maximizing markets will promote environmental quality (Berger,
1994).
Democracy solves environment – less war, famines and more responsibility.
Li, Prof of poli sci at Penn State, and Reuveny, prof of public and environmental affairs
@ Indiana U 07
(Quan and Rafael, “The Effects of Liberalism on the Terrestrial Environment”
http://cmp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/24/3/219)
A second set of considerations on the positive role of democracy on environmental quality focuses
on the effects of democracy on human life and crisis situations. The famines argument (Sen, 1994)
observes that famines tend to promote environmental degradation because they divert
attention away from longer-term environmental concerns. Since famines typically do not
occur in democracies, argues Sen, environmental quality is expected to be higher in
democracies than in autocracies. The human life argument (Gleditsch & Sverdlop, 2003) suggests that
since democracies respect human life more than autocracies, they are more responsive to lifethreatening environmental degradation. A related argument, the war channel, reasons that to the
extent that democracies engage in fewer wars, they should also have a higher level of
environmental quality (Gleditsch & Sverdlop, 2003), since war often destroys the environment of
the warring parties (Lietzmann & Vest, 1999).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Trade
Democracies increase trade – confidence with rule of law.
Li, Prof of poli sci at Penn State, and Reuveny, prof of public and environmental affairs
@ Indiana U 07
(Quan and Rafael, “The Effects of Liberalism on the Terrestrial Environment”
http://cmp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/24/3/219)
If trade can be used as a tool of power, who will trade with whom? Grieco (1988), Gowa (1994), and Gowa and
Mansfield (1993), among others, expect that states will avoid trade with states they consider to be
their actual or potential adversaries. In such situations, the concern for relative gains—who gains more from
trade—may reduce trade flows to trickles, as the side that gains less will worry that the side that gains more
may translate the gain to military power. During the Cold War, for example, the U.S. regulated its trade with
the Soviet bloc based on this logic. Since democracies are expected not to engage in wars against each
other, they feel more secure in their bilateral trade and may be content with trade regardless of
who gains more. Democracy, then, should promote trade (e.g., Russett & Oneal, 2001; Morrow, 1997;
Snidal, 1991). Moreover, since democracy is associated with the rule of law and respect for property
rights, agents will feel more secure to trade as the level of democracy rises , as it is more likely they
will be able to enjoy the fruits of their investments (e.g., Olson, 1993; Clauge et al., 1996).
Democracy leads to free trade
Milner 2
Helen Milner, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, Summer 2002,
International Organization
We have argued that the regime type of states can strongly affect their propensity to cooperate on economic
issues. Leaders in democracies have a greater incentive to pursue international cooperation in
trade than do their nondemocratic counterparts. We developed this argument using a formal model of
trade policymaking emphasizing the electoral constraints faced by political leaders. Although there are many
reasons why countries choose to cooperate, our analysis emphasizes how a country’s regime type creates
domestic political incentives for leaders that influence this choice. Our model assumes that both
democratic and autocratic leaders would like to maximize the rents stemming from trade barriers, but that
both may lose office if their rent seeking becomes excessive. The problem faced by voters and leaders,
however, is that voters have incomplete information about their leaders. behavior: they do not know exactly
what trade policy their leaders have chosen at any point in time. And domestic executives cannot credibly
commit to accurately divulge this information. Hence, when exogenous shocks adversely influence the
economy, an incumbent executive may be voted out of office not because the executive was too
extractive, but rather because voters mistakenly assume that the executive was engaged in
protectionist predation. The prospect of losing elections due to factors beyond the incumbent
executive’s control provides a strong incentive to find ways of reassuring voters that the
government is not being too extractive. Trade agree- ments are one such means. Commercial
agreements can mitigate the executive’s informational problem. The monitors of these agreements.either
countries that are party to them or the international trade institutions themselves.can credibly signal to voters
whether their leader is cheating or abiding by the agreement. Accusations of cheating against one.s
government by foreign countries or an international institution are newsworthy events that can alert (at least
some) voters to the government’s behavior. Because of this signal, executives can improve their chances of reelection. In democracies, however, voters have a greater impact on the tenure of leaders than in autocracies,
since the democratic electorate can more easily turn incumbents out of office. Since autocratic leaders
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
face fewer worries about re-election, they have fewer incentives to relinquish policy autonomy
and sign trade agreements, making them less likely than more democratic leaders to seek commercial cooperation. The greater accountability of leaders to
voters in democracies makes a difference. Surprisingly, this result is obtained even though democratic executives discount the future more heavily than their autocratic counterparts. In
our model, international agreements serve a domestic purpose. They allow executives to commit themselves credibly to actions that voters would otherwise find incredible. Unilateral
trade barrier reductions are less credible to voters and more easily repealed than are mutually agreed-upon international reductions. Others have argued that international institutions
promote cooperation by providing infor- mation, but they have been less specific about how this mechanism actually induces leaders to choose cooperation.60 Here, we identify one
mechanism by which cooperative agreements can convey information to voters about the behavior of their leaders, thus allowing voters to better judge their leaders. Other mechanisms
might serve this purpose as well, but our claim is that trade agreements do so especially well. The information provided by trade agreements benefits all of the players in our analysis
voters and governments alike. Existing studies rarely acknowledge that international institutions can serve this function. The tendency for such institutions to be created with monitoring
and dispute settlement mechanisms suggests their importance in disseminating information domestically as well as internationally. International cooperation can thus generate domestic
empirical findings strongly support the
two central hypotheses stemming from the formal model. Since World War II, more democratic
political benefits for leaders, making them more likely to seek cooperative agreements in the first place. Our
countries have displayed a greater likelihood of concluding trade agreement than other
countries, even when holding constant various political and economic influences. Equally, pairs of democratic
countries are about twice as likely to form a PTA as are pairs composed of a democracy and an autocracy and
roughly four times as likely to form such cooperative agreements as are autocratic pairs. In sum, holding
constant Cold War influences, economic variables, and various other factors, we find considerable evidence
that democracy promotes commercial cooperation. Clearly, democracy is not alone in promoting such
agreements, but our findings indicate that it is a potent impetus to cooperation.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Famine
Democracy prevents famine
Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize winner, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge and Lamont
University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, 2001,
[The Global Divergence of Democracies, p. 7-8]
I have discussed elsewhere the remarkable fact that, in the terrible history of famines in the world, no
substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent and democratic country with a relatively
free press. We cannot find exceptions’ to this rule, no matter where we look: the recent famines of
Ethiopia, Somalia, or other dictatorial regimes; famines in the Soviet Union in the 1930s; China’s 1958—61
famine with the failure of the Great Leap Forward; or earlier still, the famines in Ireland or India under alien
rule. China, although it was in many ways doing much better economically than India, still
managed (unlike India) to have a famine, indeed the largest recorded famine in world history: Nearly
30 million people died in the famine of 1958—61, while faulty governmental policies remained
uncorrected for three full years. The policies went uncriticized because there were no opposition
parties in parliament, no free press, and no multiparty elections. Indeed, it is precisely this lack of
challenge that allowed the deeply defective policies to continue even though they were killing millions each
year. The same can be said about the world’s two contemporary famines, which are occurring in
North Korea and Sudan. Famines are often associated with what look like natural disasters, and commentators often settle for the simplicity of explaining famines
by pointing to these events: the floods in China during the failed Great Leap Forward, the droughts in Ethiopia, or crop failures in North Korea. Nevertheless, many countries with similar
natural problems, or even worse ones, manage perfectly well, because a responsive government intervenes to help alleviate hunger. Since the primary victims of a famine are the
Even the
poorest democratic countries that have faced terrible droughts or floods or other natural
disasters (such as India in 1973, or Zimbabwe and Botswana in the early 1 980s) have been able to feed
their people without experiencing a famine. Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious effort to
do so, and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and
independent newspapers, cannot help but make such an effort. Not surprisingly, while India continued to
indigent, deaths can be prevented by recreating incomes (for example, through employment programs), which makes food accessible to potential famine victims.
have famines under British rule right up to independence (the last famine, which I witnessed as a child, was in
1943, four years before independence), they disappeared suddenly with the establishment of a multiparty
democracy and a free press.
Famine leads to war
Marc J. Cohen, Special Assistant to the Director General, International Food Policy
Research Institute and Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Director General of the International
Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Spring 1999, Social Research,
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2267/is_1_66/ai_54668884/pg_10
Hunger and conflict usually have roots in colonial legacies and contemporary policies of racial or religious exclusion and political-economic discrimination (Heggenhoughen, 1995); and in
struggles over control of strategic resources, such as land, water, trade routes, and petroleum. Sources of discontent include skewed land distribution and discriminatory economic
policies that preclude decent standards of living. Unequal access to education and nutrition services and unequal treatment before the law inflame perceptions of unfairness. Human
rights abuse based on race, religion, ethnicity, geographic location, political ideology, or occupation rouse animosities. In Central America, civil wars followed protracted food crises and
human rights abuses, with demands for land, social justice, and democracy key to the conflicts (MacDonald, 1988; Barraclough, 1989). Tensions ripen into violent conflict especially
Hunger causes conflict when people feel they have
nothing more to lose and so are willing to fight for resources, political power, and cultural
respect. A recent econometric study found that slow growth of food production per capita is a
source of violent conflict and refugee flows (Nafziger and Auvinen, 1997). In Ethiopia, Rwanda, and
where economic conditions deteriorate and people face subsistence crises.
Sudan, governments were finally toppled when they inadequately responded to famine situations they had
helped create. Unfortunately, none of these wars immediately improved subsistence conditions; instead, all
magnified suffering and food shortages. Hunger spurs conflict in both rural and urban areas. Wolf
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
(1969), Scott (1976), and others have shown the key role of subsistence crises in "peasant wars of the
twentieth century" in such places as Mexico, Cuba, Vietnam, and Central America.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Refugees
Autocracy leads to refugee crises
Halperin Senior Vice President of the Center for American Progress and Director of the
Open Society Policy Center 5
Morton Halperin et al, Senior Vice President of the Center for American Progress and Director of the
Open Society Policy Center, 2005, “The Democracy Advantage”, p. 97-98
Autocracies are also the main culprit in the world’s refugee crises. Of the 40 countries that have
generated refugees over the past 20 years, 36 were autocracies engaged in conflict.2’ Of the top 10
refugee populations at the end of 2003, all were fleeing conflicts that originated in autocracies (see
Table 4.1). Similarly, of the 50 largest instances of annual refugee flows from 1980 to 2003, all originated
in autocracies. The most sizable nonautocratic refugee experience was in Sierra Leone in 1999. Yet this
event, though it generated 487,000 refugees, was only the 88th worst refugee crisis of the past two
decades. These figures buttress a key observation made in Chapter 2—humanitarian and economic
disasters nearly always take place under autocracies.
Refugee crises are a key contributor to contemporary conflict
Lischher 5
[Sarah Lischher, Assistant Professor of Government at Sweet Briar College, 2005, Dangerous Sanctuaries,
p. 4]
Since the early 1990s, refugee crises in Central Africa, the Balkans, West Africa, and the Middle East
have led to the international spread of internal conflict. In 2001, a United States government analysis
reckoned, “the recent military interventions in Fiji and Cote d’Ivoire; ethnic conflicts in the former
Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, eastern Indonesia, and Democratic Republic of the Congo; and
the Arab-Israeli dispute have resulted in part from large-scale migration and refugee flows.” That
analysis also predicted that migration to less-developed countries would continue to “upset ethnic
balances and contribute to conflict or violent regime change.”
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Social Services
Democracy is key to effective social service spending
Halperin Senior Vice President of the Center for American Progress and Director of the
Open Society Policy Center 5
Morton Halperin et al, Senior Vice President of the Center for American Progress and Director of the
Open Society Policy Center, 2005, “The Democracy Advantage”, p. 97-98
In summary, the historical patterns of democratic development imply that even low-income
democracies are better able to marshal the resources at their disposal into services that
contribute to improved standards of living. That is, contrary to the conventional hypothesis,
democracies are capable of creating administrative structures that are both efficient and
effective. They typically generate higher levels of social welfare and (possibly) economic growth for a
greater share of their populations than autocracies do. Considering the importance of human capital to
improved economic productivity, the tendency of low-income democracies to more effectively build the health
and education capacities of their societies suggests that democratic policies also indirectly contribute to longterm economic development.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Ethnic Conflict
Democracy solves ethnic conflict
Halperin Senior Vice President of the Center for American Progress and Director of the
Open Society Policy Center 5
Morton Halperin et al, Senior Vice President of the Center for American Progress and Director of the
Open Society Policy Center, 2005, “The Democracy Advantage”, p. 97-98
Democracies’ capacity to avoid conflict appears to be particularly important in ethnically diverse
societies. Democratic governments generally manage social conflicts by channeling them into
conventional politics. When divisive ethnic issues surface in democracies, they usually are expressed in
protest rather than rebellion and often culminate in reformist policies.’7 Similarly, whereas ethnic
diversity reduces growth by up to three percentage points in dictatorships, it has no adverse effects on
economic growth in democracies.’8 Evidently, democracies are better able to incorporate the
competing interests of diverse societies than are autocracies. The latter, by relying on a narrow
political, economic, and military base of power, tend to direct a disproportionate share of benefits to
a single or limited number of ethnic groups. Indeed, this is a central mechanism by which they ensure
the loyalty and discipline needed to maintain their hold on power. However, the exclusivity and
disenfranchisement of this system stirs resentment and violent opposition.
Ethnic conflicts risk nuclear war
Brown 93
Michael Brown, Director of the Security Studies Program and the Center for Peace, 1993, Ethnic Conflict
and International Security, p. 18
Ethnic Wars and Weapons of Mass Destruction The proliferation of nuclear weapons and other
weapons of mass destruction has added a new dimension to ethnic conflicts: the possibility,
however remote, that these weapons could be used in interstate or intrastate ethnic wars. Both India
and Pakistan have nuclear and chemical weapon capabilities, and tensions between the two have risen to high
levels on more than one occasion in recent years. One of the main sources of tension between the two is
India’s claim that Pakistan is supporting Kashmiri separatists and Pakistan’s claim that India is supporting Sindh
insurgents. India and Pakistan are also involved in a prolonged, bitter battle over the Siachen Glacier and their
northern border. Russia and Ukraine both have nuclear weapons stationed on their territory, although the
latter does note yet have operational control of the weapons on its soil. Although military hostilities between
the two are unlikely at present, they cannot be rules out for the future. Another possibility is that central
authorities could use weapons of mass destruction against would-be secessionists in desperate
attempts to maintain integrity of their states. China has both nuclear and chemical weapon capabilities, ad the
current regime in Beijing would presumably use every means at its disposal to prevent Tiber, Xinxiang, or inner Mongolia
from seceding, which many in these nominally autonomous regions would like to do. Iran has chemical weapon capabilities
and is trying to develop or acquire nuclear weapon capabilities. One suspects that Tehran would not rule out using harsh
measures to keep Azeris in northwestern Iran from seceding, should they become inclined to push this course of action. It is
not inconceivable that Russian, Indian, and Pakistani leaders could be persuaded to take similar steps in the face of national
collapse. Use of nuclear or chemical weapons in any of these situations would undermine international taboos about the
use of weapons of mass destruction and, thus, would be detrimental to international nonproliferation efforts, as well as
international security in general. Although the possibility that a state would use weapons of mass destruction against its
citizens might appear remote, it cannot be dismissed altogether: The Iraqi government used chemical weapons in attacks
on Kurdish civilians in the 1980s.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
State Failure
Democracy prevents state failure
Halperin Senior Vice President of the Center for American Progress and Director of the
Open Society Policy Center 5
Morton Halperin et al, Senior Vice President of the Center for American Progress and Director of the
Open Society Policy Center, 2005, “The Democracy Advantage”, p. 97-98
Democratic government is also a bulwark against state failure—the collapse of a central state’s ability
to maintain political order outside the capital city.19 State failure usually results in violent civil conflict
and is typified by the experiences of Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, and Afghanistan in the 1
990s. A comprehensive analysis of 75 potential predictors of state failure from 1955 to 1996 found
that lack of democracy was one of the three most important.20 (The two others were material well
being as measured by infant mortality rates and the level of trade.) In other words, the stronger a
country’s democratic institutions, the lower the likelihood that it will become a failed state.
Democracy solves refugee flows
Diamond 95
Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, December 1995, Promoting Democracy in the
1990s, http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm
As for immigration, it is true that people everywhere are drawn to prosperous, open, dynamic societies like
those of the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. But the sources of large (and rapid)
immigration flows to the West increasingly tend to be countries in the grip of civil war, political
turmoil, economic disarray, and poor governance: Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti, Central America, Algeria. And in
Mexico, authoritarianism, corruption, and social injustice have held back human development in
ways that have spawned the largest sustained flow of immigrants to any Western country--a flow
that threatens to become a floodtide if the Zedillo government cannot rebuild Mexico's economy and societal
consensus around authentic democatic reform. In other cases--Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, Afghanistan-immigration to the West has been modest only because of the greater logistical and political difficulties.
However, in impoverished areas of Africa and Asia more remote from the West, disarray is felt in
the flows of refugees across borders, hardly a benign development for world order. Of course, population
growth also heavily drives these pressures. But a common factor underlying all of these crisis-ridden
emigration points is the absence of democracy. And, strikingly, populations grow faster in authoritarian
than democratic regimes.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Human Rights
Democratization is essential to the advance of human rights
Sharansky 4
Nathan Sharansky, Israel’s Minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs and former Soviet dissident,
2004, The Case for Democracy, p. 205
In the post 9/11 world, many democratic governments now have a better appreciation of how difficult it can be
to find the appropriate balance between providing maximum security to your citizens and protecting human
rights. In debating issues like the Patriot Act or the rights granted to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Americans
are confronting a dilemma that Israel has faced since the day it was established.
Human rights violations can and do take place in democratic societies. But one of the things that sets
democracies apart from fear societies is the way they respond to those violations. A fear society does not
openly debate human rights issues. Its people do not protest. Its regime does not investigate. Its press does not
expose. Its courts do not protect. In contrast, democratic societies are always engaged in self-examination. For
example, look at how the United States dealt with the abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by American
soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison. Even before the abuse became publicly known, the army had suspended those
involved and was conducting a full investigation. And as soon as the disturbing pictures of the abuse were
published, America’s democracy was shocked into action. The Congress, determined to find the culprits,
immediately convened public hearings, and demanded a full account of what led to the abuse. Politicians and
opinion makers insisted that the people responsible for the abuse be held accountable, including those at the
very top of the chain of command. The media mulled over the details, pursuing every allegation, tracking down
every lead. The American people openly discussed what the abuse said about their own country’s values, its
image in the world, and how that image would affect the broader War on Terror. The U.S. president, for his
part, apologized to the families of the victims and said that those responsible would be punished. But let’s not
forget that the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib under Saddam was far worse than anything America was
accused of. Yet were pictures distributed of Saddam’s soldiers murdering, raping, and torturing Iraqis? If they
had been distributed, would Iraq’s parliament have conducted public hearings? Would the Iraqi media have
reported it? Would anyone have publicly called for the resignation of Saddam’s defense minister, let alone
Saddam himself? Would Saddam have denounced the brutality and apologized to the victims and their
families? Far from showing that all societies are the same, the human rights abuses that sometimes
occur in democracies often help illustrate the tremendous moral divide that separates free and
fear societies. While I have not always agreed with the decisions made by my government on issues related to
human rights, my experience has made me confident that these issues are thoroughly discussed and
debated and that the need to protect human rights is never ignored. I suspect that in most other free
societies the situation is much the same. Every democratic state will choose its own balance between
protecting security and protecting human rights, but concern for human rights will always be part of
the decisionmaking process. The free world is not perfect, but the way it responds to its
imperfections is only further proof that human rights can only be protected in democratic
societies.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Economy
Democracy helps the economy
Koch and Zeddy 09 (Andrew M. Koch is a professor of government and justice studies at Appalachian
State University, Amanda Gail Zeddy is working on a PhD at the University of California at Santa Barbara,
Democracy and Domination Technologies of Integration and the Rise of Collective Power, Lexington
Books, page 191, first publication in March 28, 2009)
In this regard, the push toward globalization produced a democratic response as both cause and effect.
As the regimes created more democratic forms of rule, the demands for greater economic
performance were manifest on the national level. In turn, the democratic form of domination
enhanced the stability of domestic institutions and provided a safer investment climate, which
brought greater growth rates and greater integration into the global economy.
Democracy is necessary for a sustainable global economy
Koch and Zeddy 09 (Andrew M. Koch is a professor of government and justice studies at Appalachian
State University, Amanda Gail Zeddy is working on a PhD at the University of California at Santa Barbara,
Democracy and Domination Technologies of Integration and the Rise of Collective Power, Lexington
Books, pages 193-194, first publication in March 28, 2009)
Much of the criticism of the current circumstance centers on the lack of democracy in the new
structures. There is no democratically organized political structure that makes the institutional
decisions legitimate beyond the interests of the major players. Lacking those legitimating structures,
the rewards of the current arrangement go disproportionately to those with the power to design the
system. As is demonstrated by the complex political discussion surrounding the European Union , the North
American Free Trade Agreement, and the Mercosur, economic integration reaches a structural limit
without the furthering of political integration.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
AT: Biopower
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Impact defense—Generic
Biopower prevents large scale violence—governmentality ensures respect for all life
Ojakangas, Professor of Political Thought, 05
[Mika, May, Foucault Studies, No. 2, p. 20-21, “Impossible Dialogue on Bio-power: Agamben and
Foucault”, http://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/foucault-studies/article/view/856, accessed 7/12/13]
According to Foucault, it is that transformation which constitutes the background of what he calls governmentality, that is to say,
bio-political rationality within the modern state.78 It explains why political power that is at work within the modern state as a legal
framework of unity is, from the beginning of a state’s existence, accompanied by a power that can be called pastoral. Its role is not to
threaten lives but to “ensure, sustain, and improve” them, the lives of “each and every one”.79 Its
means are not law and violence but care, the “care for individual life”.80 It is precisely care, the Christian
power of love (agape), as the opposite of all violence that is at issue in bio-power. This is not to say, however, that bio-power would be
nothing but love and care. Bio-power is love and care only to the same extent that the law, according to Benjamin, is violence, namely, by
its origin.81 Admittedly, in the era of bio-politics, as Foucault writes, even “massacres have become vital.”82 This is the case, however,
because violence is hidden in the foundation of bio-politics, as Agamben believes. Although the twentieth century
thanatopolitics is the “reverse of bio-politics”,83 it should not be understood, according to Foucault,
as “the effect, the result, or the logical consequence” of bio-political rationality.84 Rather, it should be
understood, as he suggests, as an outcome of the “demonic combination” of the sovereign power and bio-power, of “the city-citizen game
and the shepherd-flock game”85 – or as I would like to put it, of patria potestas (father’s unconditional power of life and death over his
son) and cura materna (mother’s unconditional duty to take care of her children). Although massacres can be carried out
in the name of care, they do not follow from the logic of bio-power for which death is the “object of
taboo”.86 They follow from the logic of sovereign power, which legitimates killing by whatever arguments it chooses, be it God, Nature,
or life.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Democracy Checks Biopower
The alt overlooks the terminal importance of juridical state structures---the
preservation of democratic political sphere can prevent the escalation of biopower
into mass genocide
Dickinson, professor of history, 04
[Edward Ross, March, “Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on Our Discourse About
"Modernity", Central European History, Volume 37, Issue 1]
In an important programmatic statement of 1996 Geoff Eley celebrated the fact that Foucault’s ideas
have “fundamentally directed attention away from institutionally centered conceptions of
government and the state . . . and toward a dispersed and decentered notion of power and its
‘microphysics.’”48 The “broader, deeper, and less visible ideological consensus” on “technocratic reason
and the ethical unboundedness of science” was the focus of his interest.49 But the “power-producing
effects in Foucault’s ‘microphysical’ sense” (Eley) of the construction of social bureaucracies and social
knowledge, of “an entire institutional apparatus and system of practice” ( Jean Quataert), simply do not
explain Nazi policy.50 The destructive dynamic of Nazism was a product not so much of a particular
modern set of ideas as of a particular modern political structure, one that could realize the disastrous
potential of those ideas. What was critical was not the expansion of the instruments and disciplines of
biopolitics, which occurred everywhere in Europe. Instead, it was the principles that guided how those
instruments and disciplines were organized and used, and the external constraints on them. In
National Socialism, biopolitics was shaped by a totalitarian conception of social management focused
on the power and ubiquity of the völkisch state. In democratic societies, biopolitics has historically
been constrained by a rights-based strategy of social management. This is a point to which I will return
shortly. For now, the point is that what was decisive was actually politics at the level of the state. A
comparative framework can help us to clarify this point. Other states passed compulsory sterilization
laws in the 1930s — indeed, individual states in the United States had already begun doing so in 1907.
Yet they did not proceed to the next steps adopted by National Socialism — mass sterilization, mass
“eugenic” abortion and murder of the “defective.” Individual figures in, for example, the U.S. did make
such suggestions. But neither the political structures of democratic states nor their legal and political
principles permitted such policies actually being enacted. Nor did the scale of forcible sterilization in
other countries match that of the Nazi program. I do not mean to suggest that such programs were not
horrible; but in a democratic political context they did not develop the dynamic of constant
radicalization and escalation that characterized Nazi policies.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Colonialism/Indigenous People impact defense
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Impact Defense—Generic
Reciprocal economic partnerships and democratic agreements are the norm—not
colonial exploitation
Ikenberry, Professor of Geopolitics, 04.
[G. John Ikenberry. “Illusions of Empire: Defining the New American Order” Foreign Affairs, March/April
2004.]
Is the United States an empire? If so, Ferguson's liberal empire is a more persuasive portrait than is Johnson's military empire. But ultimately,
the notion of empire is misleading -- and misses the distinctive aspects of the global political order
that has developed around U.S. power. The United States has pursued imperial policies, especially toward weak countries in the
periphery. But U.S. relations with Europe, Japan, China, and Russia cannot be described as imperial, even when "neo"
or "liberal" modifies the term. The advanced democracies operate within a "security community" in
which the use or threat of force is unthinkable. Their economies are deeply interwoven. Together,
they form a political order built on bargains, diffuse reciprocity, and an array of intergovernmental
institutions and ad hoc working relationships. This is not empire; it is a U.S.-led democratic political order that
has no name or historical antecedent.To be sure, the neoconservatives in Washington have trumpeted their own imperial vision:
an era of global rule organized around the bold unilateral exercise of military power, gradual disentanglement from the constraints of
multilateralism, and an aggressive effort to spread freedom and democracy. But this vision is founded on illusions of U.S. power. It fails to
appreciate the role of cooperation and rules in the exercise and preservation of such power. Its pursuit would strip the United States of its
legitimacy as the preeminent global power and severely compromise the authority that flows from such legitimacy. Ultimately, the
neoconservatives are silent on the full range of global challenges and opportunities that face the United States. And as Ferguson notes,
the
American public has no desire to run colonies or manage a global empire. Thus, there are limits on
American imperial pretensions even in a unipolar era. Ultimately, the empire debate misses the most important
international development of recent years: the long peace among great powers, which some scholars argue marks the end of great-power war.
Capitalism, democracy, and nuclear weapons all help explain this peace. But so too does the unique way in which the United States has gone
about the business of building an international order. The
United States' success stems from the creation and
extension of international institutions that have limited and legitimated U.S. power.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Aff k2 solve regional exploitation
Criticizing Western “imperialism” obscures more insidious practices by regional
powers
Shaw, professor of international relations at University of Sussex, 2
(Martin Shaw, “Uses and Abuses of Anti-Imperialism in the Global Era”, 4-7-2002,
http://www.martinshaw.org/empire.htm AFM)
It is fashionable in some circles, among which we must clearly include the organizers of this conference, to argue that the global era is seeing 'a
new imperialism' - that can be blamed for the problem of 'failed states' (probably among many others). Different contributors to this strand of
thought name this imperialism in different ways, but novelty is clearly a critical issue. The logic of using the term imperialism is actually to
establish continuity between contemporary forms of Western world power and older forms first so named by Marxist and other theorists a
century ago. The last thing that critics of a new imperialism wish to allow is that Western power has changed sufficiently to invalidate the very
application of this critical concept. Nor have many considered the possibility that if
the concept of imperialism has a
relevance today, it applies to certain aggressive, authoritarian regimes of the non-Western world
rather than to the contemporary West. In this paper I fully accept that there is a concentration of much world power economic, cultural, political and military - in the hands of Western elites. In my recent book, Theory of the Global State, I discuss the
development of a 'global-Western state conglomerate' (Shaw 2000). I argue that 'global' ideas and institutions, whose significance characterizes
the new political era that has opened with the end of the Cold War, depend largely - but not solely - on Western power. I hold no brief and
intend no apology for official Western ideas and behaviour. And yet I propose that the
idea of a new imperialism is a
profoundly misleading, indeed ideological concept that obscures the realities of power and especially of empire
in the twenty-first century. This notion is an obstacle to understanding the significance, extent and limits of contemporary Western
power. It simultaneously serves to obscure many real causes of oppression, suffering and struggle for
transformation against the quasi-imperial power of many regional states. I argue that in the global era, this
separation has finally become critical. This is for two related reasons. On the one hand, Western power has moved into new territory, largely
uncharted -- and I argue unchartable -- with the critical tools of anti-imperialism. On the other hand, the politics of empire remain all too real, in
classic forms that recall both modern imperialism and earlier empires, in many non-Western states, and they are revived in many political
struggles today. Thus the
concept of a 'new imperialism' fails to deal with both key post-imperial features of
Western power and the quasi-imperial character of many non-Western states. The concept overstates
Western power and understates the dangers posed by other, more authoritarian and imperial centres
of power. Politically it identifies the West as the principal enemy of the world's people, when for many of
them there are far more real and dangerous enemies closer to home. I shall return to these political issues at the
end of this paper.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Reps not first
Solely critiquing representations isn’t enough – action must be taken with it
Newman, professor of geopolitics, 4
[David, October, Progress in Human Geography, vol. 28, no.5, p.634 “Is There a Politics to Geopolitics?”]
One of the challenges facing geopolitics is to link the academic and the practitioner into a related
framework, enabling one to learn from the other. Practitioners in the guise of statesmen, diplomats and
foreign-affairs specialists supply us with our raw data for analysis. But it should not continue to be a one-way
process. Critiquing the way in which foreign-policy decisions were made through analysis of text
and narrative is important, but it is not enough. If we believe that we understand the complex
processes of structural change which are taking place in global relations, we should not shy away
from taking a proactive stance on a range of geopolitical issues, from EU enlargement and its relations
with non-EU countries, to US hegemonic policies and intervention in foreign places, and to ways forward in
resolving the Middle East conflict – to name but a few relevant areas of geopolitical expertise. We no longer
need to be worried that we will be tainted with the brush of Haushofer – it is time to show that our
geopolitics can extend beyond the realms of the ivory tower and even make an impact where it
counts.
Representations doesn’t shape policymaking
Tuathail, Professor of Government and International Affairs, 96
[Gearóid, Political Geography 15:6/7, The patterned mess of history and the writing of critical
geopolitics: a reply to Dalby, p 661-5]
While theoretical debates at academic conferences are important to academics, the discourse and
concerns of foreign-policy decisionmakers are quite different, so different that they constitute a
distinctive problemsolving, theory-averse, policy-making subculture. There is a danger that academics
assume that the discourses they engage are more significant in the practice of foreign policy and the
exercise of power than they really are. This is not, however, to minimize the obvious importance of
academia as a general institutional structure among many that sustain certain epistemic communities in
particular states. In general, I do not disagree with Dalby’s fourth point about politics and discourse
except to note that his statement-‘Precisely because reality could be represented in particular ways
political decisions could be taken, troops and material moved and war fought’-evades the important
question of agency that I noted in my review essay. The assumption that it is representations that make
action possible is inadequate by itself. Political, military and economic structures, institutions,
discursive networks and leadership are all crucial in explaining social action and should be theorized
together with representational practices. Both here and earlier, Dalby’s reasoning inclines towards a
form of idealism. In response to Dalby’s fifth point (with its three subpoints), it is worth noting, first, that
his book is about the CPD, not the Reagan administration. He analyzes certain CPD discourses, root the
geographical reasoning practices of the Reagan administration nor its public-policy reasoning on
national security. Dalby’s book is narrowly textual; the general contextuality of the Reagan
administration is not dealt with. Second, let me simply note that I find that the distinction between
critical theorists and poststructuralists is a little too rigidly and heroically drawn by Dalby and others.
Third, Dalby’s interpretation of the reconceptualization of national security in Moscow as heavily
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
influenced by dissident peace researchers in Europe is highly idealist, an interpretation that ignores the
structural and ideological crises facing the Soviet elite at that time. Gorbachev’s reforms and his new
security discourse were also strongly selfinterested, an ultimately futile attempt to save the Communist
Party and a discredited regime of power from disintegration. The issues raised by Simon Dalby in his
comment are important ones for all those interested in the practice of critical geopolitics. While I agree
with Dalby that questions of discourse are extremely important ones for political geographers to
engage, there is a danger of fetishizing this concern with discourse so that we neglect the institutional
and the sociological, the materialist and the cultural, the political and the geographical contexts within
which particular discursive strategies become significant. Critical geopolitics, in other words, should not
be a prisoner of the sweeping ahistorical cant that sometimes accompanies ‘poststructuralism nor
convenient reading strategies like the identity politics narrative; it needs to always be open to the
patterned mess that is human history.
Representations don’t influence reality
Kocher, Author and Philosopher, 2k
[Robert L., November 13th, “Discourse on Reality and Sanity”,
http://members.citynet.net/theanalyticpapers/reality1.htm, accessed 7/10/13]
While it is not possible to establish many proofs in the verbal world, and it is simultaneously possible to
make many uninhibited assertions or word equations in the verbal world, it should be considered that
reality is more rigid and does not abide by the artificial flexibility and latitude of the verbal world. The
world of words and the world of human experience are very imperfectly correlated. That is, saying
something doesn't make it true. A verbal statement in the world of words doesn't mean it will occur as
such in the world of consistent human experience I call reality. In the event verbal statements or
assertions disagree with consistent human experience, what proof is there that the concoctions created
in the world of words should take precedence or be assumed a greater truth than the world of human
physical experience that I define as reality? In the event following a verbal assertion in the verbal world
produces pain or catastrophe in the world of human physical reality or experience, which of the two can
and should be changed? Is it wiser to live with the pain and catastrophe, or to change the arbitrary
collection of words whose direction produced that pain and catastrophe? Which do you want to live
with? What proven reason is there to assume that when doubtfulness that can be constructed in verbal
equations conflicts with human physical experience, human physical experience should be considered
doubtful? It becomes a matter of choice and pride in intellectual argument. My personal advice is that
when verbal contortions lead to chronic confusion and difficulty, better you should stop the verbal
contortions rather than continuing to expect the difficulty to change. Again, it's a matter of choice. Does
the outcome of the philosophical question of whether reality or proof exists decide whether we
should plant crops or wear clothes in cold weather to protect us from freezing? Har! Are you crazy?
How many committed deconstructionist philosophers walk about naked in subzero temperatures or don't
eat? Try creating and living in an alternative subjective reality where food is not needed and where you
can sit naked on icebergs, and find out what happens. I emphatically encourage people to try it with
the stipulation that they don't do it around me, that they don't force me to do it with them, or that they
don't come to me complaining about the consequences and demanding to conscript me into paying for
the cost of treating frostbite or other consequences. (sounds like there is a parallel to irresponsibility
and socialism somewhere in here, doesn't it?). I encourage people to live subjective reality. I also ask
them to go off far away from me to try it, where I won't be bothered by them or the consequences. For
those who haven't guessed, this encouragement is a clever attempt to bait them into going off to some
distant place where they will kill themselves off through the process of social Darwinism — because,
let's face it, a society of deconstructionists and counterculturalists filled with people debating what, if
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
any, reality exists would have the productive functionality of a field of diseased rutabagas and would
never survive the first frost. The attempt to convince people to create and move to such a society
never works, however, because they are not as committed or sincere as they claim to be. Consequently,
they stay here to work for left wing causes and promote left wing political candidates where there are
people who live productive reality who can be fed upon while they continue their arguments. They ain't
going to practice what they profess, and they are smart enough not to leave the availability of people to
victimize and steal from while they profess what they pretend to believe in.