Does the democratic peace thesis
invalidate the realist view of
international politics?
BA thesis
Juraj Draxler
Thesis supervisors:
Dr. Markus Jachtenfuchs
Dr. Margrit Schreier
Submitted: December 5, 2003
Contents
I.
Introduction………………………………….3
II.
Debate……………………………………….6
War………………………………………....11
III.
Liberal democracy………………………….14
IV.
Realists versus idealists…………………….16
V.
Conclusion with a historical perspective……20
2
I. INTRODUCTION
In 1983, Michael Doyle wrote the essay “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs” in
which he claimed to have found that liberal democracies don’t wage wars on each other. 1
The notion of “democratic peace” soon attracted considerable attention. Some authors
tempered the original statement, and chose the formulation that democracies rarely fight
each other.2 But by and large, the claim became accepted to such an extent that it has
even been referred to as “the closest thing we have to a law in international politics.”3
Usual explanations offered for the “democratic peace” include the notion that
democracies don’t fight each other since they share the same norms and values; that the
checks and balances in democracies prevent them from plunging into wars; or that
citizens in such regimes are more informed of the consequences of wars and therefore are
more ready to resist war mobilization. There have also been numerous suggestions that
democratic polities are more prone to solving problems by deliberation and that
democracies more readily commit themselves to participation in international institutions,
which, in turn, facilitate peaceful resolution of conflicts.
Critics attacked the thesis on various fronts. In classic works, David E. Spiro4 and Joanne
Gowa5 claimed that the finding that democracies have rarely been at war is statistically
insignificant. Ido Oren pointed out the “subjectivity” of the assumptions of the thesis:
almost all authors use Ted Robert Gurr’s “Polity II” dataset and coding for establishing
which regimes are democracies. Also, in this very American discussion, perceptions of
which countries have liberal regimes and which don’t have changed over time, usually in
correlation with the status of that country in American foreign policy – thus Germany had
been admired prior to World War I as the embodiment of republican virtues by the same
Woodrow Wilson who, after he took the US to war with Germany, labeled her as
undemocratic.6 Others chose to attack the implications of the thesis, for instance Edward
1
Doyle: Legacies. In: Lynn-Jones et al: Peace.
cited from: Lynn-Jones: Introduction. In: Lynn-Jones et al: Peace, p. xix
3
Ibid., p. xi
4
Spiro: Insignificance. In: Lynn-Jones et al: Peace.
5
Gowa: Ballots.
6
Oren: Subjectivity. In: Lynn-Jones et al: Peace.
2
3
D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder emphasize that spreading of democracy in order to
promote peace may be, at least in the short-term, counter-productive since transforming
countries tend to be unstable and bellicose.7
This is actually not a new discussion. Immanuel Kant had famously asserted that if the
world were a community of republican nations, there would most likely be a lasting
peace.8 In fact, Kant’s arguments form the backbone of Doyle’s essay. And Woodrow
Wilson made the US enter the Old Continent’s war saying the US was fighting “for
permanent peace.”9
What gave the old debate a new life were several factors. By 1980s, there were, for the
first time in history, enough countries with some form of democratic regime to lend the
democratic peace thesis semblance of statistical significance. Some, as we noted above,
have disputed this, but the advent of democracies in Eastern Europe gave the proponents
of the thesis a new hope that a lasting peace in this area would prove them right.
Also, a commitment to spreading democracy had become part of US foreign policy
strategy. In 1982, in his speech before the British Parliament, Ronald Reagan called for a
“global campaign for democratic development.” He added that foreign policies of liberal
democracies were characterized by “restraint” and “peaceful intentions”.10 With the end
of the Cold War, the US government effectively replaced the policy of containment with
a democratic peace doctrine. President Clinton explicitly used the argument that
“democracies don’t attack each other” to point out that “ultimately the best strategy to
insure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy
elsewhere.”11
On the academic front, the claim of “democratic peace” has been consciously put forward
as an attack on realist view of international relations. The thesis is said to contradict “two
tenets of most realist theories: realist pessimism about the prospects for international
7
Mansfield, Snyder: Democratization. In: Lynn-Jones et al: Peace.
Kant, Immanuel. “Perpetual Peace”. In: Carl J. Friedrich , ed. 1949. The Philosophy of Kant. New York:
Modern Library.
9
Waltz: Man, p. 110
10
cited from: Doyle: Legacies. In: Lynn-Jones et al: Peace, p. 3
11
Owen: Liberalism. In: Lynn-Jones et al: Peace, p. 116
8
4
peace, and realism’s emphasis on systemic factors as explanations of international
outcomes.”12 Doyle notes that “the Realist model of international relations, which
provides a plausible explanation of the general insecurity of states, offers little guidance
in explaining the pacification of the liberal world.”13 Bruce Russett takes this to the
logical conclusion that “the theoretical edifice of realism will collapse if attributes of
states’ political systems are shown to have major influence on which states do not fight
each other.”14
This paper tries to investigate both crucial claims: first, that the democratic peace thesis
can be treated as a law or near-law of international relations, and, secondly, that it
invalidates the realist view of international politics by showing that the nature of states
can overwhelmingly determine their foreign policies.
That the “democratic peace” claim is not a falsifiable hypothesis in a strict sense is clear
from the ping-pong debate between its critics and proponents. Having a law means being
able to predict what will happen under a set of clearly identifiable conditions. Yet here
we are dealing with too many questions regarding the definition of basic terms.
Moreover, the whole notion is not constructed as a falsifiable hypothesis once we accept
(as the proponents of the thesis do) that at least one contrary example does not disprove
the theory.
Most critics have nevertheless chosen the ceteris paribus approach and criticized either
the definition of one of the basic terms used in the thesis or the statistical significance of
the claim that democracies never or rarely fight each other.
This paper takes a different course. It will try to show that the basic problem with the
democratic peace thesis lies in the fact that it tries to be at the same time ahistorical (“the
law of international relations”) while relying on highly time-specific concepts. What the
thesis takes as givens, namely democracy and war, are in effect highly complex
conglomerates of historical phenomena.
The main body of this paper starts with a section that attempts to set the discussion in
context by clarifying terminology. We then proceed to deal with the issue of war and, in
12
Lynn-Jones: Introduction. In: Lynn-Jones et al: Peace, p. xii
Doyle: Legacies. In: Lynn-Jones et al: Peace, p. 14
14
Lynn-Jones: Introduction. In: Ibid., p. xiii
13
5
the next section, liberal democracy. The section called “Realists versus idealists” reexamines the issue of democratic peace in the context of the long discussion between the
realist and the liberal, or idealists, schools of thought.
II. THE DEBATE
Doyle defines as liberal those countries where citizens are juridically equal and “possess
fundamental civic rights such as freedom of religion and of the press”; where
representative legislatures are effective sovereigns of the state and where the state is
therefore not subject to external authority. The economy is based on the recognition of
the rights of private property, which includes the ownership of the means of production,
and “economic decisions are predominantly shaped by the forces of supply and
demand.”15
Using these broad criteria he recognizes three liberal regimes at the end of 18 th century,
Switzerland (only in certain cantons), French Republic and the United States. By the end
of 1850 the number rises to eight, after adding Belgium, Great Britain, the Netherlands,
Piedmont and Denmark and re-adding France (in 1830). For the period of 1900-1945 he
counts 29 countries that were at certain years liberal and for the period after 1945 the
number rises to 49. The counting obviously ends in 1983, when the essay was written.
Bruce Russett uses the term ‘democracy’ as coterminous with Doyle’s “liberal regime”,
with the exception that he does not take the existence of civil liberties as a definitional
feature. A democracy for him is a state “with a voting franchise for a substantial fraction
of citizens, a government brought to power in contested elections, and an executive either
popularly elected or responsible to an elected legislature.”16
Another author who prominently sides with the idea of the “democratic peace” is John M.
Owen. He defines “a liberal democracy” somewhat broadly as “a state that instantiates
liberal ideas, one where liberalism is the dominant ideology and citizens have leverage
over war decisions.” Furthermore, he then declares that to liberals “non-democracies may
15
16
Doyle: Legacies. In: Lynn-Jones et al: Peace, p. 5-6
Russett: Grasping, p. 14
6
be dangerous because they seek other ends, such as conquest or plunder. Liberals thus
hold that national interest calls for accommodation of fellow democracies, but sometimes
calls for war with non-democracies.”17
Thus while Doyle and Russett try to show that peace-seeking with other democracies is
naturally inherent in liberal regimes, Owen, I would argue, comes close to tautological
definition of democracies as those countries that seek peace with democracies.
He also stresses the caveat that democracies must perceive each other as such.18
In this paper, the term liberal democracies or simply democracies will be used in a broad
sense of Doyle’s “liberal states”, Russett’s “democracies” and Owen’s “liberal
democracies.”
There are some possible objections to the classifications of liberal democracies that the
authors in questions use. For instance, Switzerland is accepted as a two centuries-old
democracy, even though in this country women were barred from voting in the national
elections up to 1972 and in some cantonal elections even as late as early 1980s. On the
other hand, Russett rejects the possibility of classifying the second Boer war as a war
between democracies partly on the ground that the larger of the two Boer republics, the
South African Republic, had only internal sovereignty, while externally Britain reserved
the right of foreign policy conduct, partly by claiming that this republic could not be
counted as a democracy since it did not grant suffrage to recent settlers and blacks (even
though the Black population did not have any voting rights in the British part of South
Africa either).
But it is the argument about Wilhelmine Germany where issues get really contentious.
Doyle rejects this country as a liberal democracy on the grounds that foreign policy was
in the hands of the Kaiser.19 Russett is at one on this point. Nevertheless, one must see,
17
Owen: Liberalism. In: Lynn-Jones et al: Peace, p. 118
Ibid., p. 199. As a matter of fact, the stress on perceptions of democracy as a condition for “democratic
peace” might be a dangerous avenue. As perceived threats go, a Newsweek/Gallup poll in September 1989
showed that 52 percent of Americans considered Japanese economic power to be a greater threat to the US
than the Soviet military power (Brown et al: Perils, p. 58). In 2003, in fact, a poll of 7,500 people taken
across the European Union at the behest of the European Commission, considered Israel, a democracy of
more than 50 years, the greatest threat to world peace, putting it ahead of North Korea or Iran
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1076084,00.html, visited on December 5, 2003).
19
Doyle: Legacies. In: Ibid., p. 12
18
7
first that Germany was governed, at least in its internal affairs, as a democratic country.
When compared with, for instance, Britain, especially of pre-1911 parliamentary reform,
the German voter had at least as much chance, if not more, than a British one, to be
represented in law-making. And when we accept the thesis of shared norms, on which
especially Russett relies, it is very difficult to explain the fact that Britain did not even
have to introduce conscription in 1914 since the influx of volunteers willing to slaughter
their German counterparts was mighty enough. This, secondly, makes Doyle’s statement
rather void: it might matter somewhat that the Kaiser was in charge of foreign policy, but
there was not much opposition to war in the German parliament either. One would even
be tempted to draw a parallel to the US construction of “police action” whereby a US
president can send military forces abroad by-passing the Congress and seeking its
approval only ex-post.
As for the definition of war, Russett, for instance, uses the arbitrary but widespread
threshold of 1,000 battle deaths.20 The issue of defining a war through casualty rates does
not seem to be a contentious point. What is contentious is the definition of inter-state war.
Russett strongly rejects the possibility of classifying the American war of North versus
South as an inter-state war. This is understandable regarding the pragmatics of the
discussion. Should the slightest possibility be granted that this was a war between
democracies, the argumentation for democratic peace gets a visible dent, since this was
one of the bloodiest wars in history. Russett says that Confederacy was not
internationally recognized. Raymond Aron, writing three decades before Russett, did not
find this argument, already bandied around, very plausible. “Had the Confederacy won,
the United States would have been divided into two states, and the War of Secession,
having begun as a civil war, would have ended as a foreign one.”21 One might add that
the fact of non-recognition is rather obvious since in the middle of 19th century countries
did not grant recognition to each other overnight, nor was it really necessary in the state
of diplomatic affairs of the day.
20
21
Russett: Grasping, p. 12
Aron: Peace, p. 7
8
But Russett finds another way out, since he also claims that “the strong norm that
democracies should not fight each other seems to have developed only toward the end of
the nineteenth century.”22
This points at the tension between the attempt to arrive at a super-temporary “law” of
international relations while dealing with the phenomenon that is strongly grounded in
historical development. To Russett, however, democracy is a unidimensional concept,
and wars could have occurred between democratic regimes in the past, when those
democracies were “imperfect by modern criteria.”23
So far we have looked at some definitions of the basic terms of the discussion. But what
is the discussion actually about? Russett says that the statement “in the modern
international system, democracies have almost never fought each other” represents a
complex phenomenon. First, he says, comes the empirical observation that democracies
rarely fight each other. But the thesis also comprises what he calls a “prudential
statement” that democracies have other means of conflict resolution, and a “normative
statement” that democracies perceive that they should not fight each other since it would
contravene their principles.24
Owen, similarly, makes a distinction between structural and normative theories of the
“democratic peace”. The first argue that the main reason behind the phenomenon are
checks and balances and other mechanisms of democratic control, the second “locate the
cause of the democratic peace in the ideas or norms held by democracies.” 25 The
“democratic peace” thesis thus purports to be a statement of fact and an explanation of it.
When we take the norms-based approach, which stresses inherently peaceful nature of
democracies, we are struck by the discrepancy between the alleged propensity of
democracies not to fight each other and the fact that democracies are generally rather
bellicose, which is the something that Doyle, Russett, Owen and others accept.
22
Russett: Grasping, p. 5
cited from: Lynn-Jones: Introduction, p. xix
24
Russett: Grasping, p. 4
25
Owen: Liberalism. In: Lynn-Jones et al: Peace, p. 119
23
9
With some cheek in tongue, one could, for example, almost argue that there is some kind
of a tendency toward a South American peace. Except for the Central American
skirmishes in 1907-8, the Chaco war in 1932-36 and the brief “football” war between
Honduras and El Salvador in 1969, the sub-continent has not seen a military conflict
between two of its states for the last century. Unfortunately, the peace is broken by a
rather regular pattern of interventions by the biggest of democracies, the US.
Furthermore, the US has demonstrated a remarkable propensity to crushing nascent
democratic orders. It suppressed an independence movement in the Philippines at the
beginning of the century, the fact that Russett explains by the perception formula:
Americans did not, at the time, perceive indigenous population of an Asian country as
capable of democratic governance. In 1965, the Americans invaded the Dominican
Republic to crush the uprising in support of the democratically elected president Juan
Bosch who had been ousted from power by the military. Bosch lamented that “a
democratic revolution was smashed by the leading democracy of the world.26 In 1973, the
CIA orchestrated subversive actions against the democratically elected government of
Chile. Russett replies that subversive actions don’t count.
But why should democracies fight other countries other than in self-defence, at all? As
Doyle mentions, “outside the pacific union, liberal regimes, like all other states, are
caught in the international state of war Hobbes and the Realists describe.”27 Elihu Root,
the erstwhile Secretary of War under President McKinsey and Secretary of State under
Theodore Roosevelt, put it bluntly in 1917: “To be safe democracy must kill its enemy
when it can and where it can. The world cannot be half democratic and half autocratic…
If it is all Prussian, there can be no real international law. If it is all democratic,
international law honored and observed may well be expected as a natural development
of the principles which make democratic self-government possible.”28
So, democracies must fight countries that they perceive as non-democratic, since they are
in a security dilemma. But here we are almost on the realist turf. Let us return to the issue
26
Paterson, Thomas G et al. 2000. American Foreign Relations. A history since 1895. New York:
Houghton Mifflin.
27
Doyle: Legacies. In: Lynn-Jones et al: Peace, p. 31
28
Russett: Grasping, p. 33
10
of security dilemma between democracies in the section that analyses the realist and
liberal approach in more detail.
Notwithstanding the above-mentioned objections, it is still probably fair to accept that, to
put it in the words of John Mearsheimer, one of the most prominent neorealists, “as
challenges to realism go, democratic peace theory is among the strongest.”29
Let us now explore the critical concepts that underlie the thesis, and put them in a
historical perspective.
III. WAR
Peace is the absence of war and asking about the causes of peace should probably entail
asking why does it not make sense to go for the alternative.
The authors propounding the “democratic peace” thesis deal only very briefly with the
question of why wars actually arise, and they treat war as an a priori negative concept.
Doyle, for instance, gives a short overview of realist thought on war, recapitulating that
wars, “arise from fear as a state seeking to avoid a surprise attack decide to attack first;
from competitive emulation as states lacking an imposed hierarchy of prestige struggle to
establish their place; and from straightforward conflicts of interests that escalate into war
because there is no global sovereign to prevent states to adopt the ultimate form of
conflict resolution.”30
The fact that the growth across countries in terms of demographics or economic output is
not always uniform is self-evident. The uneven growth might put a strain on resources.
Throughout most of history, the advancement of economic and security interests was
naturally best served by wars. There seems to be a near-consensus in scholarly thought
that “in an era of relatively stable technology and low productivity gains in both
agriculture and manufacturing, a group or state could best increase its wealth and power
by increasing its control over territory and conquering other peoples.”31
29
Mearsheimer: Tragedy, p. 367
Doyle: Legacies. In: Lynn-Jones et al: Peace, p. 30
31
Gilpin: Change, p. 23
30
11
In fact, looking at the development of the modern European state, one might well
conclude that “the functions of the state appear overwhelmingly military and
overwhelmingly geopolitical rather than economic and domestic.”32 It was through the
process of wars that European states emerged and it was the process of wars that shaped
their domestic development. As states struggled to survive, the extraction of resources for
war became the critical factor. Trade and manufacturing provided more revenue than land
and it was also easier to extract. In supporting trade and commerce, though, the sovereign
usually had to ally with the rising bourgeoisie against the nobility. This set the states on
the path to liberalism.
The insight that war is to a great part a constitutive element of Western liberal state might
or might not change our view of today’s democracy. But what definitely should be taken
into account is, first, that international relations do have a strong effect on domestic
developments. The treatment of “democracy” as an independent variable appears rather
dangerous in this light. Secondly, what we can get from tying the pattern of economic
development with issue of war are the different types and reasons for wars.
Robert Gilpin categorizes three main objectives of states in relation to the issues of war
and peace: conquest, influencing the behaviour of other states, and influencing world
economy.33 The latter gained in prominence as European countries turned towards
intensive rather than extensive economic development.
At the same time, the industrialization brought about factors that changed not only
purposes of wars, but also their context in terms of payoff structure.
In the industrial era, the cost of war rises in two ways. First, modern weapons provide a
far greater destruction capacity than older ones. This is certainly true for nuclear
weapons, however, the focus should not be only on them. As both world wars show,
modern warfare has advanced to the point that even conventional weaponry can provide
for annihilation of large segments of population in a short time. The second world war, in
fact, provides us with an example of a first weapon in history that was developed earlier
32
33
Held: Order, p. 53
Gilpin: Change, p. 23-4
12
but not employed. This was gas, whose effects would be so great that no side dared to
employ it first for fear of retaliation.34
The destructiveness of modern weapons prompted Alfred Nobel to speculate to a peace
activist that the destructiveness of his dynamite might be more effective in bringing about
peace than appeals to rationality.35
Secondly, industrialization, as we said (and August Comte noted this already in 19 th
century), decreases the scarcity pressure – extraction (of raw resources and food) from
land is no longer the primary source of wealth. Conquest of territory no longer provides
the immediate gain while wars generally disrupt production and trade systems that are the
main generators of wealth.
Economic interdependence should not be viewed in terms of simple trade exchange. The
novelty of post-1945 development was the expansion of transnational firms. By 1985,
production by transnational companies outside their home-countries was larger than the
total volume of the world trade. At the same time the proportion of intra-firm trade, that
is, trade across country boundaries but within the same company, was growing.36
Practically none of the world’s large corporations is not transnational.37 Nor is the
orientation towards transnational operations limited to the big – more and more small and
medium-sized companies produce for the world market rather than for some national
economy.
As Robert Mueller points out, with the exception of Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956,
there have been no wars between any of the forty-four wealthiest (per capita) states of the
world since 1945. What is more, the developed world has not experienced civil wars
either.38
As Aron summed it up: “ The capacity for industrial production restores some relevance
to the utopia of abundance, the destructive capacity of weapons revives the dreams of
34
Mueller: Obsolescence, p. 58, 84
Mueller: Obsolescence, p. 36
36
Strange: States, p. 71
37
Strange: States, p. 74
38
Mueller: Obsolescence, p. 4-5
35
13
eternal peace.”39 Yet he then concludes that international relations continue to be
“developing within the shadow of war.”40 He ties his scepticism to the concept of zerosum games. “In order for the state, whose territory is small in relation to the number of
mouths to feed, not to be tempted by conquest, for its neighbouring states not to feel
threatened, it does not suffice for both to have the same kind of regime and to declare
themselves brothers.”41
IV. LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
Liberal democracies evolved from capitalist mode of production. There is an extremely
strong correlation between industrialization and development of liberal democracy.
Democracies are, at best, rare in agrarian societies.42 Some authors claim that
representative government won over other forms of governance since it is the only
system able to deal with the complexities of modern economies.43 Others stress that
democracy should be viewed as a product of the contradictions of capitalism.44
There is considerable disagreement, though, about the strength of the causal link between
capitalism and democracy.
Various strands of modernization theory claim that there is a straightforward positive
relationship between the two. Historical comparative research, on the other hand, often
leads to different conclusions. Karl de Schweinitz first formulated in a comprehensive
way the claim that democracy as known in the West might be the privilege of the
countries in that region, owing to slow original economic development, when labour was
less mobilized and international competition less pronounced. “The Euro-American route
to democracy is closed. Other means must now be devised for building new democratic
39
Aron: Peace, p. 18
Ibid., p. 703-4
41
Ibid., p. 708
42
Rueschemeyer: Development, p. 1-2, 4
43
Ibid., p. 15
44
Ibid. p. 17, Strange: States, p. 94
40
14
states.”45 The view that 19th century capitalism arose due to highly specific historical
circumstances was shortly after de Schweinitz repeated in the path-breaking work of
Barrington Moore, Jr.46
Whether we lean more on the side of modernization theory or accept Moore’s and de
Schweinitz’s conclusions, the study of capitalism as a prerequisite for democracy gives a
much needed connection between democracy and international relations and between
capitalism and democracy.
Thus, as states turned from an extensive model of wealth creation to an intensive one
through use of technological advances, international trade and, later, portfolio investment
began to be of primary importance for the growth of economies. The expansion of North
American and European economies found reflection in competition for colonies that
could serve as markets, in ‘open door’ policies, and in enforcement of property rights
according to Western model.
The true interdependence, however, came in the 20th century. Transnational corporations
began investing directly into foreign countries. Foreign direct investment is different to
portfolio investment inasmuch as disruption of production due to war is a clear economic
loss. It cannot be easily postponed, like repayment of bonds. The idea that “a citizen of
one country can exercise property rights across national boundaries is a revolutionary
feature of the modern world, especially on the scale that it is now practiced in the 1980s”
writes Gilpin.47
Secondly, modern economies rely on a fragile financial architecture, which, in turn rests
on the role of credit. There is no longer any universally accepted denominator of wealth,
like gold, that would underlie money. Institutions, countries, firms, create credit and a
disruption through war would deal a major blow to this system.
Based on this view, the peacefulness of democracies should really better be described as
peacefulness of capitalist economies. Economic growth results in economic
interdependence. First, companies invest abroad - to counter trade cycles, realize
economies of scale, etc. Secondly, world financial structure depends on the collaboration
45
Schweinitz, Karl de. 1964. Industrialization and Democracy. Free Press.
Moore, Barrington, Jr. 1966. The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Boston: Beacon Press.
47
Gilpin: Change, p. 25
46
15
of all, disruptions could be extremely damaging, as the financial collapse of the Great
Depression showed. However, the provision of rules of the trade game and of the
financial architecture brings us back to the problem of the basic anarchy of international
system.
Do these public goods arise of themselves? “[…] economic power can play the role that it
does in today’s world because of the nature of the economic and political order created
and defended primarily by the United States,” notes Gilpin.48 We will examine this view
in the next section.
V. REALISTS VERSUS IDEALISTS
States embody interests. If they did not, they would cease to be states. The great debate is
how the interests are taken care of in the domain of international relations.
The American tradition, spilling over to other countries, has two strands. On the one hand
there are the realists. The realist approach generally stresses importance of states as
international players, focusing less on individuals and other transnational actors.
Secondly, realists stress the fundamental anarchy of international relations. Thirdly,
realism relies on the analysis of power relations.49 Classical realism is based on the view
that a man seeks force (to establish security for himself) since he is egoistic by nature.
These views, elaborated on in connection with foreign politics by the theologian
Reinhold Niebuhr, and further propounded by such authors as Hans Morgenthau, George
F. Kennan or Robert E. Osgood, amount to the dictum that “statesmen should be
concerned with the interest of the collectivity for which they are responsible, but they
should not ignore the interest of other collectivities.” Classical realism sought to be, in
Niebuhr’s words, “the remedy for a pretentious liberalism which claims to know more
about the future and about humanity than is given to mortals.”50 In the words of another
prominent exponent of realist thinking, E. H. Carr, “Realism tends to emphasize the
irresistible strength of existing forces and the inevitable character of existing tendencies,
48
Ibid., p 34
Brown et al: Perils, p. ix
50
Aron: Peace, p. 594
49
16
and to insist that the highest wisdom lies in accepting, and adapting oneself to these
forces and tendencies.”51
The neorealism, or structural realism of Kenneth Waltz tends to rely on “systemic
analysis”, stressing that the structure of the international system affects the behaviour of
actors regardless of their intentions and motives.52
There are other schools within this tradition, of which a very prominent one is the school
stressing the importance of hegemony. Two prominent exponents are Charles
Kindleberger and Robert Gilpin.
On the other side of the divide is the liberal or, as some choose to call it, idealist tradition.
Liberalism, broadly speaking, is an “optimistic” outlook in the sense that it stresses the
possibility of improvement in international relations, such as in the way of the abolition
of wars. The era of Enlightenment gave birth to the strong belief that “reason could be
employed to make the world a better place.” Liberals tend to believe that reason dictates
that general welfare could be improved by international cooperation and that states will
therefore seek it.53 International division of labour will increase everybody’s wellbeing.54 In this context, “liberal institutionalists” claim that international institutions
changed the ordering of international politics and made genuine cooperation possible.55
Furthermore, liberalism believes that the internal character of states determines their
international behaviour, to the extent that, in Waltz acrid comment, “peace and war are
the products, respectively, of good and bad states.”56
Realists, on the other hand, stress the function of war as an element of change in
international sphere. All the major international orders came up as the results of war.
Realists stress that change takes place when ratios of relative powers of states start to
move. Underlying the change is what Gilpin terms the realist law of uneven growth. He
specifically makes the distinction between uneven growth and Marxist concept of uneven
development to provide for the fact that realism, as purely a theory of international
51
cited from: Mearsheimer: Tragedy, p. 17
Gilpin: Change, p. 85
53
Mearsheimer: Tragedy, p. 15-7
54
Waltz: State, p. 98
55
Brown et al: Perils, p. xiii
56
Waltz: State, p. 114
52
17
change, is quite open to being supplemented by theories that account for the underlying
structure in domestic developments, specifically mentioning Marxism.57
This brings us to the important distinction between relative and absolute power. Kenneth
Waltz states the example of Robert Reich’s question to six various groups in the US
which they would prefer: that in the next decade Japan’s economy grow by 75 percent
and America’s by 25, or by 10.3 and 10 percent respectively. Of six different audiences
of professionals, only economists chose the former, and in that case unanimously. For all
others, the answer was in favour of preserving relative advantage rather than gaining in
absolute terms and losing the advantage. The survey was done in 1991.
As Waltz adds, “one might wonder why, with worries over military security reduced, and
with the disappearance of the Soviet Union, concern for relative gains should take
precedence over concern for absolute ones.”58
As we have noted, under the prevalent hegemonic order, where democratic states form a
community of interests under the umbrella of the United States, the issue of power
differentials is to some extent solved. The US provides the collective good of
multilateralism in trade negotiations and of stable financial architecture. It also dominates
the structure of zero-sum games, like the world trade with raw materials. What counts is
the ratio of US power to the countries or groups of countries that could replace it as a
hegemon, not so much the power differentials of, say, Japan versus EU, since these do
not determine the structure of the system and cannot effect a change. This is reserved to
the hegemon. The US is able to manipulate the structure to its own advantage. In 1960s,
de Gaulle was complaining about the ‘exorbitant privilege’ of the US in global financial
architecture, when the US was able to finance its deficits through printing dollars, as only
those could be changed into gold. However, the role of the dollar was so strong by the
time that when the US shut the “gold window” in 1971, the demand for the currency
continued running apace and, moreover, the dollars could not be changed into gold but
had to be kept idle, spent on US goods or, later, invested in the Eurodollar market,
dominated by US banks.59
57
Gilpin: Change, p. 94
Brown et al: Perils, p. 57 (emphasis added)
59
Strange: States, p. 106
58
18
Yet, as Strange notes, there have never been serious attempts to challenge US structural
power. “[…] none of the ‘opposition groups’ in the international monetary system… have
carried their criticism and opposition to the point of willfully disrupting the system of
which they too are a part.”60
US structural power, to use Strange’s term, underpins US military might in providing for
hegemony and is perhaps the decisive factor in determining the extent of that
hegemony.61
And promotion of the standards of liberal democracy goes hand in hand with this in
relation to countries that are potentially strong enough to disrupt global economic
development should they start dissenting moves.
Liberal authors brush the notion of hegemonic alliance aside. Russett notes that historical
research shows higher probability generally of alliance partners actually fighting each
other than it is the case of liberal democracies.62 But why should the US fight? It has
enough structural power to effect changes in the system by other than military means.
This is why realist authors place economic cooperation firmly in the context of power
relations. Some even see, for example, the EU as an unplanned consequence of
superpower struggle.63
The fact that Western liberal democracies do not fight can easily be accounted for by the
fact that the security dilemma between them is decreased as they are not part of a purely
anarchic, but of a hegemonic system. The US as a benevolent hegemon pursues its own
interests which, however, coincide with the interests of the other members of the Western
system, since US enforces the provision of certain collective goods.
At the beginning of this paper we quoted two US presidents who expressed beliefs
corresponding to the democratic peace thesis. It might be worth noting that whatever
views US politicians might express, US strategic planners are firm realists. In March
1992, the initial draft of the Pentagon’s Defense Planning Guidance was leaked to the
New York Times. It stated “we must account sufficiently for the interests of the large
60
Ibid., p. 95
The importance of structural power, especially when it comes to credit creation, is underscored by the
fact that Comecom countries became partially “integrated and involved with the global financial struture
dominated by the major market economies,” some time before the East bloc officially collapsed. Ibid. p. 91
62
Russett: Grasping, p. 28
63
Mearsheimer: Tragedy, p. 49
61
19
industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership… we must
maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a
larger regional or global role.”64 It is probably not out of momentum that the US still
maintains 100,000 troops in Europe.65
In fact, Bruce Russett himself notes, when explaining how easily the Cyprus-Turkey
conflict was contained in 1963-4 when the governments of Greece and Turkey were
democratic, that they were “easily contained, largely by an American warning (!) and UN
peacekeeping action.”66 Liberal authors too seem to be leaning on the side of hegemony
from time to time.
VI. CONCLUSION WITH A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Democratic peace thesis is not new. It was postulated famously by Kant in the 18 th
century and given wide currency in the 18th and 19th centuries by thinkers and activists of
various strands (Waltz helpfully categorizes them into ‘interventionist’ and
‘noninterventionist’ liberals in this respect67). Yet as Thomas Paine, Jeremy Bentham,
Norman Angell and many others were explaining the barbarity of wars, their costliness
and counter-productiveness when it comes to general welfare, wars were becoming more
and more devastating. Two things in this respect appear highly significant. First, liberal
democracies, in whatever way they are defined, are hardly less bellicose than other
regimes. On the contrary, some of the regimes that have been hailed as democratic and
liberal have proven to be highly war-prone, especially when it comes to attacking weaker
adversaries. In the 19th century the US managed to wipe out Indian tribes with whom it
had concluded treaties with all the trappings of international agreements 68, and the 20th
century can be described as the century of American interventionism, when the US
country attacked more states than any other. Similarly, European colonial wars in the 19th
and 20th century were often waged by ‘democracies’. Perhaps more worryingly, some
64
Brown et al: Perils, p. 130
Mearsheimer: Tragedy, p. 361
66
Russett: Grasping, p. 20
67
Waltz: State, p. 103
68
Strange: States, p. 53
65
20
records in war devastation in 19th century had been set in wars waged on each other by
countries that could be described as ‘democratic’. Many authors argue that the bloodiest
war of the 19th century, the war of the North versus South, cannot be classified as an
international conflict. Russett brushes the whole idea aside by saying that the
Confederacy government was not internationally recognized. On the other hand, the two
groups that emerged from the North-South split had practically identical constitutional
regimes and were clearly political entities with centralized governance, defying usual
classifications of civil wars. Similarly, the Boer war, which saw widespread introduction
of such novelties as concentration camps, was fought by Great Britain against the Boer
republics which did have universal suffrage, yes, excluding Blacks, but the Black
population was not enfranchised in the British part of South Africa either. And the First
World War, the first war of mass mobilizations, was even called by some the “first
democratic war”69.
Since also the classification of Wilhelmine Germany proves highly contentious and there
are additional complications, as with the issue of the Ruhr Crisis, proponents of the
democratic peace thesis can only properly point to a very short time-period and rather
constrained geographical area when they claim they found cases of democracies not
fighting each other. The period is post-WWII and the area is the North Atlantic area,
basically embodying Deutsch’s “North Atlantic community,” maybe with an inclusion of
Japan, which, however, does not improve statistical yield, since it is so distant from
Europe that its inclusion into potential war dyads would only be with the US. Everything
else is statistically insignificant and dubious in regards to the definition of basic terms.
This community, however, is clearly strongly hegemonic, relying on American military
power for security and American structural power for stability of economic-political
order.
Thus, realism can explain the absence of war between the countries concerned with
reference to decreased security dilemma for the members in this hegemonic arrangement
(except for the hegemon, which can rely on structural power to perpetuate its
dominance).
69
Furet: Passing, p. 48
21
Democratic peace thesis treats democracy as an independent variable, not grounded in
larger historical development. Thus it cannot be used to make predictors about where a
liberal regime would arise. Realism, on the other hand, can not only explain the
“democratic peace” but realist analysis can be used to establish, for instance, where the
US might next try to establish a “democracy”.
This paper was primarily an exercise in thinking about international relations. And
thinking about international relations involves being able to see through terms of
discussion. Democratic peace thesis is in a way an inverted riddle – it states a fact with
the assumption that the terms it uses are stable and easily comprehensible. Yet it turns out
that exactly those are the puzzling factor.
The democratic peace statement is not without its value. Realism does have the inherent
tendency for degeneration into a simplistic view preoccupied with power struggles. The
democratic peace thesis, as a positive ideal, probably helps cooperation where
cooperation is desired. Yet it is a correlate of ideals in intra-state life. States propound the
nice values of education yet rely on laws to enforce it. Citizens are regarded in
democratic societies as responsible and benign beings, yet anti-drug penalties or
compulsory pension schemes belie the distrust in citizens’ capacity for rational
behaviour. “Trust but verify” is more often than not the motto of life within states, and
why should it be different in the anarchic international order?
“The illusion that some states are more peaceful than others,” notes Susan Strange, “ is a
kind of intellectual phoenix that rises from time to time again from the ashes.”70 (53) The
illusion might be seductive. But the real world remains the realist’s world.
70
Strange: States, p. 53
22
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