Foundations of World Politics
Topic 4: The Idea of ‘Progress’ in World Politics
Benoit Hubert (November 5th 2002)
Introduction
Following from last week’s discussion on sovereignty and the emergence (or not…) of
the Westphalian System, today’s topic moves on to the idea of ‘Progress’ in World
politics. This broad theme will plunge us back to the end of the 17th Century, when
movement of Enlightenment appears.
We’ll start by exploring the meaning of the Enlightenment philosophy to discover the
many repercussions that entailed.
Second, we’ll examine the context of this period in time. This will encompass the work
of Clausewitz, the industrial revolution & the militarization of war, and most importantly,
the French Revolution.
Finally, we’ll examine the work of one of the Enlightenment’s most prestigious
philosophers Immanuel Kant. His main piece, the pamphlet on Perpetual Peace, still
stands today as the intellectual basis and centrepiece in the debate surrounding the
question of the existence of the Democratic Peace Thesis. We shall discover its main
components and discover the reasons why some support it (such as the liberalists) while
others challenge it (such as the realists).
1. Enlightenment
According to the Oxford dictionary, the Enlightenment is ‘a European intellectual
movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries emphasizing reason and individualism rather
that tradition’. Furthermore, Baylis and Smith add that Enlightenment ‘provided a
vocabulary for articulating liberal ideas such as human rights and humanitarian law’.
They also suggest that ‘its key ideas were secularism, progress, reason, science,
knowledge and freedom’. The philosophy’s motto was ‘have courage to use your own
understanding’.
The European Enlightenment was therefore initially a political and cultural movement,
which developed its own philosophy, ‘based on the idea that moral and political progress
would be achieved through the application of secular reason to human affairs’. One of its
main philosophers, besides Jean-Jacques Rousseau, was Immanuel Kant of Koenigsberg.
For Kant, Perpetual Peace is the ultimate goal of the Enlightenment philosophy. In his
pamphlet he furthers the argument that underlies the idea of Enlightenment to the
international arena. His main argument being that a perpetual peace amongst nations is
possible, under certain conditions. As we shall discover, this essay would unravel much
debate amongst historians, social scientists and others.
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2. Context
Before getting into the actual components of Kant’s Perpetual Peace, I thought it would
be useful to move on to an explanation of the context in which this whole debate would
arise. Let us start by quickly examining some key issues in the work of Carl Von
Clausewitz in On War.
a) Clausewitz
According to Micheal Howard, ‘Clausewitz believed that the menace of French power
had been checked in 1814-15, but by no means destroyed and he sought to understand
war … to ensure that in future, Prussia and her allies would be able to wage it more
swiftly and effectively against the hereditary foe’.
In matters relating to our discussion, I shall say that Clausewitz wrote in the early years
of the 19th Century, before any real signs of industrialization or further development or
militarization of warfare occurred. Furthermore, most of his field experience would
come from battles against the French armies of Napoleon. Clausewitz identified war as
being the ‘continuation of politics by other means’. He also invented the concept of total
war, which implied the total use of the nation’s resources and capabilities in order to
wage war and impose our will on our opponents. In the context of the French
Revolution, ‘the young French Republic discovered or invented total war’, therefore,
neither France nor Britain would be prepared to ‘settle for less than total victory’
(Hobsbawm).
Interestingly enough, some of Clausewitz’s main ideas on military issues and
conduct stem within the same context of Enlightenment and also with some of its
main ideals.
b) Industrial Revolution
Moving on to the second element of context, let us now examine the impact of the
Industrial Revolution, which began in the earlier decades of the 19th century,
particularly in Great Britain. According to Hobsbawm, ‘the economy of the 19th C
was formed mainly under the influence of the British Industrial Revolution’.
The end of the 18th C was an ‘age of crisis for the old regimes of Europe and their
economic systems’. Interests of capitalist expansion formed her ‘foreign policy’. In
the context of the French Revolution, the fundamental armed conflict was between
France and Britain. The British were seeking to ‘eliminate their chief competitor on
the way to achieving total predominance of their trade in the European markets’.
In examining the consequences of the process of warfare, and of military
mobilizations and operations during the French Revolution, we discover that ‘…no
area affected by the wars of 1792-1815 was devastated as parts of Central Europe and
Eastern Europe would be in the Thirty Years’ War’. Hobsbawm adds that ‘the
armaments used - relatively light and mobile artillery – were not very destructive by
modern standards’. The number of casualties also attests to this.
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The war also had a ‘general economic effect of the great diversions of resources from
peacetime to military uses’. Examples of this effect are seen in the mobilization of men
for military campaigns, in the rapid expansion of iron and steel industries and also in the
development of many technological innovations. At the end of the war, this would also
create huge problems of readjustment, due to the ‘release of mass resources’. This
affected not only the French but also the British whose war effort cost an estimated ‘three
and four times as much as it did the French’. As Hobsbawm illustrates, ‘The British
decisively eliminated her nearest possible competitor and became the ‘workshop of the
world’ for two generations’. This triumph from war provided Great Britain hegemony on
all industrial matters for many years to come.
c) French Revolution
The final and essential element of the contextual analysis is the French Revolution.
As we have seen in the letters of Edmund Burke, there was much to rebuke and to fear
about the French Revolution. In his own words was born a republic of regicide, which
was in a state of hostility not only with England, ‘but with all civilized people’. He
identified Jacobinism as ‘the revolt of enterprising talents of a country against its
property’. He went even further and identified that the French would even allow the
existence of Jacobinism and Atheism by Establishment. Furthermore, he described the
French’s manners as ‘coarse, rude, savage and ferocious’.
For Burke, the solution was war, as the ‘sole means of justice amongst nations’. Because
the French had created a ‘schism with the whole universe’, they made intercourse
amongst nations therefore ‘impracticable’. The law of civil vicinity would therefore be
invoked, engulfing the whole vicinage of Europe, in its duty against the danger of the
Revolution. Europe was at war with the existence of this ‘system’. ‘It was a war
between the partisans of the ancient, civil, moral and political order of Europe against a
sect of fanatical and ambitious atheists’ he says. Finally, this system had to be destroyed,
or it would in turn destroy all of Europe.
Referring to Hobsbawm, I will now turn to another historical interpretation of the events.
For him, ‘the French revolution would provide the vocabulary and the issues of liberal
and radical-democratic politics for most of the world’. The end of the 18th century was
an age of democratic revolution, in many states, but none would be as ‘far-reaching’ as
France’s, because it had the most powerful and populous state in Europe, became a social
revolution and sought to revolutionize the world with its ideas.
The feudal reaction actually triggered the Revolution. Following the decision to call the
States-General, aristocrats attempted to recapture the state, but underestimated the
intentions of the Third Estate, the main victims of the economic and social crisis. In this
context, nationalism was born from the idea that the people started to identify with the
nation (I will not say much more on nationalism, since Gavin will further discuss the
topic in his piece).
Once they had obtained the majority in the National Assembly, they introduced the idea
of liberation from gentry and oppression, which came to its peak on July the 14th 1789 as
the masses captured la Bastille.
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One group still not entirely satisfied was the Jacobins, which had radical ideas, in order to
eradicate the bourgeois class. Because the peasantry did not represent a viable political
force, they turned to the Sansculottes. When the war was declared in 1792, the Girondins
quickly took power, overthrowing the monarchy. Mainly because of their lack of
radicalism, the Jacobin Republic quickly overthrew them. The new regime of
Robespierre was soon to be in place, as terror would reign over the country.
In 1799, the Republic was to be ruled by a general, called Napoleon Bonaparte.
According to Hobsbawm, ‘between 1794 and 1812’ the French had uninterrupted
triumph. Within a few years, France had a Civil Code, a concordat with the Church and
even a National Bank. In the end, the supply system would cause the fall of Napoleon
in 1814. At the end of his rule, he had destroyed the Jacobin dream of equality, liberty
and fraternity. Hobsbawm suggests that the revolutionary wars brought on three major
changes, which were: European frontiers, laws and government institutions, and political
atmosphere.
Finally, the revolution was a universal event, from which no country was immune.
3. Perpetual Peace by Immanuel Kant
Moving on to the last part of the presentation, I will now examine the main elements of
Kant’s Perpetual Peace, and discuss some of the supporting and some of the criticizing
evidence of it’s more recently influenced thesis called the Democratic Peace.
Inspired from the context of the Enlightenment period, Kant believed that the State of
Nature amongst states meant war and conflict. Therefore, in order to obtain peace, a
State of Peace had to been established. He structured his philosophical essay in two main
components. The first being the preliminary articles and the second, the definitive
articles towards the goal of a Perpetual Peace.
As you have all read the preliminary articles, all that I will add is that Capian Richards
identified these as being a ‘group of conditions evidently aimed to address the climate of
mistrust between nations, and to bring about an environment within which a perpetual
peace could arise. As such, they seek predominantly to stabilise the relations between
nations, rather than to set principles for the arbitration of conflicts’.
1st Section – Preliminary articles
1) ‘No conclusion of peace shall be held to be valid as such, when it has been maid
with the secret reservation of the material for a future war’;
2) ‘No state having an existence by itself – whether it be small or large – shall be
acquirable by another State through inheritance, exchange, purchase or donation’;
3) ‘Standing armies shall be entirely abolished in the course of time’;
4) No national debts shall be contracted in connection with the external affairs of the
State’;
5) ‘No state shall intermeddle by force with the Constitution or Government of
another State’;
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6) ‘No state at war with another shall adopt such modes of hostility as would
necessarily render mutual confidence impossible a future Peace; such as the
employment of Assassins or Prisoners, the violation of a Capitulation, the
instigation of Treason and such like’.
Kant also prescribes articles 1, 5 and 6 as being strict laws, therefore valid without
distinction of circumstances, and articles 2,3 and 4 as prohibitive laws.
2nd Section – Definite Articles
1) ‘The civil Constitution in every State shall be Republican’;
2) ‘The Right of Nations shall be founded on a Federation of Free States’;
3) ‘The Rights of men as Citizens of the world in a cosmo-political system, shall be
restricted to conditions of universal Hospitality’.
For Kant, ‘the Republican Constitution was the only one which arises out of the idea of
the Original Compact upon which all the rightful legislation of the people is founded’.
He adds that the ‘Republican Constitution…includes also the prospect of realizing the
desired object: Perpetual Peace’. He also makes a clear case for the importance of
representation within government.
Regarding the second article, Kant hoped that this would ‘give rise to an International
Federation of the Peoples’. Contrary to Grotius, Kant believed that a Pacific Federation
was the only solution to assemble all nations in an aim to ‘put an end to all wars for ever’.
The main element that would bring man to form a state of Nations was his reason.
In regards to the third and final definitive article, Kant describes hospitality as ‘a Right of
a stranger in consequence of his arrival on the soil of another country, not to be treated by
its citizens as an enemy’. This also led to his idea of a Cosmo-political Right of the
whole Human Race.
An interesting aspect of his work is on the question of the guarantee of Perpetual Peace.
He believes that nature is the guarantee of Peace, guided by fate, which in turn is directed
by Providence.
Debating the Democratic Peace
Kant’s perpetual peace thesis has inspired liberalists in developing a democratic peace
thesis. As Lynn-Jones puts it, ‘the debate over the democratic peace is theoretically
important because it represents another round in the ongoing debate between realism and
liberalism’. Here are some of the main arguments on both sides:

For the supporters of the Democratic Peace Thesis such as Doyle, ‘States that
adhere to liberal principles enjoy a separate peace amongst themselves, but are
likely to wage war against non-liberal states’. He believes that perpetual peace
should be achieved in the 22nd C.

For Russett, ‘wars have occurred only when at least one rival is not democratic’;
also the reasons why democracies do not fight one another are: international
institutions, distance, strategic alliances, wealth, political stability and democracy
(based on 2 models – cultural / normative and structural / institutional);
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Here are some of the main arguments of authors arguing against the existence of the
Democratic Peace Thesis:

Layne argues that democracies act ‘on the basis of calculations of national
interest, pay attention to strategic concerns and use threats when vital interests are
jeopardized’;

Spiro argues that ‘the absence of war between democracies could be the result of
random chance’;

To Farber and Gowa, ‘the democratic peace seems to be an artefact of the Cold
War, and that systemic variables are more important than regime type in
explaining the incidence of international conflicts’;

Oren believes that countries, mainly the United States, modify the definition of
democracy to suit their own purposes;

Mansfield and Snyder argue that democratizing states are more likely to go to war
because of basic internal problems that destabilize their fragile institutions;
As we can see, much debate exists surrounding the existence of the Democratic Peace
Thesis. It would be doubtful to say that Kant anticipated that his work would still be
generating so much debate after over 200 years!
Conclusion
In conclusion, the French Revolution and the ideas and philosophies that sprang from the
context of Enlightenment have certainly provided ample grounds for progress in the arena
or theatre of World politics.
Benoit Hubert (November 5th 2002)
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