The theory of democratic peace
Introduction
" Let us not, however, assert that democracy is the panacea. Like all political models, this one has its limits and corresponds above all to a historical reality. If democratic peace exists, it can not be perpetual . "
After a major crisis (war, revolution, economic crisis) disrupting the international system, man, faced with a conceptual vacuum created by an unprecedented situation, finds himself obliged to create new tools to explain the world surrounds.This intellectual duty does not escape the field of international relations, since the State is generally one of the first actors whose functioning and existence are affected by such crises.
Following the First World War, Woodrow Wilson's idealist liberalism was proposed to rebuild a security system based on the territorial integrity and equality of all nations. Though theoretically attractive, he is confronted with a political reality not yet ready for such a change, which the advent of the Second World War a few years later will confirm. In the aftermath of the conflict and throughout the Cold War, realism became the dominant paradigm of international relations by explaining the security system of the time by the balance of powers. Once the USSR dissolved, the principle of equilibrium became de facto obsolete.
Thus, a new geostrategic space aimed at establishing a stable security regime seems to be established under the benevolent control of the newly created "superpower", as Zbigniew Brzezinski calls it in his Grand Chessboard . This space, which Blin calls " geodemocratic ", is that of democracy, international institutions and human rights. This is reflected, on the one hand, in the scientific field where the notions of "human security" or "just war" are gradually asserting themselves, and on the other hand, in practice, by a global wave of democratization and by The global spread of western liberal capitalist values due to the phenomenon of globalization. It is in this context that many scientific studies on the benefits of democracy will be rediscovered. Of the latter, a trend emerges that will quickly quasi-consensus in the literature, namely that democracies do not make war.
This resurgence of the so-called theory of democratic peace, as Michael Doyle, one of his leading modern thinkers, explains, in that " democracies are in a state of peace between themselves and only among themselves " Will soon be taken up politically and put into true doctrine by the President of the United States Bill Clinton when he will in turn declare in 1994 that " the democracies do not make war " . Political doctrine in the sense that he succeeded-where Wilson had failed earlier because it was out of step with the post-World War I context-to make freedom, democracy the pillar of the security system on the ashes Conceptual models of the Cold War.
Although seductive on paper, the empiricists quickly demonstrate that they can not freeze a theory with very different ambitions from the perpetual peace project idealized by Emmanuel Kant in 1795. Indeed, if the world after the Cold War is that The advent of democracy and human rights, it is also that of violence. Never has society separated itself from its warlike culture (military parades, hymns, respect for the army, virile glory of war) and never seems to have been so much conflictual. Worse still, the change in violence (terrorism) is testing the security of democracies. So how can democracy be reconciled with democratic insecurity?
Consequently, considering on the one hand that democracies are not alien to the phenomenon of war and, on the other hand, that the theory of democratic peace is intended to be verifiable only within the world; It seems pertinent to question the real legitimacy of this theory as the basis for the current security system. In other words, the question is whether - without questioning the empirical observation that democracies do not wage war between themselves - the stability of the security system is due to the establishment of democracy as an ideal political regime And whether its exportation will serve the future stability of this system. Ultimately , the debate opens with Fukuyama's words: " The correlation between democracy and peace is for me one of the few things that political science can affirm in international relations . "
The aim of this duty is therefore not to question the causes of democratic peace - literature is already heavily prolix of this type of considerations - but rather to equate the notions of peace and democracy in order to understand how They act on each other. Beyond the weight given to empirical observations, it will be a question of trying to verify the thesis of perpetual peace within the democratic space (Part One) but also to question the capacity of democracy, As a political and values regime, to be a promoter of peace beyond the western world (Part Two).
Part I: After the happy globalization, the rediscovery of war and realism within the global democratic space
For Bruce Russet, democracies do not make war on each other because " the structure of power and the nature of the values that characterize the internal political life of democracies neutralize the security dilemma in their mutual relations" but also " On the other hand "because respect for the fundamental human rights and freedoms of the democracies deprives them of any reason for intervening in favor of the protection or promotion of these values. "
By reading too strictly this quote, some would be tempted to conceive of democratic space as a hermetic space for war by virtue of the very structure and values of democratic regimes. However, the veil of post-Cold War globalization must not hide the fact that war remains prevalent in the West (A), nor do it spread an unshakable faith that democracy is the sole cause of peace within the same space (B).
A: The theory of democratic peace as a prism of insufficient analysis to apprehend the phenomenon of war in the West
If peace is democratic, it can not be perpetual. Thus if the democratic space is for the moment peaceful, the latter continues to arm itself. Indeed, among the 15 countries with the highest military spending in 2013, no fewer than 10 are democracies . In addition, the top 10 arms-producing groups in 2012 also turn out to be either American or European . This militarization of democratic space demonstrates that even with the disappearance of major international conflicts and the certainty of democratic peace, states do not exclude war as an emanation of their foreign policy.
First, the war between democracies. This idea would like to see the theory of democratic peace conceptually obsolete in relation to the present reality and would see a permanent state of war between the democracies. Not a war in the classic sense of the term, that is, understood as a militarized conflict, but a war in a new dimension, the economy. Thus, since the economy has become the prime factor of power in the 21st century, states and firms clash to secure economic benefits to the detriment of other states and firms. Hence, must we conceive of this confrontation as a war or as a simple competition? If for some the economy is the new terrain that allows the democratic states to wage war, for others (Krugman) talk of economic war is an ineptitude, the economy being by nature creative and not destructive .Whatever the reality, the existence of the debate clearly shows that the border between war and peace is not perfectly defined within the world democratic space.
Secondly, between democracies and non-democracies. One corollary of the theory of democratic peace is that democracies are quite inclined to go to war against non-democracies. So it seems an ineptitude to say that the democratic world is peaceful. The best example to transcribe this reality remains to date the one of the Global War on Terror launched in 2001 by the United States. Established as a global security threat, the war on terrorism (which was largely carried out by the West) would have cost nearly $ 800 billion since 2009, but was mostly fatal for the Committed democracies. Thus over 2000 American soldiers have fallen in combat in Afghanistan since 2001 .Another element is the constant increase in the number of peacekeeping operations (OMPs) mandated by the United Nations, of which there have been 69 since 1948. Conflicting terrain - although the latter can be analyzed in a positive way in favor of a search for peace.
In a third phase, it must also be stated that the political regime of a state may change in the course of history and that the absence of a war between democracies can be biased. Thus a democratic A-State may enter into conflict with a non-democratic B-State long before that B-State becomes democratic and now has peaceful relations with State A. The example of Germany is an example of The idea of a subjective and self-constructed democratic peace.
Ultimately , it is clear that the exploitation of the theory of democratic peace does not make it possible to mention a pacified or peaceful democratic space. One of the current representations of this trend is certainly that terrorism, a new form of political violence, has led to war within democracies. The redefinition in 2008 of the French White Paper on Defense and National Security thus de facto emphasizes the awareness in the West that the democratic regime is no longer an inviolable haven of peace.
B: The relativisation of the political regime as the main source of absence of peace in the democratic space
" If one can not accurately measure how much the nature of a political regime influences its foreign policy, it is obvious that this component is important. This varies considerably depending on other factors, such as the geostrategic environment and historical circumstances .
For the vast majority of the current "unrealistic" doxa of international relations - if it is possible to call it that - the peace that seems to prevail in the world democratic space is due precisely to the very nature of the political regime .This critical theory of democratic peace - the so-called name, whose main authors reply to the names of Paine, Tocqueville and Russet - seems to be challenged by four hypotheses breaking the incestuous link between Democracy and peace. It will be in this part to discuss the latter.
First comes the hypothesis of a pax americana as the economic guarantor of peace within the world democratic space.Synonymous with GHERVAS of hegemonic peace, the hypothesis would advocate a post-Cold War social order led by a " supreme entity " , namely the United States. Thus, once the demise of the USSR and with it the bipolar world, the democratic states would have been channeled by the new "gendarme of the world" imposing by its military power, economic but also its Soft Power (Nye) an order Secured by hegemony (Mearsheimer). By analogy, it is possible to push the analysis further, that is to say until the period of the Cold War itself by asserting that stability was then due to a balanced order ( balance of powers ) . This hypothesis, although it may have been welcomed in the early 1990s, is today criticized by many authors seeing the decline of the United States already under way.
Next comes the idea of the pax europea . The latter in its contemporary conception obviously refers to the construction of Europe and more particularly to the European Union. " The pooling of coal and steel production will change the destiny of those regions which have long been devoted to the manufacture of weapons of war, of which they have been the most constant victims . The idea of the pax europea , which closely resembles that of federal peace, is none other than the intellectual emanation of Robert Schuman when he intends in 1957 to pool the resources of Germany And France in order to make these two states prosper: the beginning of European functionalism. The monitoring of this method makes the European Union one of the most foreign areas of war by welcoming in its midst all the states that have been acquired (in appearance) for the cause of democracy. But if the EU receives the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012 , this must not hide the flaws of this system, which can not achieve a serious political union (CFSP / CSDP difficulties) and whose inequalities are glaring. As in the case of pax americana , pax europea is finally reducing in the sense that it is confined to the study of the simple European continent and prosperous in favor of a rather favorable historical context.
Third, the peace of the Directory appears. A state of affairs which would correspond to the guarantee of a system of co-operation by a small number of powers. In its contemporary form, the peace of the Directory is assimilated to the sacrosanct institution of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). This peace of victors established in the aftermath of the Second World War was supposed to be the guarantor of multilaterally managed stability in full respect of the rules of newly established international law. Today, however, it is clear that the shortcomings of such a system are so profound that its questioning and increasingly announced. Ultimately , the UNSC, in addition to being relatively inefficient (gives the table of PKOs in the world, right of veto, discretionary freedom of States to apply the law) is increasingly criticized as no longer responding to a historical reality And geostrategic very different from what it was in 1945 .
Finally, it is a question of mentioning belonging to a security community. This hypothesis would verify that the absence of war between democracy is due to the creation of alliances and the distribution of powers. This is of course referred to NATO. Once the Cold War was over, the debate on the legitimacy of such an organization did not seem meaningless.Indeed, NATO now seems closer to an American shield than to a real collective security body. If the news (the Ukrainian crisis) seems to reactivate its natural existence via ill-founded reflux of the Cold War, its "competition" with a possible full European CSDP echoes its conceptual vulnerability. But again, what could happen in the event of the disappearance of such a body? The answer is probably on the side of the neo-realists and the supporters of the theory of democratic peace.
Emmanuel Kant's idea was that of a perpetual but universal peace, destined to be applied to every nation. It is clear that the theory of democratic peace is now only verifiable within the world democratic space. Thus it seems interesting to be interested in his attempts to export out of the liberal Western world.
Second part: The obvious finding of a restricted scope to the theory of democratic peace
If the communist model has been able to compete for nearly half a century with the liberal model proposed by the United States, it is above all because it has managed to export beyond the borders of Russia to form the USSR.Similarly, the world today would have no more than 1.5 billion Muslims if Islam, when it appeared in the seventh century, had confined itself to spreading over the unique Arabia. In other words, it is the export and dissemination of a model that largely defines its viability over time and its legitimacy to govern a given social order. The theory of democratic peace does not escape this rule. As a religion the "word" of democracy, mainly since the early 1990s, has made use of proselytism (A) but has also by its attractiveness diffused its essence (B). The purpose of this part is to attest to the peaceful influence of these two movements.
A: The advent of an era of "democratic crusades": political consequence of capitalist liberal ideological interpretation
The American administration's view since Bill Clinton's mandate, referring to the theory of democratic peace, was that an export of the Western democratic model under strong American tropism would be beneficial to peace and Security of unstable areas, but above all would enable us to design new commercial and economic agreements that would benefit the US market.
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1991 and the 2001 World Trade Center attacks were the two catalysts for what might be called the democratic war waged by the United States and some of its democratic western allies. These interventions, whose disastrous consequences are still being felt today in Iraq and Afghanistan, have proved by the large number of victims they have caused and the fact that the rule of law and democracy still do not exist. Prospered in these countries that the doctrine of regime change was completely ineffective. Thus it appeared that democracy could only emerge from a military solution, and this one even less imported from abroad. If this method has not been unanimous in the western camp (conferring the speech of Dominique de Villepin then French Minister of Foreign Affairs at the UN), it nevertheless proved the warlike appetite of a supposedly peaceful world.
But what further darkens the picture is surely the observation that, in spite of unfounded theories of complo- tics, these wars have found in their successive extensions the satisfaction of many actors. The idea, developed by David Keen , is that in developing the preventive war doctrine, the United States has made the war on terrorism an endless war.Indeed, in addition to engendering the resentment of the Muslim populations and thus widening the specter of the threat, it enabled many actors to take advantage of this situation of stalemate without, however, trying to ensure that the Situation improves. Conventional criminals, traffickers, defense industrialists, generals, the media and even political decision-makers took advantage of the war. The bitter observation that war fueled war then seems to impose itself on the democratic regimes which took part in this terrorist "witch hunt" but also on the democratic societies which suffered as a whole from the vicissitudes of these operations.
It is in this context of attempts to impose democracy that greater clarity is made on regimes calling into question, or at least criticizing the Western security order based on the liberal democratic model. These so-called "revolutionary" states thus come into conflict with the representatives of what they consider to be an order to be overthrown. Today very few states can boast of such status, but the current evolution of international relations could make a difference. The most striking example would be that of Iran, proposing a new grid of reading based on religion, in particular Shiite Islam, and would try to export this grid of reading in its near vicinity first, then away then. To a lesser extent, China and Russia appear to be "dissidents" of the liberal democratic order, although they join it in many respects. This being explained, the whole question is what will become of these hotbeds of contention. Will they succeed in imposing their model so that it comes to compete with the established ones? Or will they socialize, as the author suggests, to integrate this so-called model? The example of the USSR, the only veritable protesting state of this order governing the world since 1945, shows that the second hypothesis remains statistically the most probable. However, the scale taken into account for this analysis remains compared to the very short history of history and the hindsight is certainly missing to dare a clear affirmation.
The question of socialization mentioned above ultimately takes on its importance when it comes to dealing with the theory of democratic peace in a non-democratic framework. Indeed, if it has been demonstrated that the mere "crusade" for democracy is in no way effective and promotes peace, then what can be done about the gentle diffusion of democracy, in which notions of Soft Power and globalization have a full place.
Democracy is commonly considered today as the only ideal political regime with a universal vocation. Thus, since 1945, there has been a movement to democratize the world, not by arms, but this time due to the spread of democratic values beyond the world, but also to the hopes aroused by this regime for the states which, adopt. However, the empirical evidence shows that even soft, democratization is likely to create insecurity and imbalances.
Insecurity at first. Indeed, Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder warn against the undesirable effects of democratization processes. For these authors, a state in a period of democratic transition would be much more inclined to enter into conflict with a war against a foreign actor than an undemocratic state. Indeed, during these periods, the institutions of the rule of law and democracy are not yet in place. As a result, it is not the only freedom of voting that can prevent a leader from taking any actions he deems necessary to increase his security or power. A state in transition can also take advantage of the unrest in such a situation to establish its legitimacy by triggering a war, thus reinforcing the national sentiment. Or a State in transition may be prey to neighboring States wishing to influence the decisions of the first or even to annex a part of its territory. The most striking example of such a contemporary case is certainly that of the war between Iraq and Iran between 1980 and 1988. In the middle of the Islamic Revolution, the new power of Ayatollah Khomeini was very fragile . Saddam Hussein's neighboring Iraq took advantage of this to launch a war against its Shi'ite neighbor on the grounds that it wanted to recover territory that was returned to him by law. Although this war threatened the Islamic Republic, the Islamic Republic relied on it to reinforce the feeling of national unity and the full commitment of the population against the foreign aggressor. The result was a war that lasted 8 years and claimed over a million lives. However, Mansfield and Snyder relativize their explanation by stating that the potential instability resulting from democratization depends, of course, on the environment of the state concerned. Thus such a process will be more at risk in the Middle East than it could be at the borders of Europe.
An imbalance then. The phenomenon of globalization must theoretically allow the world to have access to the world market, and thus in this way to obtain resources in a peaceful way and consequently to prosper . What Wallerstein learns in his so-called theory of world economics is that the entry of the so-called peripheral states (third world, southern states) into the economy of the central (western) states, A process of double polarization. On the one hand, they are on the margins of the liberal capitalist system, and on the other hand their very society is polarized between a rich elite and a poor majority. But it is freely accepted that poverty leads to disorder and in some cases inevitably to war.Consequently, what can be deduced from this demonstration is that what liberal democracies would diffuse would not be so much democratic values but above all a model of liberal capitalism. This postulate would then lead to talk, like Blin, of liberal peace and not of democratic peace, which would mean that capitalism precedes democracy and not that the former is an emanation of the latter.
These somewhat gloomy findings in the export and diffusion of democracy in the world thus make it possible to relativize the role of the democratic political system in the development of peace.
The object of this duty was not to try to explain why the democracies do not make war, since such a thing has already been treated prolificly by literature. The ambition was rather to shed light on the reality of the link between peace and democracy. Whether the future can be thought of according to the vision of Fukuyama or that of Huntington, or in any other way.
Winston Churchill said of democracy that it is the worst of regimes with the exception of all the others already tried in the past. The aim of this duty, however, is not to sink into pessimism and skepticism, but to nourish hope. Monique Castillo, a French philosopher, said that " there is no other happiness than that which consists in making oneself worthy of happiness ." Indeed, the aim here is to make democracy worthy of the ideals and values it likes to disseminate, in the most perfect Kantian spirit.
Peace will be perfectly democratic when democracy is fully synonymous with peace. Today there is a consensus that democracy is in crisis. Everywhere in the world (democratic and undemocratic) people rise up against an inegalitarian and flawed world order, a "new world order" enacted in the Second Gulf War, that is, in times of war. The goal of future generations is to rethink democracy, to actualize it in the present era and to make globalization a virtuous and non-destructive vector.
Ultimately , the real goal, at least on a respectable scale, is to create a true climate of peace within the democratic space rather than pursue millennial myth of perpetual peace.
THIBAULT GERBAIL
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