Debunking the Liberal Peace

Peace has been the goal of many political scientists since the very beginning of the science. Studying war and its causes is the very nature of international politics. Many have proposed world models that would create a everlasting peace. One of the most accepted and quoted is Immanuel Kant's essay Perpetual Peace. Kant proposed that liberal states are inherently peaceful, and do not become aggressors in war (790-792). While this has not proven true as an absolute, many political scientists have modified this theory to try and propose a method of ending war. One of the most accepted of these proposals was by Michael W. Doyle, a professor at Princeton University. In his essay Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs he proposes that the true liberal peace is a peace between liberal states. He proposes that liberal nations are peaceful one towards another and do not war with one another (99).

The first step in considering this theory is to define the terms. A state is any body defined by a sovereign government and specific boundaries (Cooper, 2003a). For the purposes of this discussion, war will be defined by armed conflict, and peace by the lack thereof. Doyle defines liberal regimes as having the following: a market economy with private ownership, a system where politics are sovereign, citizens with juridical rights, and a representative form of government (102). Sovereign is any body that does not answer to a higher body (Cooper, 2003a), thus including both sides during the time of a civil war.

Kant's and Doyle's Theories

Kant's argued that liberal governments will not be aggressors in war for two major reasons. First, that since the people play a role in the decision, they are less inclined to fight th...

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...er for peace, short of Judgment Day. But we will never know until we move beyond Kant's and Doyle's flawed theories.

Works Cited

Cooper, Scott. 2003a. Lecture on definitions in international politics, Brigham Young University.

___. 2003b. Lecture on the liberal peace, Brigham Young University.

Doyle, Michael W., 1983. Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs. In Packet: Political Science 170, ed. Scott Cooper, pagination as in original. Provo, Utah.

Kant, Immanuel.

Library of Congress. Germany -- A Country Study. http://www/lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/detoc.html. Accessed 2 April 2004.

Peck, David. 2004a. Lecture on colonialism, Brigham Young University-Idaho.

____. 2004b. Lecture on terrorism, Brigham Young University-Idaho.