So, I’ve been feeling guilty about not posting anything substantive on this blog for ages. Exams and other fun stuff have precluded me from instructing you, my loyal fanboys and girls, what to think about things, and I can only imagine the shadowy wilderness of confusion and ignorance through which you’ve been stumbling blindly as a result. And, I’m afraid, through which you’ll have to keep stumbling for a while yet. But in the meantime, to keep you going, I thought I’d upload a few of the essays I’ve done for my course. I know that’s cheating, but fuck it, it’s my blog. Please do feel free to laugh at them, poke them with sticks, and generally have at them.

First up – my magisterial, ground-breaking treatise on the merits and otherwise of Kant’s proposal for perpetual peace.

Could peaceful relations between states be secured on the basis of universal moral law?

Immanuel Kant argued that perpetual peace, or something very close to it, could be secured on the basis of universal adherence to the tenets of ‘moral law’, which stresses the importance of individual rights and freedoms. Kant argued that representative, republican states are the only ones which tend to respect moral law, since they treat their citizens as ‘ends’ rather than ‘means’. The core of Kant’s argument is that a world of republican states whose external relations are governed by a shared normative framework, derived from ‘moral law’ and voluntarily adhered to by every state, would be a world of peace. He supports this argument in three ways. First, a republican constitution is conducive to the moral development of its citizens and the development of a democratic culture, both of which will constrain the state’s ability and desire to go to war. Second, Kant argued that representation provides institutional disincentives and blocks to rulers going to war on a whim. If the population doesn’t want to aggressively attack another state, then to the extent that that state is representative it will be unable to launch an attack. If the state is a democracy, then any ruler that did start an unpopular war could be voted out. Finally, Kant argued that the growth of trade between republican states would provide a powerful economic incentive to keep the peace. Kant’s argument is a compelling one, and has proved immensely influential in the field of international relations. But it must be asked how realistic his conditions for securing peace are. In particular, the prospect of a world in which every state is republican and representative looks very remote. Moreover while Kant’s argument that a republican constitution can act as a powerful constraint to autocratic rulers launching wars of choice is powerful, he ignores other features of states that may also drive them to conflict, for example a fight over scarce resources or the economic imperatives of capitalism.

Kant’s moral law is based on two fundamental precepts. First, the ‘categorical imperative’ stipulates that only those actions able to be universalised are morally just: “[a]ct in such a way that you can wish your maxim to become a universal law” (Kant 1991:122). Second, there is a moral injunction to treat others as “ethical subjects” (Doyle 1993:) – not as means, but as ends in themselves. In political terms what this amounts to is a stress on the importance of individual freedom and autonomy and an assertion of universal moral or ‘human rights’ norms (Kant 1991:125). Kant argues that only in a republican state – that is, a liberal, representative, constitutional state with legal equality and a separation of powers[1] – can these moral requirements be met. The “republican constitution is the only one which does complete justice to the rights of man” (Kant 1991:112). Moreover it is the only constitution compatible with political freedom, which Kant defines as “independence from coercion by another will” (Reiss 1991:26) – i.e. freedom from laws one hasn’t consented to. Thus, universal acceptance of moral law will produce Kant’s first requirement for the achievement of international peace: that “[t]he Civil Constitution of Every State shall be Republican” (Kant 1991:99).

But for Kant, the development of a correct internal state structure isn’t possible so long as the international order remains in a state of nature – he regarded “the solution of the international problem as a pre-condition of the perfect civic constitution” (Hinsley 1963:75).[2] While states have to cope with the constant threat of invasion from other states, their domestic orders will be neither stable nor free. In a “state of emergency” like a war or an acute threat of war states tend to assume increased powers, and the freedom of citizens tends to be curtailed, [3] while popular culture tends to become less open to the universalist mentality Kant advocates. Moreover even if a democratic society did survive despite the constant threat of war, it would be subject to destruction at any minute through external invasion. Thus, for Kant, “the closer a state approaches perpetual peace with its potential enemies, the more secure citizens’ juridical freedom will be” (Perreau-Saussine 2010:3). Or as he put it, “[t]he problem of solving a perfect civil constitution is subordinate to the problem of a law-governed external relationship with other states, and cannot be solved unless the latter is also solved” (cit. Hurrell 1990:187).

Thus Kant proposed the creation of “a Federation of Free States”, in which “[e]ach nation, for the sake of its own security” enters into a legal constitution with every other state, “within which the rights of each could be secured” (Kant 1991:102):

“There is only one rational way in which states coexisting with other states can emerge from the lawless condition of pure warfare. Just like individual men, they must renounce their savage and lawless freedom, adapt themselves to public coercive laws, and thus form an international state … which would necessarily continue to grow until it embraced all the peoples of the earth” (Kant 1991:105).

This ‘federation’ would comprise a system of laws and norms voluntarily adhered to by individual states. It would not amount to a “world state” (Hinsley 1963:62), which Kant rejected on the grounds that any such government would become a “soulless despotism”, adding that “war is not so incurably evil as that tomb, a universal autocracy” (Kant, cit. Hurrell 1990:190). Unlike in civil constitutions, this law of nations would rely on voluntary acceptance by individual states: “there would be no effective international authority, no sanctions except self-discipline” (Hinsley 1963:68).[4]

In summary, then, the core of Kant’s prescription for perpetual peace is the voluntary adherence by republican states to a set of common norms based on moral law. The “domestic organisation of states on an increasingly legal, constitutional, basis will lead to greater cooperation between states” (Halliday 1999:105), and the reduced threat of external violence will reinforce republicanism domestically, in a mutually reinforcing cycle whose effect will be to produce peaceful relations between states. That established, it remains for us to consider first, whether such conditions are indeed likely to produce perpetual peace, and second, the likelihood that those conditions will ever exist in the first place.

Kant advances three main lines of argument to overcome the classic problem faced by Rousseau and others before him – the impossibility of meaningful contracts between states absent a superordinate coercive power to ensure compliance – and thereby to defend the claim that republican states organised in a loose federation of common law would relate to each other peacefully. The first is ‘cultural’ or ‘moral’. Kant emphasised the capacity of individuals for “moral improvement”, based on the “straightforward but powerful moral imperative to find a means of abolishing war” (Hurrell 1990:196). He envisioned a “gradual process by which individuals become increasingly able to see themselves as part of a global community of mankind” and to “develop a growing sense of moral interdependence” (Hurrell 1990:198). A republican constitution fosters a tradition of democratic participation and awareness by citizens of the value of their own rights and freedoms, as well as a distaste for the subjugation of others and for resolving problems through violence. These attitudes are also applied abroad: citizens who value their own freedom from state violence and see themselves as ethical subjects, rather than mere objects or means, will tend to view citizens of other states in the same way. They will therefore be reluctant to support violence by their own state against those other citizens. In other words, popular “attitudes to the use of force can change and do, at least to a degree, affect state behaviour (Hurrell 1990:197).

The second is ‘economic’. Included in Kant’s precepts for a perpetual peace is the ‘right of strangers’, or the “[c]osmopolitan right” (Kant 1991:105), which stipulates a “natural right of hospitality” to create “conditions which make it possible for them [i.e. state or citizens] to attempt to enter into relations” with people in other states. In this way, “continents distant from each other can enter into peaceful mutual relations which may eventually be regulated by public laws, thus bringing the human race nearer and nearer to a cosmopolitan constitution” (Kant 1991:106). Kant’s argument here is twofold: first, that increased trading and economic relations between states, or between individuals in different states, would facilitate and perhaps catalyse the development of international laws to regulate that trade, and thereby increase global legal and moral interdependence[5], and second, that greater economic relations between republican states will increase incentives for maintaining peaceful relations:

“nature also unites nations … by means of their mutual self-interest. For the spirit of commerce sooner or later takes hold of every people, and it cannot exist side by side with war … Thus states find themselves compelled to promote the noble cause of peace, though not exactly from motives of morality” (Kant 1991:114).

This claim that the “growth of peaceful trade relations and economic interdependence will make war less likely” is “a common liberal argument” (Hurrell 1990:198). For a neo-Kantian version of it, see Doyle’s argument that “material incentives sustain interliberal normative commitments”, since with the growth of trade according to comparative advantage “[e]ach economy is said to be better off” with stable, peaceful relations “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” (Doyle 2005: 464-5). [6] The European Union could be viewed as an example of this principle in action: as economic interdependence between Western European states increased, the chances of an inter-European war decreased, to the point where it is now almost inconceivable that any of the European powers would go to a war against another.[7]

Kant’s third argument is ‘institutional’. Republican government contains within it structural features that act to constrain the ability of rulers to go to war on a whim. Whereas “under a constitution where the subject is not a citizen, it is the simplest thing in the world to go to war”, under a republican constitution, in which the “consent of the citizens is required”, there will inevitably be “great hesitation before embarking on so dangerous an enterprise” as war (Kant 1991:100). The burdens of war – the cost, the deaths, the destruction – fall overwhelmingly on the general population, and so the requirement of popular consent greatly limits the ability of republican states to wage it. As Doyle puts it,

“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” (Doyle 2005:464).

In short, “[r]epresentation should … ensure that liberal wars are only fought for popular, liberal purposes” (Doyle 2005:464).

Kant’s ideas, as summarised above, have become extremely influential in modern international relations theory, most notably in the form of ‘democratic peace theory’ (DPT), which holds that democratic states never or rarely fight each other, and conversely that democratic states are prone to war with non-democracies.[8] Though there are important differences between Kant and modern democratic peace theorists, DPT clearly borrows heavily from Kant, as can be seen in Doyle’s summary of its central pillars: “Republican representation, an ideological commitment to fundamental human rights, and transnational interdependence” (Doyle 2005:463). Therefore one can usefully turn to critiques of DPT for a critical analysis of Kant’s argument.

Few scholars today dispute the democratic peace hypothesis, namely the empirical fact that democratic states have either never or rarely made war with each other.[9] But DPT does not simply note this tendency – it offers a causal explanation for it, in line with the Kantian-inspired arguments summarised above. That causal explanation has been subject to many critiques, most compellingly by Sebastian Rosato (2003), for whom the historical record demonstrates that:

“Democracies do not reliably externalize their domestic norms of conflict resolution and do not trust or respect one another when their interests clash. Moreover, elected leaders are not especially accountable to peace loving publics or pacific interest groups, democracies are not particularly slow to mobilize or incapable of surprise attack, and open political competition does not guarantee that a democracy will reveal private information about its level of resolve thereby avoiding conflict.” (cit. Wearing 2007:14)

For critics such as Rosato, the absence or near-absence of war between democratic states is not explained by DPT – or, by extension, the main principles of Kant’s “perpetual peace”. They instead point to other explanations – for instance, Farber and Gowa observe that democratic peace only existed to a significant extent after the Second World War, i.e. during the Cold War, and posit that this was “due to the relatively high level of common interests among the Western democracies that the Cold War induced” (cit. Wearing 2007:15). Rosato offers an alternative explanation on similar lines, suggesting that “…democratic peace is in fact an imperial peace based on American power. [It] is essentially a post-World War II phenomenon restricted to the Americas and Western Europe… [where] the United States has been the dominant power” (Rosato, cit. Wearing 2007:16).

This line of criticism can be directed against Kant’s intellectual heirs more than Kant himself. However, Kant’s theory itself suffers from the same narrow conception of the causes of war and peace. For Kant, war is a product of the “depravity of human nature”, the “warlike inclinations of those in power” and the “international anarchy that exists between states” (cit. Hurrell 1990:195). His proposals for perpetual peace reflect this causal analysis, focusing on the democratisation of the domestic political structure, to allow for individual freedom and moral progress, and the development of a framework of international rules to govern relations between states. Others have located the causes of war elsewhere. Lenin, for instance, argued that war is inherent in the capitalist economic system itself, famously describing imperialism as the “highest stage of capitalism”.[10] Halliday observes that “one and a half centuries of capitalist development have left the world more unevenly developed than ever before and with the concentration of wealth greater than at any previous time” (Halliday 1999:117). One can easily imagine other situations in which the respective interests of different states clash in a way that is not resolvable through deliberation or diplomatic negotiation. For instance, if states fail to drastically reduce their CO2 emissions and the predicted effects of climate change are realised, certain resources, water in particular, are likely to become increasingly scarce. It is not clear that negotiations – even between liberal, republican states subscribing to a voluntary framework of international law – would be sufficient to overcome conflicting interests of that gravity, and should they fail, states may well resort to more traditional methods of asserting their claims.[11]

Kant’s association of representation with a reduction in state belligerence assumes a population inclined to passivity. This assumption is open to question:

“democratic public opinion [is not], 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” (Layne 1994:13).

Nonetheless, there is good reason to assume that populations will tend in general to be less inclined to embark on wars of choice then unrepresentative and unaccountable rulers, for the reasons Kant outlines (discussed above). In any case, as Doyle notes, democratic peace theorists do not argue that either representative government, democratic norms, or economic incentives are alone sufficient to ensure peaceful relations between states: they must all be present (Doyle 2005:463).

Some people have seen in today’s system of international law the beginnings of Kant’s “federation of free states”. Halliday, for example, argues that recent years have seen the development of an “increasingly effective set of international standards” and a “system of global governance” based on “individual … citizens”, who pay taxes, lobby governments, enlist in “peace-keeping forces” and “authorize the decisions that comprise global governance and world politics generally” (1999:123). Lord Wright of Richmond similarly claims that “[i]nternational law … increasingly forms the substance of international relations”, reflecting the “significant change which has taken place over recent years in the attitude of sovereign governments to what used to be rejected as interference in their domestic affairs” (Byers 2000:vi-vii). It is enough to contrast this claim with the recollection of one Labour Cabinet minister of the deliberative process leading up to the invasion of Iraq:

“[t]here was nothing about the justification or otherwise of going to war in any of our wars, nothing about the role of the United Nations” (Kampfner 2003:14)

to see that the reality of international law and international politics bears little resemblance to this rosy picture. International law as it exists today functions to legitimise state violence as much as it does to prevent it – that is, “[t]he international rule of law is not counterposed to force and imperialism: it is an expression of it” (Mieville 2005:8). International law is inherently ambiguous (Mieville 2004:273), and so can be used to legitimise conflicting claims. Although all parties in the international legal system are formally equal, in practice “they have unequal access to the means of coercion and are not therefore equally able to determine either the policing or the content of the law”. The result is that “strong states are able to enforce their own interpretations of law” (Mieville 2004:294)[12] – or as Karl Marx succinctly put it, “between equal rights, force decides” (cit. Ibid.). In Doyle’s interpretation, the role of international law in Kant is largely “symbolic”– it provides a rhetorical ‘guarantee of respect’ (Doyle, cit. Hurrell 1990: 194), “enshrines the mutual acceptance of the legitimacy of states, reinforces normative barriers to the use of force and helps increase the expectation of cooperative and mutually beneficial behaviour”. (Hurrell 1990: 194). But as Hurrell comments, “it is hard to believe that a rhetorical renunciation of war will mean a great deal unless more attention is paid to the political context within which differences and conflicts will continue to arise” (Ibid.). The idea that states – even democratic, republican states – could determine their relations with respect to each other on the basis of “respect” implies a view of the state as a moral agent that is highly implausible, and that can lead to a profound lack of scepticism towards the foreign policies of ‘liberal’ states. This can be seen in, for instance, Doyle’s attempt to explain away the US’s frequent violent opposition to democratic movements in South America, the Middle East and elsewhere as a consequence of belief by US officials that they were not truly democratic. Doyle points to President Kennedy’s remark, referencing US support for President Trujillo,

"There are three possibilities in descending order of preference, a decent democratic regime, a continuation of the Trujillo regime or a Castro regime. We ought to aim at the first, but we cannot really renounce the second until we are sure that we can avoid the third". (cit. Doyle 2005:465)

He would have done better to quote Henry Kissinger defending the US policy to overthrow the democratically elected Allende regime in Chile:

"The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."

"I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people."[13]

More generally, Thomas Carothers, a leading ‘democracy promotion’ specialist and a former Reagan official, identifies in US ‘democracy-promotion’ efforts since WWII a “’strong line of continuity’" running through every administration: Washington supports democracy if and only if it conforms to strategic and economic interests”.[14] This violent hostility to democracy abroad is difficult to square with the image of enlightened republican states portrayed by Kant and in DPT.

Just as Neo-Kantians and democratic peace theorists tend to have an overly rosy view of international law, so they tend to overestimate the extent to which the policies of nominally ‘liberal democratic’ states today actually represent the wishes of their citizenry. To take Britain as an example, is it really true that, as Halliday would have it, the British public “authorize[s] the decisions” taken by the British government internationally? Iraq again provides a good example. Prior to the war, a large majority of the population opposed any invasion of Iraq absent UN authorisation. Despite failing to achieve that authorisation, and in the face of unprecedented protest both domestically and abroad, the Blair government invaded anyway. More generally, the British historian and policy analyst Mark Curtis has shown that British foreign policy-making is highly unrepresentative – it is, in his words, “more totalitarian than democratic”.[15] The same is true of the US[16] and other ‘liberal democratic’ states.

None of this undermines Kant’s theory as such. It does, however, suggest that Kant’s program for perpetual peace is highly unlikely to be realised in practice. Halliday points out that “[m]ost of the states in the world today are not liberal democracies of the established kind” (Halliday 1999:124). In fact, as adumbrated above, none are, at any rate in the sense required by Kant’s theory. This is important since according to DPT, ‘liberal democratic’ states are particularly prone to war with states that are not liberal democracies. Unless republicanism can be universalised, Kant’s program has no chance of success:

“[u]nless … [Kant’s] federation is able to become truly universal, its effect is merely to rearrange the units within the international anarchy, rather than overcome that anarchy. Indeed by making the units larger and more powerful the potential dangers of the state of war may actually be increased.” (Hurrell 1990:193)

Kant, however, insists that his is not a utopian theory – it is “not just an empty idea” (Kant 1991:130). He supports this by appealing to a dialectical process of moral progress, in which the very fact of war and violence leads states and citizens to conclude that they must “leave the lawless state of savages and … enter into a union of states” (Kant, cit. Hinsley 1963:75). In his words,

“The means which nature employs to bring about the development of innate capacities is that of antagonism within society, in so far as this antagonism becomes in the long run the cause of a law-governed social order” (Kant 1991:44).

As elegant as this idea is, it is hardly sufficient to overcome the obstacles blocking Kant’s road to peace. Some have already been mentioned above: the large and increasing inequalities between states, the growing scarcity of resources and, most glaringly, the fact that few if any states are republican in Kant’s sense. Kant’s other prescriptions – for example the abolishment of standing armies – aren’t even within the realm of serious contemplation in today’s world.

In conclusion, Kant’s vision of a world of republican states relating to each other peacefully on the basis of universal moral law is an attractive one, but one that is, at least very least, incomplete. It ignores the fact that states may have fundamentally conflicting interests that cannot be resolved through negotiations, and the possibility that states may be driven to war for reasons other than the “bellicosity of despots” – for instance, the economic imperatives of capitalism. Neo-Kantians and democratic peace theorists tend to be insufficiently sceptical about the extent to which Kant’s principles are manifest in the contemporary political order, which often leads them a) to faulty analyses of international conflicts, and b) to underestimate the near impossibility of realising Kant’s program in practice. That said, the fact that the full implementation of Kant’s ideas is unlikely is no reason to dismiss them out of hand. As Kant points out, his model provides a good ideal to work towards even if it will always remain out of reach:

“while the likelihood of being attained is not sufficient to enable us to prophesy the future theoretically, it is enough for practical purposes. It makes it our duty to work our way towards this goal, which is more than an empty chimera” (Kant 1991:114).

Even if Kant’s account of the causes of war and peace is incomplete, one can say that to the extent that states are democratic and representative, to the extent that populations have internalised respect for human rights and individual freedom, and to the extent that states are interdependent in ways that would be harmed in the event of military conflict, those factors will tend to act to constrain the desire and/or the capability of states to go to war. That isn’t quite the strong claim Kant and democratic peace theorists would like to make, but it’s strong enough to ensure the continued importance of Kant’s ideas to those seeking to create a less belligerent world order.

Bibliography

Byers, M. (ed.). 2000. The Role of Law in International Politics: Essays in International Relations and International Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Danilovic, V. and Clare, J. 2007. ‘The Kantian Liberal Peace (Revisited)’ in American Journal of Political Science, 51:2. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4620073

Dunn, J. 1996. The History of Political Theory and other essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Doyle, M.W. 2005. ‘Three Pillars of the Liberal Peace’ in The American Political Science Review, 99:3 http://www.jstor.org/stable/30038953

Doyle, M.W. 1993. ‘Liberalism and International Relations’ in Beiner and Booth (eds.) Kant and Political Philosophy: The Contemporary Legacy. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Halliday, F. 1999. ‘The potentials of Enlightenment’, in Review of International Studies: The Interregnum – Controversies in World Politics 1989-1999. Vol. 25, Special Issue.

Hinsley, F.H. 1963. Power and the Pursuit of Peace: Theory and Practice in the History of Relations between States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hurrell, A. 1990. ‘Kant and the Kantian Paradigm in International Relations’ in Review of International Studies, 16:3. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20097222

Kampfner, J. 2003. Blair’s Wars. Simon and Schuster: London.

Kant, I. 1991. ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’ in H.S. Reiss (ed.). Kant: Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Koskenniemi, M. 2000. ‘Carl Schmitt, Hans Morgenthau, and the Image of Law in International Relations’, in Byers, M. (ed.). 2000. The Role of Law in International Politics: Essays in International Relations and International Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lai, B. and Reiter, D. 2000. ‘Democracy, Political Similarity, and International Alliances, 1816-1992’ in The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 44:2. http://www.jstor.org/stable/174663

Layne, C. 1994. ‘The Myth of the Democratic Peace’ in International Security, 19:2. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2539195

Mieville, C. 2003. Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law. Leiden: Brill.

Mieville, C. 2004. ‘The Commodity-Form Theory of International Law: An Introduction’ in Leiden Journal of International Law, 17.

Perreau-Saussine, A. 2010. ‘Immanuel Kant on international law’, forthcoming in Besson and Tasioulas (eds.) Philosophy of international law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Picciotto, S. 1997. ‘International Law: the Legitimation of Power in World Affairs’ in Ireland and Laleng (eds.). The Critical Lawyers’ Handbook 2. London: Pluto Press. http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/lwasp/crit2.pdf

Reiss, H.S. 1991. ‘Introduction’ in H.S. Reiss (ed.). Kant: Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rosato, S. 2003. ‘The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory’ in American Political Science Review, 97:4.

Tuck, R. 1999. The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wearing, D. 2007. How Liberal are the Peacemakers? Democratic Peace Theory and US-Israeli Democracy Promotion in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Unpublished Masters dissertation.

[1] There is a dispute over whether Kant placed more importance on the representative or the liberal character of republican states – see Danilovic & Clare 2007:397-9.

[2] In Kant’s words, “in the external relationship with one another, states, like lawless savages, exist in a condition devoid of right … this condition is one of war (the right of the stronger), even if there is no actual war or continuous active fighting” (cit. Hurrell 1990:186).

[3] For modern examples, see for instance the dramatic decrease in civil liberties and increase in state authoritarianism in the US and Britain during WWII.

[4] Kant is not always as clearly opposed to a ‘world state’ as he is in Perpetual Peace, although the bulk of his writings do defend the importance of state sovereignty. For a good overview, see Hurrell:1990.

[5] Indeed, the development of international law did go hand in hand with the expansion of economic activity, first mercantilism and then capitalism (Mieville 2003:201-24).

[6] See also Lai & Reiter’s summary of the main tenets of ‘democratic peace theory’, among them “economic interdependence”, i.e. the claim that “democracies are particularly likely to ally because they have higher levels of trade with each other” (Lai & Reiter 2000:204).

[7] See also Thomas Friedman’s “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention”, which posits that “[n]o two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other”. This was disproven in 2006 when Israel invaded Lebanon, and in 2008 with the conflict between Russia and Georgia. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/08/opinion/foreign-affairs-big-mac-i.html?pagewanted=1

[8] As Doyle puts it,

“Immanuel Kant’s (1970) 1795 essay, "Perpetual Peace," could be constructed as a coherent explanation of two important regularities in world politics-the tendencies of liberal states simultaneously to be peace-prone in their relations with each other and war-prone in their relations with nonliberal states” (Doyle 2005:463).

See also Layne 1994:8.

[9] For statistical evidence to this effect, see, e.g., Russet, B. and Oneal, J. 2001. Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence and International Organization. W.W. Norton.

[10] Lenin, V.I. [1917] 2008. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/

[11] See, e.g., Randerson, J. ‘UK’s ex-science chief predicts century of “resource” wars’, The Guardian, 13 Feb 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/13/resource-wars-david-king

[12] They are also able to create law through their own actions, which then ‘establish precedents’. The State of Israel is attempting to do this today following international condemnation of its conduct during the 2009 attack on Gaza. Prof. Kasher, the author of the IDF’s Code of Conduct, explains:

“We in Israel are in a key position in the development of law in this field because we are on the front lines in the fight against terrorism … What we are doing is becoming the law … Customary international law accrues through an historic process. If states are involved in a certain type of military activity against other states, militias, and the like, and if all of them act quite similarly to each other, then there is a chance that it will become customary international law”. [my emph.] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=263672

The US government has already signalled its support: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3854841,00.html. Needless to say, the ability to establish precedent in this manner is not distributed equally among all states.

[13] http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/HKissinger.html

[14] Cited in Chomsky: http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20061225.htm

[15] http://www.medialens.org/articles/the_articles/rwanda/mc_rwanda.html. See also Curtis, M. 2003. The Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World. Vintage.

[16] For extensive documentation of the “democratic deficit” in the US, see Chomsky, N. 2004. Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.