Peace in International Relations

Oliver P. Richmond

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429679483
• Edition: 2
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This updated and revised second edition examines the conceptualisation and evolution of peace in International Relations (IR) theory.

The book examines the concept of peace and its usage in the main theoretical debates in IR, including realism, liberalism, constructivism, critical theory, and post-structuralism, as well as in the more direct debates on peace and conflict studies. It explores themes relating to culture, development, agency, and structure, not just in terms of representations of IR, and of peace, but in terms of the discipline of IR itself. The work also specifically explores the recent mantras associated with liberal and neoliberal versions of peace, which appear to have become foundational for much of the mainstream literature and for doctrines for peace and development in the policy world. Analysing war has often led to the dominance – and mitigation – of violence as a basic assumption in, and response to, the problems of IR. This study aims to redress this negative balance by arguing that the discipline offers a rich basis for the study of peace, which has advanced significantly over the last century or so. It also proposes innovative theoretical dimensions of the study of peace, with new chapters discussing post-colonial and digital developments.

This book will be of great interest to students of peace and conflict studies, politics, and IR.

PART I

Towards an orthodoxy of peace and beyond

1
Peace and the Idealist Tradition

Towards a Liberal Peace

Introduction: idealist utopias?

This chapter examines the idealist aspect of the first ‘great debate’¹ in IR in which idealism and liberalism opposed realism and its inherency orientation that war and violence are intrinsic to human nature, society, the state, and the international system. Idealism was to offer an ambitious, ethically oriented account of peace through liberal-internationalism and governance, as most famously argued by US President Wilson:

The day of conquest and aggrandisement is gone by…. The programme of the world’s peace, therefore, is our programme; and that programme, the only possible programme, as we see it, is this….²

This approach focuses on a discussion of ethics, interdependence, and transnationalism: “…peace as well as war, requires preparation…”³ It pointed to the blurring or domestication of international politics, though this rests on what occurs inside states.⁴ Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, liberal thought represents one of the largest bodies of work on peace that exists in IR theory, drawing on earlier idealist thinkers such as Zimmern, Bailey, Noel-Baker, and functionalists and pluralists such as Mitrany, Burton, and most famously, the approach of Woodrow Wilson at Versailles after WWI, as well as that of famous advocates such as Einstein and Bertrand Russell.⁵ Normative positions on state behaviour in an international context, as opposed to interest- and power-oriented ontologies, point to an ambitious peace, which is universal though perhaps unachievable.

The terms ‘utopian’ and ‘idealist’ are often used from a realist perspective to cast aspersions upon the claims of the thinkers in this broad area.⁶ Indeed, the so-called idealists who called for disarmament, the outlawing of war, adopted a positive view of human nature and international capacity to cooperate, were often accused of being unable to focus on facts, understand power, or see the hegemonic dangers of universal claims⁷ (despite the fact that realism itself makes a universal claim of being able to expose objective truths). Yet, the idealist tradition is often taken to be the founding tradition of IR (though long refuted).⁸ Many thinkers of the day, and some more recently, saw elements of this group’s work – such as supporting and developing the League of Nations, international courts and law, other international organisations, or Mitrany’s work on functionalism – as pragmatic rather than utopian⁹ and certainly far more so than realism. Idealist thought offered the possibility of a single global peace (under a single world system of government) in which all conflict would end. Liberalism, by extension, offered the possibility of linear and ineluctable progress that would lead to the achievement of this peace, eventually.

Idealist approaches have lost their currency partly because they are linked to a discredited absolute form of pacifism and the failed Treaty of Versailles in 1919 (and the subsequent League of Nations). Pluralist approaches are often ignored in the disciplinary orthodoxy that is deemed to be the ‘mainstream.’ However, after the Cold War, liberal approaches drawing on thinkers such as Kant, Locke, Paine, Bentham, and others who added variants to this debate became an orthodoxy of the discipline. They represented a new form of epistemic imperialism, in which norms, institutions, and systems of governance and production were disseminated, particularly from the US. It used straightforward and more complex, hidden, frameworks of intervention to police this system, from peacekeeping to development. The European peace project intersected with this later permutation of liberal internationalism, solidarism or pluralism, and functionalism.

The view of peace from the context of the so-called the first ‘great debates’ in IR contains both major contrasts and elements of hybridity in its evolved, liberal, guise. Idealist contributions to the debate on peace were altogether more ambitious than those in the realist tradition, and much more nuanced and pragmatic than often thought. Pluralist and liberal contributions combined realist frameworks as the discipline moved into a second ‘great debate’ with the aim of both proving the existence of an ‘international society,’ functional networks, or transnationalism, derived from the inherently positive nature of humans, and of building a peaceful international system on its basis. Yet, this is also underpinned by defensive military might (easily translatable into offensive force). Idealism, pluralism, and liberalism, by contrast, have endeavoured to develop an alternative and pragmatic approach to creating peace in opposition to the tragic and often flimsy intellectual claims of realism (and its excuses for power and privilege). Indeed, these agendas emerged partly as a reaction to the bleak realist conceptualisation of peace, partly in tandem with them, and partly because of other more humanistic agendas.

Idealist and liberal agendas for peace

Idealist thinking about IR rested upon various notions of internationalism and interdependence, peace without war, disarmament, the hope that war could be eradicated eventually,¹⁰ the right of self-determination of all citizens, and the possibility of world government or a world federation. In this sense, it saw itself as eminently practical rather than utopian, reflecting an ontology of peace, cooperation, and harmony in world politics as opposed to enmity and competition. The international organisation of sovereign states, in this case, the League of Nations, was central to the idealist agenda, though it was also recognised that the spirit of international organisation (internationalism, democracy, and trade) might be more important than an actual organisation itself.¹¹ Underpinning this was the optimistic argument that human nature is not intrinsically violent, and even if it is, social and political norms, regimes, and organisation can prevent violence. By the early 1930s, the optimism of these idealist agendas was replaced with concern over the rise of Fascism and Nazism.¹²

This idealist agenda drew on and reflected early liberal thinking of which there emerged three main strands. Locke focused on individualism and Bentham on utilitarianism: Adam Smith provided the foundations for the arguments for free trade and pacifism; and Kant developed a Republican internationalism.¹³ These provided the foundations for human rights and international law, though these were disputed amongst these thinkers. The core liberal assumptions are of universal rationality, individual liberty, connected with the idealist possibility – if not probability – of harmony and cooperation in domestic and international relations, and of the need for enlightened, rational, legitimate domestic government and international governance. There, latter conditions were tempered, of course, by the Millian understanding that government was a necessary evil.¹⁴ Idealists and liberals assume that war is of no interest to peoples who operate under the assumption of harmony and cooperation, and that political pluralism, democracy, and a broad distribution of rights and responsibility are crucial to peace in IR. Incorporated into this are ideas associated with economic liberalism, derived from Adam Smith.¹⁵ The notion of free markets and trade as a ‘hidden hand’ that would build up irrevocable and peaceful connections between states also became part of the liberal agenda for peace through interdependence. Effectively, liberalism developed a moral account of free individuals in a social contract with a representative and benevolent government, framed by democratic and transparent institutions that reflect these principles. There would be no arbitrary authority, and there should be a free press and free speech, legal equality, and freedom of property. Social and economic rights of welfare are also a concern, though this is balanced by a tendency to avoid highly centralised states.¹⁶ The implication of this is that individuals prefer peace, freedom, rights, and prosperity, and that IR is, or should be a zone of peace. Idealists, liberals, and pluralists concur on this, and offer a positive epistemology of peace¹⁷ as well as institutional support and normative concurrence for liberals, together with scientific proof on the part of pluralists.

Aristotle wrote that we may have to “… make war that we may live in peace.”¹⁸ Spinoza argued that “[p]eace is not an absence of war; it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, and justice.”¹⁹ These views help frame the liberal dilemma: in order to attain an approximation of an idealist view of peace that would provide peoples and states with rights, security, prosperity, and lead to disarmament, there first has to be a suitable foundation. This can be a clean slate (terra nullis), a victory, an agreement, cease-fire, or treaty. In other words, violence often precedes peace, and indeed provides a foil for an ensuing peace that can then be created with liberal and pluralist tools. This creates a significant doubt about whether the specific idealist-liberal-pluralist approach to peace masquerades as an ideal. It is based upon the ‘enforcement’ of supposedly universal political norms, appeals to a limited pluralist theoretical scientific approach based on human needs and transnationalism, and in fact shares some characteristics with a realist version of peace (though it offers a much more developed account).

Erasmus rejected war in his famous text, The Complaint of Peace.²⁰ For him, war was to be avoided at all costs as it provided pretexts for crime, murder, brutality, and self-interest. Yet, peace was ignored. He helped establish a genre of peace plans, and from Eramus onwards, there was a long line of similar writings (including those of Emeric Cruce, the Duc de Sully, and William Penn, Abbé de St Pierre, Rousseau, and, of course, Kant) aimed at avoiding war in Europe. They often rested on the creation of a federation of states with a federal council that would act to prevent war between its members, as well as to promote free trade.²¹ These were seen as idealistic plans, though their authors regarded them as pragmatic.

Locke, one of the fathers of modern liberalism, saw human reason as the key to controlling the state of nature. What was crucial for him was the development of a social contract through which subjects and rules developed mutual constitutive roles in order to protect life, liberty, and private property (this influenced Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence).²² This, combined with Bentham’s view of the need for liberal institutions as opposed to imperialism and competitive tariffs, led into a discussion of the qualities of the liberal state,²³ which many idealists saw as the basis for an international peace.

The Kantian ‘Perpetual Peace’ is perhaps the archetypal version of these agendas, and their influential status in IR and in thinking about world politics and peace more generally. It is indicative of a common impetus, shared by idealist, liberal, and pluralist approaches to overcome the negative epistemology and ontology of realism, which at best provides for a domestic and international peace that is subservient to defensive requirements and preparedness against potential threats. In the post-Enlightenment world, however, the major agenda for a new peace came to be associated with overcoming these ‘primitive’ notions of peace in IR, through liberal internationalism, liberal institutionalism, and the modernist era, through what were supposed to be more scientific forms of pluralism. Where realism presents war as part of the ‘fall’ of humanity, and a necessary stabilisation mechanism for international order, idealism and liberalism see ‘fallen man’ as retrievable through suitable planning and organisation. This involves th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Part I Towards an orthodoxy of peace and beyond
• Part II Post-positivism and peace
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index