Democratic Peace Theory
In order to critically evaluate the concept of the democratic peace theory, one must highlight the key aspects of what it means to be a democracy and emphasize the controversies caused by various arguments associated with the history of liberalism. The theory, based on assumptions made by notable scholars, proposes the idea that democratic states naturally abstain from engaging in armed conflict with other equally democratic states. Immanuel Kant’s ‘Perpetual Peace’ written in 1795, occasionally viewed as a liberal-institutionalist view, supports this theory with the idea that states are not instinctively peaceful, but rather peaceful through the maintenance of civil structure or ‘republican constitutions’. The premise …show more content…
Bush rationalized with the citizens of the United States as to why it was beneficial for them to go to war with Iraq, with the idea that invading a country 6,000 miles away was conclusively justified along with the intention of invasion being solely based on the “global expansion of democracy”. In this case, the Kantian view fails to support the claim that “republics governed by the rule of law provide the basis for sustained peace” with the belief that “natural processes of self-interest impel rational individuals to act as agents to bring a just peace”. In other words, the Bush administration attempted to hide behind the veil of the democratic peace theory, failed to rationalize a proposal for peace, and instead used propagandist culture through mainstream media to convince the American people that the normalization and acceptance of war should be widely justified. The premise of this claim can also be linked to the realist perspective, stating that “all great powers are war-prone… their power and interests may draw them into fights far from home”, especially democratic states who believe that other nondemocratic states pose some type of threat to their values causing great powers, such as the United States, to impose its modern version of ‘democratic justice’
In order to critically evaluate the concept of the democratic peace theory, one must highlight the key aspects of what it means to be a democracy and emphasize the controversies caused by various arguments associated with the history of liberalism. The theory, based on assumptions made by notable scholars, proposes the idea that democratic states naturally abstain from engaging in armed conflict with other equally democratic states. Immanuel Kant’s ‘Perpetual Peace’ written in 1795, occasionally viewed as a liberal-institutionalist view, supports this theory with the idea that states are not instinctively peaceful, but rather peaceful through the maintenance of civil structure or ‘republican constitutions’. The premise …show more content…
Bush rationalized with the citizens of the United States as to why it was beneficial for them to go to war with Iraq, with the idea that invading a country 6,000 miles away was conclusively justified along with the intention of invasion being solely based on the “global expansion of democracy”. In this case, the Kantian view fails to support the claim that “republics governed by the rule of law provide the basis for sustained peace” with the belief that “natural processes of self-interest impel rational individuals to act as agents to bring a just peace”. In other words, the Bush administration attempted to hide behind the veil of the democratic peace theory, failed to rationalize a proposal for peace, and instead used propagandist culture through mainstream media to convince the American people that the normalization and acceptance of war should be widely justified. The premise of this claim can also be linked to the realist perspective, stating that “all great powers are war-prone… their power and interests may draw them into fights far from home”, especially democratic states who believe that other nondemocratic states pose some type of threat to their values causing great powers, such as the United States, to impose its modern version of ‘democratic justice’