Liberalism and the Use of Force: Core Themes and Conceptual Tensions

Since the mid-1980s, a number of authors have asserted that there is a special kind of relationship between democratic states; or that liberalism promotes peaceful relations between liberal states; or that there exists a hierarchy of states in international society with liberal states at the apex of that hierarchy. Many of these theories touch on issues of liberalism, liberal states, and the use of military force. Yet they still do not directly address the key question of: when, and for what ends, liberals believe that military force may be used. An implicit intimation is often made that there is a monolithic liberal approach to the use of force. In contrast, this article identifies a variety of contemporary liberal views on this topic and argues that these depend upon the priority given to values such as those of tolerance and consent versus progress and civility, or those of cosmopolitanism versus communitarianism. On this basis, the article examines the liberal options for the use of force that can be justified in different ways by these different values, from self-defense to the creation of liberal entities, depending upon which liberal values predominate.