The Democratic Peace Theory: Is War a Means to Peace?

Introduction

The past three decades have been marred by military interventions in international politics. From missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo, the international arena has thereafter become a moral grandstanding premised on ideals of democracy. Recent international developments have pivoted the focus of global security discourse with the goal of promoting the establishment of an international democratic order. In this context, examining the process of establishing democracy in nondemocratic nations and the processes adopted to bring about this change becomes critical. It also becomes crucial to question the underlying morality of building an international community of democratic countries.

The liberal democratic world order based on ideas of individualism and liberty has gained legitimacy to the extent of becoming the norm. This normalization of a particular form of organizing principle is largely to do with the rise of unipolarity post the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. There certainly exist narratives of the world order not just experiencing change but also a large-scale transformation in its ideals and principles; these views have been categorized as transitory templates which are missing a deeper reality (Ikenberry 2011). The liberal international order is alive and has endured its own crises, while remaining as vital in contemporary politics as it was earlier. At the same time, the position of the USA has seen a definite shift, along with the rise of other powerful nation-states, which often does not prescribe to the same ideals as that of modern liberalism (Ikenberry 2011). In such a scenario, where the power dynamics seem to experience certain alterations, the role and position of the USA, to say the least, have experienced challenges. This gives a context to analyze the continued politics of hegemony in situations that have confronted this condition.

The article locates its research question, of whether the instances of initiation of war for establishing democracy are enough to justify violence and human rights abuse, within the aforementioned state of affairs. The USA, as the most powerful member of the liberal bloc, has the capacity to exercise hegemonic powers, while legitimizing the same. Conformity to tenets of modern liberalism is one of the prerequisites of being considered worthy of tolerance. However, there continues to be a deep division between different political cultures, often arranged in a dichotomous hierarchy of liberal and illiberal. An illiberal regime is said to be ruled by an elected leadership, but the process of election takes place through questionable democratic means. In this way, an illiberal regime is seen to be stuck at a partial transition from authoritarianism to complete democratization (O’Neil 2010). However, the connotation of the term “illiberal” arose in Europe (Zakaria 1997) and continues to be used in the USA in order to measure standards of democracies through the gaze of the West. Hence, the “illiberal state” must then be converted into a civilized people (Zakaria 1997). The means adopted for this transformation, and the sources of these means, are matters that have been engaged with in the article in later sections. Pertaining to this, the second question arises, which refers to the violence that the means have created—is there a promised peace that has been achieved at the end of wars? This leads one to think if war actually exposes the truth about who is right and who is wrong, or simply reflects the distribution of capabilities in the global political system.

To analyze these implications, the article combines deductive logic with empirical observations in order to discover and confirm a set of probabilistic causal laws to predict general patterns. It relies heavily on secondary sources, while using the methodology of content analysis. The data, which includes research literature, government archives, newspaper reports, and important speeches, are analyzed keeping the contextual nuances of international politics and intrastate relations in mind. In addition to content analysis, the article uses the case study approach to look deeply at the politics of war. An in-depth case study analysis of Afghanistan is carried out, in order to understand the historical contexts and current situations, which have resulted in the precarious nature of its socio-politics.

In addition to this, the theorization of democracies and democratization by Immanuel Kant has been of primary importance to the article. Kant’s own contexts of being an Enlightenment thinker and his ideologies being rooted in modern liberalism provide a base to look at the praxis of modern liberalism in contemporary times. This is also important, given the hegemony of liberal practices. A number of such processes have been drawn from modern liberal thinkers, one of which is Kant and his theory of peace between democracies. As one tries to understand democratic peace theory (DPT), its historical, and current trajectory into world politics, its relation with Immanuel Kant holds equal weightage.

In an attempt to explore and address these pressing issues, this article has been structured in four sections. The first two sections look at the history of the US foreign policy and the DPT, as proposed by Immanuel Kant. An attempt is made to understand the theoretical background to the DPT and its relevance in contemporary international politics. Keeping in mind the context of the dynamics of power relations between nation-states and the entrenched legitimacy of democratic processes, the liberal democratic world order and the relative decrease in interstate conflicts has been analyzed. Immanuel Kant, who is one of the central thinkers of the Enlightenment period and hence, liberalism, is also inextricably related to the theory of democratic peace (Franceschet 2001). In this context, the article tries to examine the connection between Kant and DPT to understand the nuances to Kant’s proposal of republicanism, and discover the divergences in contemporary politics, from the same. The third section contextualizes US foreign policy and DPT with regard to the war in Afghanistan (2001 to present). This section explores the means adopted to implement the goals of DPT and what this has meant for the countries in question. It looks at Afghanistan and its socio-politics through a lens that unpacks the situation to take into account the manifestations of violence and also situate the violence through its actors. The fourth and the concluding section attempts to put into perspective the theorization by Kant, of Kant, and of the DPT in order to provide an extensive understanding of the consequences of the use of tools of violence to mitigate other forms of violence. It concludes by providing an answer to the primary question that the article deals with—is war in the name of peace justified?

Democratic Peace Theory and the US Foreign Policy

The end of the Cold War and the “End of History” thesis by Fukuyama (1992) mark the victory of a liberal democratic world order. They also mark the faith of the Western nations in achieving stable and peaceful world relations through democratization of other countries—which is theoretically conceived as the DPT. Finding its basis in Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” essay, the DPT has evolved over time and fermented its centrality in the study of international relations in the twenty-first century. Beyond its writings in international relations, the DPT is now also relevant to security and war studies. As Levy (1989: 88) observes, the “absence of war between democracies comes as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations.”

DPT does not contend that democratic states are less war-prone than nondemocracies; they are not. The theory, instead, makes two important claims that form the basis and the principal characteristics of the DPT in all its varied conceptions (Small and Singer 1976). These are:

The DPT further establishes that a world of countries with democratic institutions would, in the long term, remain peaceful and stable. The theory then advances two arguments about the success of democracy (Layne 1994):

This democratic ethos, based on “peaceful competition, persuasion, and compromise,” explains the absence of war and warlike threats in relations between democratic states (Maoz and Russett 1993: 246). It may feel obliged to adapt to the harsher norms of international conduct, lest it be exploited or threatened to be eliminated by the nondemocratic state that takes advantage of the inherent moderation of democracies (Russett et al. 1993).

Thus, it is a fundamental postulate of DPT that democracies behave in a qualitatively different manner in their relations with each other than they do in their relations with nondemocracies. This then implies that the internal functioning of the government of a country forms the basis of its international relations. Hence, by creating homogeneous structures of domestic institutions, predictable international relations can be established (Layne 1994).

In his essay “Perpetual Peace,” Kant proposed three mechanisms that establish peace among nations (Mello 2014):

The USA has used the first and the third components of Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” to bring into effect its use of violence to establish a regime similar to its own. This translates into a strategy of enhancing or maintaining its dominance.

To put it into perspective, the DPT, in its original conception, in the form of the essay “Perpetual Peace” by Immanuel Kant, has evolved in response to changed international structure. This is an international structure which has been created over the decades based on a unipolar world order. Therefore, the changes in the conception of the DPT are a result of the increased writings and discussions on the theme and the role of the hegemon. This has resulted in the expansion of the original understanding of the theory and transformed the potential of its application.

Relevant to the article is the understanding of how the DPT has evolved and been reinterpreted from its original conception to justify the present-day actions of countries to go to war with nondemocratic regimes with the aim of converting them into democracies through intervention by force. This refers to the prioritization of creating a uniform set of regimes throughout the world, which mirrors the hegemonic political culture. The most relevant point here is the focus on the end, which is a liberal democracy, often sought after through violent means that democracies do not employ among themselves. This process is, in turn, justified by highlighting peaceful relations between democracies, or the DPT itself.

Kantian Peace

As the DPT has evolved from initial focus on the “means” to achieve an end, to a cruder goal-oriented attitude, two forms of peace continue to remain under the branch of “Kantian Peace” (Geis and Wanger 2011).

Commercial peace—while the commercial peace thesis has a long and well-known history, it did not appear prominently until the 1990s. It gained momentum in the wake of the democratic peace debate. Kant, in “Perpetual Peace” mentioned the spirit of commerce only in a supplement; the commercial peace thesis was quickly incorporated as one of three legs in a “Kantian triangle” by Russett and Oneal (2001: 35) and Gelpi and Grieco (2008), in particular, have argued that democracies “react to greater trade integration with a reduced propensity to initiate militarized disputes with their partners” (2008: 17).

Again, a broad range of causal mechanisms has been put forward to explain the pacifying effect of international institutions: they may reduce uncertainty by conveying information, they may act as mediators in a conflict, or, as in collective security institutions, even coerce norm-breakers. From a constructivist perspective, institutions may contribute to peace by creating trust, by generating narratives of mutual identification, and by socializing states into norms of peaceful conflict resolution (Geis and Wagner 2011). In another analogy to commercial peace research, scholars of the institutional peace like Pevehouse and Russett (2006) have argued that democracies cooperate disproportionately among themselves, and that “inter-democratic institutions” (, i.e., international institutions composed of democracies) are particularly effective in reaping the pacifying effects of cooperation.

Mechanisms to Implement Democratic Peace Theory

The context of transition of a country into a democracy is unique in itself, and, therefore, it is not easy to generalize or standardize. In cases where these countries adopted democratic institutions due to external intervention—application of the DTP—also are varied and unique to themselves. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms used by foreign countries to install democratic regimes to ensure the application of the DPT is complex. Broadly, these mechanisms can be classified into two:

Use of soft power—largely as a tool of foreign policy, soft power plays an essential role; it acts as a display of hegemony. In the case of the application of DPT, coercion, almost naturally, plays a central role. It acts as a mechanism for liberal democratic nations to exert their influence to mold regime types around them and create an environment that would sustain and benefit their growth. Diplomacy mechanisms at the Track I and Track II level can also act as a stimulus.

This can be seen during the Iraq War (2003) by the USA. Along with citing the perceived threat from the presence of weapons of mass destruction in the country, the USA had claimed that the Saddam Hussein government was detrimental to its own people and other countries. And, therefore, the USA in its war in Iraq along with causing extensive collateral damage to the country also changed its government and helped establish a pro-US liberal democratic government.

Application of the Democratic Peace Theory in the Twenty-first Century

The democratic peace thesis’ migration from academia to the public sphere was prompted and guided by a host of strategic, political, and ideological reasons (Ish-Shalom 2013). However, it is one particular incident that pressed the transformation of the DPT into a policy—the 9/11 attacks.

Under the black cloud of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, US Government (2002) unfolded what came to be known as the Bush Doctrine. The doctrine prescribes four principles: preemptive action, unipolarity backed by military superiority, unilateral action, and a commitment to spreading freedom and democracy. The most comprehensive presentation and justification of the doctrine came in the 2002 National Security Strategy (White House 2002), which expounded these four tenets. The Iraq War, launched by the USA on March 19, 2003, was a planned and deliberate realization of the doctrine, carrying to the extreme the logic of unsurpassed unilateral preventive military action. The war was also conducted under the banner of democracy promotion.

Soon after the war began, Max Boot, a leading neoconservative, eulogized the National Security Strategy as

…emphatic because the administration embraces the theory of a ‘democratic peace’—the notion that liberal democracies are unlikely to use weapons of mass destructions, sponsor terrorism, and undertake other activities that threaten their neighbours and the United States. (Boot 2003: 27).

In this way, he declared that the role of the USA is vital in the spread of representative governments, often by forcibly converting regimes.

However, what Boot describes as a straightforward process of embracing and implementing a theory is really a far more torturous process. But he does point in the right direction, namely that DPT—or more accurately the democratic peace thesis and its contingent theories—lies at the heart of the Bush Doctrine’s emphasis on democracy promotion.

The post-9/11 period has been marked by an increased interest of the USA in systematically installing democratic regimes in the world. The first phase of this began with the “War on Terror.” under which the USA targeted countries, which hosted the terror outfits that were behind the 9/11 attack. Along with fighting the terror groups in those countries, the USA worked to establish democratically elected governments too. Second phase can be seen in the intervention of the USA in the Middle-Eastern countries. The process of democratization by the USA at many levels has ignored the social construct of the society and has instead imposed itself superficially.

As the use of force has been adopted by the USA as a part of its foreign policy, the study of US foreign policy and its relations with countries becomes an important aspect in the article. It provides an opportunity to analyze the complex policy mechanisms and framework strategies that play into politicizing the DPT. The war in Afghanistan is a result of the War on Terror, post the 9/11 attacks. The ensuing discourse of “just war” and what the Afghanistan War itself sought to achieve are part of the case study in the next section to examine the praxis of the DPT.

Case Study: Afghanistan

One way to understand the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan, albeit in a less nuanced manner, given the scope of the article, is to take into account the historical background of the country. Afghanistan, from serving as a buffer state to being embroiled in Cold War tensions, has had a history of political instability (Central Intelligence Agency 2018). The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that took place in 1979 was militarily opposed by the Mujahideen, which got massive support from the leader of the capitalist bloc, the USA (Bosin 2009; Halliday 1979). While victory of the Islamic rebels took place in 1992, war for power in Afghanistan continued between warlords, along with deep discontent among the people. This ultimately gave rise to the Taliban movement in 1996 (Halliday 1979).

The Taliban, which was supported by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, was formed out of the Pashtun Afghan faction of Mujahideen (Maizland and Laub 2020). It is important to note here that the Pashtun areas were also the ones which went through the greatest destruction over the years of oppressive regimes in Afghanistan (Akhtar 2008). However, as the Taliban gained more power, it became the source of the country’s problem, and a rival to the USA itself, which had backed it up previously (Maizland and Laub 2020).

Matters in international politics changed significantly after the 9/11 attacks in the USA. On September 11, 2001, 19 Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked 4 US commercial aircraft and flew them into important buildings in the USA. One airliner each crashed into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center in New York. A third aircraft crashed into the Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, where the US Defence Department is headquartered. The fourth aircraft, presumably bound for the Capitol building of the US Congress, came down in a field in Pennsylvania (Baylis et al. 2011).

The offensive killed nearly 3,000 people and is considered the most severe attack on US soil since the founding of the country. Apart from economic and social impact, it was an attack on the power and influence of the USA symbolized by the buildings that came down (Baylis et al. 2011). The archives of the White House state that then US President George W. Bush described the attacks, which were also denounced by different national governments, as “evil, despicable acts of terror” and stated that the country was at war with a new enemy.

The USA responded by launching the War on Terror and invading Afghanistan in October 2001 to depose the Taliban, which had harbored Al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces along with the anti-Taliban Afghan Northern Alliance launched the strikes on Afghanistan (Maizland and Laub 2020). According to a policy paper published by the Government of the UK in 2014 (Ministry of Defence 2014). the war was an attempt to dispose the Taliban of the power it had gained in Afghanistan and establish a democratic regime in the country. It must be noted that such action was taken, despite the US agreement to be a part of international guarantees of nonintervention in Afghanistan after Soviet withdrawal, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (Khan 1987).

Not surprisingly, Afghanistan was largely ignored after the end of the Cold War when different factions fought for power within the country. However, when an intervention did take place, it was militant in nature; not for humanitarian needs, but as a result of change in US national interest (Ayub and Kouvo 2008). It will not be far-fetched to claim that the intervention was conducted not to promote security or stability in Afghanistan per se, but to ensure that Afghanistan could no longer be a source of insecurity for the USA and its allies (Ayub and Kouvo 2008).

Within months of the 9/11 attacks, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents, US contractors, and US Special Forces had begun detaining prisoners in camps constructed in Afghanistan. Most were “low-grade” fighters with no ideological motivation but were tortured, nonetheless, sometimes without any trials (Burke 2017). When US agencies began getting hold of probable important leaders within al-Qaeda and the Taliban, secret prisons were set up. These were constructed in remote woods of Eastern Europe, on Afghan air bases, in Iraq, on Indian Ocean airbases, and other areas. The USA made arrests all over the world, often without the knowledge of the government of the persons being arrested, deprived them of sight and hearing, and flew them between these locations. Some of them were brought to Guantanamo Bay, a US Naval base in Cuba, where the prisoners did not receive the protection of international law or the law of their own country or that of the USA. Even the United Nations (UN) representatives were not allowed to meet the prisoners. In fact, 26 of the 119 people detained from 2002 to 2008 in the secret network were held wrongfully, according to a 2014 report by the senate select committee on intelligence into “the CIA’s detention and interrogation program” (Burke 2017; US Government 2014). Former US President, Barack Obama, vowed to close Guantanamo Bay and significantly reduced the number of prisoners, but he failed to completely shut it down. Guantanamo still remains operational and previous President Trump had even vowed to begin refilling it with foreign-born prisoners (Borger 2018).

It can be seen that the option of using military has been counterproductive as it is a blunt instrument, which has ignored the need to counter or undermine terrorism by addressing the inequalities that gave birth to it in the first place (Smith 2009). In this way, the approach or the “humanitarian intervention” can be considered to be of short-term benefit rather than addressing the long-term problems.

While the response of the USA seemed understandable, it was also subject to various criticisms as well as the challenge of alternative responses that could have been used. Primary among them is that the approach used by the Bush administration seemed to favor hawks, covert agencies, and the patriotic. It has also been stated that the war was patronizing, a threat to civil liberties as individual rights were made subservient to the war, and lacked analysis and invited reaction due to its target on a particular group of people, namely the Arabs and Muslims. Bringing Kant’s deontological view on actions, it is important to point that there was usage of methods like kidnapping, imprisonment without trial, censorship, and invasion of privacy, which challenge whether the West’s claim of having a moral and a just cause was enough to justify these actions. It is also interesting to note that just as the terrorists were male and came from a patriarchal background or culture, so was the response that was predominantly masculine in nature (Smith 2009).

The military interventions had tried to enable the local people to elect stable governments, which would have then helped the country. However, a report by Human Rights Watch accuses Western governments of ignoring undemocratic practices in countries where they have a commercial interest. At the same time, despite early optimism that the removal of the Taliban would improve the situation of women in the country (which has often been used to justify the invasion itself), the results have been disappointing. At the same time, the freedom entailed in democracy also seems to have not made its mark in the country. According to reports, when an Afghan reporter was found guilty of talking negatively about Islam, he was sentenced to death (Smith 2009).

The Government of Afghanistan has been unable to communicate to the broader Afghan population in disseminating its choices and policies, and failed in ensuring security and extending its legitimacy in the conflict-ridden areas (Ayub and Kouvo 2008). This is evident from the growing insecurity within and across provinces, the widening gap between the elites in Kabul and the rural population, and allegations of high corruption, which eroded faith in the efforts of the new government or the international community. Under the Bonn Agreement, the UN had authorized the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to assist in stabilizing Afghanistan until it had the capacity of its own to do so. At the same time, the US-led coalition in the country operated under the principles of Operation Enduring Freedom, which has been committed to counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. This sometimes led to conflicting objectives, thereby ensuing in the lack of coordination between the two security missions, which has further complicated the security situation in Afghanistan. The European nations have also been criticized for not taking a unified stance on key developmental issues in Afghanistan (Ayub and Kouvo 2008).

In fact, as per the 2007 Human Rights report of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), 41% of the civilian deaths in Afghanistan could be attributed to pro-government forces (Crawford 2016). The ISAF operations (carried out by the NATO countries) have also lost legitimacy on grounds of several civilian casualties, and US soldiers have also faced a variety of charges of murdering Afghan civilians and covering it up (Crawford 2016; Starr and Kuchins 2010).

As a result, Afghanistan’s security situation remains precarious with the Taliban increasing its foothold in the country since the second half of 2017 (Walsh 2018). Sustained attacks by the Taliban continue with a background of unsteady Afghan National Security Forces’ performance, and severe financial shortfalls (Mashal and Shah 2018; Sharifi and Adamou 2018). A descriptive account of the situation tells us that a whole generation of Afghan children grew up knowing nothing of life but bombings that killed their families, destroyed their homes, and forced them to seek refuge. As a result, they also become easy prey to those committed to raising hatred among various factions (Zunes 2011).

In the early phase of his term as President, in 2017, Donald Trump had committed to increasing the US military’s engagement in Afghanistan, stating that his new approach would switch from nation building to “killing terrorists,” a plan which was welcomed by Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani. (Borger 2017). This meant that there was an open-ended war in Afghanistan that saw more foreign troops. This is while there has been growing resentment against the presence of foreign troops in the country in civilians (Constable 2006). While, in 2020, Trump announced that troops would be “brought back home,” the BBC has found that while the presence of the military in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq has decreased, the overall US military presence in terms of global operations has remained static (Giles 2020).

Decoding War and Peace

The result of the war in Afghanistan, if analyzed now, is greater chaos. And this chaos has continued the presence of foreign troops in the country. The DPT, which has been applied here, also does not seem to work. Even with the presence of a formal government in Afghanistan, peace is yet to be established. Democracy in the country remains superficial, which has not reached large parts of the population. And there is also resentment toward it because of the atrocities that people of Afghanistan have started to face due to the US troops. This validates the argument that the means used to establish peace is as important as the end, or maybe even more, as claimed by Kant. This is so because the means has to be just in order to achieve greater likelihood and support for the end. Causality of the violence is presented in Figure 1.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Source: The authors.

The success stories of the democratic order across the world stand on the foundations of an internally driven movement for democracy with assistance of the international order. India stands a shining example of this. A process of democratization that is not violently imposed has the potential to facilitate and nurture the development of democratic institutions domestically that can then support a harmonious international order.

The basis of democracy is “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” as said by Abraham Lincoln during the Gettysburg Address of 1863. ¹ By using war to force a democratic shift, the government fails to be “of, by, and for” the people. The use of force simply spirals into a state of disarray, repression, and negative peace (if peace at all). Therefore, a war in the name of establishing democracy fails at the primary step of setting up a democratically elected government.

Beyond the failure of establishing a government, a war in the name of democracy leads to a vicious cycle of war and violence (Levi 1960). It alters the development trajectory of the country and instils a cycle of war. This makes life within the country hostile, as well as exposes the international community to reactions caused by these hostilities. Here, the case of Afghanistan is the starkest example.

The rejection of the twenty-first century’s use of DPT as a tool of the US foreign policy brings one back to its original conception by Kant. By theorizing the democratic ethics based on peace, persuasion, and compromise, Kant explains the absence of war and war-like threats in relations between democratic states (Maoz and Russett 1993).

Kant’s basis of the democratic peace, as discussed in the first section of the article, goes beyond the narrow conception that DPT has acquired in the present state, and it is actually able to provide a sustainable model of peace building. The DPT applied by the USA post 2001 has been a power strategy, and it is a retaliation to the 9/11 attacks. The use of war and violence to initiate the democratic transition makes DPT inherently faulty as it overlooks the “means” to achieve its “goals.”

By retreating to a more Kantian perspective of the DPT, one can genuinely get an opportunity to build democratic institutions that cater to the needs of the society and the international system as well.

Conclusion

This article is an inquiry into the moral validity of war for democracy. The past five decades have seen an imminent increase in empiricism as the primary mode of analysis in the domain of international relations. What these data-driven projects have left out is that at the end of day, the political is a lot about the stories and the values that are held close (Smith 2003). Therefore, this article unpacks the value systems and morality that underpin our international democratic order.

Drawing from Kantian philosophy to the American foreign policy, this article looks at how ideals of hegemony re-manifest. The logic behind this argument is not entirely unique. It draws heavily on conventional wisdom in the political philosophy literature, which recognizes that notions of supremacy that inform actions of the hegemon are rarely benevolent.

It breaks this idea down to three levels. It starts by looking at the philosophical origins and conception of the DPT. It then expansively looks at the American foreign policy vis-à-vis the War on Terror and concludes with the implication of using force to establish democracy.

The article illustrates the relevance of using categorical imperatives as a tool for analyzing international policy and reasserts the importance of taking the morality of a policy in analysis. It also leaves room for further research to explore foreign policy imperatives of other NATO countries and international interventions.