The peace/violence nexus: Fundamental,multiple,contingent

Abstract

This paper finds its point of departure in Murad Idris’s argument about peace being a fundamentally violent ideal marked by an overarching logic of constitutive aggression. It responds to this categorical statement by reconstructing four distinct variants of the peace/violence nexus, each of which involves a different type of violence, performed by a different type of agent, with a different demeanor, at different times and intervals, and in relation to a different conception of peace. There is not one peace/violence nexus but at least four. What is more, a detailed examination of these peace/violence nexuses puts into doubt their fundamental nature, if by fundamental is meant intrinsic and inescapable. It draws attention to the contingency of their becoming a social and political reality, and thereby confirms that the imbrication of peace and violence may at least theoretically—and temporarily—be avoided.

Keywords

Contingency democratic peace peace peace-violence nexus violence

Introduction

In War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought, Idris (2019) has painted a particularly disenchanting picture of what I propose to call the peace/violence nexus. The concept refers to the entanglement of peace and violence, which Idris assumes to be fundamental and nearly impossible to escape. In his view, peace is shot through with violence. When people legitimize the exercise of violence with reference to their desire for peace, this should not be regarded as the result of people cynically appropriating an otherwise innocent idea. Rather, the argument holds, the concept of peace makes for an intrinsically violent ideal: “Not only can peace be weaponized, but its idealization is, structurally and discursively, crafted as a weapon, with specific enemies in view, and honed against specific others” (Idris, 2019: 7; emphasis in original). Idris (2019: 7) contends that peace is marked by an “overarching logic of constitutive aggression” and concludes on this basis that “peace is not the solution. It is a problem.”

These are provocative claims. They radicalize the well-established observation in peace research, critical or otherwise, that the establishment and consolidation of a condition of peace can occasion the exercise of violence. The radical nature of Idris’s claims lies mainly in the fact that he holds no hope. Peace cannot possibly be the solution, he maintains, and therefore proposes that we settle for the concept of a truce and for an ethics of separation instead (Idris, 2019: 319–320). This stance contrasts with peace researchers’ continuing attempts to reconceptualize peace in such a way that it avoids the concept’s violent affordances. Klem (2018: 235) observes about critical strands in peace research that their proponents “take issue with the supposed harmony and inclusivity of peace” and that they acknowledge that “peace-building is prone to hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forces,” but Klem simultaneously finds that (critical) peace researchers continue to value and promote peace. “The deeper teleology of ultimately getting to peace is not written off” (Klem, 2018: 235; see also Dingli, 2021) and neither is the basic belief in the possibility of establishing a peace untainted by violence. The situations of compromised peace that peace researchers describe and theorize should “be [. . .] read as an imperfect, pragmatic prelude to a [. . .] state of real peace.” “Real peace is thus deferred, but the suggestion that it could be realized is retained” (Klem, 2018: 236). Hence the continuing investment in the concept of “positive peace” (Diehl, 2016; Galtung, 1969) and hence also the articulation of such new concepts as “quality peace” (Wallensteen, 2015), “emancipatory peace” (Richmond, 2022) or even “relational peace,” which has a more sober ring to it, but the “ideal-typical” definition of which nonetheless includes such “demanding” elements as deliberation, non-domination, cooperation, mutual recognition, mutual trust and a sense of friend- or at least fellowship (Söderstrom et al., 2021: 496). Notwithstanding peace researchers’ acknowledgment of the oftentimes glaring imperfections of most instances of really existing peace, their understanding of the ideal of peace (quality, emancipatory, relational, positive) remains a fundamentally optimistic one. They continue to confess “a normative preference for peace” (Söderstrom et al., 2021: 485) and remain committed to the belief that peace can be non-violent. Not so Murad Idris. In his view, peace is a violent ideal—always, forever, intrinsically.

Idris derives this conclusion from a close reading of the philosophical works of a number of canonical authors in the Western and Islamic tradition: Plato, Al-Farabi, Aquinas, Erasmus, Gentili, Grotius, Ibn Khaldun, Hobbes, Kant, and Sayyid Qutb. In his engagement with each of these authors, Idris (2019: 20) attempts to lay bare the “discursive work” that the notion of peace does in their writings. Consider his interpretation of the work of Thomas Hobbes. Although Hobbes (2012: 192–193) defined peace in sharp opposition to the time of war (a time of direct physical violence, of the psychological violence of continuous suspicion, and of the insidious violence of arrested development), Idris shows that Hobbes failed to maintain that separation. He draws attention to how Hobbes conceptualized peace in terms of “industry” (and the fruits thereof) and “navigation” (and the consequent ability to import foreign commodities and achieve knowledge of the face of the earth). Idris (2019: 235) observes that “the peaceful world [that Hobbes] envisioned follows a particular economic and cultural pattern [. . .]: Hobbes insinuates peace with a political economy that defines human activity through commerce, travel, and knowledge.” This all sounds pleasant enough, which is how Hobbes intended it to sound, but then Idris adds in a more critical vein that Hobbes’ vision “gestures toward the desire to map, master, and traverse the world” (Idris, 2019: 235–236). At its frankest, his argument holds that “the things Hobbes associates with peace are necropolitical, doing the work of spreading [. . .] death and war beyond Europe” (Idris, 2019: 230). Once again, the ideal of peace shows itself to be shot through with violence.

One imagines different responses to this kind of comprehensively critical assessment. Idris’s own response, as mentioned earlier, is to point to conceptual alternatives to peace (the notion of a truce, the practice of separation), and thus to escape the peace/violence nexus by abandoning the ideal of peace. The response of critical peace researchers is to accept the empirical significance of the peace/violence nexus, but to deny its necessity by insisting on the possibility of conceptualizing peace in such a way that it does not trigger, enable or demand the exercise of violence. They insist on the necessity and possibility of thinking peace better (also True, 2020, responding to Bellamy, 2019). But I would propose an alternative response still and take issue with the categorical nature of Idris’s articulation of the peace/violence nexus. I propose to focus, that is, on the very link—the nexus—that connects peace and violence. There is not one peace/violence nexus, it is my main observation in this context, but at least four peace/violence nexuses, entailing different types of violence, performed by different agents, with different demeanors, at different times and intervals, and toward different ends. What is more, a detailed examination of these peace/violence nexuses puts into doubt their fundamental nature, if by fundamental is meant intrinsic and inescapable. It draws attention to the contingency of their becoming a social and political reality, and thereby confirms that the imbrication of peace and violence may at least theoretically—and temporarily—be avoided.

Four variants of the peace/violence nexus

To write about a peace/violence nexus is to develop a theoretical notion. Peace/violence nexuses cannot be observed directly. Even though the concept is meant to capture a meaningful aspect of empirical reality, it remains an irreducibly theoretical concept—a concept to think and observe with. This also means that the concept of a peace/violence nexus must be conjured up somehow. It is the product of a process of theoretical imagination. In this process of theoretical imagination, it is useful to draw on a rich variety of sources, including philosophy and the history of ideas, mythical stories, and literary works (Horton and Baumeister, 2003: 12). At the same time, though, it is desirable to feed empirical illustrations, historical or contemporary, into the process of theoretical imagination, so as to ensure a theoretical notion’s prima facie validity. Such then has also been my procedure in the development of the four variants of the peace/violence nexus, each of which includes reference to empirical dynamics in (or pertaining to) the so-called zone of democratic peace.¹ Let it nonetheless be stated explicitly that what I present below are four theoretical concepts—each of them the product of my theoretical imagination—that may or may not withstand a more systematic process of empirical validation. Let it also be stated explicitly that I do not intend the below to be an exhaustive presentation of all possible variants of the peace/violence nexus. There could well be other ones. However, to the extent that my primary concern is to complicate Murad Idris’s overly categorical rendition of the peace/violence nexus, it suffices for me to show that there are multiple, truly distinctive variants thereof and to indicate, for each of the variants, how the actual manifestation of these nexuses—their becoming a social reality—is not a necessity but an outcome contingent on human action, on the praxis of human agents (Reiter and Stam, 2002: 104–105).

Utopian violence and peace

The concept of peace often has a utopian connotation to it. It hints at a world that is yet-to-come but that will be—this is the promise of the concept—happier and a fair deal better than our world today is. The concept expresses an aspiration. It gives a name to a dream that we entertain and that we may work to accomplish. Its utopian quality transpires most evidently from the superlative meaning that we give to the notion. A basic meaning is that war should be absent, and this more than momentarily. But then this basic meaning is immediately judged to be insufficient. We call the absence of war a mere negative peace. We do not go so far as to dismiss the absence of war, but genuine peace, we (think we) know, demands more. A condition of genuine, or positive, peace adds to the absence of (physical) violence something extra. This something extra will vary across cultural environments. One imagines a time and place when it would have been harmonious relations or purity of intentions. Current thought more often defines genuine peace as a situation which combines the absence of war with the presence of social justice and human flourishing (Diehl, 2016; Galtung, 1969). If we are going to put in the effort of imagining a better world, a world that is not a state of war but a state of peace, then let us imagine it in truly perfect terms. Such is the utopian’s intellectual disposition.

The desire for perfection is just one element of the utopian habitus. Another element is the belief that plans ought to be put into practice. The description of Utopia, of a utopian peace, is meant to serve as a plan or blueprint.² It is here that its potential for violence lies. Utopias prefigure a world that is, by definition, radically different from the current world. The implementation of a Utopia amounts to a revolution of kinds. Old things are shaken up and it is therefore to be expected that the utopian project will be resisted, no matter how much happiness it promises to deliver. Traditional opinions, institutions and elites will stand in its way. Utopians will insist that these powers of tradition are being unreasonable, as they are wont to be. They (think they) know they are in the right. In a first moment, they might try to argue their case, emphasizing how their plans make rational sense, but if traditional powers prove stubborn-headed, if they continue to resist their plans, utopians feel justified to use force in order to clear the ground. As Winter (2006: 4) concludes about [major] utopians: They “uproot, cleanse, transform, exterminate.”³

The utopian quality of peace brings with it the possibility of utopian violence. Utopian violence is instrumental violence. It is unsentimental. It is rationalist violence. Utopian violence presents itself as a means to an end. This means that although we have here a clear case of peace and violence belonging together, it is not a case of them belonging together intrinsically. In principle, if only the powers of tradition were more reasonable and stopped their resistance, utopians would not have to take recourse to violence. Other means would do and would probably have the utopians’ preference.

Some people have interpreted democratic peace and democratic violence in utopian terms. The interpretation is not implausible. In scholarship on the democratic peace the implications of the thesis have long been explained in terms of “democratic peace” offering a way out of the international state of war. When Russett (1993: 138) wrote that “[a system created by autocracies centuries ago might now be recreated by a critical mass of democratic states,” and when he implied that this act of recreation will help build a wider democratic peace, there was certainly a utopian aspect to his words. The interpretation became even more plausible at the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which the American administration partly justified with reference to the democratic peace thesis (Hobson, 2011; Rengger, 2006). It was the express purpose of the invasion to bring democracy (and individual freedom) to the Iraqi people and thus to contribute to the spread of a democratic peace. To the extent that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein resisted these developments, because he clung to his dictatorial powers, he was standing in the way. If only he and his Ba’ath party be toppled, democracy and peace would prevail. Detailed plans for post-war plans for reconstruction were sorely lacking—the invasion was the plan, it was a clearing of the ground—precisely because the intervention was an act of utopian, tradition-removing violence (Fukuyama, 2007).⁴

Structural violence and peace

A utopian peace is a good peace turned bad. The concept does not abandon the idea that peace is a valuable something that ought to be pursued. On the contrary, it is so valuable that we pursue it too eagerly, without regard for circumstances or obstacles. Suddenly we find ourselves applying utopian violence, without even the slightest hesitation, even if it leads to eventual regret. This is an awkward dynamic, which will cause some to doubt the wisdom of a policy of peace.

Etymological considerations suggest the possibility of a more sobering interpretation still, wherein the concept of peace is met with skepticism, or even hostility, from the beginning. [Mind you, though, that it is a (tentative) etymology that applies to the French and English language, but not, for instance, to the German or the Dutch or Norwegian language.⁵ I am not sure about the etymology of equivalent concepts in other, very different languages like Arabic or Chinese.⁶] Etymologically, peace traces back to the Latin word pax. It is an expression that we know from such current concepts as Pax Americana or Pax Sinica, but also from the original Pax Augusta or Pax Romana. Pax belongs to the same family of words as the word pacisci (to conclude a pact), but Zampiglione and Dunn (1973: 133) explains that this should not be taken to imply that the Roman word pax captures, or prefigures, a situation of equality and reciprocity, or a situation freely engaged in.

[. . .] for the Romans a treaty was an institution very different from that known to modern international law. It generally meant, purely and simply, the unconditional surrender of a defeated state. [. . .] Latin authors adopted expressions like “to impose,” “to concede,” “to dictate” peace terms. It was recognized, with the use of such words, that the relevant situations were due not to the convergence of free wills but to the victory of the Roman army.

The observation applies more generally. A great many situations of peace are actually situations of pax in this particular sense. When we declare that a city, or a state or a region is at peace, we should really be saying that the city, or state or region has been pacified. Pacification is bound to elicit resistance, of various degrees of intensity, so that most cities (& states & regions) that we declare peaceful are forever being pacified. The process is ongoing and endless. When we do not notice anymore that we are being pacified, it is because the project has achieved temporary success: we have been lulled into submission.

To the extent that peace coincides with pacification—to the extent, that is, that the sweet word that is peace⁷ obscures the stern reality that is pacification—it is full of violence (Barkawi, 2016: 201–204; Neocleous, 2014: 17–47; Polat, 2010). There is direct, physical violence in it. Physical violence will be exercised when a certain area is first being pacified but also at later stages when individuals or groups decide to rise up against the peace. In any case, there is always the threat of physical violence by the guardians of the peace.⁸ They make it very clear that any disturber of the peace will be reined in, with violence if necessary.

There is also less tangible, structural violence in projects of pacification. Historically, pacification has always been a two-pronged process, involving the use and threat of force but also involving an effort to re-educate subject populations. They would be trained to change their old ways, to fall in line with the ways of the new rulers, or with the ways that the new rulers saw fit for a subject people. The process embodied structural violence: paths of development that had been ongoing and futures that were in the process of becoming were violently arrested and forcefully re-routed. Whether or not one agrees that structural violence is real violence, re-education will often be experienced as painful or harmful or shameful. There is a chance that it will be counter-productive, that it will foster the very disturbance of the peace it wants to prevent.

The sweet word that is peace obscures a nasty process that is pacification and thus cloaks the presence of structural violence. At least on some accounts, the notion of a “democratic peace” does much the same (Barkawi and Laffey, 1999). It obscures how, internationally, a hierarchy has been established between a (capitalist, democratic) core and a (equally capitalist, less democratic) periphery. It obscures how their shared interests in managing the periphery, and in extracting resources from it, has been a precondition for the countries in the core to maintain the peace among themselves. It obscures how the core has been policing the periphery and how it has chosen to stamp out—more or less bluntly—resistance to the order it imposed, also if that resistance enjoyed popular support and embodied a democratic aspiration. It further obscures how also domestically, within the core, the original radically democratic project—calling for rule by the people—was blunted by the ruling classes in favor of a liberal, representative democracy and thus obscures that “democracy” could only be accepted as a form of state, and later promoted as an international project, once it had been duly domesticated (Hobson, 2015). To insist on the truth of the “democratic peace” is to fail to grasp the context of structural violence that makes the phenomenon possible. Peace and violence do more than belong together on this view. They coincide.

Pacifistic violence and peace

The dynamic captured by the concepts of utopian (or genuine) peace and utopian violence is awkward. The dynamic expressed by the notions of pacification (or stable peace) and structural violence is sobering. One can debate their empirical importance—how common or exceptional they are as empirical phenomena—but they are not too difficult to comprehend. The reason is that they are a common part of lived experience. We all know people who get carried away by their enthusiasm and their convictions, and we know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Similarly, many of us have experienced the sensation of being disciplined, physically and psychologically, and being told that we should not disturb the peace (of the classroom, workplace, etc.). The concept of pacifistic violence is less easily understood. The concept is not common. Mine might well be a first use and there is a distinct possibility that the notion takes the idea that peace and violence belong together too far. Pacifists are well aware of the dangers of both utopian violence and structural violence. For this reason, they may even choose not to promote peace but choose simply to abstain from all violence and to counsel that others abstain from the exercise of violence too. And yet, it will be my argument, pacifists run the risk of engaging in violence too, and not only because the pacifist will is weak—much as any human will is—but because their very pacifism motivates, or even disposes, them to. Notice, though, that, unlike utopians and the guardians of the peace, pacifists regret their violence. As committed prophets of peace, they are thoroughly conflicted about it.

Pacifism comes in a variety of forms (Ceadel, 1996). Two of the most important distinctions to make are that between an absolute and a relative pacifism and that between a political and an individual pacifism (Russell, 1943: 7–13). Absolute, individual pacifism entails a total commitment to non-violence. The later writings of Leo Tolstoy give expression to the stance and he—as did many before and after him—finds it embodied in the figure of Jesus of Nazareth. Relative pacifism trades the ethics of conviction of absolute pacifism for an ethics of responsibility. It understands that war is an absolutely cruel business and that war, once it is begun, has a tendency to spiral out of control. What begins as a limited war ends up becoming an unlimited war: the parties’ war aims expand while their commitment to the rules of war dwindles. As war takes its course, pacifists know, adversaries inevitably become enemies and violence intensifies. This must be avoided at all cost and so pacifists—absolute and relative alike—counsel that parties to a conflict take recourse to, and learn to understand the benefits of, the diplomatic process. They will also counsel that civil and international institutions be reformed so that states or other political groups would no longer feel that they have to take the law into their own hands. However, in contrast to absolute pacifists, relative pacifists (think they) understand that at a certain point their argument breaks down. Faced with an existential threat, with an adversary that is constitutively incapable of compromising, who, if left unopposed, will eradicate all that we hold dear, it is permissible and may be morally obligatory for the authorities to wage a war of self-defense: “Some, very few wars are worth fighting” (Russell, 1943: 8).

Absolute pacifist disagree. They fear that our violent response to roguish adversaries does more damage than the adversary himself intended to bring about. And even if the adversary is temporally subdued by violent means, this is no durable solution. If the enemy is a rogue indeed, he will simply bide his time and then come back with a vengeance. To absolute pacifists, it is absolutely clear that the exercise of violence can never be legitimate. Thus Tolstoy, in his Calendar of Wisdom, and interpreting the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, insisted that violence should never be taken recourse to: not for reasons of retaliation, not for reasons of protection, and not to help others either (Tolstoi and Langeveld, 2012: 108; emphasis mine). We should never kill, we should never be violent, we should not even allow ourselves to become angry.⁹ We must cultivate an ethos of universal love: we must learn to love our neighbors and our enemies too (Hartnett, 2020: 271).

But at the same time absolute pacifists—to the extent they do not retreat from public life¹⁰—can be experienced by others as a violent presence in the world. Their very posture, which is a prophetic one, is provocative. It incites counter-violence. On at least one reading, the provocation is deliberate.¹¹ Reflecting on the meaning of the pacifistic teachings of Jesus, Wink (1992: 200) suggest that the injunction to “turn the other cheek” was not a call for passivity on his listeners’ part, but one for active defiance. It would disorient the (typically superordinate) opponent and “even if the superior orders the person flogged for such ‘cheeky’ behavior (this is certainly no way to avoid conflict), the point has been irrevocably made.” In the reading of Karl Jaspers, this defiance very much marks the figure of Jesus himself (and does not just find expression in his teachings). Jaspers explains that

If Jesus was not an active political leader [. . .] his conduct becomes hard to understand. For by violence (cleansing of the temple, creation of a movement among the people) he provoked violence against himself. What he suffered was the consequence of his act. In all this there is a flavor of militancy which is also unmistakable in other manifestations of his personality. (Jaspers, 1962: 73)

And further:

Violently, with a whip, he drives the money-changers from the Temple.

Jesus can simply not be interpreted as passive, mild, moved always and only by love, [. . .]

The strange duality of gentleness and uncompromising militancy is evident in the words with which Jesus demands faith. [. . .] [He] can command men to follow him at once, without hesitation and without reservation. (Jaspers, 1962: 76)

If we accept that Jesus was the archetypal absolute pacifist (for a fine theological defense, see Davis, 1949), it becomes clear that that figure is no stranger to violence. The absolute pacifist sometimes succumbs to anger. He loses his temper and reacts violently. This is mere weakness of the will: it does not situate violence within pacifism. But the pacifist also performs violence, he stages it. His violence will be contained. It will take the form of an outburst: a sudden harsh command, a sudden erecting of the backbone, a sudden violent spasm. His violence is a performance, the assumption of a posture. It gives expression to the absoluteness of his position and also finds its origin in it. Absolute pacifists know that absoluteness cannot be imposed, that only renunciation of the world offers an immediate prospect of peace, but they are nonetheless disappointed—time and again—by the lack of commitment on the part of their fellow human beings (Elshtain, 2008: 415). At a certain point—this is inevitable and can be deliberate—absolute pacifists lash out. They assume an aggressive posture. The intention is to impress, to communicate the severity of their commitment. Often enough people are duly impressed, so much so that they feel cornered and respond with counter-violence. When this happens, one imagines absolute pacifists instantly assuming again their non-violent stance and remaining utterly unfazed. One may get the uncanny impression that they had expected the counter-violence, had even counted on it. To the extent that absolute pacifists are a religious lot (Fiala, 2018: 31), that they are indeed prophets of peace, they know that God works in mysterious ways.

Few people have interpreted democratic violence in terms of pacifistic violence. It is possible to draw a parallel between the explanation of democratic wars (against non-democratic opponents) in terms of the lingering pressures of anarchy and the relative pacifists’ concession that some wars are fought justifiably. In both cases war is fought because circumstances make it necessary to fight a war. But the differences are starker than the similarities. The relative pacifist fights only in the direst of circumstances, when facing absolute evil, whereas the democratic state finds justification for war in any encounter with a non-democratic state that is somewhat hostile. The relative pacifist will fight truly defensive wars only. The democratic state, caught in a situation of anarchy, is willing to consider pre-emption, and even offense too (Reiter and Stam, 2002).

It does not appear that democratic wars that result from the pressures of anarchy are the same type of war as relative pacifists’ war. Neither is there any similarity between the absolute pacifists’ violent posturing and democratic wars, whether resulting from the pressures of anarchy or from the utopian desire to expand the zone of democratic peace. There is some similarity, however, with reports about the arrogant attitudes of liberal peacekeepers as they roam from conflict zone to conflict zone (vaguely reminiscent of the ways of itinerant preachers of yesteryear; cf. Autesserre, 2014; Polecritti, 2000). One easily imagines the dynamic on the ground: arrival from afar, a powerful message to convey, some local people flock about the peace-maker, he proposes them to collaborate (and be obedient), he taunts local authorities, setbacks disappoint him, he summons his audience to attention: a voice is raised, a barbaric yawp is sounded, calm returns. “If only,” the peace-maker thinks to himself, “he could have stayed put in the privacy of his compound.”

Regenerative violence and peace

Let us assume, for a moment, that peace can be achieved and that this peace will suffer from none of the afflictions that projects of pacification don it with. Let us assume that it will verily be a sweet peace, a paradisiacal peace. Imagine an abundance of figs but no cramped hiding behind a fig leaf. Or imagine a situation of secure, self-styled political sovereignty without a constant need to be on guard or prepare for military operations. One would think that there would be no violence in this world,¹² let alone that peace and violence would still belong together here. There would be none of the opposition, none of the waywardness that ultimately provokes the violence of the utopians, the guardians of the peace and the prophets of peace alike—different in demeanor, in tone and intention, though their exercise of violence is. Violence would serve no obvious purpose anymore. There would be no ground to clear. There would be no unruly subject to domesticate. There would be no militancy to be bodied forth. Any exercise of violence that would inadvertently occur—in a fit of absent-mindedness—would be looked down upon with mild sadness. It would register, but barely. People would show sympathy and welcome the perpetrator back into the fold. Peace would straightaway be restored. Surely it is an exaggeration to say that it was ever disturbed.

Those who believe in these kinds of notions will explain that paradisiacal peace was our share before the beginning of history and that it awaits us at the end of it. That may be so, but we live in history, not before or after it, and in actual history there can ever only be approximations of Eden. Also in actual history, it is the belief of those who have contemplated quasi-paradisiacal situations, violence is bound to be performed there: not because all good things ultimately come to an end, but because it is functional to the maintenance of the peace.

The most direct problem of states of near-perfect peace is that many people, especially “the energetic young” (Howard, 2001: 3), find it to be utterly boring. These children of peace are enraptured by old stories that circulate (from before the world became so quiet). They are culturally conditioned to expect life to be interesting. At a certain point they simply cannot stand the quiet anymore. They crave an uproar. They crave an occasion to prove their worth. They savor the transgressions that they end up taking part in. The initial enthusiasm for the First World War illustrates the dynamic (Kustermans and Ringmar, 2011).¹³ It had throngs of men and women come out into the streets of London, Paris and Berlin, overjoyed with the war that was to come (Ringmar, 2018). Europe had been at peace for too long. Europe’s young men had been idling about for too long. As one Hungarian writer saw it:

Today’s man has grown up in a hothouse, pale and sipping tea. He greets this healthy brutality enthusiastically. Let the storm come and sweep out our salons. (cited in Kustermans and Ringmar, 2011: 1785)

Or in the words of a German painter:

It is a European civil war, a war against the inner invisible enemy of the European spirit. (cited in Kustermans and Ringmar, 2011: 1785)

The outbreak of the Great War offered a chance of relief. It was all very exciting. It offered an opportunity to feel that life mattered, that oneself mattered, that something was at stake. But it also offered the prospect of revitalizing the European peace. “The salons,” it was the idea, would be “swept out” but not wiped out. They would be returned to after the war, but with a re-invigorated sense of purpose. The European spirit would be fought over, but not destroyed. It too, it was the idea, would come out strengthened.

The First World War escalated badly. Very little regeneration of the European peace was accomplished through it.¹⁴ Violence began and it simply spiraled out of control. Societies have long been aware of the dynamic and they have sought to contain it, typically by sanctioning violence in specified settings (Girard, 1979). They would organize festivals and let them devolve into sheer rowdiness. However, the festival would be of limited duration (Caillois, 2012). Chaos reigns for a short while, violent antics are briefly given license to, and then the orderly word is returned too. Festivals have been of all times, but with the rise of the state, argued Roger Callois, they became gradually less rowdy and thus could no longer fulfill their regenerative function. As the state achieved prominence, Callois hypothesizes, “recurrent periods of festival [were] replaced by alternating phases of war and peace.” That is to say that wars were used to the same, regenerative effect as festivals were earlier.

“War [. . .] is in a sense a substitute for the festival [. . .]. Just as the festival rips people out their familiar world, from their private and family lives, armed violence also transports them into a kind of transcendental frenzy.” (cited in Joas and Knöbl, 2013: 158)

The festival was functional only when it could be contained, when it was clearly delimited in space and time. In the same way war will only be functional in reinvigorating the peace if it is a limited war. What the maintenance of peace requires is a bout of violence: a short raid, a successful battle. Otherwise the solution does more damage than the problem.

To many of those who believe in the empirical reality of the thesis, the zone of democratic peace comes as close to an example of a quasi-paradisiacal state as modern international history has to offer, especially in its Western core (Risse, 2017: 78–114). (Some will also mention the Confucian peace of the Ming and Qing eras. cf. Kang, 2012; but compare Phillips, 2017). They accept that there has been the occasional “Cod War” between liberal democratic countries, but these conflicts have always remained minor. That they would be resolved diplomatically was always self-evident. Some have worried what would happen if the zone of democratic peace would indeed expand to become universal (Geis, 2006). One fear has been precisely been that the world will become too tepid by far, and that the “energetic young” are on the verge of dragging the world back into history, “with all its wars, injustice and revolution” (Fukuyama, 1992: 312). Certain manifestations of Islamic violence could be made sense of in this way, as an expression of modern nihilism (Pahsa, 2017: 101). The idea that one could counter the problem by sanctioning violence within specified settings is rarely if ever entertained, although one hears a faint echo of it when people suggest that we should cultivate the memory of our violent past—in ceremonies, books, films, and museums (van Den Dungen, 2009: 63–74). But the experience of violence remains completely vicarious here and it is rarely positively valuated. We are meant to feel piety, not relief. It would appear, from existing evidence, that the actual performance of officially sanctioned regenerative violence is alien to the so-called zone of democratic peace, even though it could be argued, in a strange parallel to nihilistic forms of Islamic violence, to characterize the violent conduct of the (self-styled, ever slightly ridiculous, but no less dangerous for that) “knights templar” of the contemporary far right (Millar and Costa Lopez, 2021).

Conclusion

Critical arguments about the fundamental nature of the peace/violence nexus have thus far led to two substantive responses (excluding denial, a response that lacks substance). A first response has been to abandon peace as a normative horizon for political action. A second response has been to try to think peace better and thereby reduce or even undo its potential to foster violence. My own response has been a different one. I have wanted to examine in more detail how it is that “peace” fosters “violence.” Wherein consists the nexus that ties peace and violence together? And how does that nexus function? Table 1 offers a synoptic overview of the four variants of the peace/violence nexus. It shows that the four variants, although each may share certain elements in common with another variant, refer to distinct phenomena indeed. As such, they warn against comprehensive and categorical accounts of the peace/violence nexus, such as that developed by Murad Idris in Genealogies of Peace.

Table 1.

Synoptic table: parsing the peace-violence nexus.

Which violence?	Who performs?	Which demeanor?	When, which rhythm?	Which peace?
Utopian violence	The utopian	Rationally, regretfully	Establishment, irregularly	Genuine peace
Structural violence	The guardians of the peace	Rationally, cold-bloodedly	Establishment + maintenance, continuously	Stable peace
Pacifistic violence	The prophet of peace	Suddenly, theatrically	Establishment, sporadically	Aspirational peace
Regenerative violence	The children of peace	Enthusiastically	Persistence, recurrently	Habitual peace

Table 1 also shows that peace does not operate as a normative ideal in every variant of the peace/violence nexus. Stable peace and habitual peace may sound like desirable conditions to many, but that is not quite how they function in the variants of the peace/violence nexus in which they feature. Pace Murad Idris again, it is not necessarily as an ideal that peace fosters—demands, enables, triggers—violence. As mentioned a number of times already, the causal power (in my presentation) of each of these variants lies with the agents who pursue (a more worthwhile) peace and choose to perform violence in the context of this pursuit. This implies that they could choose otherwise, that the operation of any peace/violence nexus depends on the actions of human agents. It depends on human agency. Agency implies hope. It implies that establishing peace in a non-violent manner is not impossible. However, agency simultaneously implies a limit to what we may hope for and the fragility of any political or moral accomplishment. Agency, as it characterizes human beings, is marred by the brittleness of human virtue. Murad Idris may be wrong to abandon the pursuit of peace, but critical peace researchers may equally be mistaken to cling to a “deep teleology of peace” (Dingli, 2021; Klem, 2018) We may have to settle for—and cherish—(more or less extended) moments of peace and (more or less expansive) islands of peace.¹⁵ This is what human beings are capable of. This may be all that human beings are capable of.

Admittedly, this remains a theoretical argument. Let me repeat, therefore, that I do indeed assume the notion of a peace/violence nexus to be an intrinsically theoretical concept. Peace/violence nexuses cannot be observed directly, but one can conjure up a peace/violence nexus by way of the theoretical imagination and then think and observe with that concept. One could certainly proceed to test the empirical validity of the concept more systematically, but that has not been my ambition here. Empirical reality—that is to say: empirical illustrations, references to historical and contemporary happenings—featured in the argument to the extent that it fed into the presentation of the distinct variants of the peace/violence nexus, but it did not determine my account of them. There was always input, predominantly so, from “non-empirical material” such as the history of ideas, traditional myths, and other literary sources. As such, the paper participates in a particular tradition of how to do political theory (Horton and Baumeister, 2003)—interpretive more than analytical, world-disclosing more than normative—and was never meant to be anything else than a contribution of this kind to (international) political theory. I did not set out to write a sociological analysis of peace/violence nexuses or their actual manifestation. And neither did I set out to define, defend or reject a particular normative conception of peace, nor to defend or reject the use of a particular kind of violence for the sake of a particular kind of peace. If there is nonetheless a normative dimension to what I wrote, it lies in the emphasis that I put on agency in the operation of peace/violence nexuses and in the acknowledgment of the ambiguity, the particular combination of hope and humility, that I take this notion to imply.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Rikkert Horemans, Maria Mälksoo, Ted Svensson, Zeger Verleye and Jan von Schmettow for constructive feedback on an earlier version of the paper.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research benefited from a grant of the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) (Grant number: G015824N).

ORCID iD

Jorg Kustermans

Notes

Author biography

Jorg Kustermans is an associate professor of international politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. His research focuses on the dynamics of international authority and the conceptual history of peace. His book Democratic Peace: A Historical and Cultural Practice will appear in 2024 with Routledge.

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