Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs
o
What difference do liberal principles and
institutions make to the conduct of the foreign affairs of liberal states?
o
They judge that international relations are
governed by perceptions of national security and the balance of power; liberal
principles and institutions, when they do intrude, confused and disrupt the
pursuit of balance-of-power politics
o
Liberalism is a distinct ideology and set of
institutions that has shaped the perceptions of and capacities for, foreign
relations of political societies that range from social welfare or social
democratic to laissez faire (liberal nationalism)
§
Cannot be reliance of the balance of power
§
Not peace-loving
o
Yet the peaceful intent and restraint that
liberalism does manifest in limited aspects of its foreign affairs announces
the possibility of a world peace this side of the grave or of the world
conquest. It has strengthened the prospects for a world peace established by
the steady expansion of a separate peace among liberal societies
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II
o
Liberal has been identified with an essential
principle—the importance of the freedom of the individual
§
Moral freedom, the right to be treated, and a
duty to treat others as ethical subjects, and not as objects or means only
o
Negative freedom – includes freedom of
conscience, a free press and free speech, equality under the law, and the right
to hold, and therefore to exchange, property without fear of arbitrary seizure
§
Calls for freedom from arbitrary authority
o
Positive freedom –
§
Right necessary to protect and promote the
capacity and opportunity for freedom
§
Social and economic rights as equality of
opportunity in education and healthcare and employment necessary for effective
self-expression and participation, and thus are among liberal rights
o
Third liberal right, democratic participation or
representation is necessary to guarantee the other two
§
To ensure that morally autonomous individuals
remain free in those areas of social action where public authority is needed,
public legislation has to express the will of the citizens making laws for
their own community
o
Political order of laissez-faire and social
welfare liberals is marked by a shared commitment to four essential
institutions
§
Citizens possess juridical equality and other
fundamental civil rights such as freedom of religion and the press
§
Effective sovereigns of the state are
representative legislatures deriving their authority from the consent of the
electorate and exercising their
authority free from all restraint apart from the requirement that basic civil
rights be preserved
·
The impact of liberalism on foreign affairs, the
state is subject to neither the external authority of other states nor to the
internal authority of special prerogatives held
§
The economy rests on the recognition of the
rights of private property including the ownership of means of production
·
Property is justified by individual acquisition
or by social agreement or social utility
·
Exclude state socialism and state capitalism,
but need not exclude market socialism and various form of mixed economy
·
Economic decisions are predominantly shaped by
the forces of supply and demand, domestically and internationally, and are free
from strict control by bureaucracies
-
III
o
Unlike liberalisms domestic realm, its foreign
affairs have experienced startling but less than fully appreciated success.
Together they shape an unrecognized dilemma, for both these successes and
weaknesses in large part spring from the same cause: international implications
of liberal principles and institutions
o
Mutual respect for sovereign right then becomes
the touchstone of international liberal theory. When states respect each
other’s rights, individuals are free to establish private international ties
without state interference
§
Profitable exchange between merchants and
educational exchanges among scholars then create a web of mutual advantages and
commitments that bolsters sentiments of public respect
§
Even though liberal states have become involved
in numerous wars with nonliberal states, constitutionally secure liberal states
have yet to engage in war with one another.
o
Realism, in its classical formation holds that
the state is and should be formally sovereign, effectively unbounded by
individual rights nationally and thus capable of determining its own scope of
authority
§
State of war
§
International Anarchy
§
Geography—“insular security” and “continental
insecurity”—may affect foreign policy attitudes; but it does not appear to
determine behavior
§
Belief, expectations and attitudes of leaders
and masses should influence strategic behavior
o
Recent additions to game theory specify some
circumstances under which prudence could lead to peace. Experience; geography;
expectation of cooperation and belief patterns; and the differing payoffs to
cooperation (peace) or conflict associated with various types of military
technology all appear to influence the calculus
o
Second, at the level of social determinants,
some might argue that relations among any group of states with similar social
structures or with compatible values would be peaceful (communist, feudal or socialist
don’t support the conclusion)
o
Third, at the level of interstate relations,
neither specific regional attributes nor historic alliances or friendships can
account for wide reach of liberal peace
§
Raymond Aron has identified three types of
interstate peace: empire, hegemony (dominant of US as a peacekeeper enforcer),
and equilibrium
o
Some realists might suggest that liberal peace
simply reflects the absence of deep conflicts of interest among liberal states
-
IV
o
Some have argued that democratic states would be
inherently peaceful simply and solely because in these states citizens rule the
polity and bear the cost of wars
o
Other liberals have argues that laissez-faire
capitalism contains an inherent tendency toward rationalism, and that since war
is irrational, liberal capitalisms will be pacifistic
o
Montesquieu argued that “Peace is the natural
effect of trade”
o
Kant offers “Perpetual Peace”
§
Shows how republics, once established, lead to
peaceful relations. He argues that once the aggressive interests of absolutist
monarchies are tamed an once the habit of respect for individual rights is
engrained by republican government, wars would appear as the disaster to the
people’s welfare that he and the other liberals thought them to be
·
People are against war because of its cost
(calamities of war)
·
One could add to Kant’s list another source of
pacification specific to liberal constitutions. The regular rotation of office
in liberal democratic polities is a nontrivial device that helps ensure that
personal animosities among heads of government provide no lasting, escalating
source of tension
§
Complementing the constitutional guarantee of
caution, international law adds a second source—a guarantee of respect
·
“as culture progresses and men gradually come
closer together toward a greater agreement on principles for peace and
understanding
·
The experience of cooperation helps engender
further cooperative behavior when the consequences of state policy are unclear
but (potentially) mutually beneficial
§
Cosmopolitan law adds material incentives to
moral commitment. The cosmopolitan right to hospitality permits the “spirit of
commerce” sooner or later to take hold of every nation, thus impelling states
to promote peace and try to avert war
·
International labor division/ free trade
according to comparative advantage
·
Each economy is said to be better off than it
would have been under autarky; each thus acquires an incentive to avoid
policies that would lead the other to break these economic ties
·
A further cosmopolitan source of liberal peace
is that the international market removes difficult decisions of production and
distribution from the direct sphere of state policy
o
No one of these constitutional, international or
cosmopolitan sources is alone sufficient, but together they plausibly connect
the characteristics of liberal politics and economies with sustained liberal
peace
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