Democratic Peace Theory in Relation to Conflict Today

Since the late 1700’s, many have looked at the Democratic Peace Theory as an outline of steps necessary to follow for a peaceful world. But while many agree with this theory, many also see flaws in it. Initially DPT made a lot of sense to me as it assumed that republican governments were essential to a world without war. The theory argued that since republican rulers are acting in the interests of the public, they are more likely to make decisions which avoid conflict whereas autocratic rulers are really only worrying about themselves since the public has no voice or say in the matter. However, when I began to think about the current conflict between the US and the Middle East, I began to question this theory.

            The point of DPT is that if we, as a successful, democratic state go in and help weaker states stabilize their government and instill a democratic foundation, it will benefit us in the long run, due to the fact that “secure nations are more likely to support free trade and maintain democratic structures”, eventually leading to a world free of conflict. However, isn’t that exactly how we got into the conflict we find ourselves in now? In 2003 we invaded Iraq with the goal of training their army and leaving them with a democratically elected government. We succeeded in this task, only to leave Iraq in 2011 and have the entire foundation come crumbling down due to a group of radicals gaining support from those who felt unfairly treated/ represented in the democracy. Now, as they are revolting, America finds itself back in the midst of conflict, with increased involvement in Syria through air strikes. Now, from my perspective, it seems that with aims of peace in war torn countries, we ended up only contributing to more conflict years later.

            Now, I do believe that if we want any sort of shot at a peaceful world, weaker countries need to be stabilized. Most of the conflict that seems to be going on today revolves around weak central governments and the people not having a voice. However, at what cost can we fix this? In her article “Democratic Peace Theory: An Appropriate Guide to Foreign Policy”, Jennifer Jackson mentions the philosophical gap between the long-term goal of world peace and the short-term goal of national interest. I feel this is the most important idea to look at when establishing the appropriateness of DPT. It’s no secret that stabilizing a weak country takes time.  But the problem is, while we are devoting our time and resources to helping weaker countries build a foundation, we are involving ourselves in conflicts we really have nothing to do with. To me, the idea of getting ourselves involved in all these wars for the purpose of one day not being in wars seems kind of ironic. Nobody in America wants to be in war right now if we don’t need to be, however I do recognize that if we want to even potentially have hope for a peaceful world one day, actions like this are necessary. I think the real issue just comes in us, as a nation, deciding how far we are willing to go in order to ensure this possibility. As one of the strongest, most stable countries in the nation, I see how we have a sort of obligation to help weaker states. However I think there has to come a time where we put our foot down, and say enough is enough. The Democratic Peace Theory lies a nice foundation for a globally stable future. However, the more we involve ourselves in other countries’ conflicts, the further away the possibility of peace seems. So until a time comes when all countries are stable, I think we need to find a better way to involve ourselves in other countries’ issues than what we’ve been doing, because judging by how well it worked out when we invaded Iraq, it seems some serious change is necessary.

Jackson, Jennifer, “Democratic Peace Theory: An Appropriate Guide to Foreign Policy?

A Plan for Syria

Between conflicts with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the oppressive reign of Bashar al-Assad, the United States has been forced to create a plan for dealing with the country of Syria. With the recent rise of ISIS, there have been many conflicting viewpoints on how the United States should intervene. President Barack Obama has attempted to avoid putting United States troops in Syria to this point, but many critics believe that the only way to stop the growth of ISIS is to use the force of the greatest military in the world to its fullest extent. Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has been making the rounds promoting his new book Worthy Fights, in which he describes his years as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and as the Secretary of Defense. He has strongly opposed the actions taken by President Obama, and is among those who believe that putting United States troops on the ground in Syria is the only way to stop ISIS in their tracks.

In our discussion section on Friday afternoon, we attempted to formulate a plan for how the United States should deal with the conflicts in Syria. To this point, President Obama has committed to a number of air strikes that have been largely unsuccessful. It is believed that the reason for the lack of air strike success has been due to the lack of reliable intelligence in the area. Without United States troops on the ground providing intelligence, air strike success will naturally be limited. I believe that, in order to improve the effectiveness of air strikes, the United States must send enough troops to Syria in order to gain intelligence on the ground.

However, I also believe that United States troops should not necessarily be the primary focus on the country’s efforts in Syria. Former United States President Bill Clinton made the valid point that the United States has unsuccessfully attempted to win ground wars with our troops in the Middle East over the years and that we need a different approach. While I believe that some United States troops will certainly be necessary, arming and training rebel groups and gaining support from surrounding countries has to be the main effort.

This process will likely be extremely lengthy, and talking about a timetable right now is not reasonable. It is impossible to predict how long the United States will need to remain involved in Syria, and putting a time limit on it will only result in future problems. The country should remain involved for as long as it takes to stabilize the area. I do not believe that Bashar al-Assad should be much of a focus in this effort. Right now, the biggest threat to the United States and its allies is ISIS. Stopping their growth should be the one and only priority.

The U.S. The Great Humanitarian

           The United States is known for it’s humanitarian intervention all through out the world. As a great power they take responsibility to spread human rights, peace and democracy to the world. But when should the nation intervene and when should the U.S. just stay home and focus on more domestic problems. Today we ask this question with the conflicts in Syria.

            To some the Islamic State in Syria is a great threat to our nations people and to our allies. This force must be stop. Others may not see it as an immediate threat. In the month of September President Barack Obama decided to send airstrikes over Syria to “destroy and dismantle” ISIS. Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta criticized President Obama for not taking into consideration all his options and not sending ground troops to Syria. Panetta claims you need to know what your target is before you send air strikes.

            What should the U.S. do in this situation? If we were to decide to send ground troops along with more airstrikes, when do we stop? Do we begin another war that could last years, killing both American and Syrian lives. Are ultimate goal is destroy the terrorist groups and ensure safety in the world and the U.S., this may come at a large price.

            In the situation that the U.S. stays in Syria and destroys ISIS, the U.S. may decide to stay for nation building and secure U.S. safety against another terrorist groups that may arise.  The greatest explanation for the U.S. potential to stay in Syria is the Democratic Peace Theory. The U.S has the ultimate goal to spread democracy and peace. By converting other nations into democracies the security of the U.S. seems to be more secure.  We have seen through out history that the U.S. has used this reason to engage in intervention. “Each presidential administration since President Woodrow Wilson has used the democratic peace theory as the basis of its justification for foreign intervention, particularly war.”(Jackson, Democratic peace theory: a appropriate guide to foreign policy, 2011)

           

            It might seem that we have ulterior motives to stay after the terrorist groups are destroyed. We want to continue our reputation as a world leader in democracy. When we help build a strong democracy the U.S. can take credit for its accomplishment further down in history. When we see a weak state the U.S. at times can see it as a perfect occasion to re-build the state as a democracy. But I believe because of the severity of the issue in Syria and the potential threat it has to the American people, the U.S. may decide to stay in Syria in order to assure that no other terrorist groups arises. We have seen this happen before especially in the Middle East.  We don’t exactly know what future steps the U.S. will take, but it is most likely that no decision will be an easy decision. ISIS power continues to build and each day we hear on news outlets about new people who have joined their movement. Now we have to question what is the nations next step to stop this and bring safety to all people.

The False Peace

       Since 1945 there has been a phenomenon of relatively few wars. This has been discussed by many international theorists and has given rise to several different theories as to the cause of the peace. These range from the Capitalist peace which posits that nations that trade together don’t go to war, the Institutional Peace where the international institutions keep the peace and the Democratic Peace theory stresses that only government type creates this peace. Without a doubt these theories might seem to explain the peace but a closer look reveals it is more nuanced than that.

            The Capitalist peace seems to make the most sense because trade partners logically would be allies so that they can both benefit. But capitalism is not about a mutually beneficial trade relationship as we have seen from the many human rights infringements across the world. Capitalists seek to maximize their profit and this can mean war sometimes, as we saw from the US involvement in the middle east long speculated to be about oil industry as much as national security. Destroying a country though military involvement can cause their resources value to plummet further increasing the profit to be had. Clearly economic reasons can’t be solely to blame for the peace we have seen in recent history.

            Other theorist claim that Institutions such as the U.N have risen in power on the international stage, allowing peace to be negotiated before military involvement comes into play. While this constructivist approach does have logical reasoning, it greatly overestimates the power that these institutions have. The US dominates in the U.N. using its soft power to set the agenda and coerce other states into doing what it wants, with its military might backing them up. The U.N. could never oppose the U.S. nor could it stop them from going to war. They were not able to stop the Vietnam war, nor the Iraq war and they certainly could not stop a U.S. China conflict from breaking out should it come to that. Each country has sovereignty and ultimately these institutions have to respect that. This means that they will only ever has as much power as the countries that make it up allow them to have. If the institutions have no real power, then they can not have single-handedly have caused this peace.

            Finally, the Democratic peace is often the most cited reason for the peace we have enjoyed. Nations that have democracies don’t go to war theorists argue because they have common goals and shared beliefs. This is simply untrue since there are many forms of democracies, varying in system, voting, legitimacy, goals and beliefs among other things. There can be socialist democracies, false democracies, communist democracies and many more. Simply because two nations have elected their leaders in similar fashions does not mean that they have common goals either, in fact each nation is working in its own self-interest not toward that of a common democratic goal. In reality, there has been many conflicts between democracies, however other reasons have prevented war. The US, for example has overthrown democratically elected leaders in South America on multiple occasions through supporting military coups and even providing weapons to such organizations as occurred in Chile and Guatemala. While other nations would have gone to war over something like this, the US is simply too powerful to confront, allowing them to maintain this so called peace.

            Finally, all these theories can be discredited simply because of the ambiguous definitions of war and peace. War is a difficult term to define, and while there are basic criteria such as a death count of over 2,000 it is difficult to say whether this is really a good way to measure the severity of a conflict. By this definition, a country could completely blockade all trade to an enemy nation, assassinate the entire cabinet or ruling body and never be at war. This can undoubtedly be seen in the careful steps Obama took to not declare a war in Libya while still maintaining an active military conflict through bombings and enforcement of a no-fly zone. He argued that we did not need permission from Congress because the bombing did not qualify as hostilities. It is this ambiguity that has lead theorist to claim that there has been peace and to seek out reasons it. Even if this so called peace actually existed, we all know that correlation does not prove causation and an increase in peace does not mean it is cause by any of these factors, just as the increase in global warming is not caused by the decrease in pirates.   

Sources: 
 Peace Lecture

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/jun/22/are-us-actions-libya-subject-war-powers-resolution/

 The Pinochet File: How U.S. Politicians, Banks and Corporations Aided Chilean Coup, Dictatorship. Democracy Now! September 10, 2013

Avoiding The Real Problem: Avoiding Peace in Syria and Gaza

       When reading the two opposing views on the online debate on Syria intervention, I could not help but relate it to a similar debate regarding a conflict happening not too far away from that country—how to make peace in Israel. As this is where most of my interest gravitates towards, I have been astound at how almost any conflict or topic we have covered in class has been able to be related back to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in some way. After a recent conference in Cairo, many international donors promised to give money to the Palestinian government to help rebuild the Gaza Strip. There has been much debate over whether or not this is a good idea, seeing no period of time longer than ten years has passed without war breaking out in Gaza. The constant tension continues to grow between Israelis and Arabs, and I believe rebuilding Gaza will simply be a waste of time, money, and overall effort. I feel as though by rebuilding Gaza, both parties of this long ongoing conflict are ignoring the bigger problem--that peace has not been found. Because of this, there is no telling just how long it will be until violence breaks out again and destroys all the reconstruction so many other countries plan to help create. The Palestinian government is simply rebuilding something that will very likely be destroyed soon again, like they are trying to cover up a wound without letting it heal.

            This relates directly back to article we read in class about the debate on Syria intervention. In the debate, Ed Husain, Senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies of the Council on Foreign Relations, argues that a ceasefire is the best way to go about fixing the conflict in Syria, and military intervention is not the answer. I completely agree with him, because similar to the Arab-Israeli conflict, he feels as though violence has not been the answer thus far and therefore will not be the answer this time. No more improvements will be able to be made until complete peace is made and complete violence is stopped, and this is the case in both Syria and Gaza. In both conflicts, avoiding full peace, by either imposing military action in Syria, or rebuilding Gaza, would not be solving the real problem, and practically forecasting future violence, in my opinion. As Husain further states, “The immediate priority is to stop the loss of life on both sides in the conflict in Syria. The best guarantee of that is to allow Russian, French and British diplomats to work together to broker a ceasefire with immediate effect” (1). This further illustrates his argument that peace should be the top priority in fully solving this conflict. 

            Many times in politics, both domestically and internationally, people can lose sight of the states best future interests because they get so caught up in wanting immediate results. However, though it may not come as easy, finding true peace now is the only way to ensure both of these conflicts will not get worse in the future before it is too late.

Sources:
(1) http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/810