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