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WAYS OF WAR AND PEACE

REALISM, LIBERALISM, AND SOCIALISM

Michael W. Doyle

t>rr W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

NEW YORK I LONDON

Copyright © 1997 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Doyle, Michael W. Ways of war and peace : realism, liberalism, and socialism I

Michael W. Doyle. p. em.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-393-03826-2. - ISBN 0-393-96947-9 (pbk.)

I. Peace. 2. International relations-Philosophy. 3. Politics and war. 4. World politics-1989- I. Title.

JXI963 .D687 1997 327.1'7-dcZO

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc .

96-15090 CIP

500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110 www. wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd. Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London WIT 3QT

8 9 0

to Amy Gutmann, who inspired my effort to build a bridge between international politics

and political philosophy and whose advice and affection sustained me along the way

250 LIBERALISM

through logrolling and least common denominators different too from individ­ ual interests. Democratic capitalism means free trade and a peaceful foreign policy simply because they are, Schumpeter claims, the first best solutions for rational majorities in capitalist societies.

The contrast between Locke and Schumpeter thus emerges as the contrast between First and Second Image Liberals. Schumpeter makes the peace, which is a duty of the Lockean Liberal statesman, into the structured outcome of capitalist democracy. Both highlight for us powerful elements of Liberal world politics. But if there is a long state of peace between Liberal republics, Locke offers us a weak explanation for it. (How do they avoid partiality and bias so regularly in these relations?) He also misses the persistent state of war between Liberals and non-Liberals. (Why are the Liberals so regularly more partial here?) Schumpeter misses the Liberal sources of war with non-Liberals, unless we should blame all these wars on the non-Liberals.

Kant and the Liberal internationalists try, as we see next, to fill these gaps as they illustrate for us the larger potential of the Liberal tradition.

Ill c H A p T E R E I G H T 111

Internationalism: Kant

It can be shown that this idea of federalism, extending gradually to encompass all states and thus leading to perpetual peace, is practicable and has objective reality. For if by good fortune one powerful and enlightened nation can form a republic (which is by nature inclined to seek perpetual peace), this will provide a focal point for federal associa­ tion among other states. These will join up with the first one, thus securing the freedon of each state in accordance with the idea of inter­ national right, and the whole will gradually spread further and further by a series of alliances of this kind.

-Immanuel Kant, "Perpetual Peace"1

WHAT DIFFERENCE DO Liberal principles and institutions make to the conduct of the foreign affairs of Liberal states? Despite the contributions of Locke and the Institutionalists, on the one hand, and Smith and the commercial pacifists, on the other, a thicket of conflicting judgments suggests that the legacies of Liberalism have not been clearly appreciated. For many citizens of Liberal states, Liberal principles and institutions have so fully absorbed domestic poli­ tics that their influence on foreign affairs tends to be either overlooked alto­ gether or, when perceived, exaggerated. Liberalism becomes either unself­ consciously patriotic or inherently "peace-loving." For many scholars and diplo­ ~e relations among independent states appear to differ so significantly from domestic politics that influences of Liberal principles and domestic Lib-

1 Immanuel Kant, "Perpetual Peace," Kant's Political Writings (1795), trans H. B. Nisbet and ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 104.

252 LIBERALISM

1 institutions are denied or denigrated. They judge that international rela­ ;.~ns are governed by perceptions of national security and the balance of power; {iberal principles and institutions, when they do intrude, confuse and disrupt the pursuit of balance of power politics.

Although Liberalism is misinterpreted from both these points of view, a cru­ cial aspect of the Liberal legacy is captured by each. Liberalism is a distinct ideology and set of institutions that have shaped the perceptions of and capaci­ ties for foreign relations of political societies that range from social welfare or social democratic to laissez-faire. It defines much of the content of the Liberal patriot's nationalism. _!:.iberalism does appear to disrupt the pursuit of balance o!.£9wer politics. Thus its foreign relations cannot be adequately explained (or prescribed) by a sole reliance on the balance of power. But contrary to the pacifists, Liberalism is not inherently "peace-loving," nor is it consistently restrained or peaceful in intent. Furthermore, Liberal practice may reduce the probability that states will successfully exercise the consistent restraint and peaceful intentions that a world peace may well require in the nuclear age. Yet the peaceful intent and restraint that Liberalism does manifest in limited aspects of its foreign affairs announce the possibility of a world peace this side of the grave or of world conquest. Liberals, contrary to the Institutionalists, have created something considerably more stable than a troubled peace constantly threatening an outbreak of war. They have strengthened the prospects for a world peace established by the steady expansion of a separate peace among Liberal societies.

::!}lis chapter highlights the differences between Liberal practice toward ?ther Liberal societies and Liberal practice toward non-Liberal societies. It argues that Liberalism has achieved extraordinary success in the first and has contributed to exceptional confusion in the second. Appreciating these Liberal legacies calls, first, for another look at one of the greatest of Liberal philoso­ phers, Immanuel Kant, for he is a source of insight, policy, and hope.

IMMANUEL KANT

Just as Locke is the theorist of individualist (Image I) statesmanship, and the commercial pacifists of societal (Image II) forces, Kant is the Liberal theorist of international interaction (Image III) , distinguishing outcomes by differences in interaction. He highlights how the interacting pair (dyad) makes for outcomes that cannot be predicted by a dispositional analysis of the foreign policies of Liberal states. Peace holds only in the interaction between Liberals, he argues, not in relations between Liberals and non-Liberals. The peace they enjoy is, moreover, a state of peace, not merely successful deterrence or an absence of opportunity for war.

Internationalism: Kant

Kant

Human Nature

Domestic Society

Interstate System

X

X

XX

2 53

His life (1724-1804) gave little inclination of the revolution he was to ignite in the tradition of philosophy in the West. Born in Konigsberg, a subject of Prussia, the son of a poor saddlemaker, he earned his tuition to the university by writing essays for his less assiduous fellow students and by winning at bil­ liards (i.e., pool sharking). He took a graduate degree in physics, with a disserta­ tion in kinetics, and began a long, exhausting and undistinguished career as a privat docent (tutor), teaching anything from anthropology to the sciences. At fifty-seven he suddenly burst upon the world with the publication of the Cri­ tique of Pure Reason, and over the next ten years he wrote the various critiques and other studies that were to lay the foundations of rigorous philosophy for the

next two centuries. Short (five feet), frail, and amazingly punctilious (housewives of Konigsberg

were reported to set their clocks by the regularity of his daily walk), Kant led a life almost solely of the mind. Still, he was in reliable contact with the currents of his day, reacting to both public and intellectual events. Indeed, it was the arrival of Rousseau's Emile that occasioned the only known, avoidable lapse in his schedule; he was so startled by the brilliance of Rousseau's arguments that he lost track of his time and resolved to respond to the Genevan. He did so by developing a moral theory that made a categorical imperative for individuals what Rousseau saw as the General Will of a society.

"Perpetual Peace" Kant's "Perpetual Peace,:: a mature work, written in 1795 after he had estab­ lished his system of philosophy, predicts the ever-widening pacification of a Liberal pacific union. It also explains that pacification, and at the same time suggests why Liberal states would not, regretfully, be pacific in their relations with non-Liberal states. Kant argues that perpetual peace will be guaranteed by the widening acceptance of three "definitive articles" of peace. When an nations have accepted the definitive articles in a metaphorical "treaty" of per- _, petual peace he asks them to sign, perpetual peace will have been established.

The importance of Immanuel Kant as an theorist of international ethics has been well appreciated.2 Moreover, the ultimate aim of Kant's theory is to estab-

2 A partial list of significant studies on Kant's international theory includes: A C. Armstrong, "Kant's Philosophy of Peace and War," Journal of Philosophy 28 ( 1931 ), pp. 97-204; Karl Friedrich, Inevitable Peace (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948); Callie, Phi-

254 LIBERALISM

lish the grounds on which a "moral politician"- "someone who conceives of the principles of political expediency in such a way that they [sic] can co-exist with morality" -can adopt a strategy of peace as a practical duty. To show that the duty is practical, Kant wants to demonstrate that it is not impossible. He does this by showing that it can be imagined to follow logically from human beings' pursuing their rational self-interest in the circumstances of the world as we know it. 3

Kant's analytic theory of international politics is thus crucial to his project of eventual universal peace. "Perpetual Peace" helps us understand the interactive i1ature of international relations. Methodologically he tries to teach us that we cannot stud either the s stemic re ations o states or e vanebes v­ ior in isolation from one another. Like George and Martha in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the behavior of state A and state B cannot be understood in isolation from its pair. 4 Kant's states continue to live in interna­ tional anarchy- in the sense that there is no world government- but this anar­ chy is tamed and made subject to law rather than to fear and threat of war.

ant's t eory is, moreover, a eory of state interest and of w at does and what does not constitute a threat. Just as the superior capability of another state would be inherently threatening in Hobbes's Structural Realists, so autocratic regimes would be assumed to be inherently threatening to Kantians. Rather than an alternative to rational national interest theory, Kant offers a specifica-

losophers of Peace and War; William Galston, Kant and the Problem of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975); Pierre Hassner, "Immanuel Kant," in Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds. History of Political Philosophy (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1972); Hin­ sley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace; Hoffman, "Rousseau on War and Peace"; George A. Kelly, Idealism, Politics, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969); Patrick Riley, Kant's Political Philosophy (Totowa, N.J. : Rowman and Littlefield, 1983); Kenneth Waltz, "Kant, Liberalism, and War," American Political Science Review 56 (1962), pp. 331- 40; Yirmiahu Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); Susan Shell, The Rights of Reason (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980); Howard Williams, Kant's Political Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983); Roger Sulli­ van, Immanuel Kant's Moral Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Sissela Bok, A Strategy for Peace (New York: Pantheon, 1989); and Pierre Laberge, "Kant on Justice and the Law of Nations," in Terry Nardin and David Mapel, eds., The Constitution of Inter­ national Society (forthcoming). 3

"0n the Disagreement between Morals and Politics in Relation to Perpetual Peace," in "Perpetual Peace," p. 118. I will cite Kant's works from Immanuel Kant, Kant's Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). I cite "Perpetual Peace" (1795) as PP; "The Idea for a Universal History with a Cos­ mopolitan Purpose" (1784) as UH; "The Contest of Faculties" (1798) as CF; "The Meta­ fhysics of Morals" (1797) as MM.

This was the minimum condition argued by Kenneth Waltz to be essential to a systemic, structural model of world politics. The analogy to Albee's play is Waltz's as well; see Theory of International Politics, where Waltz's quotes, "That which is George or Martha, individu­ ally, does not explain what is compounded between them, nor how" (p .75).

Internationalism: Kant 2 55

tion of what does (and should) constitute the public interest that a Liberal state should (and usually does) rationally pursue.

K<>nt liltP Hobbes. begins with the state of nature. which is a state of ' ... ,_ - '

""tates," he bluntly says, "like lawless savages, exist in a condition devoid of right ... this condition is one of war. .. .'' 5 International law constitutes no guarantee of justice in these circumstances. States therefore have the right to make war in this condition when they are injured (and legal proceedings do not provide satisfaction). But they also may make war (1) when they "believe" they are injured (and legal proceedings fail to satisfy the grievance) or (2) when the state experiences a "threat" as another state makes preparations for war or (3) when another state achieves an alarming increase in power.6 From this last consideration follows the right to maintain a balance of power.

The rights of peace include neutrality, rights to guarantees, and defensive alliances. During war all means of conflict ·us in bello are allowe xce t those that render ones own Citizens "unfit to be citizens" of a possible eventual peace based on international law. Thus ~ies, assassins, pmsoners, sharpshoot­ ers, propaganda: All are banned. So too are war aims (jus ad bellum) that involve punishment, permanent conquest, subjugation, or extermination. Just w~rs are defensive in ~· Conquest for the sake of reforming an unjust enemy states is permitted, forcing them "to accept a new constitution of a nature that is unlikely to encourage their warlike inclination."7 But no peace should constitute a violation of the fundamental rights of the citizens of a conquered state.8

The state of war requires decisions on the basis of right, but it does not allow for security or welfare. The will to subjugate is always present, and the produc­ tion of armaments for defense ("which often makes peace more oppressive and destructive of internal welfare than war itself') can never be relaxed. Only a true "state of international right" can establish peace. The "European 6alance of power" IS nothing more than an illusion, like Swift's famous house con­ structed in such perfect harmony (balance) that as soon as a sparrow landed on it, it collapsed. Peace has to be founded on a different basis.9 Thus, for example, the United States and the USSR were peaceful in their Cold War relations, experiencing very few direct casualties. And Venezuela and Argentina have never fought a war against each other, nor have Iceland and Indonesia. But nuclear deterrence goes a long way to account for the "peace" of the first, and distance and lack of capacity a long way to account for the second and third.

5Kant, MM, para. 54, p. 165. 6 Ibid., para. 56, p. 167. 7 Ibid., para. 60, p. 170. 8 Ibid., para. 57, pp. 168-69. 9 That is, it has to be constructed by changes in domestic structures and international rela­ tions among states.

~

256 LIBERALISM

None of these sets of relations escaped from the state of war. The Kantian peace, on the other hand, is a state of peace, experienced while relations are close and interdependent and irrespective of arms levels or technologies

Preliminary Articles. Kant begins with a set of six preliminary articles designed to build confidence among states still in the state of war. 10

l. No peace treaty will be considered valid if it harbors a secret intent to resume war at some more favorable opportunity. True peace agreements should be distinguished from truces if states are going to learn to trust each other.

2. No independent state should be subject to 'conquest, purchase, or inheri­ tance. This provision is designed to establish the norm of "territorial integrity."

3. Standing armies will be gradually abolished. 4. No national debt will be incurred with the purpose of enhancing interna­

tional power. This provision is designed to limit the incentives to engage in war by requiring that wars be fought from current revenues.

5. No state will forcibly interfere in the constitution or government of another. Supplementing the second provision, this guarantees "political inde­ pendence" -the second of the two principles underlying modern sovereign equality.

6. No state will commit war crimes-use poisoners, assassins, promote sub­ version- because these are acts that destroy the mutual confidence a future peace will require.

Together these principles are designed to build the mutual confidence and respect that establishing a true peace will require. Well-intentioned, "enlight­ ened despots" (Kant praises his own Frederick the Great) should seek to further these principles, and they sometimes have. 11 But these principles alone are not likely to be effective in the state of war, when confusion and powerful incen­ tives for aggression are prevalent. What is needed, Kant argues, is an institution­ alization-a constitutionalization-of peace. The continuing dangers of~ state of war make it "necessary to establish a federation of peoples [to] protect one another against external aggression . . . [going beyond an] alliance which can be terminated at any time, so that it has to be renewed periodically." 12

1°Kant, PP, pp. 93-97. 11 Kant remarks on Frederick, ibid., p. 102. This point was drawn to my attention by Dr. Dominique Leydet. 12 Kant, MM. para. 54, p. 165. In 1792 Madison came to the same insight Kant developed. Madison criticized "Jean-Jacques Rousseau's" plan for collective security. Actually, as noted in chapter 4, this was the Abbe de St.-Pierre's plan, which Rousseau had presented and dissected. Madison wrote: "Instead of beginning with an external application, and even pre­ cluding internal remedies, he [Rousseau/St.-Pierre] ought to have commenced with, and chiefly relied on, the latter prescription .. . . As the first step towards a cure, the government itself must be regenerated. Its will must be made subordinate to, or rather the same with, the will of the community." Quoted in Marvin Meyers, ed., The Mind of the Founder (Hanover: University Press of England, 1981), P· 192, and drawn to my attention by Stanley Kober.

Internationalism: Kant 2 5 7

The Definitive Articles. Th t definitive articl requires that the civil con- stitution of the state be republican. By repu ican" Kant means a politica society that has, from a formal-legal point of view, solved the problem of com­ bining moral autonomy, individualism, and social order. A private property and market-oriented economy partially addresses that dilemma in the private sphere. The public, or political, sphere is more troubling. Kant's answer is a republic that preserves juridical freedom-the legal equality of citizens as subjects-on the basis of a representative government with a separation of pow­ ers. Juridical freedom is preserved because the morally autonomous individual is by means of representation a self-legislator, making laws that apply equally to all citizens including himself. Tyranny is avoided because the individual is subject to laws he does not also administer. 13

Liberal republics will progressively establish peace among themselves by means of the pacific federation, or union (foedus pacificum), described in Kant's second definitive article. The pacific union will establish peace within a federa­ tion of free states and securely mamtain the ri hts of each state. The world will not ave achieved the "perpetual peace" that provides the u timate guarantor of republican freedom until "a late stage and after many unsuccessful attempts." 14

Then, right conceptions of the appropriate constitution and great and sad expe­ rience will have taught all the nations the lessons of peace. Not until then will individuals enjoy perfect republican rights or the full guarantee of a global and just peace. In the meantime, the "pacific federation" of Liberal republics- "an enduring and gradually expanding federation likely to prevent war"- brings within it more and more republics (despite republican collapses, backsliding, and disastrous wars), creating an expanding separate peace. 15 And Kant empha­ sizes: "It can be shown that this idea of federalism extendin -;:aduall to ~pass a states and thus leading to perpetual oeace. is oracti --LL __ .:~ L

objeCtiVe reali!Y:_ For if by gooCf fortune one powerful and enlightened nation can form a republic (which is by nature inclined to seek peace), this will pro­ vide a focal point for federal association among other states. These will join up with the first one, thus securing the freedom of each state in accordance with ~ the idea of international right, and the whole will gradually spread further and further by a series of alliances of this kind." 16

13 Kant, PP. pp. 99-102; and see Riley, chap. 5. 14K ant, UH, p. 47. 15 Kant, PP. p. 105. Some have suggested, following the UH, that peace will be achieved only when all states have become republican. I think Kant meant that the peace would be established among Liberal regimes and would expand by ordinary political and legal means as new Liberal regimes appeared. By a process of gradual extension the peace would become global and then perpetual; the occasion for wars with non-Liberals would disappear as non­ Liberal regimes disappeared. This interpretation suggests that "peace comes piece (peace) by piece (peace)" and that the UH should be read in light of the later and more complete "Perpetual Peace." 161bid., p. 104.

258 LIBERALISM

The pacific union is neither a sinE!le peace treatv endinE! one war nor a state or state of nahons. Kant hnds the first insufficient. The second and third are impossible or potentially tyrannical. National sovereignty precludes reliable subservience to a state of nations; a world state destroys the civic freedom on which the development of human capacities restsY Although Kant obliquely refers to various classical interstate confederations and modern diplomatic con­ gresses, he develops no systematic organizational embodiment of this treaty, presumably because he does not find institutionalization necessary. 18 J:!e appears to have in mind a mutual nonaggression pact, perhaps a collective security agreement and the cos . . e third definitive artie

The definitive artie establishes a cosmopolitan law to o erate in con- junction with the pacific union. e cosmopo 1 an aw "shall be limited to conditions of universal hospitality." In this Kant calls for the recognition of the "right of a foreigner not to be treated with hostility when he arrives on someone else's territory." This "does not extend beyond those conditions which make it

\A possible for them to attempt to enter into relations [commerce] with the native ~llr~ ..... inhabitants."20 Hospitality does not require extending to foreigners either the _.,l~1A., right to citizenship or the ri ht to settlement, unless the forei n visitors would

pens 1 t ey were expelled. Foreign conquest and plunder also find no justifi­ cation under this right. Hospitality does appear to include the right of access and the obligation of maintaining the opportunity for citizens to exchange goods and ideas, without imposing the obligation to trade (a voluntary act in all cases under Liberal constitutions) . Liberal republican states, Kant suggests, would establish a peace among themselves while remaining in a state of war

LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM

The historical record of Liberal international relations seems to support Kant's speculations. Liberal principles and institutions seem to have had three striking effects on the foreign affairs of Liberal states. They have created incentives for

17 Kant, UH, p. 50. 18 See Schwarz (1962), p. 77, and Riley (1983), chap. 5. 19 Kant's foedus paci{lcum is thus neither a pactum pacis (a single peace treaty) nor a civitas gentium (a world state). He appears to have anticipated something like a less formally institu­ tionalized League of Nations or United Nations. One could argue that these two institutions in practice worked for Liberal states and only for Liberal states. But no specifically Liberal "pacific union" was institutionalized. Instead Liberal states have behaved for the past 200 ~ears as if such a Kantian pacific union and Treaty of Perpetual Peace had been signed. °Kant, PP, p. 106.

Internationalism: Kant 2 5 9

a separate peace among Liberal states, for aggression against non-Liberals, and for complaisance in vital matters of security and economic cooperation.

The first of the effects of Liberalism on the foreign relations of Liberal states is the establishment of a peace amon them. 21 During the nineteenth century t e United States an Great Britain engaged in nearly continual strife, includ­ ing one war, the War of 1812. But after the Reform Act of 1832 defined actual representation as the formal source of the sovereignty of the British Parliament, Britain and the United States negotiated their disputes despite, for example, British grievances against the North's blockade of the South, with which Britain had close economic ties. Despite severe Anglo-French colonial rivalry, Liberal France and Liberal Britain formed an entente against illiberal Germany before World War I. And in 1914-1915 Italy, the Liberal member of the Triple Alli­ ance with Germany and Austria, chose not to fulfill its treaty obligations under the alliance to support its allies. Instead it joined in an alliance with Britain and France that had the result of preventing it from having to fight other Lib­ eral states, and it then declared war on Germany and Austria. And despite generations of Anglo-American tension and Britain's wartime restrictions on American trade with Germany, the United States leaned toward Britain and France from 1914 to 1917, before entering the war on their side.

Nowhere was this special peace among Liberal states more clearly pro­ claimed than in President Woodrow Wilson's War Message of April 2, 1917: "Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed people of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles."22 Even in the quiet recesses of secret diplomacy, Liberalism has shaped the discourse of statesmen at crucial times of national emergency. In October 1938, as fears of war rose in Europe, President Roosevelt sent a special message to Britain. He asked the special envoy, Colonel Arthur Murray, in Murray's words, "to convey . . . to the Prime Minister ... an assurance-in the

21 Clarence Streit, Union Now: A Proposal for a Federal Union of the Leading Democracies (New York: Harper's, 1938), pp. 88, 90-92, seems to have been the first to point out (in contemporary foreign relations) the empirical tendency of democracies to maintain peace among themselves, and he made this the foundation of his proposal for a (non-Kantian) federal union of the fifteen leading democracies of the 1930s. D. V. Babst, "A Force for Peace," Industrial Research (April 1972), pp. 55-58, performed a quantitative study of this phenomenon of "democratic peace." And R. J. Rummel did a similar study of "libertarian­ ism" (in the sense of laissez-faire), focusing on the postwar period in "Libertarianism and International Violence." I use Liberal in a wider (Kantian) sense in my discussion of this issue in "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs," Part I (1983). In that essay I survey the period from 1790 to the present and find no war among Liberal states. Recent work on the thesis of democratic peace is covered later in the chapter. 22 Woodrow Wilson, The Messages and Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Albert Shaw (New York: Review of Reviews, 1924), p. 378.

260 LIBERALISM

event of hostilities and the United States being neutral-of his [Roosevelt's] desire to help in every way in his power. ... He [Roosevelt] said he wished the Prime Minister to feel he had, in so far as he, the President, was able to achieve it, 'the industrial resources of the American nation behind him in the event of war with the dictatorships.' "23

Be inning in the ei hteenth centu rowin since then a zone of peace, whic Kant called the acific federation or ion be an to

e esta ished among Liberal societies. (More than sixty Liberal states currently make up the union. Most are in Europe and North America, but they can be found on every continent.)

Of course the outbreak of war in any given year between any two given states is a low- robabili event. But the occurrence of a war between any two adJ;­ cent states. considered over a long time, wou be more proba~ e. T e near absence of war between Liberal states, whether adjacent or not, for almost two hundred years thus may have significance. More significant perhaps is that when states are forced to decide on which side of an impending world war they will fight, Liberal states all wind up on the same side, despite the complexity of the paths that take them there. And we should recall that medieval and early modern Europe were the warring cockpits of states, wherein France and Britain and the Low Countries engaged in nearly constant strife. Then in the late eighteenth century there began to emerge Liberal regimes. At first hesitant and confused, and later clear and confident as Liberal regimes gained deeper domestic foundations and longer international experience, a pacific union of these Liberal states became established. These characteristics do not prove that the peace among Liberals is statistically significant or that Liberalism is the peace's sole valid explanation.24 But they do suggest that we consider the possi-

23 From Barbara Farnham, Roosevelt and the Munich Crisis: A Study of Political Decision­ Making (Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming 1996). One can presume that Roosevelt's motivation, as in most political events, was complex. He did not categorically support every foreign policy of a democracy (nor should he have). He, for example, ques­ tioned the legitimacy of the British Empire. America had failed to support the democracies financially in the 1920s. Roosevelt was concerned as well to avoid a Nazi conquest of Europe and the threat a united Nazi Europe would pose to the United States. "On the Atlantic," the president also said, "our first line is the continued independent existence of a very large group of nations." (From a January 1939 briefing to the Senate Military Affairs Committee, quoted in John MacVicar Haight, American Aid to France, 1938-1940 [New York: Athe­ neum, 1979], p. 98.) But Roosevelt's aim was not to establish a balance of power in Europe between Nazi Germany and democratic Britain and France but to defeat the Nazi forces altogether. See also Haight, pp. 30-31. 24 Babst (1972) did make a preliminary test of the significance of the distribution of alliance partners in World War I. He found that the possibility that the actual distribution of alliance partners could have occurred by chance was less than 1 percent (p. 56). But this assumes that there was an equal possibility that any two nations could have gone to war with each other, and this is a strong assumption. Rummel (1983) has a further discussion of signifi­ cance as it applies to his libertarian thesis.

Period

18th century

1800-1850

1850-1900

1900-1945

Internationalism: Kant 2 6 1

TABLE 8.1

The Liberal Community (By date "Liberal") 1

Total Number

Swiss Cantons2 3 French Republic 1790-1795 United States,2 1776-

Swiss Confederations, 8

United States France, 1830-1849 Belgium, 1830- Great Britain, 1832- Netherlands, 1848- Piedmont, 1848- Denmark, 1849-

Switzerland, 13

United States, Belgium, Great Britain, Netherlands Piedmont, -1861, Italy 1861- Denmark, -1866 Sweden, 1864- Greece, 1864- Canada, 1867-3

France, 1871- Argentina, 1880- Chile, 1891-

Switzerland, 29

United States, Great Britain, Sweden, Canada Greece, -1911 , 1928-1936 Italy, -1922 Belgium, -1940; Netherlands, -1940; Argentina, -1943 France, -1940 Chile, -1924, 1932 Australia, 1901

262 LIBERALISM H Internationalism: Kant 263

TABLE 8.1 (continued) Period Total Number Period Total Number

Norway, 190 5-1940 ' Israel, 1949-

New Zealand, 1907- I West Germany, 1949-

Colombia, 1910-1949 Greece, 1950-1967, 1975-

Denmark, 1914-1940 I Peru 1950-1962, 1963-1968,

Poland, 1917-1935 1980-

Latvia, 1922-1934 Turkey, 1950-1960, 1966-1971;

Germany, 1918-1932 1984-

Austria, 1918-19 34 Japan, 1951-

Estonia, 1919-19 34 Bolivia, 1956-1969, 1982-

Finland, 1919- Colombia, 1958-

Uruguay, 1919- Venezuela, 1959-

Costa Rica, 1919- Nigeria, 1961-1964, 1979-1984

Czechoslovakia 1920-1939 Jamaica, 1962-

Ireland, 1920- Trinidad and Tobago, 1962-

Mexico, 1928- Senegal, 1963-

Lebanon, 1944- Malaysia, 1963-

19454 Switzerland, the United States, 68 Botswana, 1966-

Great Britain, Sweden Singapore, 1965-

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, 1976-

Finland, Ireland, Mexico Spain, 1978-

Uruguay,-1973; 1985- Dominican Republic, 1978- Ecuador, 1978-

Chile, -197 3; 1990- Peru, 1980-1990 Lebanon,-1975 Honduras, 1981- Costa Rica, -1948, 19 53- Papua New Guinea, 1982- Iceland, 1944- El Salvador, 1984- France, 1945- Argentina, 1983- Denmark, 1945- Norway, 1945-

Uruguay, 1985- Mauritius, 1987-

Austria, 194 5- South Korea, 1988- Brazil, 1945-1954, 1955-1964; Taiwan, 1988-

1985- Thailand, 1988- Belgium, 1946- Pakistan, 1988- Netherlands, 1946- Panama, 1989- Italy, 1946- Paraguay, 1989- Philippines, 1946-1972; 1987- Madagascar, 1990- India, 1947-1975, 1977- Mongolia, 1990- Sri Lanka, 1948-1961, 1963- Namibia, 1990-

1971, 1978-1983, 1988- Nepal, 1990- Ecuador, 1948-1963, 1979-

2 6 4

Period

LIBERALISM

TABLE 8.1 (continued)

Nicaragua, 1990- Poland, 1990- Hungary, 1990- Czechoslovakia, 1990-

Total Number

1 I have drawn up this approximate list of Liberal regimes (including regimes that were Liberal democratic as of 1990) according to the four "Kantian" institutions described as essential: market and private property economies; polities that are externally sovereign; citi­ zens who possess juridical rights; and "republican" (whether republican or parliamentary monarchy), representative government. This last includes the requirement that the legisla­ tive branch have an effective role in public policy and be formally and competitively (either inter- or intraparty) elected. Furthermore, I have taken into account whether male suffrage is wide (that is, 30 percent) or, as Kant would have had it (MM, p. 139), open to "achieve­ ment" by inhabitants (for example, to poll tax payers or householders) of the national or metropolitan territory. (This list of Liberal regimes is thus more inclusive than a list of democratic regimes, or polyarchies [G. Bingham Powell, Contemporary Democracies (Cam­ bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 5)).) Female suffrage is granted within a generation of its being demanded by an extensive female suffrage movement, and represen­ tative government is internally sovereign (for example, including and especially over military and foreign affairs) as well as stable (in existence for at least three years). Arthur Banks and William Overstreet, eds., A Political Handbook of the World, 1982-83 (New York: McGraw­ Hill, 1983); United Kingdom, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, A Yearbook of the Com­ monwealth 1980 (London: HMSO, 1980), The Europa Yearbook for 1985 (London: Europa Publications, 1985), 2 vols.; William Langer, ed., The Encyclopedia of World History (Bos­ ton : Houghton Mifflin, 1968); U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1981); Raymond Gastil, Freedom in the World 1985 (New York, Freedom House, 1985); R. Bruce McColm and Freedom House Survey Team, eds., Freedom in the World 1990-1991 (New York: Freedom House, 1991); and James Finn eta!., Freedom in the World 1994-1995 (New York: Freedom House, 1995). 2There are domestic variations within these Liberal regimes. For example, Switzerland was Liberal only in certain cantons; the United States was Liberal only north of the Mason­ Dixon line until 1865, when it became Liberal throughout. These lists also exclude ancient "republics," since none appears to fit Kant's criteria (Stephen Holmes, "Aristippus in and out of Athens," American Political Science Review 73, 1 [ 1979], pp. 113-28). 3 Canada, as a commonwealth within the British Empire, did not have formal control of its

foreign policy during this period. 4

Selected list, excludes Liberal regimes with populations less than one million. These include all states categorized as "Free" by Freedom House and those "Partly Free" (at least 4 on the political scale and 5 on the civil liberties scale).

bility that Liberals have indeed established a separate peace- but only among themselves.

This is a feature, moreover, that appears to be special to Liberal societies. Neither specific regional attributes nor historic alliances or friendships account for the wide reach of the Liberal peace. The peace extends as far as, and no farther than, the relations among Liberal states, not including non-Liberal _.

Internationalism: Kant 265

states in an otherwise Liberal region (such as the North Atlantic during the 1930s) or excluding Liberal states in a less Liberal region (such as Central America or Africa).

Relations among any group of states with similar social structures or with compatible values or pluralistic social structures are not similarly peaceful.25

Feudal warfare was frequent and very much a sport of the monarchs and nobil­ ity. There have not been enough truly totalitarian, fascist powers (nor have they lasted long enough) to test fairly their pacific compatibility, but fascist powers in the wider sense of nationalist, military dictatorships fought one another in the 1930s in Eastern Europe. Communist powers have engaged in wars more recently in East Asia when China invaded Vietnam and Vietnam invaded Cambodia. We have not had enough democratic Socialist societies to consider the relevance of Socialist pacification. The more abstract category of pluralism does not suffice. Certainly Germany was pluralist when it engaged in war with Liberal states in 1914; Japan as well in 1941. But they were not Liberal~ among Liberals thm appears to be a special characteristic. Here the predictions of Liberal pacifists are borne out: Liberal states do exer­ cise peaceful restraint, and a separate peace exists among thef!!.lrhis separate peace provides a solid foundation for the United States' crucial alliances with the Liberal powers (NATO, the Japanese alliance, ANZUS). This foundation appears to be impervious to the quarrels with allies that have bedeviled many U.S. administrations. It also offers the promise of a continuing peace among Liberal states. And as the number of Liberal states increases, it announces the possibility of global peace this side of the grave or world conquest.

Liberalism also carries with it a second effect-what Hume called "impru­ dent vehemence." or aggression against non-Liberals. 26 Peaceful restraint seems

25 There is a rich contemporary literature devoted to explaining international cooperation and integration. Karl Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957) develops the idea of a "pluralistic security community" that bears a resemblance to the pacific union, but Deutsch limits it geographi­ cally and finds compatibility of values, mutual responsiveness, and predictability of behavior among decision makers as its essential foundations. These are important, but their particular content, Liberalism, appears to be more telling. All three traits characterized the eighteenth­ century state of war and balance of power. Joseph Nye in Peace in Parts (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971) steps away from the geographic limits Deutsch sets and focuses on levels of development; but his analysis is directed toward explaining integration-a more intensive form of cooperation than the pacific union. 26 Hume, "Of the Balance of Power," Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, pp. 346--47. With "imprudent vehemence," Hume refers to the reluctance to negotiate an early peace with France and the total scale of the effort devoted to persecuting tl1at war, which together were responsible for over half the length of the fighting and an enormous war debt. Hume of course is not describing fully Liberal republics as defined here, but the characteristics he describes do seem to reflect some of the Liberal republican features of the British eighteenth­ century constitution (the influence of both popular opinion and a representative [even if severely limited) legislature). He contrasts these effects with the "prudent politics" that should govern the balance of power and with the special but different failings characteristic

266 LIBERALISM

TABLE 8.2

International Wars Listed Chronologically*

British-Maharattan (1817-1818) Greek (1821-1828) Franco-Spanish ( 182 3) First Anglo-Burmese (1823-1826) Javanese (1825-1830) Russo-Persian (1826--1828) Russo-Turkish (1828-1829) First Polish ( 18 31) First Syrian (1831-1832) Texan (1835-1836) First British-Afghan (1838-1842) Second Syrian (1839-1840) Franco-Algerian (1839-1847) Peruvian-Bolivian ( 1841) First British-Sikh (1845-1846) Mexican-American ( 1846--1848) Austro-Sardinian ( 1848-1849) First Schleswig-Holstein ( 1848-1849) Hungarian (1848-1849) Second British-Sikh ( 1848-1849) Roman Republic ( 1849) La Plata (1851-1852) First Turco-Montenegrin

( 1852-185 3) Crimean (1853-1856) Anglo-Persian (1856--1857) Sepoy(1857-1859) Second Turco-Montenegrin

(1858-1859) Italian Unification (1859) Spanish-Moroccan (1859-1860) Italo-Roman ( 1860) ltalo-Sicilian ( 1860-1861)

Franco-Mexicuuan ( 1862-1867) Ecuadorian-Colombian (1863) Second Polish (1863-1864) Spanish-Santo Dominican

( 1863-1865) Second Schleswig-Holstein ( 1864) Lopez (1864-1870) Spanish-Chilean (1865-1866) Seven Weeks ( 1866) Ten Years (1868-1878) Franco-Prussian ( 1870-1871) Dutch-Achinese (1873-1878) Balkan (1875-1877) Russo-Turkish (1877-1878) Bosnian (1878) Second British-Afghan (1878-1880) Pacific (1879-1880) British-Zulu ( 1879) Franco-Indochinese ( 1882-1884) Mahdist (1882-1885) Sino-French (1884-1885) Central American (1885) Serbo-Bulgarian ( 1885) Sino-Japanese (1894-1895) Franco-Madagascan ( 1894-1895) Cuban (1895-1898) Italo-Ethiopian (1895-1896) First Philippine ( 1896--1898) Greco-Turkish ( 1897) Spanish-American ( 1898) Second Philippine (1899-1902) Boer (1899-1902) Boxer Rebellion ( 1900)

of" enormous monarchies." The monarchies are apparently worse; they risk total defeat and collapse because they are prone to strategic overextension, bureaucratic and ministerial decay in court intrigue and praetorian rebellion (pp. 347-48). In this connection one can compare the fates of Britain with its imprudence with Louis XIV's or Napoleon's France or, for that matter, Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy or Brezhnev's Soviet Union. Overexten­ sion to the extent of destruction is clearly worse, from the strategic point of view, than a bit nf imnrnrlPnrP

Internationalism: Kant 267

Ilinden ( 190 3) Russo-Japanese ( 1904-190 5) Central American ( 1906) Central American ( 1907) Spanish-Moroccan (1909-1910) ltalo-Turkish (1911-1912) First Balkan ( 1912-1913) Second Balkan ( 1913) World War I (1914-1918) Russian Nationalities (1917-1921) Russo-Polish ( 1919-1920) Hungarian-Allies ( 1919) Greco-Turkish (1919-1922) Riffian (1921-1926) Druze (1925-1927) Sino-Soviet ( 1929) Manchurian (1931-1933) Chaco (1932-1935) Italo-Ethiopian ( 193 5-1936) Sino-Japanese (1937-1941) Changkufeng (1938) Nomohan ( 1939) World War II (1939-1945) Russo-Finnish ( 1939-1940) Franco-Thai (1940-1941) Indonesian (1945-1946) Indochinese (1945-1954) Madagascan ( 194 7-1948)

First Kashmir (1947-1949) Palestine ( 1948-1949) H yderabad ( 1948) Korean (1950-1953) Algerian (1954-1962) Russo-Hungarian ( 19 56) Sinai (1956) Tibetan (1956--1959) Sino-Indian ( 1962) Vietnamese ( 196 5-197 5) Second Kashmir (1965) Six-Day ( 1967) Israeli-Egyptian ( 1969-1970) Football ( 1969) Bangladesh ( 1971) Philippine-MNLF ( 1972-) Yom Kippur (1973) Turco-Cypriot (1974) Ethiopian-Eritrean ( 1974-) Vietnamese-Cambodian ( 197 5-) Timor (1975-) Saharan ( 197 5-) Ogaden ( 197 6--) Ugandan-Tanzanian (1978-1979) Sino-Vietnamese ( 1979) Russo-Afghan ( 1979-) Iran-Iraqi (1980-)

*The table is from Melvin Small and J. David Singer, Resort to Arms (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982), pp. 79-80. This is a partial list of international wars fought between 1816 and 1980. In Appendices A and B Small and Singer identify a total of 575 wars in this period, but approximately 159 of them appear to be largely domestic or civil wars.

This definition of war excludes covert interventions, a few of which have been directed by Liberal regimes against other Liberal regimes. One example is the United States' effort to destabilize the Chilean election and Allende's government. Nonetheless, it is significant that such interventions are not pursued publicly as acknowledged policy. The covert destabi­ lization campaign against Chile is recounted by the U.S. Congress, Senate Select Commit­ ~ee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Covert Action zn Chile, 1963-73, 94th Congress, 1st Session (Washington, D.C. : Government Printing Office, 1975).

The argument (and this list) also exclude civil wars. Civil wars differ from international wars not in the ferocity of combat but in the issues that engender them. Two nations that could abide each other as independent neighbors separated by a border might well be the fiercest of enemies if forced to live together in one state, jointly deciding how to raise and spend taxes, choose leaders, and legislate fundamental questions of value. Notwithstanding these differences, no civil wars that I recall upset the argument of Liberal pacification.

268 LIBERALISM

to work only in the Liberals' relations with other Liberals. Liberal states have fought numerous wars with non-Liberal states.

Many of these wars have been defensive and thus prudent by necessity. Lib­ eral states have been attacked and threatened by non-Liberal states that do not exercise any special restraint in their dealings with Liberal states. Authoritarian rulers both stimulate and respond to an intern.ational political environment in which conflicts of prestige, interest, and pure fear of what other states might do all lead states toward war. War and conquest have thus characterized the careers of many authoritarian rulers and ruling parties, from Louis XIV and Napoleon to Mussolini's Fascists, Hitler's Nazis, and Stalin's Communists.

But imprudent aggression by the Liberal state has also characterized many of these wars. Both Liberal France and Britain fought expansionist colonial wars throughout the nineteenth century. The United States fought a similar war with Mexico in 1846-1848, waged a war of annihilation against the Ameri-

~ - - - -

NonetheleSs, establishing the statistical significance of Hume's assertion appears remarkably difficult. The best statistical evidence indicates that "liber­ tarian" or "democratic" states (slightly different measures) are not less war­ prone than nonlibertarian or nondemocratic states. Indeed, in these measures _they appear to be more war-prone 28 War proneness is not, however, a meaS'Ure of imprudent aggression since many wars are defensive. But that does not mean

/ that we can simply blame warfare on the authoritarians or totalitarians, as many of our more enthusiastic politicians would have us do. 29 Liberal states ("liber-

27 For a discussion of the historical effects of Liberalism on colonialism, the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, and post-World War Two interventions against non-Liberal regimes, see "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs," Part 2 (1983) and the sources cited there. 28 See Melvin Small and J. David Singer, "The War-proneness of Democratic Regimes," Jerusalem Journal of International Relations l (December 1976), pp. 50-69; Steve Chan, "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall . .. . Are Freer Countries More Pacific?," Journal of Conflict Resolution 28 (December 1984), pp. 617-48; and Erich Weede, "Democracy and War Involvement," Journal of Conflict Resolution 28 (December 1984 ), pp. 649-64. These quan­ titative studies counter Rummel's ( 1983) view that libertarian states are less prone to violence than nonlibertarian states, which he based on a sample of 1976-1980 data not representative of the war year data of 1816-1980 of Chan or the 1960-1980 data of Weed e. 29 There are, however, serious studies that show that Marxist regimes have higher military spending per capita than non-Marxist regimes (James Payne, "Marxism and Militarism," Polity [ 1987]). But this should not be interpreted as a sign of the inherent aggressiveness of authoritarian or totalitarian governments or-with even greater enthusiasm-the inherent and global peacefulness of Liberal regimes. Marxist regimes, in particular, represent a minor­ ity in the current international system; they are strategically encircled, and because of their lack of domestic legitimacy, they might be said to "suffer" the twin burden of needing

1.-.... '( Int ernationalism: Kant 2 6 9 V'l"¥_..., .

tarian") acted as initiators in 21:_out of the 56 interstate wars in which they participated between 1816 and 1980 while non-Liberals were on the initiating side in 91 out of 187 times. 30 Although non-Liberal states initiated a higher percentage of interstate wars, Liberal metropoles were the overwhelming participators in "extrasystemic wars," colonial wars, which we can assume to have been by and large initiated by the metropole (see ore, the United States intervened in the Third World re than twice as ofte in~

e period 1946-1976 as the Soviet Union i in 194 y. t e United States devoted one-quarter and the Soviet Union. one-tenth, of their~ respective defense budgets to forces designed for Third World interventions ' l. - x .. M ___ ,., __ ~- -erceived threats would presumably have a less than "

Although Liberal initiation of wars suggests some basis for Hume's assertion, it does not resolve the claim he made. Initiation or response may reflect either aggressive or defensive policy, in that an aggressive policy may provoke a rival to initiate a war and a defensive policy_may require preemption. Hume appears to suggest that Liberal policy has a tendency to be unnecessarily aggressive. To assess his assertion, we need to take into account the specific circumstances­ the threats with which the state is faced, its resources, and its goals-and doing this requires a historical understanding of time and place. If Liberals were always aggressive or always nonaggressive in relations with non-Liberals, we could reasonably argue that they are also unnecessarily aggressive, or were not. Thus we were able to support the existence of something special in Liberal foreign relations with other Liberals. But relations with non-Liberals appear more complicated. Unless we can normalize not just the number but the situa­ tions of Liberal relations with non-Liberals and non-Liberal relations with non­ Liberals, the best we can do, if we can do that, is illustrate imprudent vehe­ mence.

We should recall as well that authoritarian states also have a record of impru­ dent aggression . It was not semi-Liberal Britain that collapsed in 1815, but Napoleonic France. It was the Kaiser's Germany that dissolved in 1918, not republican France and Liberal Britain and democratic America. It was imperial

defenses against both external and internal enemies. Andreski, "On the Peaceful Disposition of Military Dictatorships" moreover, argues that {purely) military dictatorships, because of their domestic fragility, have little incentive to engage in foreign military adventures. 3°Chan (1984), p. 636. 31 Walter Clemens, "The Superpowers and the Third World," in Charles Kegley and Pat McGowan, Foreign Policy: USNUSSR (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982), pp. 11 7-18. 32 Barry Posen and Stephen Van Evera, "Overarming and Underwhelming," Foreign Policy 40 (1980), pp. 99-118, and "Reagan Administration Defense Policy," in Kenneth Oye, Robert Lieber, and Donald Rothchild, eds., Eagle Defiant (Boston: Little, Brown, 1983), pp. 86-89.

270 LIBERALISM

Japan and Nazi Germany that disappeared in 1945, not the United States or the United Kingdom. 33 It is the contrast with ideal rational strategy and even more the comparison ~th Liberal accommodation with fellow Liberals thal highlight the aggressive impmdence of Liberal relations with non-Liberals. -

Most wars, moreover, seem to arise out of calculations and miscalculations of interest, misunderstandings, and mutual suspicions, such as those that char­ acterized the origins of World War I. But we can find expressions of aggressive intent and apparently unnecessary vehemence by the Liberal state characteriz­ ing a large number of wars. 34

In relations with powerful non-Liberal states, Liberal states have missed opportunities to pursue the negotiation of arms reduction and arms control when it has been in the mutual strategic interest, and they have failed to con­ struct wider schemes of accommodation that are needed to supplement arms control. Prior to the outbreak of World War I, this is the charge that Lord Sanderson leveled against Sir Eyre Crowe in Sanderson's response to Crowe's classic memorandum on the state of British relations with Germany. 35 Sand­ erson pointed out that Crowe interpreted German demands to participate in the settlement of international disputes and to have a "place in the sun" (colo­ nies) of a size not too dissimilar to that enjoyed by the other great powers, as evidence of a fundamental aggressiveness driving toward world domination. Crowe may well have perceived an essential feature of Wilhelmine Germany, and Sanderson's attempt to place Germany in the context of other rising powers (bumptious but not aggressively pursuing world domination) may have been naive. But the interesting thing to note is less the conclusions reached than Crowe's chain of argument and evidence. He rejects continued accommoda­ tion (appeasement) with Germany not because he shows that Germany is more bumptious than France and not because he shows that Germany has greater potential as a world hegemon than the United States, which he does not even consider in this connection. Instead he is (legitimately) perplexed by the real uncertainty of German foreign policy and by its "erratic, domineering, and often frankly aggressive spirit," which accords with the well-known personal characteristics of "the present Ruler of Germany."

33 See David Lake, "Powerful Pacifists," American Political Science Review 86, l ( 1992), pp. 24-37. This does not necessarily mean that the non-Liberals are strategically inferior or less capable of mobilizing the resources needed to win. Non-Liberal Russia bore the burden of both those sets of victories. The Liberal advantage in World Wars I and II was in not fighting each other, but in being resistant to defection to the non-Liberal camp. 34The following paragraphs build on arguments I present in "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs," Part 2. 35 Memoranda by Mr. Eyre Crowe, January I, I907, and by Lord Sanderson, February 25, I907, in G. P. Gooch et al., eds., British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898-1914 (London: HMSO, 1928), vol. 3, pp. 397-431.

Internationalism: Kant 2 7 1

Similar evidence of deeply held suspicion appears to characterize U.S. diplo­ macy toward the Soviet Union. In a fascinating memorandum to President Wilson written in 1919, Herbert Hoover{then one ofWilson's advisers) recom­ mended that the president speak out against the danger of "world domination" that the "Bolsheviki" -a "tyranny that is the negation of democracy" -posed to free peoples. Rejecting military intervention as excessively costly and likely to "make us a party in reestablishing the reactionary classes in their economic domination over the lower classes," he proposed a "relief program" designed to undercut some of the popular appeal the Bolsheviks were garnering both in the Soviet Union and abroad. Although acknowledging that the evidence was not yet clear, he concluded: "If the militant features of Bolshevism were drawn in colors with their true parallel with Prussianism as an attempt at world domina­ tion that we do not stand for, it would check the fears that today haunt all men's minds." (The actual U.S. intervention in the Soviet Union was limited to supporting anti-Bolshevik Czechoslovak soldiers in Siberia and to protecting military supplies in Murmansk from German seizure-?6

In the postwar period, and particularly following the outbreak of the Korean War, U.S. diplomacy equated the "International Communist Movement" (all Communist states and parties) with "Communist imperialism" and with a domestic tyranny in the USSR that required a Cold War contest and interna­ tional subversion as means of legitimizing its own police state. U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles most clearly expressed this conviction, together with his own commitment to a strategy of "liberation," when he declared: "[W]e shall never have a secure peace or a happy world so long as Soviet communism dominates one third of all the peoples that there are, and is in the process of trying at least to extend its rule to many others."37

Opportunities for splitting the Communist bloc along cleavages of strategic national interest were delayed. Burdened with the war in Vietnam, the United States took ten years to appreciate and exploit the strategic opportunity of the Sino-Soviet split. Even the signal strategic, "offensive" success of the early Cold War, the defection of Yugoslavia from the Soviet bloc, did not receive the wholehearted welcome that a strategic assessment of its importance would have

36 Herbert Hoover to President Wilson March 29, 1919, excerpted in Thomas Paterson, ed., Major Problems in American Foreign Policy (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1978), vol. 2, f· 95. 7 U.S. Senate, Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations on the Nomination of

John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State Designate, 15 January 1953, 83d Congress, 1st Session (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1953), pp. 5-6. John L. Gaddis has noted logistical differences between laissez-faire and social welfare Liberals in policy toward the Soviet Union. In U.S. policy, until the advent of the Reagan administration, the fiscal conser­ vatism of Republicans led them to favor a narrow strategy; the fiscal liberality of Democrats led to a broader strategy. See Strategies of Containment.

2 7 2 LIBERALISM

warranted. 38 Both relationships, with Yugoslavia and China, became subject to alternating, largely ideologically derived moods: Visions of exception (they were "less ruthless," more organic to the indigenous, traditional culture) sparred with bouts ofliberal soul-searching ("we cannot associate ourselves with a totali­ tarian state").

Imprudent vehemence is also associated with Liberal foreign policy toward weak non-Liberal states; no greater spirit of accommodation or tolerance informs Liberal policy toward the many weak non-Liberal states in the Third World. This problem affects both conservative Liberals and welfare Liberals, but the two can be distinguished by differing styles of interventions. 39

Protecting "native rights" from "native" oppressors, and protecting universal rights of property and settlement from local transgressions, introduced espe­ cially Liberal motives for imperial aggression. Ending the slave trade destabi­ lized nineteenth-century West Mrican oligarchies, yet encouraging "legitimate trade" required protecting the property of European merchants; declaring the illegitimacy of "suttee" or of domestic slavery also attacked local cultural tradi­ tions that had sustained the stability of indigenous political authority. Europe­ ans settling in sparsely populated areas destroyed the livelihood of tribes that relied on hunting. The tribes defensively retaliated in force; the settlers called for imperial protection.40 The protection of cosmopolitan Liberal rights thus bred a demand for imperial rule that violated the liberty of Native Americans, Mricans, and Asians. In practice, once the exigencies of ruling an empire came

38Thirty-three divisions of armed soldiers, the withdrawal of the Soviet bloc from the Medi­ terranean, political disarray in the Communist movement: These advantages called out for a quick and friendly response. An effective U.S. ambassador in place to present Tito's posi­ tion to Washington, the public character of the expulsion from the Cominform (June 1948), and a presidential administration in the full flush of creative statesmanship (and an electoral victory) also contributed to Truman's decision to rescue Yugoslavia from the Soviet embargo by providing trade and loans (1949). Nonetheless (according to Yugoslav sources), this crisis was also judged to be an appropriate moment to put pressure on Yugoslavia to resolve the questions of Trieste and Carinthia, to cut its support for the guerrillas in Greece, and to repay prewar (prerevolutionary) debts compensating the property owners of nationalized land and mines. Nor did Yugoslavia's strategic significance exempt it from inclusion among the countries condemned as "Captive Nations" (1959) or secure most-favored-nation trade status in the 1962 Trade Expansion Act. Ideological anticommunism and the porousness of the American political system to lobbies combined (according to George Kennan, ambassa­ dor to Yugoslavia at that time) to add these inconvenient burdens to a crucial strategic relationship. (John C . Campbell, Tito 's Separate Road [New York: Council on Foreign Relations/Harper and Row, 1967), pp. 18-27; Suctozar Vukmanovic-Tempo, in Vladimir Dedijer, The Battle Stalin Lost [New York: Viking, 1970], p. 268; George F. Kennan, Mem­ oirs, 1950- 1963 [Boston: Little, Brown, 1972], chap. 12). 39 See Robert A. Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973) for an interesting analysis of the impact of Liberal ideology on Ameri­ can foreign aid policy, esp. chap. 3 and pp. 313-23. 40 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Vintage, 1945), vol. I, p. 3 51. Tocqueville describes how European settlement destroys the game; the absence of game

Internationalism: Kant 2 7 3

into play, Liberal imperialism resulted in the oppression of "native" Liberals seeking self-determination in order to maintain imperial security, to avoid local chaos and international interference by another imperial power attempting to take advantage of local disaffection.

Thus nineteenth-century Liberals, such as British Prime Minister William Gladstone, pondered whether Egypt's protonationalist Arabi rebellion ( 1881- 1882) was truly Liberal nationalist (they discovered it was not) before interven­ ing to protect strategic lifelines to India, commerce, and investmentY These dilemmas of Liberal imperialism are also reflected in U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean, where, for example, following the Spanish-American War of 1898, Article III of the Platt Amendment gave the United States the "right to inter­ vene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a gov­ ernment adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual l "b ty ,42 1 er ... .

The record of Liberalism in the non-Liberal world is not solely a catalog of oppression and imprudence. The North American West and the settlement colonies-Australia and New Zealand-represent a successful transplant of Liberal institutions, albeit in a temperate, underpopulated, and then depopu­ lated environment and at the cost of Native American and Aboriginal rights. Similarly, the twentieth-century expansion of Liberalism into less powerful non­ Liberal areas has also had some striking successes. The forcible liberalization of Germany and Japan following World War II and the long covert financing of Liberal parties in Italy are the more significant instances of successful trans­ plant. Covert financing of Liberalism in Chile and occasional diplomatic

reduces the Indians to starvation. Both then exercise their rights to self-defense. But the colonists are able to call in the power of the imperial government. Palmerston once declared that he would never employ force to promote purely private interests-whether commercial or settlement. He also declared that he would faithfully protect the lives and liberty of English subjects. In circumstances such as those Tocqueville described, Palmerston's distinc­ tions were irrelevant. See Kenneth Bourne, Palmerston: The Early Years (New York: Macmil­ lan, 1982), pp. 624-26. Other colonial settlements and their dependence on imperial expansion are examined in Ronald Robinson, "Non-European Foundations oflmperialism," in Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe, eds., Studies in the Theory oflmperialism (London: Long­ mans, 1972). 41

Gladstone had proclaimed his support for the equal rights of all nations in his Midlothian Speeches. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt served as a secret agent in Egypt keeping Gladstone informed of the political character of Arabi's movement. The Liberal dilemma in 1882- were they intervening against genuine nationalism or a military adventurer (Arabi)? -was best expressed in Joseph Chamberlain's memorandum to the cabinet, June 21, 1882, excerpted in J. L. Garvin and J. Amery, Life of Joseph Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1935), vol. 1, p. 448. And see Peter Mansfield, The British in Egypt (New York: Holt, Rine­ hart and Winston, 1971), chaps. 2 and 3; Ronald Hyam, Britain's Imperial Century: 1815- 1914 (London: Batsford, 1976), chap. 8; and Robert Tignor, Modernization and British Colo­ nial Rule in Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966). 42 The Platt Amendment is excerpted in Paterson, p. 328.

2 74 LIBERALISM

demarches to nudge aside military threats to non-Communist democratic par­ ties (as in Peru in 1962, South Korea in 1963, and the Dominican Republic in 196243 and again in 1978) illustrate policies that, though less successful, were directed toward Liberal goals. These particular postwar Liberal successes also are the product of special circumstances: the existence of a potential Liberal majority, temporarily suppressed, which could be readily reestablished by out­ side aid or unusually weak oligarchic, military, or Communist opponents.44

At other times in the postwar period, when the United States sought to pro­ tect Liberals in the Third World from the "Communist threat," the conse­ quences of Liberal forei n olic on the non-Liberal society often became far removed from the promotion of individual rights or of national secunty. n Vietnam and elsewhere, intervening against "armed minorities" and "enemies of free enterprise" meant intervening for other armed minorities, some sus­ taining and sustained by oligarchies, others resting on little more than U.S. foreign aid and troops. Indigenous Liberals simply had too narrow a base of domestic support. These interventions did not advance Liberal rights, and to the extent that they were driven by ideological motives they were not necessary for national security.

To the conservative Liberals, the alternatives are starkly cast: Third World authoritarians with allegiance to the Liberal, capitalist West or "Communists" subject to the totalitarian East (or leftist nationalists, who, even if elected, are but a slippery stepping-stone to totalitarianism).45 Conservative Liberals are prepared to support the allied authoritarians. The Communists attack property in addition to liberty, thereby provoking conservative Liberals to covert or overt intervention, or "dollar diplomacy" imperialism. The interventions against Mossadegh in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala, Allende in Chile, and the Sandinis­ tas in Nicaragua appear to fall into this pattern.46 President Reagan's simultane-

43 During the Alliance for Progress era in Latin America, the Kennedy administration sup­ ported Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic in 1962. See also William P. Bundy, "Dicta­ torships and American Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs 54, I (October 1975), pp. 51-60. 44 See Samuel Huntington, "Human Rights and American Power," Commentary (September 1981), pp. 37-43, and George Quester, "Consensus Lost," Foreign Policy 40 (Falll980), pp. 18-32, for arguments and examples of the successful export of Liberal institutions in the postwar period. A major study of the the role of democratic expansion in U.S. foreign policy is Tony Smith, America's Mission (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 45 Kirkpatrick, "Dictatorships and Double Standards." In 1851 the Liberal French historian Guizot made a similar argument in a letter to Gladstone urging that Gladstone appreciate that the despotic government of Naples was the best guarantor of Liberal law and order then available. Reform, in Guizot's view, meant the unleashing of revolutionary violence (Philip Magnus, Gladstone [New York: Dutton, 1964], p. 100). 46 Richard Barnet, Intervention and Revolution: The United States in the Third World (New York: Meridian, 1968), chap. 10; and on Nicaragua, see the New York Times, March 11, 1982, for a description of the training direction, and funding (twenty million dollars) of anti­ Sandinista guerrillas by the United States.

Internationalism: Kant 275

ous support for the military in El Salvador and guerilla "freedom fighters" in Nicaragua also tracks this pattern, whose common thread is rhetorical commit­ ment to freedom and operational support for conservative, free enterprise.

To the social welfare Liberals, the choice is never so cle"!r. Aware of the need for"'Srate action to democratize the distribution of social power and resources, they tend to have more sympathy for social reform. This can produce on the part of "radical" welfare Liberals a more tolerant policy toward the attempts by reforming autocracies to redress inegalitarian distributions of property in the Third World. This more complicated welfare Liberal assessment can itself be a recipe for more extensive intervention. The large number of conservative oli­ garchs or military bureaucracies with which the conservative Liberal is well at home are not so congenial to the social welfare Liberal, yet the Communists are still seen as enemies ofliberty. Left Liberals justify more extensive interven­ tion first to discover, then to sustain Third World social democracy in a political environment that is either barely participatory or highly polarized. Thus Arthur Schlesinger recalls President Kennedy musing shortly after the assassination of Trujillo (former dictator of the Dominican Republic): "There are three possibil­ ities in descending order of preference, a decent democratic regime, a continu­ ation of the Trujillo regime [by his followers] or a Castro regime. We ought to aim at the first, but we can't really renounce the second until we are sure we can avoid the third." Another instance of this approach was President Carter's support for the land reforms in El Salvador, which was explained by one U.S. official in the following analogy: "There is no one more conservative than a small farmer. We're going to be breeding capitalists like rabbits."47 President Clinton's administration seems to have succumbed to a similar dose of optimis­ tic interventionism in its conviction that nations could be rebuilt democrati­ cally in both Somalia and Haiti, although democracy had never existed in the first and was led in the second by Jean Bertrand Aristide, a charismatic Socialist and an eloquent critic of American imperialism.

The third effect apparent in the international relations of Liberal states is Hume's second assertion: "supine complaisance." This takes two forms: One is a failure to support allies; the other is a failure to oppose enemies.

Where Liberal internationalism among Liberal states has been shortsighted is in preserving its basic preconditions under changing international circum­ stances, particularly in supporting the Liberal character of its constituent states. The Liberal community of nations has failed on occasion, as it did in regard to Germany in the 1920s, to provide timely international economic support for

47 Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 769, and quoted in Barnet, Intervention and Revolution, p. 158. And for the U.S. official's comment on the Salvadoran land reform, see L. Simon and J. Stephen, El Salvador Land Reform 1980-1981 (Boston: Oxfam-America, 1981 ), p. 38.

276 LIBERALISM

Liberal regimes whose market foundations were in crisis.48 It failed in the 1930s to provide military aid or political mediation to Spain, which was challenged by an armed minority, or to Czechoslovakia, which was caught in a dilemma of preserving national security or acknowledging the claims (fostered by Hitler's Germany) of the Sudeten minority to self-determination. Farsighted and consti­ tutive measures seem to have been provided by the Liberal international order only when one Liberal state stood preeminent among the rest, prepared and able to take measures, as did Britain before World War I and the United States following World War II, to sustain economically and politically the foundations of Liberal society beyond its borders. Then measures such as British antislavery and free trade and the U.S. loan to Britain in 1947, the Marshall Plan, NATO, GATT, the IMF, and the liberalization of Germany and Japan helped construct buttresses for the international Liberal order.49

Ideologically based policies can also be self-indulgent. Oligarchic or authori­ tarian allies in the Third World do not find consistent support in a Liberal policy that stresses human rights. Contemporary conservative critics claim that the security needs of these states are neglected, that they fail to obtain military aid or more direct support when they need it (the shah's Iran, Humberto Rome­ ro's El Salvador, Somoza's Nicaragua, and South Africa). Equally disturbing from this point of view, Communist regimes are shunned even when a detente with them could further United States strategic interests (Cuba, Angola). Wel­ fare Liberals particularly shun the first group, while laissez-faire Liberals balk at close dealings with the second. In both cases our economic interests or strategic interests are often slighted. 50

48 France and Britain were insisting on prompt payment of wartime reparations, just as the United States was insisting on propmpt repayment of wartime loans. The U.S . government formally refused to consider the problem in a comprehensive light. American bankers stepped in, but in light of the needs for financial accommodation, the Dawes and Young plans were helpful but still feeble stopgaps to finance German reparations and Allied debts with lower-interest packages of loans. Two contemporary classics that discuss the problem are Arnold Wolfers, Britain and France between Two Wars (1940) and Harold G. Moulton and Leo Pasvolsky, War Debts and World Prosperity (1932). 49

Kindleberger, The World in Depression; Robert Gilpin, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation; Krasner, "State Power and the Structure of International Trade"; and Fred Hirsch and Michael W. Doyle, "Politicization in the World Economy" in Hirsch, Doyle and Edward Morse, eds. Alternative to Monetary Disorder (New York: Council on Foreign Relations/McGraw-Hill 1977). 5°Kirkpatrick points o~t our neglect of the needs of the authoritarians. Theodore Lowi argues that Democratic and Republican policies toward the acquisition of bases in Spain reflected this dichotomy; "Bases in Spain," in Harold Stein, ed. American Civil-Military Decisions (University: University of Alabama Press, 1963), p. 699. In other cases where both the geopolitical and the domestic orientation of a potential neutral might be influenced by U.S. aid, Liberal institutions (representative legislatures) impose delay or public constraints and conditions on diplomacy that allow the Soviet Union to steal a march. Warren Christo­ pher has suggested that this occurred in U.S. relations with Nicaragua in 1979. Warren Christopher, "Ceasefire between the Branches," Foreign Affairs (Summer 1982), p. 998.

Internationalism: Kant 2 7 7

A second manifestation of complaisance lies in a reaction to the excesses of interventionism. A mood of frustrated withdrawal affects policy toward strategi­ cally and economically important countries. Just as interventionism seems to be the typical failin of the Liberal great pow~m laisance characterizes

ec ined or "not quite risen" Li era states. Especially following the exhaus­ tion of wars, representative legislatures may become reluctant to undertake international commitments or to fund the military establishment needed to play a geopolitical role. Purely domestic concerns seem to take priority, as they did in the United States in the 1920s and may be doing in the 1990s. Rational incentives for "free riding" on the extended defense commitments of the leader of the Liberal alliance also induce this form of complaisance. During much of the nineteenth century the United States informally relied upon the British fleet for many of its security needs. Today the Europeans and the Japanese, according to some American strategic analysts, fail to bear their "fair" share of

alliance burdens. Liberalism, if we take into account both Kant and Hume, thus carries with -{:

it · es: peace among Liberals, imprudent vehemence toward non­ Liberals, and complaisance toward the future. The first appears to be a special ~associated with Liberalism, and it can be demonstrated statistically. The latter two cannot be shown to be special to Liberalism, though their effects can be illustrated historically in Liberal foreign policy. And the survival and growth in the number of Liberal states suggests that imprudent vehemence and com­ plaisance have not overwhelmed Liberalism's efficacy as form of governance.

THE LOGIC OF A SEPARATE PEACE

51 Ideological formulations often accompany these policies. Fear of bolshevism was used to excuse not forming an alliance with the Soviet Union in 1938 against Nazi aggression. And Nazi and fascist regimes were portrayed as defenders of private property and social order. But the connection Liberals draw between domestic tyranny and foreign aggression may also operate in reverse. When the Nazi threat to the survival of Liberal states did require a Liberal alliance with the Soviet Union, Stalin became for a short period the Liberal press's "Uncle Joe." 52 Kant, PP, p. 108; UH, pp. 44-45.

2 7 8 LIBERALISM

understanding. 53 But perpetual peace is not merely a heuristic device with which to interpret history. It is guaranteed, Kant explains in "Perpetual Peace" 's "First Addition" ("On the Guarantee of Perpetual Peace"), to result from men fulfilling their ethical duty or, that failing from a hidden plan. 54 Peace is an ethical duty because only under conditions of eace can all humans treat one ano er as en s. For this duty to be practical, Kant needs of course to s ow iliat peace is in fact possible. The widespread sentiment of approbation that he saw aroused by the early success of the French revolutionaries showed him that we can indeed be moved by ethical sentiments with a cosmopolitan reach. 56

This does not mean, however, that perpetual peace is certain ("prophesyable"). Even the scientifically regular course of the planets could be changed by a wayward comet's striking them out of orbit. Human freedom requires that we allow for much greater reversals in the course of history. We must in fact antici­ pate the possibility of backsliding and destructive wars (though these will serve to educate nations to the importance of peace). 57

But in the end our guarantee of perpetual peace does not rest on ethical conduct, as Kant emphasizes in "Perpetual Peace":

We now come to the essential question regarding the prospect of perpetual peace. What does nature do in relation to the end which man's own reason prescribes to him as a duty, i.e. how does nature help to promote his moral purpose? And how does nature guarantee that what man ought to do by the laws of his freedom (but does not do) will in fact be done through nature's compulsion, without prejudice to the free agency of man? ... [T]his does not mean that nature imposes on us a duty to do it, for duties can only be imposed by practical reason. On the contrary, nature does it herself, whether we are willing or not: facta volentem ducunt nolentem tradunt. 58

53 UH, pp. 51-53. 54

1n the MM Kant seems to write as if perpetual peace were only an epistemological device and perpetual peace, while an ethical duty, empirically merely a "pious hope" (pp. 164-75). (Even here, though, Kant finds that the pacific union is not "impracticable," p. 171.) In the UH, Kant writes as if the brute force of physical nature drives men toward inevitable peace. Yovel (1980) argues that PP reconciles the two views of history, from a postcritical (post­ Critique of Judgment ) perspective (p. 168ff). "Nature" is human-created nature (culture or civilization). Perpetual peace is the "a priori of the a posteriori" (a critical perspective that then enables us to discern causal, probabilistic patterns in history) . Law the "political tech­ ?ology" of republican constitutionalism are separate from ethical development. But both mterdependently lead to perpetual peace: the first through force, fear, and self-interest, the s~cond through progressive enlightenment, and both together through the widening of the Circumstances in which engaging in right conduct poses smaller and smaller burdens. 55Ka nt, UH, p. 50. 56 Kant, CF, pp. 181-82. This view is defended byYovel, pp. 153-154. 57 Kant, UH, pp. 47-48. 58 Kant, PP, p. 112.

Internationalism: Kant 2 7 9

The guarantee thus rests, Kant adds, on the probable behavior not of moral angels but of "devils, so long as they possess understanding."59 In explaining the sources of each of the three Definitive Articles of the perpetual peace, Kant then tells us how we (as free and intelligent devils) could be motivated by fear, force, and calculated advantage to undertake a course of actions whose out­ come we can reasonably anticipate to be perpetual peace. But while it is possi­ ble to conceive of the Kantian road to peace in these terms, Kant himself recognizes and argues that social evolution also makes the conditions of moral behavior less onerous, hence more likely. 60 In tracing the effects of both politi­ cal and moral development, he builds an account of why Liberal states do maintain peace among themselves and of how it will (by implication, has) come about that the pacific union will expand. He also explains how these republics would engage in wars with nonrepublics and therefore suffer the "sad experience" of wars that an ethical policy might have avoided.

!._he first source derives from a political evolution, from a constitutional law. Nature (Providence) has seen to it that human beings can live in all the regions where they have been driven to settle by wars. (Kant, who once taught geogra­ phy, reports on the Lapps, the Samoyeds, the Peschneras.) "Asocial sociability" draws men together to fulfill needs for security and material welfare as it drives them into conflicts over the distribution and control of social products.61 This violent natural evolution tends toward the Liberal peace because "asocial socia­ bility" inevitably leads toward republican governments and republican govern­ ments are a source of the Liberal peace.

Republican representation and separation of powers are roduced b e they are t e means by w IC t e sta e IS organized well" to prepare for and meet foreign threats (by unity) and to tame the ambitions of selfish and aggres­ sive individuals b · · re resentation, b enerallaws and

_ y nondespotic administration).62 States that are not organized in this fashion ,. fail. Monarchs thus encourage commerce and private property in order to increase national wealth. They cede rights of representation to their subjects in order to strengthen their political support or to obtain willing grants of tax revenue.63

59 Ibid. 60 Kant, CF, pp. 187-89. See George Kelly, pp. 106-13, for a further explanation. 61 Kant, UH, p. 44-45; PP, pp. 110-11. 62 Kant, PP, pp. 112-13. 63 Hassner, pp. 583-86. The Kantian pacific union has in in fact expanded steadily, but whether we can anticipate its continued expansion much beyond the current numbers of Liberal democracies has been called into question by Samuel Huntington, in "Will More Countries Become Democratic?," Political Science Quarterly 99 (Summer 1984), pp. 193- 218, an issue that he revisits in a more optimistic vein in The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).

280 LIBERALISM

Kant shows how republics, once established, lead to peaceful relations. He argues that once the aggressive interests of absolutist monarchies are tamed and once the habit of respect for individual rights is ingrained by republican government, wars would appear as the disaster to the people's welfare that he and the other Liberals thought them to be. The fundamental reason is this:

stant threat of new wars. But under a constitution where the subject is not a / c1hzen, and which is therefore not republican, it is the simplest thing in the

world to go to war. For the head of state is not a fellow citizen, but the owner of the state, and war will not force him to make the slightest sacrifice so far as his banquets, hunts, pleasure palaces and court festivals are concerned. He can thus decide on war, without any significant reason, as a kind of amuse­ ment, and unconcernedly leave it to the diplomatic corps (who are always ready for such purposes) to justify the war for the sake of propriety.64

These domestic restraints introduce republican caution, Kant's "hesitation," in place of monarchical caprice. Citizens become "co-legislative members" of the state and must therefore give their free consent through representatives not only to the waging of war in general "but also to every particular declaration of war."65 Republican caution seems to save republics from the failings Hume saw as characteristic of "enormous monarchies," including "strategic over-exten­ sion," court intrigue, and praetorian rebellion.66 Representative government allows for a rotation of elites, others have ar ued an · I o disastrous po icies as e ectorates punish the ar in ower with electoral defeat. Legis atures an pu IC opm10n further restrain executives from policies that clearly violate the obvious and fundamental interests of the public, as the public perceives those interests.67 The division of powers among legislature,

64 Kant, PP, p. 100. 65 Kant, MM, para. 55, p. 167. 66 See the discussion ofHume in footnote 6, above, pp. 347-48. 67 For an argument that democracies can both defer to prudent leadership and make prudent judgments, see Kenneth Waltz, Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics (Boston; Little, Brown, 1967), pp. 288-97. Joseph Nye concludes that the U.S. record in postwar diplomacy is more mixed, finding tllat nuclear war has been successfully avoided, but that containing Soviet power and fostering moderation in and by the Soviet Union have been less successfi,il

Internationalism: Kant 2 8 1

judiciary, and executive furthermore introduces salutary delay, time for reflec­ tion and adjustment in the foreign relations of republican states. In relations with fellow republics these delays are doubly compounded and thus can pro­ vide fertile opportunities to resolve disputes short of escalation and armed crisis.

Representation may also provide an effective signaling device, assuring for­ eig~ers that democratic commitments are credible because rash acts and exposed bluffs will lead to electoral defeats. Able to make more credi-

-e commitments, democracies may thus be less likely to stumble into wars, especially with other democracies.68 Tending to confirm this proposition is the observation that alliances among democracies endure longer than alliances among nondemocracies.69 But a purely rational-egoist approach to democratic representation also reveals that elected decision makers have a stake in winning wars70 and that democracies win 81 percent of the wars in which they are involved; autociacies only 43 percent.71 This might account for the pattern we observe of many democratic wars but no (or very few) wars against fellow democracies. But if democracies can be rationally rapacious, it does not explain why we do not find more wars in which powerful democracies conquer much weaker democracies, why Luxembourg feels safe from France and Canada safe from the United States. Nor does rational, representative caution actually seem to produce prudence. Liberal publics can become disaffected from interna­ tional commitments and choose isolationism or appeasement, as Britain and the United States did in the 1920s and 1930s. And republican caution does not end war or ensure that wars are fought only when necessary for national secu­ rity. Many democratic and representative states have been war-prone, as was classical Athens or would have been Machiavelli's free republics.

If representation alone were peace-inducing, Liberal states would not be warlike or given to imprudent vehemence, as is far from the case. It does ensure that wars are only fought for popular, Liberal purposes. The historical Liberal legacy is laden with popular wars fought to promote freedom, protect private

("Can America Manage Its Soviet Policy?" in Joseph S. Nye, Jr, ed., The Making of America's Soviet Policy [New Haven; Yale University Press, 1984], p. 325-29). 68 James Fearon, "Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of Political Disputes," American Political Science Review 88 (1994), pp. 577-92. 69 Kurt Gaubatz, "Democratic States and Commitment in International Politics," Interna- tional Organization 50 (1996), pp. 109-39. 70 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Randolph Siverson, and Gary Woller find that victory in war reduces risk of leader removal by 25 percent in any year after the victory though increasing casualties by a factor of 10 (measured in battle deaths per 10,000) increases the risk of removal by 8 percent in each year afterward. Victorious initiators are the big winners, greatly reducing the rate of overthrow to about 1 percent from the base level of 10 percent, while victorious targets gain little. See their "War and the Fate of Regimes," American Political Science Review 86 (1992), pp. 638-46, and Bueno de Mesquita and Siverson, "War and the Survival of Political Leaders," American Political Science Review 89 (1995), pp. 841-55. 71 Lake, "Powerfi1l Pacifists."

282 LIBERALISM

property or support Liberal allies against non-Liberal enemies. Kant's own posi­ tion is ambiguous. He regards most of these wars as unjust and warns Liberals of their susceptibility to them. At the same time, he argues that each nation "can and ought to" demand that its neighboring nations enter into the pacific union of Liberal states-that is, become republican.72 Thus to see how the pacific union removes the occasion of wars among Liberal states and not wars between Liberal and non-Liberal states, we need to shift our attention from constitutional law to international law, Kant's second source.

Complementing the constitutional uarantee of caution inter I law adds a secon source, a guarantee of respect. The separation of nations that ;;ocial sociability encourages is reinforced by the development of separate lan­ guages and religions. These further guarante -~ essential condition nee e to avoid o a sou - ess es o IS · t the same time, they also morally integrate Liberal sta es, or as cu ure grows and men gradually move towards greater agreement over their principles, they lead to mutual understanding and peace.'173 As republics emerge (the first source) and as culture progresses, an understanding of the legitimate rights of all citizens and of all republics comes into play, and this, now that caution characterizes policy, sets up the moral foundations for the Liberal peace. Correspondingly, international law highlights the importance of Kantian publicity. Domestically, publicity helps ensure that the officials of republics act according to the princi­ ples they profess to hold just and according to the interests of the electors they claim to represent. Internationally, free speech and the effective communica­ tion of accurate conceptions of the political life of foreign peoples is essential to establish and preserve the understanding on which the guarantee of respect depends.

We can speculate that the process might work something like this: The lead­ ers and publics of domestically just republics, which rest on consent, presume foreign republics to be also consensual, just, and therefore deserving of accom­ modation. The experience of cooperation helps engender further cooperative behavior when the consequences of state policy are unclear but (potentially)

-:\ mutually beneficial. At the same time, Liberal states assume that non-Liberal ~~~ J' states, which do not rest on free consent, are not just. Because non-Liberal "'1'' governments are perceived to be in a state of aggression with their own people,

their foreign relations become for Liberal governments deeply suspect. Wil­ helm II of imperial Germany may or may not have been aggressive (he was certainly idiosyncratic); Liberal democracies such as Britain, France, and the United States, however, assumed that whatever was driving German policy, reliable democratic, constitutional government was not restraining it. They

72 Kant, PP, p. 106, p. 102. 73 Ibid., p. 114.

Internationalism: Kant 2 8 3

regarded Germany and its actions with severe suspicion, to which the Reich reacted with corresponding distrust. In short, fellow Liberals benefit from a presum tion of amity; non-Liberals suffer from a resum tion of enmi . Both presumptions may be accurate. Each, however, may also be self-confirming.

Democratic Liberals do not need to assume either that public opinion directly rules foreign policy or that the entire governmental elite is Liberal. It can instead assume a third possibility: that the elite typically manages public affairs but that potentially non-Liberal members of the elite have reason to doubt that anti-Liberal policies would be electorally sustained and endorsed by

the majority of the democratic public. Third and last, cosmopolitan law adds material incentives to moral commit­

m~nts, for over the long run commitments unsupported by material interests are unlikely to endure. 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 to try to avert war. Liberal economic theory holds that these cosmopolitan ties derive from a cooperative international division oflabor and 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 incen­ tive to avoid policies that would lead the other to break these economic ties. Since keeping open markets rests upon the assumption that the next set of transactions will also be determined by prices rather than coercion, a sense of mutual security is vital to avoid security-motivated searches for economic autarky. Thus avoiding a challenge to another Liberal state's security or even enhancing each other's security by means of alliance naturally follows eco-

nomic interdependence. A further cosmopolitan source of Liberal peace is that the international mar-

ket removes difficult ecisions of production an istribution from the direct sphere of state policy. A foreign state thus does not appear directly responsible for these outcomes; states can stand aside from, and to some degree above, these contentious market rivalries and be ready to step in to resolve crises. The interdependence of commerce and the international contacts of state officials help create crosscutting transnational ties that serve as lobbies for mutual accommodation. According to modern Liberal scholars, international finan­ ciers and transnational and transgovernmental organizations create interests in favor of accommodation. Moreover, their variety has ensured that no single conflict sours an entire relationship by setting off a spiral of reciprocated retalia­ tion.74 Conversely, a sense of suspicion, such as that characterizing relations

74 Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, chaps. 1 and 2; Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington, Political Power: USNUSSR (New York: Viking Press, 1963), chap. 9; Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, Power and Interdependence (Boston; Little, Brown, 1977), chap. 7; Richard Neustadt, Alliance Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970); Daniele

284 LIBERALISM

between Liberal and non-Liberal governments, can lead to restrictions on the range of contacts between societies. And this can increase the prospect that a single conflict will determine an entire relationship.

Immanuel Kant's 1795 essay "P.erp.etual Peace" offers a coherent explanation ot important regularities in world politics: the tendencies of Liberal states simultaneously to be peace-prone in their relations with one another and um;sually war-prone in their relations with non-1 .jberal sta_ks. Republican rep­ resentation, Liberal respect, and transnational interdependence (to rephrase Kant's three aefinitive articles of the hypothetical peace treaty he asked states to sign) thus can be seen as three necessary and together sufficient causes of the two regularities. Thus no single constitutional, international, or cosmopoli­ tan source is alone sufficient, but together (and only together) the three sources plausibly connect the characteristics of Liberal polities and economies with sus­ tained Liberal peace. Alliances founded on mutual strategic interest among Liberal and non-Liberal states have been broken, economic ties between Lib­ eral and non-Liberal states have proved fragile, but the political bonds of Lib­ eral rights and interests have proved a remarkably firm foundation for mutual nonaggression. A separate peace exists among Liberal states.

But in their relations with non-Liberal states, Liberal states have not escaped from the insecurity of the world political system considered as a whole. More­ over, the very constitutional restraint, international respect for individual rights, and shared commercial interests that establish grounds for peace among Lib­ eral states establish grounds for additional conflict irrespective of actual threats to national security in relations between Liberal and non-Liberal societies.

And in their relations with all states Liberal states have not solved the prob­ lems of international cooperation and competition. Liberal publics can become absorbed in domestic issues, and international Liberal respect does not preclude trade rivalries or guarantee farsighted collective solutions to interna­ tional security and welfare.

TESTING THE LIBERAL PEACE

Liberalism is now wide] regarded as having an important connection to inter- yationa] securi!t_ The twin propos! IOns- a 1 era emocratic republics o not seem to go to war with one another yet seem to be as war-prone as any other regime-are seen as the foundation of the great global changes of our time. The end of the Cold War fits in with the democratization of Russia. 75

Archiburgi, "Immanuel Kant, Cosmopolitan Law, and Peace," European Journal of Interna­ tional Relations (1995), pp. 429-56. 75

See James Lee Ray and Bruce Russett, "The Future as Arbiter of Theoretical Con trover-

Internationalism: Kant 2 8 5

And in many local contests, such as the Falklands or Gibraltar, the dampening of once-bitter or violent conflict coincides with the emergence of mutual Lib­ eral democratic respect. The Liberal peace, furthermore, takes on even greater significance as we observe the worldwide spread of democratic forms to every continent and region.

None of this has escaped the politicians. Drawing on Wilsonianism, Roose­ velt's Four Freedoms, the Truman Doctrine, and, more recently, addresses by Presidents Reagan and Bush, President Bill Clinton's 1994 State of the Union Address affirmed that "democracies don'tattack eacn ofner."76 "Democratic enlargement" has become the doctrinal centerpiece of the Administration's for­ eign policy.

But the conc~r~f\ocial scientists is special. That significance was well expressed by Jac~ who observed a few years ago that "the absence of war between democracies comes as close as anything to an empirical law in .­ international relations.77 Liberalism is thus emerging as a powerful paradigm in the social scientific sense. Unusually-for international relations-it is a tested, causal theory. It has a causal argument that can generate lawlike hypoth­ eses capable of being specified in such a way that they can in principle be disconfirmed.

Qne sign of the health of such a research program is that it attracts se~ critical attention. By this measure the "Liberal Democratic Peace" is flour­ ishing. The core association between peace and democracy has been exten­ sively criticized and then defended, in both statistical and case study tests . The literature suggests that we need to pay special attention to three areas. We should elaborate-as a means of testing-the potential outcomes, or dependent variables. We should reexamine the causal model, adopting more careful ways to test it against relevant alternatives. And we should revisit its policy implica­ tions. 78

Elaborate the Dependent Variables. An absence of war is not the same as a state of pe'!£§. A state of eace is the expectation that war is not a le itimate or likely recourse. That is what the Liberal mo e seeks to explain and what Immanuel Kant envisaged in his "Perpetual Peace." A state of peace thus is not the same as successful deterrence. It is a condition that should change expecta­ tions and attitudes and give rise to more extensive forms of dispute avoidance

sies: Predictions, Explanations, and the End of the Cold War," British Journal of Political Science (forthcoming). 76 In the New York Times, January 26, 1994. 77 Jack Levy, "Domestic Politics and War," Journal oflnterdisciplinary History 18, 4 (Spring 1988), pp . 653-73. 78 These suggestions of course draw on lmre Lakatos, "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programs," in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

286 LIBERALISM

and international collaboration. This is hard to measure. Recent valuable extensions-! can't name them all-have explored disputes short of war (Bremer); internal violence (Rudolph Rummel); peaceful territorial change (Arie Kacowicz); the effect of electoral cycles (Gaubatz); and great power coop­ eration (Benjamin Miller) .79 We should be expanding on the research in politi­ cal economy, examining whether Liberal ideas, institutions, and interests make a difference in trade, investment, and financial disputes. Liberal institutions, principles, and interests should also provide a firm foundation for international law, leading Liberal states to abide by international law more reliably in deal­ ings with one another than do other pairs of states.

To those areas we should add studies of: defense policies-which way do the weapons point and why?- intelligence cooperation -do liberals resist better the temptation to engage in covert activity (was the recent squabble with France the norm or an exception)?-foreign aid-is there a "democratic differ­ ence" of discriminating in favor of fellow democracies? Liberal democracy should make some difference over and beyond war. Does it?

Causal Argument and Testing. 80 One additional reason to expand our view of potential outcomes is (I suspect) that our current statistical tests of the "dem­ ocratic peace" are full of false positives and false negatives. False negatives (absolving Liberalism) arise from the fact that there are many reasons not to go to war other than Liberalism. Distance, exhaustion, and deterrence resulting from an expectation that one will lose or that the costs of victory are too high are some of the obvious candidates. False positives (condemning Liberalism) arise from the circumstance that it is not at all clear that most lists of participat­ ing polities, including my own, are all Liberal republics. Many or some of the "democratic" conflicts and disputes may be among participatory polities but not among "Liberal republics."

Kant's theory held that a stable expectation of peace among states would be achieved once three conditions were met. We can rephrase them as:

1. Representative, republican government. This includes an elected legisla­ ture, separation of powers, and the rule of law. Kant argued that together those institutional features lead to caution because the government is responsible to

79 Stuart Bremer, "Democracy and Militarized International Disputes, 1816-1965," Interna­

tional Interactions 18, 3 (1992), pp. 23-50; Rudolph Rummel , Death by Government (New Brunswick, N.J .: Transaction Publishers, 1994); Arie Kacowicz, Peaceful Territorial Change (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1994); Kurt Gaubatz, "Election Cycles and War," Journal of Conflict Resolution (1991 ); and Benjamin Miller, When Opponents Cooperate (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995). 80 I would like to thank George Downs and Bruce Russett for their valuable advice on this section.

Internationalism: Kant 2 8 7

its citizens. This does not guarantee peace. It should select only those wars that the citizens will support.

2. A principled respect for nondiscriminatory human rights. This should pro-­ duce a commitment to respect the rights of fellow Liberal republics (because they represent free citizens, who as individuals have rights that deserve our respect) and a suspicion of nonrepublics (because if those governments cannot trust their own citizens, what should lead us to trust them?)81

3. Social and economic interdependence. Trade and social interaction gener­ ally engender a mix of conflict and cooperation. Liberalism produces special material incentives for cooperation. Among fellow Liberals interdependence should not be subject to security-motivated restrictions and consequently tends to be more varied, less dependent on single issues, and less subject to single conflicts. 82

Kant suggests that each principle is necessa and that to ether th are sufficient to esta lish a secure expectation of peace. The first principle specifies ~sentative government responsible to a winning electoral coalition of vot­ ers; the second and third specify the coalition's ends and interests. Together the three generate an expectation of peaceful accommodation among fellow Liber­ als and hostility toward non-Liberals.

Not all participatory polities would meet Kant's criteria. Kant distrusted unfettered, democratic majoritarianism, and his argument offers no support for a claim that all participatory polities-democracies-should be peaceful either in general or between fellow democracies. Many participatory polities have been non-Liberal. For two thousand years before the modern age, popular rule was widely associated with aggressiveness (by Thucydides) or imperial success (Machiavelli). Today a list of Kantian republics would not include, for example, institutionalized representative democracies that are motivated by a public cul­ ture of indiscriminate empire mongering or racism or ethnic purity. The deci­ sive preference of their median voter might well include "ethnic cleansing" against other democratic polities. Nor would they include autocracies, however enlightened and Liberal, because the autotocrats are not constrained by repre­ sentative legislatures and the rule of law. 83 Their rule would not generate a

81 The individual subjects of autocracies of course do not lose their rights. It's just that the

autocrats cannot claim legitimately to speak for their subjects. Subjects retain basic human rights, such as the rights of noncombatants in war. The terror bombing of civilians-as in t?e bombings of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki-constitute, in this view, viola­ tions of these rights and of Liberal principles and demonstrate weaknesses of Liberal models in these cases. 82

These three points are all developed above in "Liberal Legacies." 83

Kant himself had a weakness for seeing pacific potential in some enlightened despots, a point drawn to my attention by Dr. Dominique Leydet. Kant appears to hope that enlight-

288 LIBERALISM

strable expectation of Liberal respect. Nor would they include autarkic democ­ racies that lack the material and social foundations of interdependent interests that can generate mautual knowledge and egoistic incentives in support of moral commitments.84

How to weed out the false positives? One way is a better data set of Liberal polities that excludes non-Liberal republics, which may be generating cases of the "inter-Liberal" conflict. How to weed out the false negatives, where the Liberal model may be getting undue credit for peace? Distinguishing Liberal peace from peace by non-Liberal means calls for process-tracing case studies and comparisons that weigh the Liberal model against non-Liberal theories of a similar scope.

Hard Cases The Liberal peace is full of difficult cases. The collection of existing states cannot readily be sorted along a simple dichotomy: Liberal versus non-Liberal. In individual cases, passions and political and economic interests work against the pacifying tendencies of the Liberal peace.

Imperial Gennany. This is a case of complicated identification. Not only was the Reichstag elected by universal male suffrage, but by and large, the state ruled under the law, respecting the civic equality and rights of its citizens. Moreover, Chancellor Bismarck began the creation of a social welfare society that served as an inspiration for similar reforms in Liberal regimes. However, the constitutional relations between the imperial executive and the representa­ tive legislature were sufficiently complex that various practices, rather than con­ stitutional design, determined the actual relation between the government and the citizenry. The emperor appointed and could dismiss the chancellor. Although the chancellor was responsible to the Reichstag, a defeat in the Reich­ stag did not remove him, nor did the government absolutely depend on the Reichstag for budgetary authority. In practice Germany was a Liberal state under republican law for domestic issues. But the emperor's direct authority over the army, the army's effective independence from the minimal authority of the War Ministry, and the emperor's active role in foreign affairs (including the influential separate channel to the emperor through the military attaches) together with the tenuous constitutional relationship between the chancellor and the Reichstag made imperial Germany a state divorced from the control of its citizenry in foreign affairs.

ened despots will begin the process of establishing peace, even if despotic governments cannot sustain a secure peace. 84 Kant's is a testable proposition. All three may not be necessary, and we might be able to develop a more parsimonious theory of democratic peace than the one he offers. But it appears to be the case in the modern period that there is a strong tendency for stable democ­ racies to be Liberal and interdependent.

Internationalism: Kant 2 8 9

This authoritarian element not only influenced German foreign policy mak­ ing but also shaped the international political environment (a lack of trust) the Reich faced and the domestic political environment that defined the govern­ ment's options and capabilities (the weakness of Liberal opinion as against the exceptional influence of Junker militaristic nationalism). Thus direct influence on policy was but one result of the authoritarian element. Nonetheless, signifi­ cant and strife-generating episodes can be directly attributed to this element. They include Tirpitz's approach to Wilhelm II to obtain the latter's sanction for a veto of Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg's proposals for a naval agreement with Britain ( 1909). Added to this were Wilhelm's personal assurances of full support to the Austrians early in the Sarajevo crisis and his erratic pressure together with Moltke's on the chancellor throughout July and August 1914. These factors helped destroy whatever coherence German diplomacy might otherwise have had and led one Austrian official to ask, "Who rules in Berlin?

Moltke or Bethmann?"85

British Nonintervention in the U.S. Civil War. Here liberal pacification was tested in a demanding manner.86 The Civil War, which broke out in 1861, constituted not an easy but a difficult case for British Liberals. Southern propa­ gandists (such as Hotze) working in London advertised the Southern cause as a war for self-determination, for the rights of small nations, for free trade against Northern tariffs, and for (incongruously and perhaps in appeal to British Con­ servatives) an aristocratic way of life as against the crass industrial democracy of the North.87 Liberals, including even Gladstone and Russell, leaned South. Prime Minister Palmerston was cautious and looked for Southern victories to establish effective independence. Napoleon III, seeking Southern support for his adventure in Mexico, lobbied Britain for recognition.

Both the British constitutional state and its trading interest thus seemed to lean South. Public opinion was divided, with the elite generally pro-South and the radicals pro-N orth._1.incoln brilliantly turned the tide, however, and averted fu,tropean recognition of the South with his Emancipation Proclamation in ~Cynics taunted the North Americans for only freemg the slaves they could not reach.88 But the proclamation slowly at first, then with a gathering

85 Gordon Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Anny (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. xxviii and chap. 6. For an excellent account of Bethmann's aims and the constraints he encountered, see Konrad H. Jarausch, "The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Beth­ mann-Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914," Central European History 2 (1969). 86 This case and the British-American War of 1812 are examined by John Owen, who insightfully emphasizes the importance of perceptions. 87 James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 548. 88 The proclamation applied only to the states currently in rebellion and did not affect slaves held in the occupied border states.

290 LIBERALISM

tide mobilized the mass of Liberal middle-class and working-class support for the Union cause, leading young Henry Adams to enthuse: "The Emancipation Proclamation has done more for us here than all our former victories and all our diplomacy.89

The Fashoda Crisis of 1898. Here we can see the opposite: how popular passion worked against peace and against constitutional and economic inter­ est.90 Indeed, according to some scholars, passions, colonial uncertainty, and a long history of rivalry overwhelmed Liberal restraint and peace was rescued by the balance power.91

In 1893, 1894, and 1896 France sent expeditionary missions to the Sudan. Angered by having been dropped from the former Anglo-French condominium over Egypt when Britain intervened in 1882 and established sole control, the French Colonial Ministry was determined to grasp the upper Nile and perhaps obtain a stranglehold on North Africa all the way from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, slicing the equally ambitious (and fanciful) British ambitions of "Cape to Cairo" at the "waist." Unlike the earlier efforts, Marchand's 1896 expedition survived and reached the Nile in 1898. Meanwhile, fearing a French plot to dam and control the Nile, the British responded by sending Kitchener south from Egypt in a bloody campaign against the Mahdist forces that had expelled Egypt from the suzerainty it had long claimed over the Sudan. Kitchener met Marchand at Fashoda, and the crisis began.92

The crisis was greatly complicated by the hazy legal status of the Sudan and Britain's very indirect claim (through Egypt's claim) over it. The French regarded the region as terra nullius (we would say it belonged to the Sudanese). On the other hand, the crisis was greatly simplified by Britain's overwhelming military superiority-both locally (Marchand depended on Kitchener for sup­ plies) and at sea.

89 McPherson, p. 567. 90 My views of this case have been greatly influenced by an excellent paper written by Ms. Hongying Wang, "Liberal Peace? A Study of the Fashoda Crisis of 1898" (American Political Science Association, 1992). 91 See the article by Christopher Layne, discussed below, and Erik Yesson, "Power and Diplo­ macy in World Politics" (Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Politics, Princeton University, 1992). Other difficulties for the liberal thesis are raised by Hongying Wang, "Liberal Peace?" But for a contrast favoring Liberal explanations over Realist in the Fashoda and Spanish­ American War crises, see James Lee Ray, "Comparing the Fashoda Crisis and the Spanish American War," International Studies Association, American Political Science Association, March 1994. 92 Valuable sources on the incident include Darrell Bates, The Fashoda Incident of 1898: Encounter on the Nile (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); G. N. Sanderson, England, Europe, and the Upper Nile (Edinburgh: 1965); Roger Brown, Fashoda Reconsidered: The Impact of Domestic Politics on French Policy in Africa (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1970); Christopher Andrew, Theophile Delcasse and the Making of the Entente Cordi­ ale (London: Macmillan, 1968); and R. Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War.

Internationalism: Kant 2 9 1

Contrary to Liberal expectations, war soon loomed on the horizon. Britain mobilized its fleet. The French right and its press demanded firmness. The British Tory-Unionist and Liberal-Imperialist factions demanded French with­ drawal. The jingoist press on both sides called for standing firm. Although no one wanted war, neither seemed at first willing to back down.

The crisis was, however, eventually resolved through Liberal politics (but also with very good fortune). The good fortune, from the Liberal Anglo-French point of view, was simply the long-standing and widely shared French hostility to Germany. This hostility, reflecting the German conquest of Alsace-Lorraine, had not been strong enough to stand in the way of Franco-German colonial cooperation against Britain in the 1880s, but the prospect of going to war against Britain with only Germany as a potential ally was not a prospect that most of the French, elite or mass, appeared to welcome.

Also leaning against the war were three more directly Liberal internationalist factors. The elected leadership of both countries was decidedly "bourgeois Lib­ eral" (if"bourgeois" can be used to describe the Marquess of Salisbury) . Anti jin­ goist, deeply concerned about political stability, hostile to the moods of mass democracy, imbued with the cosmopolitan culture of Europe, seeking to culti­ vate the growing economic interdependence of the two economies, both Salis­ bury and the French foreign minister, Theophile Delcasse, sought a close understanding between the two neighbors. Very importantly, throughout the crisis the French ambassador to London (Courcel) and Delcasse appeared to believe that Salisbury was doing everything he could to avoid war and that although he could not say so in public, he would be prepared to accommodate France elsewhere (in Morocco) after the crisis was resolved by a French with­ drawal.93 The Liberal press-the Manchester Guardian and the radical pro­ Dreyfusard press in France-was thoroughly opposed to escalating the crisis. And the business elite on both sides of the Channel were appalled at the idea

of war.94

In the end the two appear to have been very close to war. Indeed, without French resentment of Germany's conquest of Alsace-Lorraine, there might have been war. On the other hand, if the Sudan had been clearly delimited territory, there is little indication that the two sides would have felt themselves to have been so firmly in the right. Colonial disputes between Liberals elsewhere were resolved through negotiation. Both geopolitical and Liberal forces rescued the

two from war.

93 At the same time the French were told that Queen Victoria was also urging moderation on Salisbury and the cabinet. See Courcel to Delcasse, October 29, 1898, no. 465, Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Documents diplomatiques franr;ais, 1st Serie, Tome XIV (Paris: 1957), pp. 731,751. 94 See William Langer, The Diplomacy oflmperialism (New York: Knopf, 1951), pp. 552- 53; Lebow (1981), p. 322; and Bates, pp. 154-55.

2 9 2 LIBERALISM

Covert Actions. The Liberal peace depends on accurate publicity. Both citi­ zens and leaders need to be informed and the former needs to know what the latter is doing. But in covert actions this link is broken.95 For example, in the early 1950s Jacobo Arbenz led a democratizing movement that sought to improve the lot of the poor worker in Guatemala's banana plantations and to increase popular participation in politics. He met with hostility from the large U.S. business firms, including United Fruit, which questioned his labor poli­ cies. When the dispute escalated to the point that the Arbenz government nationalized the plantations of United Fruit, the U.S. companies mobilized the efforts of the CIA against Guatemala, alleging that Arbenz was an agent of the Soviet bloc. Influenced by the companies and determined to avert "commu­ nism" in Central America, the Eisenhower administration began to plan for the armed overthrow of the Arbenz government. Engaging disaffected military officers and mobilizing a collection of subversive dirty tricks, the CIA suc­ ceeded in ousting Arbenz in 1954 and installing the pro-U.S. regime of Colonel Carlos Castillo-Armas. The Arbenz regime was far from an established Liberal democracy; it was, however, much closer to democratic and Liberal principles than the regime with which the United States replaced it.96 The American public knew little more than the Cold War propaganda orchestrated by United Fruit and its corporate allies, which painted Arbenz as a Soviet agent and kept the public uninformed about U.S. subversion.97 _

Unfortunately, despite major advances in public disclosure and constitu­ tional control, the CIA still engages in operations inimical to the stability and spread of a Liberal peace. In 1995 the French government revealed a CIA attempt to bribe its trade negotiators, and in March 199 5 it was revealed the CIA had kept information concerning its continued support for Guatemalan military intelligence and death squads secret from not only the public but also the U.S. State Department, which had assured the public that such links had nded.98

The Logic of Critical Cases. Recent research has offered a valuable explora­ tion of similarly hard cases, where war nearly occurred; others have deepened the Liberal paradigm by showing how the process of the Liberal peace might

95 For an analysis of the problem, see Stansfield Turner, Secrecy and Democracy ( 1985), p. 179, and Harold Koh, The National Security Constitution: Sharing Power after the Iran­ Contra Affair ( 1990) and a general discussion of constitutional control in Lori Damrosch, "Constitutional Control over War-Powers: A Common Core Accountability in Democratic Societies," University of Miami Law Review 50, pp. 801-19. 96 It should be noted that Arbenz later acknowledged that he was and had been a communist at heart. 97 For a good brief account, see Barnet, Intervention and Revolution, pp. 229-36, and for U.S. policy making, see Richard Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala. 98 Sam Dillon and Tim Weiner, "In Guatemala's Dark Heart, CIA Lent Succor to Death," New York Times, April 2, 1995.

Internationalism: Kant 293

have worked. Together these illustrate the progressive development of the Lib­

eral research program. One critic chose his cases as episodes when supposed liberals came close to

war.99 In the Venezuela dispute between the United States and the United Kingdom in 1895, the conflict over the Ruhr in 1936, and the Fashoda crisis of 1898 the logic of power seemed to replace the Liberal logic of accommoda­ tion. At the minimum the disputes should succeed in warning Liberals of the dangers of imperial pursuits of principled settlements (the Venezuelan dispute), unprincipled and punitive peace settlements (the Ruhr crisis), and the contest

over undefined colonial assets (Fashoda). While these cases serve as valuable warnings, they are not as effective as tests

of the Liberal theory. A theory is a coherent causal relation that presents a possible causal explanation of an outcome or set of outcomes for lated as

ypotheses) that in princip e can e disconfirmed by evide11.ce. A case study can serve, as can stabsbcal tests, either to confirm or to disconfirm theories. Most political theories, moreover, need process-testing case studies to deter­ mine whether the allegedly determining factors in a relationship were per­ ceived by the actors. But case studies designed to test a theory should be selected not by the dependent variable (in this case peace or war) as one does when one seeks out near wars, but according to the independent variables­ liberal republics and non-Liberal states. Hard cases are not the best tests of anything but iron laws. (Most advocates of Liberal theory took the trouble to point out exceptions to the peace proneness of Liberal republics or democra­

cies.) Moreover, when Liberals do get into hostile crises (militarized international

disputes), they have already suffered a failure even if war does not result. The Liberal failure precedes the crisis. One of the most important signs of Liberal­ ism at work will be not the war crises resolved but the issues and crises that did not arise. Kant focused on a state of peace distinguishing Liberal relations from the state of war characterizing Liberal-non-Liberal and non-Liberal-non-Lib­ eral relations. Kant of course was drawing on Hobbes's famous Realist descrip­ tion of international relations not as war but as a state of war, which is "a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known." "For," Hobbes continues, "as the nature of foul weather, lieth not in a shower or two of rain; but in an inclination thereto of many days together: so the nature of war, consisteth not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary." War and peace are thus merely indicators of the "states" that permit them. States of peace are distinguished from states of war when judicial processes, not coercive bar­ gaining, settle disputes and when third parties are trusted to mediate con-

99 Christopher Layne, "Kant or Cant," International Security (Fall 1994), pp 5-49.

2 94 LIBERALISM

flicts. 100 Liberals do hope to have a backup mechanism, Liberal respect that precludes war even in crises, but relying on this backup unrealistically tempts human passions.

We can also use case studies to probe when Liberal politicians might be abusing Liberal principles to promote personal or ideological agendas. 101 Lib­ eral i and leaders have interpreted political regimes in a biased fash­ ion. Double standards aboun . Left-wing Liberals have found democratic mandates in revolutionary dictatorships; Stalin became, briefly, "Uncle Joe." Right-wing Liberals have found Liberal potential in anti-Communist, capitalist dictatorships. 102 If the Liberal peace rested on enlightened Liberal intellectuals alone, its salience would presumably be much less. Constraining leaders, how­ ever, and contributing to the public reliability of the peaceful expectation are institutions of representative government and material interests that can control individual biases. Each of three Kantian conditions can be conceived of as a potential backup to each of the others. The system can allow for an occasional imperialist or racist or ethnocentric or simply erratic leader, provided his or her success and tenure in office rest on a calculation of what the interests of the represented majority will bear. Similarly, mass racism or ethnocentrism can be temporarily mitigated by Liberal statesmanship or commercial interests.

When it comes to testing the validity of the Liberal peace, therefore, we need to measure regimes better than some of the actual democratic leaders do, if only to identify where they may have made an error, mistaking favored or "like" regimes for "liberal" ones. This is because ideologies are not the only source of the peace and because we shall want to discover where their articular ideolo­ gies may have led them astray. ntersu jective measures play a particularly use­ ,... I check on subjective interpretation in this connection since they go beyond the views of a single intellectual, leader, or country. 103 It may be the case that the Liberal peace is systematically misinterpreted and spurious and that it really is instead a "Teutonic," "Aryan," or "Anglo-Saxon" -or today "capitalist" -con­ dominium resulting from "Anglo-Saxon" virtue or simple profit mongering, as

10 °For example, Anne Marie Slaughter Burley has shown the differing treatments accorded

to Liberal and non-Liberal states in American courts and William Dixon has examined the management of conflict prior to the outbreak of a crisis. See Anne Marie Slaughter Burley, "Law among Liberal States: Liberal Internationalism and the Act of State Doctrine," Colum­ bia Law Review 92 ( 1992), pp. 1907-96; and William Dixon, "Democracy and the Manage­ ment of Conflict," Journal of Conflict Resolution 37, 1 (March 1993), pp. 42-68. 101 Ido Oren, "The 'Democratic Peace' or Peace among 'Our Kind'?," International Security 20, 2 (Fall1995), pp. 147-84. 102 Doyle, "Kant, Liberal Legacies," pp. 327-28. 103 For example, the proportion of the citizenry that can vote; the proportion of the society open to international trade, investment, and travel; the degree of control exercised by the legislature over public decisions, including foreign affairs; the condition of personal and civic rights and the attitudes of the citizenry on questions of human rights all can be studied intersubjectively, and should be. My list of Liberal regimes is a very rough approximation of such a measure.

Internationalism: Kant 2 9 5

some of the politicians and intellectuals of earlier and current times may have thought or think. The best way to find out is to test the counterproposition. Is there any evidence that the "Teutons" hang together? Have the capitalists?

If the Liberal thesis is anything like normal social science, we shall discover exceptions, inter-Liberal wars or inter-Liberal crises, with some of the latter resolved by luck (from the Liberal view) rather than by principled respect, institutional restraint, and commercial interest. In many other instances, Liber­ als suggest that differences will be managed long before they become violent disputes in the public arena. Rather than our writing case after case of non­ events, however, this is where the utility of statistically testing the significance of the liberal thesis will make itself clear.

A fairer test, for example, would select a small random sample of Liberal dyads, Liberal-non-Liberal dyads, and non-Liberal dyads and examine whether the Liberal thesis holds. To test the Liberal thesis on decision making, more­ over, we will need a wider investigation than is typical of conventional diplo­ matic history or than is provided by me of the cases discussed above. We shall want to trace decision processes outside cabinets, through parliaments and pres­ sure groups and to, sometimes, the public. We should look for distinctions between informed and uninformed publics (often aroused by crises), axio­ matic and articulated assumptions, 104 and issues on or absent from the policy agenda.

Statistical Assessment What is the correct statistical test of the international political significance of Liberalism? The ideal test would robe whether a Liberal state, re lacing a non-Liberal state, would in its relations with other Liberals and non-Libera s ~ehave the same way in the same circumstances for as long as would have a ~ontinuation of the original non-Liberal state-and vice versa. Such a proposi­ tion is not readily testable. We can control for contiguity, income, etc. across an entire sample, 105 but not for all those factors at once, together with geopolitical position. This is a key neglect; international history has been described as "geography in motion." 106 We will need to settle for something less. One (still­ incomplete) test that would be interesting would be to compare for each coun­ try its war experience during its Liberal periods with that during non-Liberal periods. 107 History also provides its own test during world wars, when states are

104 ~rnest May, "Lessons" of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign fo~I!cy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).

Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett, "Alliance, Contiguity, Wealth and Political Stability: Is the Lack of Conflict among Democracies a Statistical Artifact?," International Interactions ~k 3 (1992), pp. 245-68.

10 I have heard the tag most often from Robert Gilpin. 7 This is the strategy employed by John Owen in the International Security 20 (Fall 1995)

collection.

296 LIBERALISM

forced to chose on which side of an impending conflict they will fight; interest­ ingly, Liberals tend to wind up on the same side (with a few anomalies).

Can we rely on statistical data sets for anomalies? Finland's formal status as a belligerent of the Allies in World War, II is driving much of the recent statistical differences. Ruling Finland out by the thousand battle deaths criterion of Singer and Small is a useful statistical convenience but does not resolve the issue. 108 If today the United States and Britain suddenly attacked each other and stopped before sustaining one thousand casualties, no advocate of the Lib­ eral thesis should regard the theory as vindicated. Here is where we need care­ ful case studies. A good place to begin would be Allied and Nazi relations with Finland. Was Finland regarded as an enemy by the Allies and, if so, in a way similar to how the other enemy states were regarded? If yes, then this should be regarded as a disconfirming case; if not, not.

Once we have identified the best criteria to construct data sets, there is a key role for statistical assessment. An article by Henry Farber and Joanne Gowa presents a valuable contribution to a more refined statistical testing of the "dem~a · eace" proposition. Drawing on evidence from 1816 to 1980,109

they confirm he three major propositions: that "democracies" are as likely as any ot er regime to get into war, that they are significantly less likely to go to war with one another, and that they are less likely to get into militarized dis­ putes with one another. 110 (The authors follow much of the literature in includ­ ing all participatory polities irrespective of whether they are Liberal or not.)

The authors then proceed to segment the dependent variable- both war and dispute data-into five periods: "1) pre-World War I (1816-1913); 2) World War I (1914-18); 3) the interwar years (1919-38); 4) World War II (1939-45); and post-World War II (1946-80)." 111 Doing so, they discover that before 1914, although democratic states were less likely to engage in war with one another, this result is no longer statistically significant (it could have occurred by

108 J. David Singer and Melvin Small, Resort to Arms (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982). 109 Henry S. Farber and Joanne Gowa, "Polities and Peace," International Security 20, 2 (Fall 1995), pp. 108-32. 110 Ibid., pp. 119, 121. The authors are raising issues that should concern Liberals. Even if democracies get into fewer disputes, why democracies get into militarized disputes at all is a problem worth more attention. Perhaps they are more commercially interdependent-and thus have more to dispute about? Their disputatiousness may also be an ironic product of their success in avoiding war; militarized signaling may be employed simply because neither party assumes real war will result. Thus the Anglo-Icelandic Cod War, one of the most serious Liberal disputes of the Cold War period, which involved naval intimidation and bumping and may have resulted in a casualty, could have been a product of the assumption that the dispute would never go as far as real war. In this respect it resembles perhaps the bumping games (constrained by nuclear deterrence) that U.S. and Soviet submarines played during the Cold War. 11 1Jbid., p. 119.

Internationalism: Kant 2 9 7

chance). (The democratic probability of war is lower in every period but World War II, but the relationship is statistically powerful only during World War I and the Cold War.) Moreover, democratic states before World War I are more, not less, likely to get into low-level disputes with one another than are nondem­ ocratic states with other nondemocratic states. (Democratic states are less likely to get into disputes in every period but the pre-1914 period, but only the period of World War II and the Cold War are statistically significant.) The results are interesting.

The reasons for segmenting the data, however, are less clear. Segmenting the data in that fashion makes no more sense than picking a random set of decades or half centuries, unless one is testing the democratic or Liberal model against some other model. It is worth paying some attention to their justifica­ tions.

The authors offer two reasons for breaking up the data set of democratic peace and war. First, they note that general wars such as World War I and World War II are different from dyadic wars. These wars are seen to involve systemic effects and attempts to "pass the buck" that operate over and above dyad-specific or domestic regime effects. 112 This may be so, but if so, these periods of general war should constitute an especially difficult time for Liberal cooperation. General systemic wars constitute especially severe tests of dyadic conceptions of war as states are pressured to choose sides on strategic alliance criteria ("the enemy of my enemy is my friend ") rather than regime criteria. In World War II this produced the well-known anomaly of the formal state of war existing between the Liberal Allies and Liberal Finland, because Finland was an enemy of the non-Liberal Soviet Union, which was allied to the United States and Britain. Nonetheless, Liberal logic should resist systemic logic and hold up here. Why exclude those challenges?

A second reason offered for separating pre-World War I data from post­ World War II data is unspecified differences in "processes underlying alliance formation (and] war outbreak," on the one hand, and "bipolarity and nuclear weapons," on the other. First, it is of course just these processes that we seek to test; what is the alternative set of processes? Second, one could and should test the Liberal or democratic model against other theories such as international structure-bipolarity and multi polarity, nuclear or conventional weapons. Indeed there have been-so far-no wars between atomic or nuclear-armed powers. 113 Nuclear deterrence thus might account for peace among the United

112 1b'd 114 113 I ., p. . Kenneth Waltz has elaborated the reasons for nuclear peace in Scott D, Sagan and Ken­

neth Waltz,The spread p( Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (New York: Norton, 1955). One exception to the nuclear peace might be the battles in 1969 between the USSR and the ~eople's Republic of China along the Ussuri River Border. But casualty figures are uncertain 111 that conflict, and so was the status of China's deliverable nuclear weapons.

298 LIBERALISM

States, Britain, and France in the Cold War, and it widens the argument to incorporate U.S.-Soviet relations. Does it also account for fewer militarized disputes and as extensive cooperation? Doesn't it leave unaccounted for the preatomic peace among Liberal republics. More promisingly, do multipolar alliances perhaps generate interallied strife, and bipolar alliances interallied peace? Perhaps common security interests are stron er in alliances in bipolar systems, or s the bi olar he emons reserv the eac b olicin e wea er allies. It would be worth testing whether bipolar peace is the true under­ lying cause of the peace among democracies in the U.S. bloc of the Cold War-and, presumably, an equivalent peace among Communist republics in the Soviet bloc?

None of the measures captures the temporal or institutionalized dimension of the Liberal peace. Liberalism claims to avert not merely war in any given year but any war among Liberal states as long as they are Liberal. It looks to the probability not that war was avoided by Britain and France in 1898 but that it was avoided continuously for as long as they both were Liberal. If we multiply the probabilities in each given year to find the joint probability over almost two hundred years, the probability that the Liberal peace is a statistical accident becomes remarkably small (2 preceded by a decimal point and twenty zeros, in Bruce Russett's calculation). 114 Wars, however, are not independent even!s. War in one year makes war in the next likely, as peace connects to peace, so the statistical measure is suspect. But not measuring the joint probability is equally suspect because it is that very jointness that is the essence of the Liberal claim.

The data, moreover, on democratic war and democratic disputes could just as well be a product of measurement error (the participatory polities were not Liberal) or uncontrolled factors-greater commerce, perhaps, among democra­ cies. Interdependence is a source both of conflict and, for Liberals (by argu­ ment), of peace. If one controls for commerce, does the relationship between

emocracies and disputes change?115 Or, perhaps, the pre-1900 disputa­ tiousness of democracies is due to the incompleteness of Liberal democracy in the earlier era when the franchise was limited (inter alia, women were denied the franchise) and democratic principles were new. The best we can do is test theoretical models against each other. Until we have an alternative model, segmenting the data does not produce meaningful results.

114 Bruce Russett, "The Democratic Peace-and yet It Moves," International Security 19, 4 (Sr,ring 1995), pp. 164-75. 11 John Oneal, Frances Oneal, Zeev Maoz, and Bruce Russett in "The Liberal Peace: Inter­ dependence, Democracy and International Conflict, 1950-1985," Journal ofPeace Research (February 1996), pp. 11-28, examine these questions and find that both interdependence and democracy contribute to peace.

Internationalism: Kant 299

solidarity. When we have to choose, is democratization a better long-term strat­ egyl'Orthe United States than enhancing our position in the balance of power? It is over choices such as these that the debate should continue.

In the end, as with most theoretical disputes, the debate will turn on the alternatives. Liberal theory should not be compared with the statistical residual, a richly described case study, or "History" but with the comparative validity of other theories of similar scope. To do this, we need disconfirmable versions of the two other leading modern candidates, Realism and Marxism, which is in part the aim of this book.

FOREIGN POLICY DILEMMAS

Even if our answer favors democratization, Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder have warned us that democratization is not enough. 11 7 Given all the instabilities of regime change, democratization may provoke more war. Their statistical anal­ ysis has recently been challenged, and the evidence is still in dispute. 118 But if Mansfield and Snyder are correct, Liberals have little to be surprised about, but much to worry about. Without Liberal principles and international interdepen­ dence, all of which take time, democratizing regimes may well be war-prone.

We have here a useful warning. Yet in the long run liberalization across nations seems to hold great promise. How does one get from here to there? Golden parachutes for ex-dictators and the military are one idea with a consid­ erable history that may contribute to at least short-run stability. 119 Extending international institutions, or enhancing them, may be another answer. 12° Can

116F b 1

ar er and Gowa (1995), p. 122. 17 Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, "Democratization and the Danger of War," Inter­ ~ational Security 20, 1 (Summer 1995), pp. 5-38.

18 Andrew Enterline, "Driving while Democratizing: A Rejoinder to Mansfield and Snyder,"

International Security 20,4 (Spring 1996), pp. 183-207. 119M ansfield and Snyder, p. 6. 120 See Jack Snyder, "Averting Anarchy in the New Europe," International Security 14, 4 (Spring 1990), pp. 5-41.

300 LIBERALISM

the promise of European Union membership and the presence of assistance and association be an institutional bridge over a difficult transition? Can similar institutional mechanisms become operative in Africa and Asia? These are well worth our attention.

Preserving the legacy of the Liberal peace without succumbing to the legac­ ies of Liberal imprudence has proven to be both a moral and a strategic chal­ lenge. The bipolar structure of the international system and the near certainty of mutual devastation resulting from a nuclear war between the superpowers has created a "crystal ball effect" that has helped constrain the tendency toward miscalculation present at the outbreak of so many wars in the past. 121 But this "nuclear peace" appears to be limited to the superpowers. It has not curbed military interventions in the Third World. Moreover, it is subject to a desperate technological race designed to overcome its constraints and to crises that have pushed even the superpowers to the brink of war. We must still reckon with the imprudent vehemence and moods of complaisant appeasement that have almost alternately swept Liberal democracies.

Yet restraining Liberal imprudence, whether aggressive or passive, may not be possible without threatening Liberal pacification. Improving the strategic acumen of our foreign policy calls for introducing steadier strategic calculations of the long-run national interest and more flexible responses to changes in the international political environment. Constraining the indiscriminate meddling of our foreign interventions calls for a deeper appreciation of the "particularism of history, culture, and membership." 122 But both the improvement in strategy and the constraint on intervention in turn seem to require an executive freed from the restraints of a representative legislature in the management of foreign policy and a political culture indifferent to the universal rights of individuals. These in their turn could break the chain of constitutional guarantees, the respect for representative government, and the web of transnational contact that have sustained the pacific union of Liberal states.

Liberalism at the twentieth century's end looks remarkably robust. Ironically, so it did at the beginning. If nothing else, we should have learned something about peace, war, and cooperation from our very bloody twentieth century. We have paid a high tuition; let us hope we have learned that Liberal democracy is worth defending. The promise of peace may well be one more reason for doing so.

121 Kenneth Waltz, "The Stability of a Bipolar World," Daedalus XCIII (Summer 1964), pp. 881-909, and Albert Carnesale, Paul Doty, Stanley Hoffmann, Samuel Huntington, Joseph Nre, and Scott Sagan, Living with Nuclear Weapons (New York: Bantam, 1983), p. 44. 12 Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 5.

Conclusion: Liberals and Realists: Explaining Differences

LIKE THE REALISTS, Liberals display significant differences. The institutional­ ists (Locke and Bentham) focus on individual-level(Image !)_determinants, the commercialists (Smith and Schum eter) on societal-level (Image II), and the internationa IS s ant on interstate (Image III) determinants of the state of war. Their conceptions of what describes the state of war also differ. For none of the Liberals does the state of nature (without overnment roduce the state o was_for eac the state o war must be made known by aggressive acts or declared intentions to aggress. For all the Liberals-unlike the Realists-there ~xists the more or less firm posSI'bifity of a state of peace.

For Locke and Bentham, the state of peace is easily corrupted by the incon­ veniences of prejudiced and partial judgment, misinformation, and uncer­ tainty; and the state of war and state of peace begin to merge. Individual citizens and statespersons whose perceptions and interest can corrupt peace can, if they are dedicated to the rule of law, defend the rights of life, liberty, and property and achieve a measure of international justice. They are, however, often likely to fail and may only succeed in preserving the security of their state.

For S~11:d Sc~um_eeter the state of war can be tamed by the develop­ ment o- c erc1a society or capitalist democracy, which rationalize and ~lign individual interests with social interests through~ The state of war Is a product of autocratic imperialism and export monopolism, social forma­ tions that are atavistic after the process of free market capitalism has begun to take root. Indeed, it is the development of the market economy that in the long run will ensure that the warlike forces of traditional autocracies will evolve into extinction.

For the Kantian internationalists, the state of war is a potent structural force

FreedomHouse(2015).pdf

FREEDOM IN THE WORLD 2015

Discarding Democracy: Return to the Iron Fist

Highlights from Freedom House’s annual report on political rights and civil liberties

2Cover photo: Egyptian riot policemen standing guard outside the Police Academy in Cairo, February 2014. AFP/Getty Images.

The following people were instrumental in the writing of this essay: Elen Aghekyan, Matthew Coogan, Jennifer Dunham, Bret Nelson, Sarah Repucci, Tyler Roylance, and Vanessa Tucker.

This report was made possible by the generous support of the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Schloss Family Foundation, Kim G. Davis, and the Earhart Foundation. Freedom House also gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the 21st Century ILGWU Heritage Fund, The Reed Foundation, Leonard Sussman and the Sussman Freedom Fund, Diana Villiers Negroponte, and other private contributors.

Discarding Democracy: 1 A Return to the Iron Fist

A more explicit rejection of 2 democratic standards

Freedom in the World methodology 2

The effects and causes 3 of terrorism

A return to cruder 5 authoritarian methods

Notable developments in 2014 6

Global findings 7

Regional Trends 9

Middle East and North Africa 9

Eurasia 10

Asia-Pacific 11

Europe 13

Sub-Saharan Africa 16

Americas 17

Conclusion: 19 The system of choice

Worst of the worst 20

Tolerating risk 20

Tables: Independent Countries 21

Related and Disputed Territories 27

www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2015 1

FREEDOM IN THE WORLD 2015

Discarding Democracy: A Return to the Iron Fist by Arch Puddington, Vice President for Research

In a year marked by an explosion of terrorist violence, autocrats’ use of more brutal tactics, and Russia’s invasion and annexation of a neighboring country’s territory, the state of freedom in 2014 worsened significantly in nearly every part of the world.

For the ninth consecutive year, Freedom in the World, Freedom House’s annual report on the condition of global political rights and civil liberties, showed an overall decline. Indeed, acceptance of democracy as the world’s dominant form of government—and of an international system built on democratic ideals—is under greater threat than at any point in the last 25 years.

Even after such a long period of mounting pressure on democracy, developments in 2014 were exceptionally grim. The report’s findings show that nearly twice as many countries suffered declines as registered gains, 61 to 33, with the number of gains hitting its lowest point since the nine-year erosion began.

This pattern held true across geographical regions, with more declines than gains in the Middle East and North Africa, Eurasia, sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and the Americas, and an even split in Asia-Pacific. Syria, a dictatorship mired in civil war and ethnic division and facing uncontrolled terrorism, received the lowest Freedom in the World country score in over a decade.

The lack of democratic gains around the world was conspicuous. The one notable exception was Tunisia, which became the first Arab country to achieve the status of Free since Lebanon was gripped by civil war 40 years ago.

By contrast, a troubling number of large, economically powerful, or regionally influential countries moved backward: Russia, Venezuela, Egypt, Turkey, Thailand, Nigeria, Kenya, and Azerbaijan. Hungary, a European Union member state, also saw a sharp slide in its democratic standards as part of a process that began in 2010.

There were also net declines across five of the seven categories of democratic indicators assessed by the report. Continuing a recent trend, the worst reversals affected freedom of expression, civil society, and the rule of law. In a new and disquieting development, a number of countries lost ground due to state surveillance, restrictions on internet communications, and curbs on personal autonomy—including the freedom to make decisions about education and employment and the ability to travel freely.

FREEDOM IN THE WORLD 2015

Discarding Democracy: Return to the Iron Fist

2

A more explicit rejection of democratic standards Just as disturbing as the statistical decline was the open disdain for democratic standards that colored the words and actions of autocratic governments during the year. Until recently, most authoritarian regimes claimed to respect international agreements and paid lip service to the norms of competitive elections and human rights. They now increasingly flout democratic values, argue for the superiority of what amounts to one-party rule, and seek to throw off the constraints of fundamental diplomatic principles.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including the outright seizure and formal annexation of Crimea, is the prime example of this phenomenon. The Russian intervention was in direct violation of an international agreement that had guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity. President Vladimir Putin made his contempt for the values of liberal democracy unmistakably clear. He and his aides equated raw propaganda with legitimate journalism, treated human rights activists as enemies of the state, and denounced the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community as moral degenerates.

In Egypt, the rise of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has been accompanied by a relentless campaign to roll back the gains of the Arab Spring. In an unprecedented trampling of the rule of law, Egyptian courts sentenced 1,300 political detainees to death in a series of drumhead trials that lacked the most basic

elements of due process. Under Sisi, a once-vibrant media sector has been bent into submission, human rights organizations suppressed to the point that they can no longer operate, foreign scholars barred, and domestic critics (both secular and Islamist) arrested or forced into exile. As the year drew to a close, a court dismissed charges against former president Hosni Mubarak for the murder of demonstrators in 2011, a depressing symbol of the country’s undisguised return to autocratic rule.

In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan consolidated power during the year and waged an increasingly aggressive campaign against democratic pluralism. He openly demanded that media owners censor coverage or fire critical journalists, told the Constitutional Court he does not respect its rulings, threatened reporters (and rebuked women journalists), and ordered radical, even bizarre changes to the school curriculum. Having risen from the premiership to the presidency in August, he formed a “shadow cabinet” that allows him to run the country from the presidential palace, circumventing constitutional rules and the ministries of his own party’s government.

In China, President Xi Jinping continued to centralize authority and maintain hands-on involvement in policy areas ranging from domestic security to internet management to ethnic relations, emerging as the most powerful Chinese Communist Party leader since Deng Xiaoping. He continued to bolster China’s

Freedom in the World Methodology

Freedom in the World 2015 evaluates the state of freedom in 195 countries and 15 territories during 2014. Each country and territory is assigned two numerical ratings—from 1 to 7—for political rights and civil liberties, with 1 representing the most free and 7 the least free. The two ratings are based on scores assigned to 25 more detailed indicators. The average of a country or territory’s political rights and civil liberties ratings determines whether it is Free, Partly Free, or Not Free.

The methodology, which is derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is applied to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographic location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development.

Freedom in the World assesses the real-world rights and freedoms enjoyed by individuals, rather than governments or government performance per se. Political rights and civil liberties can be affected by both state and nonstate actors,

including insurgents and other armed groups.

For complete information on the methodology, visit https:// freedomhouse.org/report/ freedom-world/freedom- world-2015/methodology.

Freedom House

www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2015 3

sweeping maritime territorial claims with armed force and personnel, and while his aggressive anticorruption campaign reached the highest echelons of the party, culminating in the arrest of former security czar Zhou Yongkang, it remained selective and ignored the principles of due process. Moreover, the campaign has been compromised by an intensified crackdown on grassroots anticorruption activists and other elements of civil society, including a series of politically motivated convictions. The government also intensified its persecution of the Uighur community, imposing layers of restriction on Uighurs’ ability to observe their Muslim faith and sentencing activists and journalists to long prison terms.

The Communist authorities also tightened China’s sophisticated system of internet control, taking steps such as the shuttering of dozens of accounts on the popular WeChat messaging service that had been used to disseminate news. And despite official rhetoric about improving the rule of law, an array of extralegal forms of detention for political and religious dissidents continued to proliferate.

The effects and causes of terrorism In a variety of ways, lack of democratic governance creates an enabling environment for terrorism, and the problem rapidly metastasized as a threat to human life and human freedom during 2014. In a wide swath of the globe stretching from West Africa through the Middle East to South Asia, radical jihadist forces plagued local governments and populations. Their impact on countries like Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, and Nigeria was devastating, as they massacred security forces and civilians alike, took foreigners hostage, and killed or enslaved religious minorities, including Muslims whom they did not recognize as such. Women were particular targets: Young women and teenage girls were seized as war prizes, schoolgirls were kidnapped and raped, women educators and health workers were assassinated, and women suffered disproportionately in refugee camps. As horror followed horror, the year ended with a slaughter of more than 130 schoolchildren by the Pakistani Taliban.

The spike in terrorist violence laid bare widespread corruption, poor governance, and counterproductive security strategies in a number of countries with

AGGREGATE SCORES OF SELECTED COUNTRIES OF INTEREST IN 2014

Hungary

Tunisia

Mexico

Ukraine

Turkey

Nigeria

Thailand

Egypt

Iraq

Russia

United Arab Emirates

Azerbaijan

Vietnam

Ethiopia

China

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

82

79

62

43

32

26

24

23

21

20

20

64

54

18

17

FREE PARTLY FREE NOT FREE

FREEDOM IN THE WORLD 2015

Discarding Democracy: Return to the Iron Fist

4

weak or nonexistent democratic institutions. The Syrian regime had opened the door to the growth of the Islamic State and other extremist movements by brutally repressing first peaceful protesters and the political opposition, then the various rebel groups that rose up to defend them. The Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki also smoothed the militants’ path by persecuting opposition leaders, rebuking peaceful Sunni protests, and fostering corruption and cronyism in the security forces. More recently, the Sisi government in Egypt has made the same mistake in its remorseless drive to eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood, indirectly fueling an armed insurgency and contributing to the formation of an Islamic State affiliate in the country.

In Nigeria, neither the government nor the military has proved capable of dealing effectively with Boko Haram, which operates with impunity in parts of the country’s north. While the military has for decades played a large role in Nigerian political life, it has proved poorly equipped, badly trained, hollowed out by graft, and prone to scattershot tactics that fail to distinguish between terrorists and civilians. In Pakistan, the military and intelligence services have a long history of colluding with certain extremist groups, including

some that are responsible for mass killings of civilians. When they do move against militant bastions, they too often resort to indiscriminate violence and fail to follow up with improved governance.

Many governments have exploited the escalation of terrorism as a justification for new and essentially unrelated repressive measures. While a vigorous debate over how democracies should respond to terrorism at home and abroad is under way in Europe, Australia, and North America, leaders elsewhere are citing the threat as they silence dissidents, shutter critical media, and eliminate civil society groups. Thus the regime of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro has imprisoned opposition political figures as terrorists, Kenyan authorities have deregistered hundreds of nongovernmental organizations and unleashed security agencies while pursuing links to Somali militants, and China has invoked terrorism to support harsh prison sentences against nonviolent Uighur activists and internet users, including a life sentence for well-known Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti.

COUNTRIES WITH DECLINES IN FREEDOM HAVE OUTNUMBERED THOSE WITH GAINS FOR THE PAST NINE YEARS

2005 2006

2007 2008

2009 2010 2011

2012 2013

2014

N um

be r o

f C ou

nt rie

s

Year under Review

Improved Declined

80

70

60

50

40

30

80

52

59 59

43

60

38

67

34

49

34

54

37

61

54

61

33

40 42

56

Freedom House

www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2015 5

A return to cruder authoritarian methods The exploitation of the terrorism threat is just one aspect of a general trend in which repressive regimes are returning to blunt, retrograde tactics in their ongoing effort to preserve political control. In recent decades, autocrats had favored more “modern,” nuanced methods that aimed to protect de facto monopolies on power while maintaining a veneer of democratic pluralism and avoiding practices associated with the totalitarian regimes and military dictatorships of the 20th century.

Over the past year, however, there were signs that authoritarian regimes were beginning to abandon the quasi-democratic camouflage that allowed them to survive and prosper in the post–Cold War world. Again, the most blatant example is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, whose official justifications included ethnic nationalist, irredentist claims and which quickly drew comparisons to the land grabs of Hitler or Stalin. The move exposed Moscow as a committed enemy of European peace and democratization rather than a would-be strategic partner. China’s government responded to public discontent with campaigns reminiscent of the Mao era, including televised

confessions that have gained prominence under Xi Jinping. The Chinese authorities are also resorting to criminal and administrative detention to restrict activists instead of softer tactics like house arrest or informal interrogations. Both China and Russia have made use of one of the Cold War’s most chilling instruments, the placement of dissidents in psychiatric hospitals.

In Venezuela and Azerbaijan, the ranks of political prisoners steadily increased in 2014, as leading officials railed against foreign conspiracies aimed at fomenting revolution. Meanwhile, rulers in Egypt, Bahrain, and other Middle Eastern countries, which just a decade ago felt obliged to move toward competitive elections, now resort to violent police tactics, sham trials, and severe sentences as they seek to annihilate political opposition. And whereas the most successful authoritarian regimes previously tolerated a modest opposition press, some civil society activity, and a comparatively vibrant internet environment, they are now reducing or closing these remaining spaces for dissent and debate.

MANY OF LARGEST GAINS AND DECLINES IN AGGREGATE SCORES OVER PAST FIVE YEARS WERE IN AFRICA

+26

+14

+13

+7

+7

Côte d’Ivoire

Niger

Madagascar

Senegal

Zimbabwe

-8

-9

-18

-28 -31

Burkina Faso

Uganda

The Gambia

Mali

Central African Republic

-40 -30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30

Change in Aggregate Score, 2010–14

FREE PARTLY FREE NOT FREE

6

FREEDOM IN THE WORLD 2015

Discarding Democracy: Return to the Iron Fist

The return to older authoritarian practices has included increased military involvement in governance and political affairs. In Thailand, the military leaders responsible for the removal of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and her elected government made clear that a return to democratic rule will not take place in the foreseeable future. The military commandeered the political transition after the ouster of the president in Burkina Faso, and armed forces continued to play a major role in a number of other African states, including Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. In Egypt, the Sisi government has cemented the military’s position as the leading force in society. A similar phenomenon has emerged in Venezuela, where the armed forces are involved in the economy, social programs, and internal security, and are thought to play a critical part in drug trafficking and other criminal ventures.

Notable developments in 2014 In addition to those described above, five major phenomena stood out during the year:

Humanitarian crises rooted in undemocratic governance: In Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, millions of refugees were forced into squalid

camps, risked their lives in overcrowded boats, or found tenuous shelter on the margins of foreign societies. Authoritarian misrule was a primary cause of these humanitarian crises. In Syria, the civil war was originally sparked by the regime’s attacks on demonstrators who were protesting the torture of students accused of antigovernment graffiti. In South Sudan, a political dispute between the president and his former vice president—in the context of an interim constitution that gives sweeping powers to the executive—led to fighting within the army that developed into full-scale civil war. The combatants have targeted civilians, who are also facing acute food shortages and massive internal displacement. While the conflict in Ukraine has not reached the same level, authoritarian Russia’s invasion has created a crisis like none seen in Europe since the Balkan wars of the 1990s. The aggression was precipitated in part by a confrontation between the Ukrainian people and their increasingly authoritarian president, following decades of corrupt Ukrainian administrations.

Tunisia’s exceptional success story: In 2014, Tunisia took its place among the Free countries of the world. This is remarkable not just because it was ranked Not Free only five years ago, with scores that placed it among some of the most repressive regimes in

NUMBER OF ELECTORAL DEMOCRACIES HAS NOT CHANGED DRAMATICALLY SINCE EARLY 1990s

116 125

140

120

100

80

60

40

20

0

1989 1994 1999 2004 2009 2014

69

113 120 119

N um

be r o

f E le

ct or

al D

em oc

ra ci

es

Year under Review

Freedom House

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the world, but also because Tunisia is so far the only successful case among the many Arab countries that exhibited some political opening in the 2011 Arab Spring. The improvements that pushed it into the Free category included a progressive constitution adopted in January 2014 and well-regarded elections for parliament and president later in the year. As the only full-fledged Arab democracy, Tunisia can set a strong positive example for the region and for all countries that still struggle under authoritarian rule.

The decline of internet freedom: Restrictions on internet freedom have long been less severe than those imposed on traditional media, but the gap is closing as governments crack down on online activity. Censorship and surveillance, repressive new laws, criminal penalties, and arrests of users have been on the rise in numerous settings. For example, officials in Ecuador increased online monitoring in 2014, hiring firms to remove content deemed unfavorable to the government from sites like YouTube and invoking the 2013 communications law to prosecute social media users who were critical of the president. The Rwandan government stepped up use of a new law that allows security officials to monitor online communications, and surveillance appears to have increased in practice. Such restrictions affect Free countries as well. After the Sewol ferry accident in South Korea in April and related criticism and rumors surrounding the president, the government began routine monitoring and censorship of online discussions. Israel also featured a stricter environment for discussion on social media this year, especially regarding controversial views on the situation in the Gaza Strip.

Personal autonomy under pressure: In addition to continued declines in freedom of expression and civil society rights, there were notable declines in freedom of movement during 2014. In some cases, a tightening of government control prevented ordinary people from moving within their own country or traveling abroad. Restrictions imposed by the authoritarian governments of Egypt and Russia were politically motivated. In Liberia and Sierra Leone, authorities limited movement due to the Ebola crisis, at times using measures beyond those necessary to control the disease’s spread. The most extreme example was a 10-day quarantine on the impoverished neighborhood of West Point in Monrovia, Liberia, which according to many experts actually increased the risk of contagion. In Libya, the worsening civil war hampered internal movement. In El Salvador and Honduras, worsening

gang-related violence and lawlessness limited where people could safely travel.

Overlooked autocrats: While some of the world’s worst dictatorships regularly made headlines, others continued to fly below the radar. Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev won a landslide reelection victory against an opposition that was crippled by arrests and legal constraints, and the regime stepped up its jailing of human rights activists, journalists, and other perceived enemies. Despite year after year of declines in political rights and civil liberties, however, Azerbaijan has avoided the democratic world’s opprobrium due to its energy wealth and cooperation on security matters. Vietnam is also an attractive destination for foreign investment, and the United States and its allies gave the country special attention in 2014 as the underdog facing Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. But like China, Vietnam remains an entrenched one-party state, and the regime imposed harsher penalties for free speech online, arrested protesters, and continued to ban work by human rights organizations. Ethiopia is held up as a model for development in Africa, and is one of the world’s largest recipients of foreign assistance. But in 2014 its security forces opened fire on protesters, carried out large-scale arrests of bloggers and other journalists as well as members of the political opposition, and evicted communities from their land to make way for opaque development projects. Finally, while several countries in the Middle East—most notably oil-rich Saudi Arabia—receive special treatment from the United States and others, the United Arab Emirates stands out for how little international attention is paid to its systematic denial of rights for foreign workers, who make up the vast majority of the population; its enforcement of one of the most restrictive press laws in the Arab world; and its dynastic political system, which leaves no space for opposition.

Global findings The number of countries designated by Freedom in the World as Free in 2014 stood at 89, representing 46 percent of the world’s 195 polities and nearly 2.9 billion people—or 40 percent of the global population. The number of Free countries increased by one from the previous year’s report.

The number of countries qualifying as Partly Free stood at 55, or 28 percent of all countries assessed, and they were home to just over 1.7 billion people, or 24

8

FREEDOM IN THE WORLD 2015

Discarding Democracy: Return to the Iron Fist

percent of the world’s total. The number of Partly Free countries decreased by four from the previous year.

A total of 51 countries were deemed Not Free, representing 26 percent of the world’s polities. The number of people living under Not Free conditions stood at 2.6 billion people, or 36 percent of the global population, though it is important to note that more than half of this number lives in just one country: China. The number of Not Free countries increased by three from 2013.

The number of electoral democracies stood at 125, three more than in 2013. Five countries achieved electoral democracy status: Fiji, Kosovo, Madagascar, the Maldives, and the Solomon Islands. Two countries, Libya and Thailand, lost their designation as electoral democracies.

Tunisia rose from Partly Free to Free, while Guinea- Bissau improved from Not Free to Partly Free. Four countries fell from Partly Free to Not Free: Burundi, Libya, Thailand, and Uganda.

FREE

PARTLY FREE

NOT FREE

GLOBAL: STATUS BY COUNTRY GLOBAL: STATUS BY POPULATION

GLOBAL STATUS BY COUNTRY

46%

28%

26%

55 countries

89 countries

51 countries

2,872,638,203 2,611,399,627

1,716,798,300

Total population: 7,215,543,130

24%

36% 40%

GLOBAL STATUS BY POPULATION

WHILE OVERALL FREEDOM HAS INCREASED SINCE 1984, IT HAS RECENTLY PLATEAUED

50

40

30

20

10

0

1984 1994 2004 2014

32% 35% 33%

40%

32% 28%

46%

28% 26%

46%

28% 26%

Pe rc

en ta

ge o

f C ou

nt rie

s

FREE PARTLY FREE NOT FREE

Freedom House

www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2015 9

Regional Trends

The negative pattern in 2014 held true across geographical regions, with more declines than gains in the Middle East and North Africa, Eurasia, sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and the Americas, and an even split in Asia-Pacific.

Middle East and North Africa: Tunisia a bright spot in troubled region

Although Tunisia became the Arab world’s only Free country after holding democratic elections under a new constitution, the rest of the Middle East and North Africa was racked by negative and often tragic events. The Syrian civil war ground on, the Islamic State and other extremist militant factions dramatically extended their reach, and Libya’s tentative improvements following the downfall of Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi rapidly disintegrated as the country fell into a new internal conflict. Rival armed groups also overran a fragile political process in Yemen, and the effects of the Syrian war paralyzed elected institutions in Lebanon. Egypt continued its rollback of post- Mubarak reforms and solidified its return to autocracy with sham elections and a crackdown on all forms of dissent.

Following high-profile killings of Israeli and Palestinian civilians and a campaign of rocket attacks on Israel by Gaza-based militants, the Israel Defense Forces launched a 50-day air and ground offensive in Gaza over the summer. More than 2,200 people died, mostly Gazan civilians, and tens of thousands of homes in Gaza were damaged or destroyed. Israel was criticized for responding to attacks by Hamas militants in a disproportionate way, while Hamas was criticized for entrenching rocket launchers and fighters in civilian neighborhoods.

Notable gains or declines:

Bahrain’s political rights rating declined from 6 to 7 due to grave flaws in the 2014 legislative elections and the government’s unwillingness to address long-standing grievances among the majority Shiite community about the drawing of electoral districts and the possibility of fair representation.

Egypt received a downward trend arrow due to the complete marginalization of the opposition, state surveillance of electronic communications, public exhortations to report critics of the government to the authorities, and the mass trials and unjustified imprisonment of members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Iraq’s political rights rating declined from 5 to 6 due to the Islamic State’s attempts to destroy Christian, Shiite, Yazidi, and other communities under its control, as well as attacks on Sunnis by state-sponsored Shiite militias.

Lebanon received a downward trend arrow due to the parliament’s repeated failure to elect a president and its postponement of overdue legislative elections for another two and a half years, which left the country with a presidential void and a National Assembly whose mandate expired in 2013.

Libya’s political rights rating declined from 4 to 6, its civil liberties rating declined from 5 to 6, and its

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status declined from Partly Free to Not Free due to the country’s descent into a civil war, which contributed to a humanitarian crisis as citizens fled embattled cities, and led to pressure on civil society and media outlets amid the increased political polarization.

Syria received a downward trend arrow due to worsening religious persecution, weakening of civil society groups and rule of law, and the large-scale starvation and torture of civilians and detainees.

Tunisia’s political rights rating improved from 3 to 1 and its status improved from Partly Free to Free

due to the adoption of a progressive constitution, governance improvements under a consensus-based caretaker administration, and the holding of free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections, all with a high degree of transparency.

Yemen received a downward trend arrow due to the Houthi militant group’s seizure and occupation of the capital city, its forced reconfiguration of the cabinet, and its other demands on the president, which paralyzed Yemen’s formal political process.

Eurasia: Ukraine in turmoil, conditions worsen in Central Asia

Events in Eurasia in 2014 were dominated by the upheaval in Ukraine. Gains related to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych through the Euromaidan protests in February, which led to the election of a new president and parliament later in the year, were offset by Russia’s seizure of Crimea in March and ongoing battles with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Crimea, evaluated separately for the first time for Freedom in the World 2015, emerged with a dismal freedom rating of 6.5 on a 7-point scale and a Not Free status, reflecting repressive conditions in which residents—especially Tatars and others who opposed the forced annexation—were deprived of their political rights and civil liberties.

The Russian government coupled its rejection of international pressure over Ukraine with intensified domestic controls on dissent, tightening its grip on the media sector and nongovernmental organizations.

Central Asia also took a turn for the worse in 2014. Kyrgyzstan, typically rated better than its neighbors, suffered from increased government restrictions on freedom of assembly and civil society groups. In Tajikistan, a sustained offensive against political pluralism continued with the persecution of opposition parties and the designation of one opposition movement, Group 24, as an extremist organization.

The government of Azerbaijan similarly renewed its assault on dissent in 2014, targeting traditional media

MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA: STATUS BY COUNTRY

MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA: STATUS BY POPULATION

MENA: STATUS BY COUNTRIES MENA: STATUS BY COUNTRIESMENA: STATUS BY POPULATION

17%72%

11%13 countries

3 countries

2 countries

5% 85% 10%

19,206,000

41,926,000

349,145,000

Total population: 410,277,000

FREE

PARTLY FREE NOT FREE

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and civil society organizations for legal harassment, arbitrary detention, and physical abuse.

Ratings for the region as a whole are the second worst in the world after the Middle East, and Crimea joins three other Eurasian states—Belarus, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—on Freedom House’s list of the world’s most repressive countries and territories for 2014.

Notable gains or declines:

Azerbaijan received a downward trend arrow due to an intensified crackdown on dissent, including the imprisonment and abuse of human rights advocates and journalists.

Kyrgyzstan received a downward trend arrow due to a government crackdown on freedom of assembly and the ability of nongovernmental organizations to operate.

Russia’s civil liberties rating declined from 5 to 6 due to expanded media controls, a dramatically increased level of propaganda on state-controlled television, and new restrictions on the ability of some citizens to travel abroad.

Tajikistan received a downward trend arrow due to constant abuse of opposition parties at the local level in the run-up to parliamentary elections, the designation of the political reform and opposition movement Group 24 as an extremist entity in October, and the arrest and temporary detention of academic researcher Alexander Sodiqov on treason charges.

Ukraine’s political rights rating rose from 4 to 3 due to improvements in political pluralism, parliamentary elections, and government transparency following the departure of President Viktor Yanukovych.

Asia-Pacific: Fair elections, a coup, and stalled reforms

Citizens of three major Asian states—India, Japan, and Indonesia—went to the polls in 2014, handing their leaders strong mandates through what were largely open and fair electoral processes. These positive achievements contrasted sharply with the coup d’état in Thailand, in which the military ousted an elected government, suspended the constitution, and implemented martial law restrictions that drastically rolled back political rights and civil liberties.

Myanmar, which has only partly abandoned military rule, began to veer from the path to democracy. Journalists and demonstrators faced greater restrictions, the Rohingya minority continued to suffer from violence and official discrimination, and proposed laws that would ban religious conversions and interfaith marriages threatened to legitimize anti- Muslim extremism.

EURASIA: STATUS BY COUNTRY EURASIA: STATUS BY POPULATION

EURASIA: STATUS BY COUNTRIES EURASIA: STATUS BY POPULATION

21%79%

60,642,000

224,352,000

Total population: 284,994,000

42% 58%

5 countries

7 countries

FREE PARTLY FREE NOT FREE

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Notable gains or declines:

Afghanistan received a downward trend arrow due to increased violence against journalists and civilians amid the withdrawal of international combat troops.

Bangladesh’s political rights rating declined from 3 to 4 due to national elections that were marred by an opposition boycott, as well as widespread violence and intimidation by a range of political parties.

East Timor’s civil liberties rating improved from 4 to 3 due to a decrease in restrictions on peaceful assembly and an overall improvement in the internal security situation over the past several years.

Fiji’s political rights rating improved from 6 to 3 due to September general elections—the first since a 2006 coup—that were deemed free and fair.

Hong Kong received a downward trend arrow due to restrictions on press freedom and freedom of assembly surrounding protests against a Chinese government decision to limit candidate nominations for future executive elections.

Malaysia received a downward trend arrow due to the government’s use of the Sedition Act to intimidate political opponents, an increase in arrests and harassment of Shiite Muslims and transgender Malaysians, and more extensive use of defamation laws to silence independent or critical voices.

Myanmar’s civil liberties rating declined from 5 to 6 due to restrictions on media freedom, including the arrest and imprisonment of a number of journalists.

Nauru’s civil liberties rating declined from 1 to 2 due to government attempts to limit freedom of expression among foreign journalists and opposition figures, as well as the dismissal of judicial officials who refused the government’s push to try asylum seekers charged with rioting at a detention center in 2013.

Nepal’s political rights rating improved from 4 to 3 due to the functioning of a stable government for the first time in over five years following 2013 elections, and significant progress by the main political parties toward the completion of a draft constitution.

The Solomon Islands’ political rights rating improved from 4 to 3 as a result of relatively successful October elections, which featured biometric registration and were accepted as legitimate by both the opposition and voters.

South Korea received a downward trend arrow due to the increased intimidation of political opponents of President Park Geun-hye and crackdowns on public criticism of her performance following the Sewol ferry accident.

Sri Lanka’s civil liberties rating declined from 4 to 5 due to increased pressure on freedom of expression and association, including curbs on traditional media and internet-based news and opinion, and surveillance and harassment of civil society activists.

Thailand’s political rights rating declined from 4 to 6, its civil liberties rating declined from 4 to 5, and its status declined from Partly Free to Not Free due to the May military coup, whose leaders abolished the 2007 constitution and imposed severe restrictions on speech and assembly.

ASIA-PACIFIC: STATUS BY COUNTRY ASIA-PACIFIC: STATUS BY POPULATION

1,653,087,627

ASIA PACIFIC: STATUS BY COUNTRIES ASIA PACIFIC: STATUS BY POPULATION

42%

20% 38% 1,528,665,252798,838,300

Total population: 3,980,591,179

41%

36%

23%

14 countries

16 countries

9 countries

FREE

PARTLY FREE

NOT FREE

Freedom House

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Europe: Democratic setbacks in Hungary, Turkey

In Hungary, parliamentary and local elections revealed the extent to which recent legislative and other changes have tilted the playing field in favor of the ruling party, Fidesz. Observers noted slanted media coverage, the misuse of state resources, gerrymandering, and campaign spending problems. With its renewed parliamentary supermajority, Fidesz continued to transform the country’s institutions, facing few obstacles from the divided and enfeebled opposition.

Turkey drifted much further from democratic norms, with longtime prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rising to the presidency and overseeing government attempts to quash corruption cases against his allies and associates. The media and judiciary both faced greater interference by the executive and legislative branches, including a series of raids and arrests targeting media outlets affiliated with Erdoğan’s political enemies.

Notable gains or declines:

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s political rights rating declined from 3 to 4 because the government

largely ignored a significant civic movement protesting corruption and calling for reforms in early 2014, and proved generally unresponsive to the population’s concerns.

Hungary’s political rights rating declined from 1 to 2 due to an election campaign that demonstrated the diminished space for fair competition given legislative and other advantages accrued by the ruling party.

Kosovo’s political rights rating improved from 5 to 4 due to the comparatively successful conduct of June elections and a subsequent agreement by rival parties to form a coalition government.

Macedonia’s political rights rating declined from 3 to 4 due to serious shortcomings in the April general elections and a related legislative boycott by the opposition.

Turkey received a downward trend arrow due to more pronounced political interference in anticorruption mechanisms and judicial processes, and greater tensions between majority Sunni Muslims and minority Alevis.

EUROPE: STATUS BY COUNTRY EUROPE: STATUS BY POPULATION

EUROPE: STATUS BY COUNTRIES EUROPE: STATUS BY POPULATION

88%

12%

37 countries

5 countries 14%

86%

528,443,000

87,909,000

Total population: 616,352,000

FREE

PARTLY FREE

NOT FREE

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Sub-Saharan Africa: Fragile states face challenges from Ebola, Islamist militants

Sub-Saharan Africa again experienced extreme volatility in 2014. News from the continent was dominated by the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, and a sharp rise in violence by Islamist militants from Boko Haram in Nigeria and Al-Shabaab in Kenya. However, several other countries, particularly in East Africa, suffered democratic declines during the year, as repressive governments further limited the space for critical views.

In Uganda, a series of recent laws that targeted the opposition, civil society, the LGBT community, and women led to serious rights abuses and increased suppression of dissent. Burundi’s government cracked down further on the already-restricted opposition in advance of 2015 elections, and critics of the authorities in Rwanda faced increased surveillance and harassment online.

Civil conflicts sparked by poor governance continued to rage in South Sudan and Central African Republic in 2014. In South Sudan, the war fueled widespread ethnic violence and displacement, and the rival factions failed to agree on a peace deal that would allow the country to hold elections on schedule in 2015. Although Central African Republic formed a transitional government in January in the wake of a March 2013 coup, attacks by Muslim and Christian militias led to a rise in intercommunal clashes and thousands of civilian deaths, and forced more than 800,000 people to flee their homes.

In Burkina Faso, President Blaise Compaoré was forced to resign amid popular protests over his attempt to change the constitution and extend his 27-year rule in 2015. This led to the dissolution of the government and parliament by the military, which took charge of the country.

Improvements were seen in Madagascar and Guinea- Bissau, which held their first elections during late 2013 and 2014 following coups in previous years. It remained uncertain whether these gains would be consolidated.

Notable gains or declines:

Burkina Faso’s political rights rating declined from 5 to 6 as a result of the dissolution of the government and parliament by the military, which took charge of the

country after President Blaise Compaoré was forced to resign amid popular protests over his attempt to run for reelection in 2015.

Burundi’s political rights rating declined from 5 to 6, and its status declined from Partly Free to Not Free, due to a coordinated government crackdown on opposition party members and critics, with dozens of arrests and harsh sentences imposed on political activists and human rights defenders.

The Gambia received a downward trend arrow due to an amendment to the criminal code that increased the penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” to life in prison, leading to new arrests of suspected LGBT people and an intensified climate of fear.

Guinea-Bissau’s political rights rating improved from 6 to 5, and its status improved from Not Free to Partly Free, because the 2014 elections—the first since a 2012 coup—were deemed free and fair by international and national observers, and the opposition was able to compete and increase its participation in government.

Lesotho received a downward trend arrow due to a failed military coup in August, which shook the country’s political institutions and left lasting tensions.

Liberia received a downward trend arrow due to the government’s imposition of ill-advised quarantines that restricted freedom of movement and employment in some of the country’s most destitute areas, as well as several new or revived restrictions on freedoms of the press and assembly.

Madagascar’s political rights rating improved from 5 to 4 due to a peaceful transition after recovery from an earlier coup and the seating of a new parliament that included significant opposition representation.

Nigeria’s civil liberties rating declined from 4 to 5 due a sharp deterioration in conditions for residents of areas affected by the Boko Haram insurgency, including mass displacement and a dramatic increase in violence perpetrated by both the militants and security forces.

Rwanda’s civil liberties rating declined from 5 to 6 due to the narrowing space for expression and

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discussion of views that are critical of the government, particularly on the internet, amid increased suspicions of government surveillance of private communications.

South Sudan’s political rights rating declined from 6 to 7 due to the intensification of the civil war, which derailed the electoral timetable and featured serious human rights abuses by the combatants, including deliberate attacks on rival ethnic groups for political reasons.

Swaziland received a downward trend arrow due to an intensified crackdown on freedom of expression, including the jailing of a journalist and a lawyer for criticizing the country’s chief justice.

Uganda’s civil liberties rating declined from 4 to 5, and its status declined from Partly Free to Not Free, due to increased violations of individual rights and the freedoms of expression, assembly, and association, particularly for opposition supporters, civil society groups, women, and the LGBT community.

Americas: Insecurity in Mexico, opportunity in Cuba

In Mexico, public outrage at the authorities’ failure to stem criminal violence and corruption reached a boiling point after the disappearance of 43 politically active students in Guerrero. Protests initially led by the families of the students, who were killed by a criminal gang linked to local officials, grew into mass demonstrations across the country that challenged the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto. Organized crime and gang violence also continued to rise in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, leading thousands of citizens to flee to the United States during the year.

A major development in the region was the announcement that the United States and Cuba had agreed to the normalization of relations after a rupture

of more than 50 years. Although Cuba is the Americas’ worst-rated country in Freedom in the World, it has shown modest progress over the past several years, with Cubans gaining more rights to establish private businesses and travel abroad. In 2014, Cuba registered improvement for a growth in independent media, most notably the new digital newspaper 14ymedio. While it remains illegal to print and distribute such media, independent journalists have found ways to share their stories online and via data packets that circulate in the black market. As part of the normalization agreement, Cuba released a number of political prisoners, including U.S. contractor Alan Gross. However, the accord included no other human rights stipulations.

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: STATUS BY COUNTRY SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: STATUS BY POPULATION

SUB–SAHARAN AFRICA: STATUS BY COUNTRIES SUB–SAHARAN AFRICA: STATUS BY POPULATION

12%

40%

48%

113,219,000

388,372,000

455,629,000

Total population: 957,220,000

21 countries

18 countries

10 countries

37%

43%

20%

FREE PARTLY FREE NOT FREE

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The United States experienced a wave of protests over separate police killings of unarmed black males in Missouri, New York, and elsewhere, and the repeated failure of prosecutors to secure indictments of the officers responsible. The protests led to a variety of proposals for reforming police tactics, including the introduction of video cameras to record officers’ interactions with civilians. Separately, in December the Senate released a lengthy report on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)’s torture and mistreatment of terrorism suspects in the years immediately after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the country. The report detailed the frequency and severity of CIA interrogation techniques, as well as the lack of oversight by the White House and Congress. Human rights groups and others reiterated calls for the prosecution of those responsible for the abuses, but critics said the report was biased, and there were no immediate signs of a new criminal investigation.

The governments of Venezuela and Ecuador continued their pattern of cracking down on the political opposition and other critical voices. Venezuelan authorities responded to opposition- led demonstrations in the spring with particularly repressive measures, including mass arrests, excessive force, and alleged physical abuse of detained protesters.

Notable gains or declines:

Ecuador received a downward trend arrow due to increased limits on freedom of expression, including the monitoring of online content and harassment of bloggers and social-media users.

Haiti’s political rights rating declined from 4 to 5 due to its failure to hold constitutionally mandated parliamentary and municipal elections for three years, use of the judicial system to persecute political opponents and human rights defenders, and tolerance of violence against media that are critical of the government.

Mexico received a downward trend arrow due to the forced disappearance of 43 students who were engaging in political activities that reportedly angered local authorities in the town of Iguala, Guerrero, an atrocity that highlighted the extent of corruption among local authorities and the environment of impunity in the country.

Venezuela received a downward trend arrow due to the government’s repressive response to antigovernment demonstrations, including violence by security forces, the politicized arrests of opposition supporters, and the legal system’s failure to protect basic due process rights for all detained Venezuelans.

AMERICAS: STATUS BY COUNTRY AMERICAS: STATUS BY POPULATION

AMERICAS: STATUS BY COUNTRIES AMERICAS: STATUS BY POPULATION

271,854,000

11,150,000 683,104,951

28% 71%

1%

Total population: 966,108,951

68% 29%

3%24 countries

10 countries

1 country

FREE

PARTLY FREE NOT FREE

Freedom House

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Conclusion: The system of choice

Along with the emergence of popular movements for democratic change, the past year brought clear evidence of crisis in major undemocratic states.

For some time now, the momentum of world politics has favored democracy’s adversaries. While the dramatic gains of the late 20th century have not been erased, the institutions meant to ensure fair elections, a combative press, checks on state power, and probity in government and commerce are showing wear and tear in the new or revived democracies of Central Europe, Latin America, and Asia. In the Middle East, the potential of the Arab Spring has given way to the chaos and carnage that prevail in Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, and to a ruthless dictatorship in Egypt. In Africa, the promise of freedom survives, but the dominant trend is one of corruption, internal conflict, terrorism, and ugly campaigns against the LGBT community. Even in the United States, the year’s headlines featured racial strife, a renewed argument over counterterrorism tactics, and political gridlock.

There are, some might say, few compelling advertisements today for the benefits of democratic government, and few signs that the retreat of open political systems can be reversed. However, several major events during 2014 suggest that this gloomy assessment is off the mark.

In Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of people rose up to defy a kleptocratic leadership that offered the country a political and economic dead end. Given the choice between a future course patterned on Russian authoritarianism and a path toward Europe and its democratic standards, the majority did not hesitate in choosing the option of freedom, even with its uncertainties. The Kremlin has imposed a terrible

punishment for this decision, but so far Ukrainians have not wavered in their defiance.

In Hong Kong, the student-led Umbrella Movement emerged after the Communist leadership in Beijing announced that contrary to previous commitments and public expectations, elections for chief executive would require candidates to be nominated by a pro- Beijing committee, making universal suffrage a hollow exercise. The controversy epitomized both Beijing’s refusal to countenance the basic tenets of democracy and the ultimate weakness of its legitimacy among the public. It also stood as a powerful reminder that while China’s model of state-driven growth combined with strict political control is attractive to elites in authoritarian settings (and to some in democracies as well), ordinary people, and especially the young, find China’s rejection of freedom profoundly unappealing. Notably, the people of Taiwan, through student protests and local election results during the year, strongly voiced their preference for a future in which popular sovereignty prevails.

Along with the emergence of popular movements for democratic change, the past year brought clear evidence of crisis in major undemocratic states.

In Venezuela, a toxic mixture of corruption, misrule, and oil-price declines brought shortages, rampant inflation, and enhanced repression. Once touted as a possible template for leftist-populist governments across Latin America, the system set in place by the late Hugo Chávez now stands as a textbook case of political and economic dysfunction.

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Plummeting oil prices also revealed the weaknesses of Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship. But Russia’s problems run deeper than a vulnerability to the energy market. Corruption, cronyism, and the absence of the rule of law have discouraged investment and economic diversification. Pervasive propaganda has virtually eliminated critical voices from policy debates. And the absence of checks on presidential power has led to disastrous foreign adventures and diplomatic blunders.

Tolerating risk These and other examples from the year should remind the world how much democracy matters. Antidemocratic practices lead to civil war and humanitarian crisis. They facilitate the growth of terrorist movements, whose effects inevitably spread beyond national borders. Corruption and poor governance fuel economic instability, which can also have regional or even global consequences.

Will the world’s established democracies come to recognize that the global assault on free institutions poses a threat to their own national interests? The sanctions placed on Russia by the United States, Europe, and others are a welcome development. They send a message that invading one’s neighbor will have repercussions. The same might be said for the coalition against the Islamic State.

But such firm messages have been lacking when despotic regimes intimidate, jail, or kill their own people. President Sisi is treated as a strong ruler and a partner in the fight against terrorism despite his enforcement of a level of repression not seen in Egypt in decades. The leaders of democracies compete for China’s favor even as Beijing steps up internal controls and pushes its expansive territorial claims. In Latin America, Brazil and other democracies respond to Venezuela’s deterioration with silence. In Asia, major democracies like India and Indonesia have declined to use their influence to encourage a return to civilian rule in Thailand.

In short, democracies often seem determined to wait for authoritarian misrule to blossom into international catastrophe before they take remedial action. This is unfortunate, as even the most powerful repressive regimes have shown that they are susceptible to pressures from their own people and from the outside as well. And ordinary citizens have exhibited a willingness to challenge rulers with established histories of bloodletting in the service of political control. Democracies face many problems of their own, but their biggest mistake would be to accept the proposition that they are impotent in the face of strongmen for whom bullying and lies are the fundamental currencies of political exchange. This is clearly not the case, even in such difficult times.

Worst of the Worst

Of the 51 countries and territories designated as Not Free, 12 have been given the worst possible rating of 7 for both political rights and civil liberties:

• Central African Republic • Equatorial Guinea • Eritrea • North Korea • Saudi Arabia • Somalia • Sudan • Syria • Turkmenistan • Uzbekistan • Tibet • Western Sahara

The following 7 countries and 3 territories received ratings that were slightly better than the worst possible, with 7 for political rights and 6 for civil liberties:

• Bahrain • Belarus • Chad • China • Cuba • Laos • South Sudan • Crimea • Gaza Strip • South Ossetia

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Country Freedom Status PR CL Trend Arrow

Afghanistan Not Free 6 6 

Albania* Partly Free 3 3

Algeria Not Free 6 5

Andorra* Free 1 1

Angola Not Free 6 5

Antigua and Barbuda* Free 2 2

Argentina* Free 2 2

Armenia Partly Free 5 4

Australia* Free 1 1

Austria* Free 1 1

Azerbaijan Not Free 6 6 

Bahamas* Free 1 1

Bahrain Not Free 7 ▼ 6

Bangladesh* Partly Free 4 ▼ 4

Barbados* Free 1 1

Belarus Not Free 7 6

Belgium* Free 1 1

Belize* Free 1 2

Benin* Free 2 2

Bhutan* Partly Free 3 4

Bolivia* Partly Free 3 3

Bosnia and Herzegovina* Partly Free 4 ▼ 3

Botswana* Free 3 2

Brazil* Free 2 2

Brunei Not Free 6 5

Bulgaria* Free 2 2

Burkina Faso Partly Free 6 ▼ 3

Burundi Not Free ▼ 6 ▼ 5

Cambodia Not Free 6 5

Cameroon Not Free 6 6

INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES

PR and CL stand for political rights and civil liberties, respectively; 1 represents the most free and 7 the least free rating.

▲ ▼ up or down indicates an improvement or decline in ratings or status since the last survey.

  up or down indicates a trend of positive or negative changes that took place but were not sufficient to result in a change in political rights or civil liberties ratings.

* indicates a country’s status as an electoral democracy.

NOTE: The ratings reflect global events from January 1, 2014, through December 31, 2014.

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Country Freedom Status PR CL Trend Arrow

Canada* Free 1 1

Cape Verde* Free 1 1

Central African Republic Not Free 7 7

Chad Not Free 7 6

Chile* Free 1 1

China Not Free 7 6

Colombia* Partly Free 3 4

Comoros* Partly Free 3 4

Congo (Brazzaville) Not Free 6 5

Congo (Kinshasa) Not Free 6 6

Costa Rica* Free 1 1

Côte d’Ivoire Partly Free 5 4

Croatia* Free 1 2

Cuba Not Free 7 6

Cyprus* Free 1 1

Czech Republic* Free 1 1

Denmark* Free 1 1

Djibouti Not Free 6 5

Dominica* Free 1 1

Dominican Republic* Free 2 3

East Timor* Partly Free 3 3 ▲

Ecuador* Partly Free 3 3 

Egypt Not Free 6 5 

El Salvador* Free 2 3

Equatorial Guinea Not Free 7 7

Eritrea Not Free 7 7

Estonia* Free 1 1

Ethiopia Not Free 6 6

Fiji* Partly Free 3 ▲ 4

Finland* Free 1 1

France* Free 1 1

Gabon Not Free 6 5

The Gambia Not Free 6 6 

Georgia* Partly Free 3 3

Germany* Free 1 1

Ghana* Free 1 2

Greece* Free 2 2

INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES continued

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INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES continued

Country Freedom Status PR CL Trend Arrow

Grenada* Free 1 2

Guatemala* Partly Free 3 4

Guinea Partly Free 5 5

Guinea-Bissau Partly Free ▲ 5 ▲ 5

Guyana* Free 2 3

Haiti Partly Free 5 ▼ 5

Honduras* Partly Free 4 4

Hungary* Free 2 ▼ 2

Iceland* Free 1 1

India* Free 2 3

Indonesia* Partly Free 2 4

Iran Not Free 6 6

Iraq Not Free 6 ▼ 6

Ireland* Free 1 1

Israel* Free 1 2

Italy* Free 1 1

Jamaica* Free 2 3

Japan* Free 1 1

Jordan Not Free 6 5

Kazakhstan Not Free 6 5

Kenya* Partly Free 4 4

Kiribati* Free 1 1

Kosovo* Partly Free 4 ▲ 4

Kuwait Partly Free 5 5

Kyrgyzstan Partly Free 5 5 

Laos Not Free 7 6

Latvia* Free 2 2

Lebanon Partly Free 5 4 

Lesotho* Free 2 3 

Liberia* Partly Free 3 4 

PR and CL stand for political rights and civil liberties, respectively; 1 represents the most free and 7 the least free rating.

▲ ▼ up or down indicates an improvement or decline in ratings or status since the last survey.

  up or down indicates a trend of positive or negative changes that took place but were not sufficient to result in a change in political rights or civil liberties ratings.

* indicates a country’s status as an electoral democracy.

NOTE: The ratings reflect global events from January 1, 2014, through December 31, 2014.

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Country Freedom Status PR CL Trend Arrow

Libya Not Free ▼ 6 ▼ 6 ▼

Liechtenstein* Free 1 1

Lithuania* Free 1 1

Luxembourg* Free 1 1

Macedonia* Partly Free 4 ▼ 3

Madagascar* Partly Free 4 ▲ 4

Malawi* Partly Free 3 4

Malaysia Partly Free 4 4 

Maldives* Partly Free 4 4

Mali Partly Free 5 4

Malta* Free 1 1

Marshall Islands* Free 1 1

Mauritania Not Free 6 5

Mauritius* Free 1 2

Mexico* Partly Free 3 3 

Micronesia* Free 1 1

Moldova* Partly Free 3 3

Monaco* Free 2 1

Mongolia* Free 1 2

Montenegro* Free 3 2

Morocco Partly Free 5 4

Mozambique Partly Free 4 3

Myanmar Not Free 6 6 ▼

Namibia* Free 2 2

Nauru* Free 1 2 ▼

Nepal* Partly Free 4 4

Netherlands* Free 1 1

New Zealand* Free 1 1

Nicaragua Partly Free 4 3

Niger* Partly Free 3 4

Nigeria Partly Free 4 5 ▼

North Korea Not Free 7 7

Norway* Free 1 1

Oman Not Free 6 5

Pakistan* Partly Free 4 5

Palau* Free 1 1

Panama* Free 2 2

INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES continued

Freedom House

www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2015 25

INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES continued

Country Freedom Status PR CL Trend Arrow

Papua New Guinea* Partly Free 4 ▼ 3

Paraguay* Partly Free 3 3

Peru* Free 2 3

Philippines* Partly Free 3 3

Poland* Free 1 1

Portugal* Free 1 1

Qatar Not Free 6 5

Romania* Free 2 2

Russia Not Free 6 6 ▼

Rwanda Not Free 6 6 ▼

Saint Kitts and Nevis* Free 1 1

Saint Lucia* Free 1 1

Saint Vincent and Grenadines* Free 1 1

Samoa* Free 2 2

San Marino* Free 1 1

São Tomé and Príncipe* Free 2 2

Saudi Arabia Not Free 7 7

Senegal* Free 2 2

Serbia* Free 2 2

Seychelles* Partly Free 3 3

Sierra Leone* Partly Free 3 3

Singapore Partly Free 4 4

Slovakia* Free 1 1

Slovenia* Free 1 1

Solomon Islands* Partly Free 3 ▲ 3

Somalia Not Free 7 7

South Africa* Free 2 2

South Korea* Free 2 2 

South Sudan Not Free 7 ▼ 6

Spain* Free 1 1

PR and CL stand for political rights and civil liberties, respectively; 1 represents the most free and 7 the least free rating.

▲ ▼ up or down indicates an improvement or decline in ratings or status since the last survey.

  up or down indicates a trend of positive or negative changes that took place but were not sufficient to result in a change in political rights or civil liberties ratings.

* indicates a country’s status as an electoral democracy.

NOTE: The ratings reflect global events from January 1, 2014, through December 31, 2014.

FREEDOM IN THE WORLD 2015

Discarding Democracy: Return to the Iron Fist

26

Country Freedom Status PR CL Trend Arrow

Sri Lanka Partly Free 5 5 ▼

Sudan Not Free 7 7

Suriname* Free 2 2

Swaziland Not Free 7 5 

Sweden* Free 1 1

Switzerland* Free 1 1

Syria Not Free 7 7 

Taiwan* Free 1 2

Tajikistan Not Free 6 6 

Tanzania* Partly Free 3 3

Thailand Not Free ▼ 6 ▼ 5 ▼

Togo Partly Free 4 4

Tonga* Free 2 2

Trinidad and Tobago* Free 2 2

Tunisia* Free ▲ 1 ▲ 3

Turkey* Partly Free 3 4 

Turkmenistan Not Free 7 7

Tuvalu* Free 1 1

Uganda Not Free ▼ 6 5 ▼

Ukraine* Partly Free 3 ▲ 3

United Arab Emirates Not Free 6 6

United Kingdom* Free 1 1

United States* Free 1 1

Uruguay* Free 1 1

Uzbekistan Not Free 7 7

Vanuatu* Free 2 2

Venezuela Partly Free 5 5 

Vietnam Not Free 7 5

Yemen Not Free 6 6 

Zambia* Partly Free 3 4

Zimbabwe Not Free 5 6

PR and CL stand for political rights and civil liberties, respectively; 1 represents the most free and 7 the least free rating.

▲ ▼ up or down indicates an improvement or decline in ratings or status since the last survey.

  up or down indicates a trend of positive or negative changes that took place but were not sufficient to result in a change in political rights or civil liberties ratings.

* indicates a country’s status as an electoral democracy.

NOTE: The ratings reflect global events from January 1, 2014, through December 31, 2014.

Freedom House

www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2015 27

Territory Freedom Status PR CL Trend Arrow

Hong Kong Partly Free 5 2 

Puerto Rico Free 1 2

Territory Freedom Status PR CL Trend Arrow

Abkhazia Partly Free 4 5

Crimea Not Free 7 6

Gaza Strip Not Free 7 6

Indian Kashmir Partly Free 4 4

Nagorno-Karabakh Partly Free 5 5

Northern Cyprus Free 2 2

Pakistani Kashmir Not Free 6 5

Somaliland Partly Free 4 5

South Ossetia Not Free 7 6

Tibet Not Free 7 7

Transnistria Not Free 6 6

West Bank Not Free 6 5

Western Sahara Not Free 7 7

RELATED TERRITORIES

DISPUTED TERRITORIES

PR and CL stand for political rights and civil liberties, respectively; 1 represents the most free and 7 the least free rating.

▲ ▼ up or down indicates an improvement or decline in ratings or status since the last survey.

  up or down indicates a trend of positive or negative changes that took place but were not sufficient to result in a change in political rights or civil liberties ratings.

* The electoral democracy designation does not apply to territories.

NOTE: The ratings reflect global events from January 1, 2014, through December 31, 2014.

FREEDOM IN THE WORLD 2015

Discarding Democracy: Return to the Iron Fist

28

Antidemocratic practices lead to civil war and humanitarian crisis. They facilitate the growth of terrorist movements, whose effects inevitably spread beyond national borders. Corruption and poor governance fuel economic instability.

www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2015

Freedom House is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that supports democratic change, monitors freedom, and advocates for democracy and human rights.

1850 M Street NW, Floor 11 Washington, DC 20036

120 Wall Street, Floor 26 New York, NY 10005

www.freedomhouse.org

202.296.5101 [email protected]

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Two concepts of sovereignty

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Sep 16th 1999 | NEW YORK

BY INVITATION

Two concepts of sovereignty As heads of state and government gather in New York for the annual session of the UN General Assembly Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, gives us his thoughts on international intervention in humanitarian crises, and the changes needed for the next century

THE tragedy of East Timor, coming so soon after that of Kosovo, has focused attention once again on the need for timely intervention by the international community when death and suffering are being inflicted on large numbers of people, and when the state nominally in charge is unable or unwilling to stop it.

In Kosovo a group of states intervened without seeking authority from the United Nations Security Council. In Timor the council has now authorised intervention, but only after obtaining an invitation from Indonesia. We all hope that this will rapidly stabilise the situation, but many hundreds— probably thousands—of innocent people have already perished. As in Rwanda five years ago, the international community stands accused of doing too little, too late.

Neither of these precedents is satisfactory as a model for the new millennium. Just as we have learnt that the world cannot stand aside when gross and systematic violations of human rights are taking place, we have also learnt that, if it is to enjoy the sustained support of the world's peoples, intervention must be based on legitimate and universal principles. We need to adapt our international system better to a world with new actors, new responsibilities, and new possibilities for peace and progress.

State sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined —not least by the forces of globalisation and international co-operation. States are now widely understood to be instruments at the service of their peoples, and not vice versa. At the same time individual sovereignty—by which I mean the fundamental freedom of each individual, enshrined in the charter of the UN and subsequent international treaties—has been enhanced by a renewed and spreading consciousness of individual rights. When we

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read the charter today, we are more than ever conscious that its aim is to protect individual human beings, not to protect those who abuse them.

These changes in the world do not make hard political choices any easier. But they do oblige us to think anew about such questions as how the UN responds to humanitarian crises; and why states are willing to act in some areas of conflict, but not in others where the daily toll of death and suffering is as bad or worse. From Sierra Leone to Sudan, from Angola to Afghanistan, there are people who need more than words of sympathy. They need a real and sustained commitment to help end their cycles of violence, and give them a new chance to achieve peace and prosperity.

The genocide in Rwanda showed us how terrible the consequences of inaction can be in the face of mass murder. But this year's conflict in Kosovo raised equally important questions about the consequences of action without international consensus and clear legal authority.

It has cast in stark relief the dilemma of so-called “humanitarian intervention”. On the one hand, is it legitimate for a regional organisation to use force without a UN mandate? On the other, is it permissible to let gross and systematic violations of human rights, with grave humanitarian consequences, continue unchecked? The inability of the international community to reconcile these two compelling interests in the case of Kosovo can be viewed only as a tragedy.

To avoid repeating such tragedies in the next century, I believe it is essential that the international community reach consensus—not only on the principle that massive and systematic violations of human rights must be checked, wherever they take place, but also on ways of deciding what action is necessary, and when, and by whom. The Kosovo conflict and its outcome have prompted a debate of worldwide importance. And to each side in this debate difficult questions can be posed.

To those for whom the greatest threat to the future of international order is the use of force in the absence of a Security Council mandate, one might say: leave Kosovo aside for a moment, and think about Rwanda. Imagine for one moment that, in those dark days and hours leading up to the genocide, there had been a coalition of states ready and willing to act in defence of the Tutsi population, but the council had refused or delayed giving the green light. Should such a coalition then have stood idly by while the horror unfolded?

To those for whom the Kosovo action heralded a new era when states and groups of states can take military action outside the established mechanisms for enforcing international law, one might equally ask: Is there not a danger of such interventions undermining the imperfect, yet resilient, security system created after the second world war, and of setting dangerous precedents for future interventions without a clear criterion to decide who might invoke these precedents and in what circumstances? Nothing in the UN charter precludes a recognition that there are rights beyond borders. What the charter does say is that “armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest.” But what is that common interest? Who shall define it? Who shall defend it? Under whose authority? And with what means of intervention? In seeking answers to these monumental questions, I see four aspects of intervention which need to be considered with special care.

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First, “intervention” should not be understood as referring only to the use of force. A tragic irony of many of the crises that go unnoticed or unchallenged in the world today is that they could be dealt with by far less perilous acts of intervention than the one we saw this year in Yugoslavia. And yet the commitment of the world to peacekeeping, to humanitarian assistance, to rehabilitation and reconstruction varies greatly from region to region, and crisis to crisis. If the new commitment to humanitarian action is to retain the support of the world's peoples, it must be—and must be seen to be—universal, irrespective of region or nation. Humanity, after all, is indivisible.

Second, it is clear that traditional notions of sovereignty alone are not the only obstacle to effective action in humanitarian crises. No less significant are the ways in which states define their national interests. The world has changed in profound ways since the end of the cold war, but I fear our conceptions of national interest have failed to follow suit. A new, broader definition of national interest is needed in the new century, which would induce states to find greater unity in the pursuit of common goals and values. In the context of many of the challenges facing humanity today, the collective interest is the national interest.

Third, in cases where forceful intervention does become necessary, the Security Council —the body charged with authorising the use of force under international law—must be able to rise to the challenge. The choice must not be between council unity and inaction in the face of genocide—as in the case of Rwanda—and council division, but regional action, as in the case of Kosovo. In both cases, the UN should have been able to find common ground in upholding the principles of the charter, and acting in defence of our common humanity.

As important as the council's enforcement power is its deterrent power, and unless it is able to assert itself collectively where the cause is just and the means available, its credibility in the eyes of the world may well suffer. If states bent on criminal behaviour know that frontiers are not an absolute defence—that the council will take action to halt the gravest crimes against humanity—then they will not embark on such a course assuming they can get away with it. The charter requires the council to be the defender of the “common interest”. Unless it is seen to be so—in an era of human rights, interdependence and globalisation—there is a danger that others will seek to take its place.

Fourth, when fighting stops, the international commitment to peace must be just as strong as was the commitment to war. In this situation, too, consistency is essential. Just as our commitment to humanitarian action must be universal if it is to be legitimate, so our commitment to peace cannot end as soon as there is a ceasefire. The aftermath of war requires no less skill, no less sacrifice, no fewer resources than the war itself, if lasting peace is to be secured.

This developing international norm in favour of intervention to protect civilians from wholesale slaughter will no doubt continue to pose profound challenges to the international community. In some quarters it will arouse distrust, scepticism, even hostility. But I believe on balance we should welcome it. Why? Because, despite all the difficulties of putting it into practice, it does show that humankind today is less willing than in the past to tolerate suffering in its midst, and more willing to do something about it.

• This article appeared in the International section of the print edition

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