Thoughts on Whether the Key to International Peace Is to Populate the World with Powerful Nations

Before considering whether the key to international peace is to populate the world with powerful states, the very definition of ‘international peace’ must first be contested. As the concepts of ‘peace’ and ‘power’ are human constructs, every theoretical approach defines them in different terms. Peace is most often considered to be the absence of war between states, or the ability to work through conflicts without resorting to violence. However, peace cannot be considered simply an 'antonym of war’. Thus, to fully understand the idea of peace, one must look beyond war to other areas of conflict such as trade as well as the individual experience within a state to ask whether we can truly be at peace internationally if there remains inequalities and conflicts within and between states. It must also be considered whether sustained stable international peace is achievable in actuality in an international system so dependent on hierarchy, or whether it is simply a way of reinforcing and naturalizing Western liberal values at the expense of non-liberal states. Even for realists, who observe anarchy rather than hierarchy, the notion of ‘power’ itself is relative and thus there can never be a peaceful international system of equally powerful states. Ultimately, I argue that the idea of international peace is a utopian idea that is not possible without a complete shift in our current hierarchical international system in which some states are required to extort the others to keep the capitalist system in place, and in which hierarchies within states create an insecure and less peace-prone environment.

If ‘power’ is equated to military or material power, then under the lens of realism, it is fair to say that populating the world with militarily powerful states would never bring about international peace. The very structure of the international system, in the absence of a higher authority to regulate and mediate, means there is an ‘ever present possibility’ of war (Brown, Ainley, 2005: 91-2). States are forced to pursue power as the only way to ensure their own security (Waltz, 2000), which often necessitates a build-up military power. Even if it is purely defensive power, misperceptions and distrust caused by anarchy can lead to a security dilemma occurring given that an increase in power for one state is viewed as a decrease in power for another (Tang, 2009), and thus requires further build-up of power in order to achieve a balance of power. However, in this way, Mearsheimer’s (2001:1) argument that “there are no status quo powers in the international system” holds. Even if a balance of power was ever perceived to have been reached among equally powerful states, there is no guarantee that states would remain at this equally powerful level. Using the lens of classical realism, due to nature of humans being naturally greedy and power-seeking, states will always strive to be more powerful than another, as can be observed with the seemingly irrational invasion of the Soviet Union by Hitler despite the two being in an alliance that highly favored Germany (Brown, Ainley, 2005). Equally, under the lens of offensive neorealism, using the bargaining theory of war, there are always problems in assessing intent and capability of other actors so it is difficult to assess how much power is enough to ensure security and survival under anarchy which leads to the build-up of more power than necessary, then leading to the build-up of power by another state (Mearsheimer 2001). Simply populating the world with states that are powerful would create a multipolar system which would make the world even less stable as there would be more competition and thus more uncertainties about the capabilities of each state (Waltz, 2000). Given that realist ideas of power are always relative to the power of other states, it can be concluded that in the long term, sustained peace is not possible through populating the world with powerful states.

1. Defensive alliances such as the NATO alliance can often be perceived as offensive to states outside NATO as it diminishes their own power relatively, as states become more collectively powerful. Thus, if the international system is considered to be an anarchic one, it is incredibly hard to pursue security to become ‘powerful’ without making the overall international system less secure, and thus more prone to war rather than peace.
2. This ensures international peace is a highly difficult concept to grasp from a realist perspective.

However, if not through powerful states, then other ways to pursue international peace must be explored. Liberal ideas lend a lens through which anarchy and the security dilemma can be mitigated. As international peace would require peace between all states, rather than populating the world with powerful individual states, liberal internationalists argue that the promotion of liberal values and transformation of the internal structure of every state into a liberal democracy is a more stable way to promote international peace. Under the democratic peace theory, liberal democracies do not go to war with each other due to shared values, and thus if the world was populated with liberal democracies, there should be no causes of conflict, and thus international peace. Waltz (2000:8), however, argues that a state being a liberal democracy is not enough to “negate the effects of anarchy” and ultimately does not ensure there will be no violence between states. In itself the idea that states following liberal principles are peace-loving and will act peacefully in the international sphere is flawed, it is simply a new way to measure civilization which is largely favorable to Western states who constructed the idea that liberal can be equated with the good. Rather than promoting peace, this can actually work to promote violence towards states that do not fit with the liberal or democratic values and forces them to comply with the West on its terms in order to gain entry to international society (Buzan, 2014), as well as reinforcing global hierarchies.

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Similarly, states increasingly recognize international law as superior and global interdependence as favorable even though this undermines their own sovereignty, which demonstrates a way in which international peace may be possible should every state observe such laws and the norms that arise from them (Brown, Ainley, 2005). However, while it is true to some extent that global interdependence and participation in international organizations do offer a way for states to cooperate and resolve conflict without resulting in war, thus increasing the likelihood of international peace, ultimately, these organizations still largely revolve around Western values and the whims of the most powerful members who can restructure the organization or ignore decisions with ease (Abbott, Snidal, 1998). The UN Security Council, for example, has ‘exclusive constitutional responsibility’ for maintaining peace in the international system (Jackson, Sorensen, 1999: 148-9), in which only the five members - the US, Britain, France Russia and China - get the power of veto over such matters while other states in the UN cannot refuse their agreed commands (Jackson, Sorensen, 1999). In this way, international organizations simply serve to reinforce the power of those higher in the hierarchy so international peace is largely at the hands of their greed and whims, and therefore cannot be classed as stable international peace. However, these lenses and the realist lens are still far too narrow a way to view the international system through alone. In itself we cannot assume that states necessarily always act rationally or in one unitary way. Nor can we assume that peace between states means there is peace domestically.

This leads onto the idea that international peace cannot be truly attained by thinking only in terms of states, but rather it requires considering internal peace also. In itself we cannot assume peace to simply mean the absence of inter-state war, as this assumes that peace between states means there is peace for all within each state. This hides the ways in which hierarchies within states facilitate violence domestically, such as gender hierarchies which perpetuate domestic violence (True, 2015), and the way this can then reflect on the way the state acts in the international sphere, thus destabilizing it. There cannot be true peace while states face domestic threats to society such poverty, gender inequality and crime (Hansen, 2000). The internal dynamics of a state can affect the dynamics of other states, especially in terms of revolutions. For example, the outcome of the French Revolution facilitated the slave revolt in the French colony of Saint Domingue, and was itself inspired by the values of the War of Independence in the US (Lawson, 2015, pp300). In summary, if there is not peace within a state for all individuals, it is debatable whether peace on an international level is ever possible.

Ultimately, anarchy is not a sufficient way to view the international system, not only because it forgets the individual, but also because it naturalizes the way that hierarchies work to destabilize the idea of international peace as a whole. As considered with the idea of a standard of civilization discussed earlier, power is a human construct and is always relative to something else; a state is not necessarily powerful unless there is something or someone to hold power over. Under the current hierarchical international system, it is not possible to populate the world with equally powerful states; having powerful states also means there are significantly less powerful ones that the more powerful ones exploit in order to retain their power relatively. For example, the capitalist system relies on the core states exploiting the periphery states in order to sustain itself. The price of manufactured goods increases at a quicker rate than raw materials which means that those in the periphery who only have the means to export raw materials have no way to gain the money to start producing manufactured goods (Baylis, Smith, Owens, 2016). In this way, liberal ideas of economic interdependence as a way to build peaceful relations are accurate only for those with more relative power. True peaceful cooperation is impossible until hierarchies are corrected as until then it is not cooperation, but extortion. Furthermore, the presence of such inequality within the hierarchy means that there is always the possibility of hierarchy versus socialist revolution. The absence of a hierarchy of equal opportunities means that there is a possibility of a revolution that will change the world order, which means that the world cannot achieve stable international peace under the current hierarchy.

In conclusion, the way one defines ‘international peace’ is relative to the lens through which they view the world, and is often flawed in that it fails to account for the effects that domestic peace can have on peace in the international system as a whole. The idea of populating the world with just ‘powerful states’ is fundamentally flawed given that power is always relative to someone else. This simply perpetuates the hierarchies in place in the international system currently. Essentially, peace will never be secure or sustainable under a hierarchical system in which there are inequalities on an international and individual level, and thus a constant threat of conflict and uprising. While steps can be taken towards international peace through the use of international institutions and international laws, these concepts are human constructs and still largely favor those at the top of the hierarchies, which largely places the prospect of international peace in the hands of these few powers.