[Prev. Item][Next Item][Page Top]
"An Unlikely Match? Kant and Feminism in IR Theory," Millennium: Journal of International Studies 26:2 (Fall, 1997)
Abstract
This essay compares and contrasts Kantian and feminist approaches to the study of international relations. The essay argues that important affinities exist between the main tenets of Kant's analysis and those of feminist standpoint theory on core conceptual issues in the study of global affairs, such as the nature and deployment of power, the moral basis to identify loci of oppression, and the epistemelogical grounds for generating interpretative theories. The essay offers a reading of Kant that takes into account the most troublesome elements of his position from a feminist perspective, and then describes the many points of convergence that nevertheless exist between Kantian and feminist standpoint analysis of world politics. The essay tests these observations against feminist critiques of Kantian moral theory drawn from outside the field of international relations, and concludes by using insights drawn from this test to offer a speculative feminist reformulation of Kant's vision of 'perpetual peace.' The essay serves as an inaugural effort to bridge Kantian and feminist analyses in the field of world politics, and thereby contribute to theoretical cumulation in the study of international relations.
[Prev. Item][Next Item][Page Top]
"The Kiwi that Roared: Nuclear-Free New Zealand in a Nuclear-Armed World."
The Nonproliferation Review 4:1, Fall, 1996.
Abstract
New Zealand's 1984 declaration of the country as "nuclear-free" was widely criticized as a frivolous moral exercise indulging anti-nuclear activists and an uninformed public, while needlessly jeopardizing the country's national interests and sacrificing its ANZUS alliance relationship with the United States. This essay assesses such claims by "testing" the nuclear-free policy against the standards of "realist" theories of international politics and foreign policy. The analysis traces the history of threat perception in New Zealand, indicating why by the 1980s the prospect of global nuclear war constituted the most serious threat to New Zealand's security. It then describes how the nuclear-free policy sought to employ symbolic action as a power resource to induce nuclear-armed states to adopt more stable nuclear weapons policies, and to advance goals of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation more broadly. Comparison of the efficacy of this approach to that of working towards the same ends through the existing ANZUS relationship shows how nuclear weapons can affect strategies of alliance choice for smaller, non-nuclear states. The essay concludes that New Zealand's nuclear-free policy "passes the test" of political realism to a surprising degree, given its idealistic roots. This conclusion has important implications for skepticism concerning popular influence on security and foreign policy decision-making. It also indicates how elements of complex interdependence among nuclear-armed states provide unique opportunities for non-nuclear small states to pursue their interests by remaining non-nuclear, bringing into question the conventional view that small states can find security only in alliances with larger powers.
[Prev. Item][Next Item][Page Top]
"Kant's Third Image: Systemic Sources of the Liberal Peace."
International Studies Quarterly 40:1, March, 1996.
Abstract
Much recent scholarship has focused upon the apparent absence of war among liberal democratic states -- the liberal peace. To help explain the phenomenon, many refer to the political writings of Immanuel Kant, and the central role he envisioned for the liberal republic as the foundation for "perpetual peace."
Against this view, "neorealists" contend that Kant, and modern interpreters, overlook the important and unremitting force of anarchy among states. For neorealists, no peace dependent on only the internal pacific disposition of liberal republics can endure. Supporters of the Kantian interpretation respond that properly-constituted republics can in fact overcome the anarchy among them, and that the present liberal peace therefore challenges the adequacy of "systemic" theories of international politics.
This essay argues that to view the significance of the liberal peace as a test of opposing "levels of analysis" misses deeper issues. Kant's thought itself contains an indispensable systemic or "third image" dimension, identifying anarchy and conflict as key sources of progress away from the state of war among states. This perspective suggests that the core questions raised by the liberal peace phenomenon concern not only the importance of anarchy among states, but also the long-run effects of anarchy on the nature of states and the consequences of their interactions.
As an initial exploration of this argument, the essay concludes with some preliminary comparative applications of neorealist and Kantian hypotheses regarding contemporary and future trends in world politics.
[Prev. Item][Next Item][Page Top]
"Who Won the Cold War?"
In Timothy Breen, ed., The Power of Words: Documents in American History (New York: Harper Collins, 1995)
Who won the Cold War? The answer is not as obvious as public debate would make it seem. The question itself hides a deeper one: why did the Cold War end? This latter question is best addressed by reflecting briefly on why the Cold War began.
The Cold War emerged from the smoke and ashes of World War II, which left the United States and the Soviet Union as the only two superpowers. Allies but never friends, tensions between the two countries soon congealed, the Iron Curtain fell, and the basic parameters of the next era of world politics were established.
Three features distinguished the Cold War from previous Great Power structures. First, the shift from a multipolar to a bipolar world centering on the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. altered the dynamics of great power behavior by hardening alliances and intensifying the rivalry. Secondly, the introduction of nuclear weapons focused the attention of the superpowers; in retrospect, the prospect of global nuclear war induced great caution by the leadership of both countries, perhaps also preventing a large-scale conventional war between them.
Finally, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were set apart not only by their competition for power, but by an unprecedented degree of ideological divisiveness. The two states differed on the most basic aspirations of the human experience and the political principles necessary to pursue them. It is this feature of the Cold War which is most crucial in explicating why and how the Cold War ended.
The importance of this ideological divergence was apparent to sensitive observers from the beginning. We need look no further than George F. Kennan, the Department of State official who in 1947 originated the idea of "containment" of the Soviet Union that became a touchstone of U.S. policy throughout the Cold War. Mr. Kennan stressed the importance of communist ideology in anticipating Soviet behavior: because its principles were "of long-term validity", the U.S.S.R. could "afford to be patient". Thus, Mr. Kennan expected Soviet leaders, unlike Napoleon or Hitler before them, to be willing to yield in particular encounters, but to be less likely to be discouraged by such passing defeats. The contest would be decided not by a key victory at some juncture, but by endurance of will over time.
If the United States could muster such will and sustain it over the long run, ultimately it would prevail. The reason was not simply U.S. military superiority over the U.S.S.R., but differences in the organizing principles of the two societies -- the very differences in ideology which formed the core of the Cold War rivalry. Though World War II was but a few years past, already Mr. Kennan perceived the Soviet Union, unlike the United States, to be a nation at war with itself. Communist power and authority had been purchased only, he wrote, "at a terrible cost in human life and in human hopes and energies." The Soviet people were "physically and spiritually tired", at the limits of their endurance. Thus, he concluded, "Soviet power ... bears within it the seeds of its own decay".
It is well to remember Mr. Kennan's foresight in considering current explanations of the demise of the Soviet Union. Many scholars, seemingly more concerned with anticipating future great power configurations, take the end of the Cold War itself for granted. Perhaps more importantly, little of what scholarly attention has been paid to this question has filtered into public forums. There are (at least) four possible explanations for the end of the Cold War, only two of which have found their way into mainstream discourse in the U.S.
The first explanation is that the collapse of Soviet power is directly attributable to the confrontational policies pursued by the Reagan and Bush Administrations. In other words, the Republicans won the Cold War. According to this story, the massive increases in defense spending and uncompromising stances toward the "evil empire" inaugurated in the early 1980s pressed the Soviet Union to the wall, beyond its material capacity to respond in kind.
The second popular explanation, mostly propounded by Democrats, is best termed the "me too" explanation. It holds that Presidents Reagan and Bush were not the first to confront the Soviets, and trots out hard-line rhetoric and policies from the Truman to Kennedy to Carter Administrations. Adherents of this view want to insure that history remembers that both parties' leaders had fine moments of hard-headed intransigence.
Lost in this feeding frenzy of credit-taking have been two other possible explanations. The first is that the hard-line postures adopted by the U.S. throughout the Cold War actually did more harm than good. This view, though normally associated in the popular media with out-of-touch liberals and pacifists, has received respectable scholarly attention. According to this view, had it not been for a tendency toward wild-eyed anti-communism on the American side, the Soviet Union may have collapsed under its own weight much sooner than it did. The stridence and belligerency emanating from Washington, from the 1950 adoption of "NSC-68" onward, had little effect but to strengthen comparable hard-line views in the Kremlin.
George Kennan himself endorsed this view in a New York Times opinion piece last year. According to Mr. Kennan, the "greatest damage" was done not by the military policies themselves, but by the tone of those policies, which produced a "braking effect on all liberalizing tendencies in the regime". As Mr. Kennan concludes, "For this, both Democrats and Republicans have a share of the blame".
A final explanation concerning the end of the Cold War is that the policies of the United States, in substance as well as tone, were not really all that important in the course of Soviet events. This idea has rarely surfaced in public discussion, nor has it received much scholarly attention, apart from Soviet specialists who have long stressed the importance of the Soviet Union's own domestic politics. Kennan himself suggests this point, remarking, "The suggestion that any Administration had the power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous domestic political upheaval in another great country on another side of the globe is simply childish." From this viewpoint, the only role which the United States had was indirect, in the alternative it presented to communism merely by its existence. The success of American political institutions themselves, rather than the particular policies promulgated through them, set the standard the Soviet Union could not match.
Let us push the ramifications of this final hypothesis a bit further. If Soviet-style communism truly was consumed by the poverty of its own principles, independent of U.S. policies, how should those policies themselves be judged? Perhaps it was not only belligerent rhetoric which was extraneous to the downfall of the U.S.S.R. The U.S. may have needlessly spent billions of dollars on high-technology weapons systems, and tragically sacrificed tens of thousands of American lives in faraway jungles. Perhaps, in setting out to break the back of Soviet communism, the U.S. simply broke its own bank instead.
The cost of the Cold War to the United States may have been even steeper spiritually than materially. In 1947 Kennan singled out one standard above military prowess or economic muscle which the Cold War would test: "To avoid destruction the United States need only measure up to its own best traditions and prove itself worthy of preservation as a great nation."
Now, with the Cold War behind us, can it truly be said that we have passed this test? The paranoid red-baiting of Joseph McCarthy, the cynicism of secret CIA-sponsored coups overturning elected regimes, the breached trust of Watergate, the duplicity of the Iran-Contra affair, all add up to a weighty and depressing litany of failures. Recent revelations that secret Bush Administration policies, rooted in Cold War logic, contributed to the buildup of Iraq simply add to this sorry score. Too often both leaders and the public were willing to compromise American principles and ideals (not to mention the law) in the name of fighting communism.
The United States emerged from the Cold War overarmed, burdened by debt and poverty, and carrying numerous scars from self-inflicted wounds to cherished institutions -- all for the sake of the superpower competition. In forging itself into a hard-line Cold War warrior, the U.S. ultimately undermined its "best traditions" more than it measured up to them. Had its leaders and citizens demonstrated greater faith in the strength of the nation's founding principles, the U.S. might have emerged from the Cold War contest economically leaner, brighter of spirit, and with its democratic institutions and values far stronger. And, to the extent that its course also diminished the potency of the alternative it posed to Soviet totalitarianism, the U.S. might have emerged from the Cold War sooner as well.
Who, then, really won the Cold War? Not the Republicans, nor the Democrats. Considering what might have been, the United States was a loser in the Cold War, not its winner.
If this conclusion is valid, it suggests some crucial lessons for the future. The United States now shoulders a burden of world leadership perhaps unprecedented in its history. Realists are right in suggesting that, despite the most benign intentions, this new preeminence could generate more new enemies than friends. Minimizing this tendency requires reinforcing what has always been the most important American task in the world: to hold out, chiefly by its own example, a beacon illuminating the path to freedom.
To meet the added challenges of the new era, the United States has simply to follow the sage council of Polonius: above all, to thine own self be true. Should Americans fail to learn this, perhaps the deepest lesson of the Cold War's end, the U.S. may come to lose the post-Cold War as well.
[Prev. Item][Next Item][Page Top]
"Liberalism in World Politics."
Presented at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, August 31 - September 3, 1995.
Abstract
This paper examines the place of liberal thought in contemporary theorizing about world politics. The paper's overarching argument is that the legacy of liberal thought is more complex, and more pervasive in such theorizing, than is commonly recognized today. To make this argument, the paper examines several thinkers -- Hobbes, Rousseau, and Kant -- whose ideas have had a formative impact on the development of both domestic and international political theory. More specifically, the paper also argues that Kant's thought offers a sophisticated integration of material and ideal forces in politics that links liberalism's domestic and international manifestations in a dynamic conception of world historical development. This formulation -- only partially appreciated by the types of "liberal internationalism" often traced to Kant -- offers particularly useful insights into the late ascent of liberalism, manifested in the proliferation of liberal democratic governments and the sustained peace among them. To illustrate this value, the paper demonstrates how a Kantian conception of liberalism overcomes fundamental problems in Francis Fukuyama's related discovery of the "end of history." The paper concludes that greater attention to the pervasive presence of liberal thought across the spectrum of world political theory can help clarify the boundaries of such theorizing, and in so doing enhance understanding of contemporary global politics.
[Prev. Item][Next Item][Page Top]
"Democracy, Democratization, and Peace: The Missing Link."
Paper presented at the International Society of Political Psychology Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC, June 30 - July 3, 1996.
Abstract
This essay explores the potential to apply insights from political psychology to current efforts to develop a comprehensive explanation of the unique absence of war among liberal-democratic states -- the "liberal peace." The exploration ventures in several directions. First, I survey the development of existing explanations, with particular attention to issues over "levels of analysis" this development has raised. Next, I undertake a sympathetic critique of recent efforts to apply theories drawn from political psychology to these questions. I find this work provocative, if not fully successful, and suggest two important ways that work along this avenue could be advanced: first, by applying psychological analyses not just to leaders and elites, but to the broader public, and second, by focusing specifically on the psychological consequences of the innate yearning for freedom. Then, I examine a parallel phenomenon of world politics -- the proliferation of liberal-democratic governments -- to demonstrate how freedom and legitimation serve to link these phenomena. I conclude by utilizing this core concern for freedom and legitimation to offer a speculative set of hypotheses that link explanations of these phenomena across levels of analysis.
[Prev. Item][Page Top]
Dissertation Summary
The relationship of democracy and war has long interested students of politics. This issue has two main variants. First, at the state level, is the question of whether democratic states are less or better able to provide for their security relative to states with other (more authoritarian) forms of government. Second, at the international level, is the question of how the presence of democratic states in the world affects historic patterns of international politics, particularly the prevalence of major war. My dissertation considers both of these questions.
Part I builds the context for this work by examining how modern conceptions of state sovereignty starkly segregate "international" and "domestic" political realms. This segregation tends to separate "security" and "democracy" as objects of study. Consequently, many analyses relating security and democracy emerge from a primary concern for only one or the other of these ideas. Such analyses often overlook perspectives and findings derived from different foci, contributing to conceptual confusion and inhibiting cumulation of results. My work seeks to bridge these gaps by drawing together viewpoints from both international and domestic realms. This exercise reveals certain fundamental parallels between the analytic and normative concerns of each realm, deriving from core political questions common to both realms. How one relates security and democracy is thus very much a function of what prior "image" of each idea one has adopted.
Part II takes up the question of how well democratic states conduct their foreign affairs by drawing from Part I to show that the tension of security and democracy is most taut when "realist" images of security and "participatory" images of democracy both prevail. This indicates the value of examining how security issues are treated in periods when vital and urgent problems incite great public attention, impassioned debate, and popular efforts outside institutionalized frameworks to influence security decisions. The reconciliation of security and democracy becomes most difficult precisely when the gravity of security issues and popular attention to them are both at their highest. Much work on democracy and foreign policy, focusing on governmental decision-making under more routine circumstances, overlooks this problem.
To examine this problem, I undertake a case study of New Zealand's adoption of its national "nuclear free" policy. This policy was the product of perhaps the most successful popular anti-nuclear movement of the Cold War period. Hence, this case offers an unequaled opportunity to examine the effects and implications, for both national security policy-making and democratic process, when decisions are shaped by dedicated and widespread popular activism.
The case study utilizes theories of participatory democracy to assess the evolution of the goals, strategies and tactics of the New Zealand nuclear free movement. It also considers the impact of the movement in broader terms, focusing on the contextual aspects of democratic decision making -- the ordering of issues on the public agenda and the legitimation of policy alternatives -- to show how the nuclear free policy helped catalyze a fundamental transition in the national consensus on security matters.
The study then analyzes the nuclear free policy through the lens of realist assumptions about the nature of international power, threat perception, security policy and alliance formation. This analysis considers the rise in importance in New Zealand of the threat of global nuclear war, the utility of the nuclear free declaration as a national policy instrument aimed at reducing the risks of such war, and the implications of the nuclear free stance for New Zealand's other security policies and global relationships. (This portion of the analysis is the basis of my monograph, Security or Spectacle? Foreign Policy Realism and Nuclear Free New Zealand.)
The study concludes by assessing the impact of New Zealand nationalism and of transnational links between groups and events in New Zealand and those in other Western states. Together, these factors culminated in widespread demands for "policy independence" and assertions of New Zealand's "right" to participate in decisions by other states bearing on its security. The influences of these factors challenge the applicability of conventional conceptions of sovereignty to relations among democratic states, re-emphasizing the shortcomings (discussed in Part I) of too sharply delineating domestic and international political realms.
Part III takes up the second question concerning the relation of security and democracy: whether the presence and proliferation of liberal-democratic governments aggravates the risks of war or promotes progress toward peace and order in world politics. To address this question, I turn to the political thought of Immanuel Kant. Kant's analysis of the role of liberal republics as the building blocks of "perpetual peace" evinces a sophisticated integration of global and domestic political realms, overcoming many of the theoretical problems identified in Part I.
After first providing a detailed discussion of Kant's propositions, I then consider them in the context of the recently much attended claim that liberal-democratic states tend not to fight wars against one another. I show how Kant's thought anticipates and explains this "liberal peace." I then consider the "neorealist" critiques of both the relevance of the liberal peace and Kant's account of it. In responding to these critiques, I develop several new perspectives concerning Kant's views, highlighting the often overlooked historical side of his approach. These new perspectives form the genesis of a "systemic" explanation of change in world politics. Such an explanation answers the neorealist critique of the liberal peace by providing a systemic account of its emergence and continuing development. At the same time, this explanation also overcomes the tendency of sympathetic interpretations to see the liberal peace as signifying the capacity of democracies to remake international relations in spite of systemic constraints. (This portion of the argument is summarized in my forthcoming article in International Studies Quarterly, "Kant's Third Image: Systemic Sources of the Liberal Peace.")
My analysis demonstrates how Kant's thought valuably provides a basis for identifying progress in the evolution of world politics without succumbing to ideological "triumphalism." This perspective shows the collapse of communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union to be not simply the most recent periodic upheaval in international relations, but a manifestation of deeply-rooted historical trends. This perspective also provides a framework to understand the importance of ongoing efforts toward political and economic reform in post-communist Europe, and to appreciate the contrasting experiences of liberalization in other parts of the world, without dismissing the many difficulties and uncertainties still inherent in global affairs. My analysis concludes with a set of definitive hypotheses regarding future developments and trends, by which the accuracy and applicability of the analysis itself may be gauged.
The dissertation concludes by drawing together these analyses to assess the question of the compatibility of national security and democracy in the nuclear age and the post-Cold War era. The study indicates key factors in determining whether active public involvement helps or hinders the making of "good" security policies, and shows how the efficacy of popular involvement in security issues is conditioned by the given international context. Recognizing this complexity in the relationship between domestic and international determinants of global political events highlights the important need for better theoretical tools to explain that relationship. My study helps to answer this need, in particular by revealing how short-term "democratic dilemmas" can become long-term determinants of change in world politics. This observation points to the unrealized potential of incorporating systemic theorizing into broader frameworks, not only to explain the persistence of conflict and war, but also to indicate the potential for progress and peace in today's increasingly democratic world.
Return to Wade's short biography | Return to Top of This Page
