Wikistrat report on "democratic peace theory" simulation
Friday, October 5, 2012 at 12:25PM
This report, compiled by Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett, Wikistrat's Chief Analyst, presents the top insights from Wikistrat's latest simulation. The simulation featured over 90 experts from around the world.
Immanuel Kant’s theory of a democratic peace imagines a world without war and—as a precondition—without dictators. In contrast to the Hobbesian requirement of a dominant, system-taming Leviathan, Kant’s vision relied on the self-restraint of societies that rule themselves. In humanity’s historical journey from Thomas Hobbes’ realism to Kant’s idealism, historians have noted that mature democracies fight with one another far less frequently than authoritarian governments fight with other states but that immature democracies tend to be the most warlike of all.
Stipulating that historical record, the massively multiplayer online consultancy Wikistrat recently conducted a week long crowd-sourced brainstorming exercise to plot out a plausible range of caveats to the conventional wisdom that is the democratic peace theory. In this summary, we propose six categories of conflict dynamics that can elicit democracy-on-democracy war—to include pluralistic systems both mature and immature/transitional . . .
Go here for this de facto executive summary.
Reader Comments (3)
Dr. Barnett
The summary was interesting and illuminated the numerous possibilities for warfare in our world. The findings seem to vindicate Thomas Hobbes' requirement for a peace-keeping Leviathan.
If the world moves towards multi-polarity with China, India, and Russia wearing badges and acting like world policemen, will this have a destabilizing effect on the world? Direct conflict between the United States and these potential great power policemen may never occur, but will their interests and preferred rules for the world create greater proxy conflict between democracies and autacracies alike?
How can globalization ever tame the world and produce a Kantian peace in the absence of ONE all-powerful Leviathan (the United States)? It appears anything else would result in perpetual conflict.
Kevin
Excellent article. I had my own doubts about Kant´s democratic peace theory and Thomas Barnett makes the difeerentation pretty well and detailed.The paradigma that democratic states won´t make war against each other needs some modification.I could imagine a democratic chauvinst China. If you see that even the democratic opposition in China and abroad and well known acticists like Wei Jingsheng or Han Dongfan claim that the Diaoyu islands are the holy part of Chinese soil, this makes clear that nationalism can also have a democratic form.I also think that it is wrong to portray the middle class as liberal per se. The German middle class and even the working class and the left was very chauvinistic as you can see from World War 1. Even many anarchists became chauvinsts in WW 1. Not to forget that Mussolini started as a socialst before he became a fascist.
“Immanuel Kant’s theory of a democratic peace imagines a world without war and—as a precondition—without dictators.”
This interpretation of Kant is a leap of logic at best. The actual summary that it introduces appears to cover all bets pretty thoroughly, but I would hope that the full report covers probabilities and improbabilities of the situations presented so the client will be able to prioritize threats and opportunities.