The Liberal Peace and Post-War Reconstruction

Myth or reality?

Roger MacGinty, Oliver Richmond, Roger MacGinty, Oliver Richmond

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317989691
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

The post-Cold War has witnessed enormous levels of western peacekeeping, peacemaking and reconstruction intervention in societies emerging from war. These western-led interventions are often called 'liberal peacebuilding' or 'liberal interventionism', or statebuilding, and have attracted considerable controversy.

In this study, leading proponents and critics of the liberal peace and contemporary post-war reconstruction assess the role of the United States, European Union and other actors in the promotion of the liberal peace, and of peace more generally. Key issues, including transitional justice and the acceptance/rejection of the liberal peace in African states are also considered.

The failings of the liberal peace (most notably in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in other locations) have prompted a growing body of critical literature on the motivations, mechanics and consequences of the liberal peace. This volume brings together key protagonists from both sides of the debate to produce a cutting edge, state of the art discussion of one the main trends in contemporary international relations.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Society.

For Better, for Worse: How America's Foreign Policy became Wedded to Liberal Universalism

ADAM QUINN and MICHAEL COX

[T]he right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts,—for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own Governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.

…

America is necessary to the peace of the world … The peace and good will of the world are necessary to America.

Woodrow Wilson¹

Righteousness, if triumphant, brings peace; but peace does not necessarily bring righteousness.

Theodore Roosevelt²

Introduction

It is a habit well ingrained in the study of international affairs to trace the origins of all phenomena, especially the most displeasing ones, to the door of the United States. Its hegemonic power in the international system, combined with many features of its politics which seem to grate especially hard on the sensibilities of academicians and foreigners (with an effect to the power of two, therefore, on foreign academicians), have tended to render America the nation towards which all roads lead for those seeking to assign responsibility. In the case of a study of “the liberal peace”, however, as concept and as practice, this course is perhaps more justified than is often the case. Indeed, it is indubitably true that no effort to understand how the project of a “liberal peace” came to assume its current status could hope to succeed without paying special reference to America's role.

On a practical level, the importance of the United States makes itself apparent in the fact that the superpower has been a prime mover in so many of the most substantial intervention and reconstruction efforts of the post-Cold War era. In discussing that theme, it is near impossible for analysts not to find themselves looking with priority at such cases as Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia and Haiti, where the United States was instrumental, to varying degrees, both in bringing about outside intervention and then in attempting to manage the erection of a more stable and virtuous post-conflict society.

Perhaps more significant than these material manifestations of US agency, however, is the deeper contribution which America has made to the very ideas summed up in the formulation of a “liberal peace”. Beyond any specific policy actions by the United States itself, the idea of a liberal peace—an arrangement of affairs which can calm strife internal to states as well as instil a cooperative and mutually beneficial spirit in the international system—has come to be the dominant lens through which the broader world views conflict and its resolution. It is all too easy to assume that this dominant paradigm has simply “come about”, the result of some inevitable grinding of systemic processes, or perhaps the evolution of a grand dialectic. In fact, it has been the contingent product of the rise of the United States, and the consequence of that nation's 20th-century internationalist turn.

In the spirit of always defining one's terms, it is no doubt desirable to explain what we take the term “liberal peace” to mean. This special issue being devoted to that theme, it is clearly the case that this question of definition is addressed in a great deal more depth and substance in other contributions. Any effort on our part to match the level of theoretical sophistication attempted elsewhere could at best be hoped to result in redundant repetition, and at worst might well muddy the waters that others have attempted to purify. Hence these observations will be brief.

The “liberal peace” is, as we understand it, a concept closely related to the “democratic peace”, though with some variation. Similarly to its democracy-oriented sister theory, it posits that the internal structures of a state play a crucial part in determining its relations with others, and that those states which share certain similarities will tend to be at peace. Both theories place importance on the role of representative institutions and shared values in constraining liberal/democratic societies from visiting aggressive violence upon one another. The “liberal peace” theory varies somewhat in also emphasising a broader set of specifications than simply democracy, most notably the adoption of liberal capitalist economics, and also a more specifically liberal interpretation of how democracy should be defined. In its more impressive formulations, the theory also places emphasis not on classifications of liberality and democracy imposed by the outside analyst but upon the perception of those attributes by states themselves, understanding that a liberal peace can only be operationalised through the beliefs which the influential actors within states hold concerning one another.³

For the purposes of this special issue, “liberal peace” also has a meaning which pertains to the achievement of peace within a given conflict-stricken society. This is the view that, where a society is internally violent—in the grips of a civil war, or perhaps some lower level of physical conflict between mutually antagonistic groups—the solution lies in the installation of a new order based on established liberal convictions about the “correct” social model. Such prescriptions include representative multi-party democracy, individual rights, separation of powers, an open and market-oriented economy, and a collective aspiration towards development along liberal capitalist lines. If only such features could become embedded in a given society, says the ideology of liberal peace, then the sources of its internal conflict would be ameliorated, or at least suppressed until ultimately forgotten amid other priorities, and peace could take root. If such a transformation were to occur, then the state in question could also take up a place as a member of the mutually respectful and peaceful international community, as reflected in the idea of “liberal peace” as it pertains to state-to-state relations.

This basic idea—that the impregnation of belligerent societies with liberal values and practices can produce peace domestically and internationally—has been the cornerstone of American strategy in the post-Cold War years. The Clinton administration was vocal in its proclamation of a policy which saw US interests as served by the spread of peace through democracy and trade. The successor administration of George W. Bush, while reviled in some quarters as the incarnation of a raw brand of power politics, has been if anything still more devoted to an ideology which places its faith in the spread of American values and practices as the only path to the Promised Land of a universal peace in the long term.⁴

This article will seek to offer a few helpful additions to the discussion in this special issue. First, it will offer an historical interpretation setting out the way in which the path traversed by the United States on its road from historical separation to wide-ranging international commitment led to its being, as a nation, particularly convinced that the project of a global “liberal peace” is essential to its foreign policy. It will then note some of the perhaps already well-known difficulties into which this strategy steers America. Next, it will make some observations, in the spirit of opening dialogue, which engage with the parallel piece on the United States in this special issue, “Hegemony, Modernisation and Post-war Reconstruction” by Tim Jacoby. Finally, we shall conclude with some very brief observations on the implications of what has been set out here for those who would wish to criticise the present role played by the United States in the international order.

The Hand of History: Liberty on One Continent?

In one sense, the foundation of the United States was itself the embodiment of liberal principles triumphant. The independence of the former British colonies had been justified by reference to Enlightenment conceptions of political right, and the independent states which resulted were to be based on constitutions steeped in liberal thinking about the rights of man and popular control of government. The new Constitution adopted in 1789 marked the coming together of those states under one government, more fully than previously, in a display of conviction that liberty, republicanism and popular representation could succeed in a territorially expansive nation, ideas summarised most famously by James Madison in Federalist no. 10.⁵

In another sense, however, the creation of the Union demonstrated a certain lack of faith in liberal notions of international affairs. In The Federalist Papers and elsewhere, those pushing for the acceptance of the Constitution, most notably Madison and Alexander Hamilton, often argued for its necessity on grounds which in today's IR terms would be considered “realist”. If the new states of North America did not come together under the auspices of the new nation, it was argued, the enfeebled Articles of Confederation already in place would soon totter and fall, resulting in the creation of separate confederacies. Although they would all still be governed by their respective state Constitutions, liberal and democratic by world standards of the day, and, in addition, would share the cultural inheritance of former British rule and have ample need and opportunity to trade with one another, peace could not be expected in such circumstances. The founders argued that even such apparent advantages offered no guarantee, or even likelihood, of peaceful relations. Rather, they insisted, the combination of proximity and rival interests would be sufficient to generate inevitable war, worsened by the likely interference of foreign powers. The “balance of power” system which afflicted Europe and served in Americans eyes as an engine for ceaseless bloody conflict would be replicated in the New World. If the states united under a stronger central authority, however, their interests could be expressed and regulated through the institutions of republican government, peace could be preserved and sinister foreign influence excluded. Thus the United States was created as a way of furthering liberal ideals at home, while averting the creation of a European-style state system in North America, which realist-type thinking led the founders to believe would inexorably generate power balancing and war.⁶

In the earliest years of the Union, there was fevered debate in government and in the nation at large on the matter of America's role with regard to any putative agenda for global reform. The first US administrations after independence coincided with the turbulence of the French Revolutionary Wars, seismic conflicts in Europe which at least in their early years appeared to have at their core a battle between the republican principles of a liberated France and those of reactionary monarchies surrounding it. During the Hamilton-dominated administrations of Washington and Adams, American opinion was riven with disagreement over how to react to the European conflict.⁷ The government itself, especially the executive branch, was always steadfastly resistant to risking war with Britain, no matter what provocations the British inflicted in the way of seizures of American shipping. The country, the Federalists believed, lacked the strength to wage a successful campaign, while the disruption of trade inherent in a fight with the British would bring Hamilton's new system of banking and import tariffs to its knees. On the other hand, a rising party of opposition, which looked for leadership to the figures of Jefferson and Madison, used both incendiary pamphletry and a network of pro-French “Democratic” societies to stoke the cause of revolutionary brotherhood across the waves, lambasting the incumbent administrations for the closet monarchism allegedly evident in their refusal to support France and their willingness to accept endless slights from the British.

One can overreach in setting up the dichotomy of ideas in this period. Jefferson, who as Secretary of State and Vice President was in and out of the very administrations his incipient party was criticising, never committed himself to the idea of the United States participating in the war in support of France, favouring the much vaguer notion of somehow tilting neutrality so as to aid the French while avoiding the disastrous consequences of actual war. Meanwhile, neither the Federalist administrations nor even Hamilton himself were ever so pro-British as was spun in Republican circles. They certainly regarded the French revolutionary cause as one far distant from their own political ideals and their aversion to a clash with Britain was chiefly pragmatic in its motives. Nevertheless, it is still true that the major foreign policy call facing America's first generation of foreign policy leaders amounted to deciding whether another nation—republican France—qualified as an ideological brother, and whether, if it did, this conclusion justified launching the United States into what might otherwise be viewed as someone else's war.

When it came to the crunch, the Federalists were clear in their minds that the answer to both questions was in the negative: the French Revolution did not represent ideas they thought politically responsible, and American involvement in a war in France's defence would be futile and immeasurably costly. This was the line of thought which guided presidential administrations through the Proclamation of Neutrality of 1793, the conciliatory Jay Treaty with Britain in 1794, and most memorably Washington's 1796 Farewell Address, which cautioned against the perils of identifying America with another country's cause, or embroiling the nation in the alliance system of Europe. The address, written substantially by Hamilton based on ideas sketched by Washington himself, declared that Europe and America operated in quite separate systems of interest, and that the wise course for US foreign policy was to avoid all political and military commitments to Europe, while still seeking commercial connection.⁸

For the Republicans, who were not in control of the levers of power, there was considerably more ambivalence throughout the 1790s. Most identified with the French cause, and favoured at the least a French-tilted brand of neutrality. Ultimately, however, the argument between America's founding brothers was won by the advocates of the course outlined in the Farewell Address. Jefferson and the Republican leaders around him, always circumspect when it came to the dangers of actually following through on their pamphleteers' fire-breathing rhetoric and mounting a pro-French war effort, had to decide when they at last came to power in 1801 what a foreign policy under their control should look like. In the event, now-President Jefferson, disillusioned finally with France after the degeneration of its republic into Napoleonic dictatorship, concluded that he must follow the course outlined by his illustrious predecessor, pledging that America's policy should consist of “peace, commerce and honourable friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none”.⁹

Thus, with the Republicans' turning away from the temptations of the cause of international revolution, the foundational consensus of 19th-century American foreign policy was established. Europe was assumed to operate on one sphere of interests and values, America on quite another. Between the two should be no interference.

As the strength and territorial expanse of the United States grew, and European imperial control in the Americas collapsed in the early 19th century, most especially that of Spain, this “divided spheres” idea broadened into the Monroe Doctrine. Prohibiting recolonisation of the new Latin republics, or the transfer of American territories between colonial powers, that aspirational proclamation broadened and deepened the ideological conviction that the Americas could operate on one system, and Europe on another, separate one. On the level of practice, this arrangement was clearly imperfect at first in its separation of the Continents' affairs: initially, Monroe's proclamation had operational meaning only thanks to a coincidence of interests with Britain, which used the Royal Navy to block the transatlantic designs of Continental European powers. With the power and wealth of the United States growing at speed in the 19th century, however, and the trend in Latin America towards the loss of control by the existing imperial powers, the principles of the Monroe Doctrine could only facilitate the steady evolution of US regional hegemony. Within such an American sphere, with an evolving preponderance of power in the hands of the United States, an American ideology of hemispheric separatism had the most fertile of soil. The interests of t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction Myth or Reality: Opposing Views on the Liberal Peace and Post-war Reconstruction
• 1.For Better, for Worse: How America's Foreign Policy became Wedded to Liberal Universalism
• 2.Hegemony, Modernisation and Post-war Reconstruction
• 3.Reconstruction: The Bringing of Peace and Plenty or Occult Imperialism?
• 4.What Fit for the Liberal Peace in Africa?
• 5.Two Ugandas and a “Liberal Peace”? Lessons from Uganda about Conflict and Development at the Start of a New Century
• 6.Justice as Peace? Liberal Peacebuilding and Strategies of Transitional Justice
• 7.EU Statebuilding: Securing the Liberal Peace through EU Enlargement
• Index