How Enemies Become Friends

The Sources of Stable Peace

Charles A. Kupchan

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780691154381, 9780691142654
• eBook ISBN: 9781400834419
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

How nations move from war to peace

Is the world destined to suffer endless cycles of conflict and war? Can rival nations become partners and establish a lasting and stable peace? How Enemies Become Friends provides a bold and innovative account of how nations escape geopolitical competition and replace hostility with friendship. Through compelling analysis and rich historical examples that span the globe and range from the thirteenth century through the present, foreign policy expert Charles Kupchan explores how adversaries can transform enmity into amity—and he exposes prevalent myths about the causes of peace.

Kupchan contends that diplomatic engagement with rivals, far from being appeasement, is critical to rapprochement between adversaries. Diplomacy, not economic interdependence, is the currency of peace; concessions and strategic accommodation promote the mutual trust needed to build an international society. The nature of regimes matters much less than commonly thought: countries, including the United States, should deal with other states based on their foreign policy behavior rather than on whether they are democracies. Kupchan demonstrates that similar social orders and similar ethnicities, races, or religions help nations achieve stable peace. He considers many historical successes and failures, including the onset of friendship between the United States and Great Britain in the early twentieth century, the Concert of Europe, which preserved peace after 1815 but collapsed following revolutions in 1848, and the remarkably close partnership of the Soviet Union and China in the 1950s, which descended into open rivalry by the 1960s.

In a world where conflict among nations seems inescapable, How Enemies Become Friends offers critical insights for building lasting peace.

CHAPTER ONE

STABLE PEACE

Long before European immigrants came to North America, Iroquois tribes settled the lands that would eventually become upstate New York. These tribes were regularly at war with each other, exacting a heavy toll on their populations. In the middle of the fifteenth century, five Iroquois tribes, aggrieved by the mounting losses, gathered around a communal fire in the village of Onondaga in an attempt to end the fighting. The confederation they forged not only stopped the warfare, but it preserved peace among the Iroquois for over three hundred years. Several centuries later, the Congress of Vienna served as a similar turning point for Europe. The gathering of European statesmen in 1814–1815 not only marked the end of the destruction wrought by the Napoleonic Wars, but also produced the Concert of Europe, a pact that maintained peace among the great powers for more than three decades. Iroquois delegates resolved disputes in regular meetings of the Grand Council in Onondaga, while European diplomats preferred more informal congresses called as needed to diffuse potential crises. But the results were the same—stable peace.

Although the Iroquois Confederation and the Concert of Europe are now historical artifacts, both amply demonstrate the potential for diplomacy to tame the geopolitical rivalry that often seems an inescapable feature of international politics. President Barack Obama appreciates this potential; he entered office determined not only to repair America’s frayed relations with traditional allies, but also to use America’s clout to address some of the world’s most intractable conflicts. In his inaugural address, President Obama asserted that Americans, having experienced civil war and the national renewal that followed, “cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.”¹

Obama wasted no time in acting on his words. Two days after assuming power, the new administration assigned high-level emissaries the tasks of forging peace between Palestinians and Israelis and bringing stability to Afghanistan and Pakistan. As former senator George Mitchell, Obama’s choice for Middle East envoy, stated, “There is no such thing as a conflict that can’t be ended. . . . Conflicts are created, conducted and sustained by human beings. They can be ended by human beings.”² Even with respect to Iran, perhaps America’s most intransigent adversary, the new administration arrived in Washington intent on opening a dialogue. The Obama administration clearly believes that enemies can become friends.

The Iroquois Confederation and the Concert of Europe are not alone in demonstrating the potential for diplomacy to produce enduring peace. At the end of the nineteenth century, for example, Great Britain deftly accommodated the rise of the United States, clearing the way for a strategic partnership that has lasted to this day. Not only did the United States peacefully replace the United Kingdom as the global hegemon, but over the course of the twentieth century the liberal democracies of North America and Europe went on to forge a uniquely cohesive and durable political community. Although it formed in response to the threats posed by Nazism, fascism, and communism, the Atlantic community became much more than a military alliance. Indeed, like the Iroquois Confederation and the Concert of Europe, it evolved into a zone of stable peace—a grouping of nations among which war is eliminated as a legitimate tool of statecraft.

It is not simply the absence of conflict that makes a zone of stable peace a unique and intriguing phenomenon. Rather, it is the emergence of a deeper and more durable peace, one in which the absence of war stems not from deterrence, neutrality, or apathy, but from a level of interstate comity that effectively eliminates the prospect of armed conflict. When a zone of stable peace forms, its member states let down their guard, demilitarize their relations, and take for granted that any disputes that might emerge among them would be resolved through peaceful means. To study historical episodes in which states succeed in escaping geopolitical rivalry is to explore how, when, and why lasting peace breaks out.

In investigating the sources of stable peace, this book not only offers a diplomatic road map for turning enemies into friends, but it also exposes several prevalent myths about the causes of peace. Based on the proposition that democracies do not go to war with each other, scholars and policy makers alike regularly claim that to spread democracy is to spread peace. To that end, successive Republican and Democratic administrations have pursued robust policies of democracy promotion. Indeed, during the 2008 presidential campaign, influential voices on both sides of the aisle called for the establishment of a “League of Democracies,” a new international body that would institutionalize peace among democratic states while excluding autocracies on the grounds that they are unworthy of partnership.³ So too is thinking within both the academic and policy communities heavily influenced by the assertion that economic interdependence promotes stability. Commercial linkages between the United States and China, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, or Serbia and Kosovo, the prevailing wisdom maintains, promise to serve as fruitful investments in peace, not just prosperity.

This book directly challenges such conventional wisdom. It refutes the claim that democracy is necessary for peace, demonstrating that non-democracies can be reliable contributors to international stability. Accordingly, the United States should assess whether countries are enemies or friends by evaluating their statecraft, not the nature of their domestic institutions. In similar fashion, this work reveals that commercial interdependence plays only an ancillary role in promoting peace; it helps deepen societal linkages, but only after a political opening has first cleared the way for reconciliation. Deft diplomacy, not trade or investment, is the critical ingredient needed to set enemies on the pathway to peace.

These and other insights about how and when states are able to escape geopolitical competition and find their way to durable peace have profound implications for both scholarship and policy. Understanding the phenomenon of stable peace is of paramount theoretical importance. International history is characterized by recurring and seemingly inevitable cycles of geopolitical competition and war. The emergence of zones of stable peace makes clear that conflict is neither intractable nor inescapable, pointing to a transformative potential within the international system. To theorize about stable peace is therefore to advance understanding of one of the most enduring puzzles in the study of global politics: how to explain change in the character of the international system—in particular, the transformation of international anarchy into international society.

The study of stable peace is also of obvious practical importance. Peace might be more pervasive if scholars and policy makers alike knew more about how to promote and sustain international communities in which the prospect of war has been eliminated. Why and how did peace break out among the United States and Great Britain, Norway and Sweden, the founding members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the nomadic tribes that now constitute the United Arab Emirates? What lessons can be drawn for fashioning zones of peace between China and Japan, Greece and Turkey, or other contemporary rivals? In the Middle East and Africa, regional institutions have the potential to help dampen rivalry and prevent war, but they have yet to mature. What can be done to advance the prospects for stable peace in these regions?

Another priority for policy makers is preserving existing zones of peace, the durability of which can by no means be taken for granted. Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the Concert of Europe succeeded in securing peace among the great powers for over three decades. By 1853, however, Europe’s major powers were again at war—this time in the Crimea. The Soviet Union and China forged a remarkably close partnership during the 1950s; by the early 1960s, they were open rivals. The United States enjoyed more than seven decades of stable and prosperous union among its individual states, only to fall prey to a civil war in the 1860s. The United States survived the challenge to its integrity, but other unions have not been as fortunate. The Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, the Senegambian Confederation, Czechoslovakia—these are only a few of the many unions that are today historical artifacts.

The fragility of former zones of peace makes clear that comity among the Atlantic democracies can by no means be taken for granted. Indeed, since the Cold War’s end, transatlantic tensions have mounted over a host of issues, including ethnic violence in the Balkans, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. Amid the rift that opened over the Iraq war, Europeans began to question whether they could still look to the United States to provide responsible international leadership. In turn, Americans began to question whether they should continue to support European unity, suspecting that the European Union (EU) was gradually transforming itself from a partner into a rival. The Atlantic community is still a zone of stable peace—armed conflict among its members remains unthinkable—but geopolitical competition, even if only in subtle form, has returned to relations between the United States and Europe.

The challenge for contemporary statecraft entails not just preserving existing zones of stable peace, but also deepening and enlarging them. The EU continues to seek more centralized institutions of governance even as it extends its reach to the south and east, exposing new members to its peace-causing effects. ASEAN’s membership has also grown, taxing the body’s capacity to coordinate regional diplomacy. South America has of late enjoyed advances in cooperation on matters of commerce and defense, but the deepening of regional integration still faces significant obstacles. These experiments in taming geopolitical rivalry are far from complete.

Fashioning stable peace among the great powers is another key challenge. With the European Union, China, Russia, India, Brazil and others on the rise, major changes in the distribution of power promise to renew dangerous competition over position and status. It may well be, however, that shifts in the global balance need not foster great-power rivalry. The history of the Concert of Europe yields important lessons about how to forge cooperation among major powers—but also sobering warnings about how easily such cooperation can erode. Rapprochement between the United States and Great Britain demonstrates that hegemonic transitions can occur peacefully—but it represents the only case of peaceful transition on record.⁴ Examining the Concert of Europe, the onset of Anglo-American rapprochement, and other instances of stable peace thus promises to elucidate the opportunities—as well as the challenges—that will accompany the onset of a multipolar world.⁵

HOW AND WHY PEACE BREAKS OUT

Two puzzles motivate and guide this study. First, through what pathway do states settle outstanding grievances, dampen geopolitical competition, and succeed in constructing a zone of peace? What is the sequential process through which enemies become friends? Second, under what circumstances do zones of stable peace form? What causal conditions enable stable peace to emerge and endure?

Stable peace breaks out through a four-phase process. Reconciliation begins with an act of unilateral accommodation: a state confronted with multiple threats seeks to remove one of the sources of its insecurity by exercising strategic restraint and making concessions to an adversary. Such concessions constitute a peace offering, an opening gambit intended to signal benign as opposed to hostile intent. Phase two entails the practice of reciprocal restraint. The states in question trade concessions, each cautiously stepping away from rivalry as it entertains the prospect that geopolitical competition may give way to programmatic cooperation.

The third phase in the onset of stable peace entails the deepening of societal integration between the partner states. Transactions between the parties increase in frequency and intensity, resulting in more extensive contacts among governing officials, private-sector elites, and ordinary citizens. Interest groups that benefit from closer relations begin to invest in and lobby for the further reduction of economic and political barriers, adding momentum to the process of reconciliation.

The fourth and final phase entails the generation of new narratives and identities. Through elite statements, popular culture (media, literature, theater), and items laden with political symbolism such as charters, flags, and anthems, the states in question embrace a new domestic discourse that alters the identity they possess of the other. The distinctions between self and other erode, giving way to communal identities and a shared sense of solidarity, completing the onset of stable peace.

As to the causal conditions that enable enemies to become friends, stable peace emerges when three conditions are present among the states in question: institutionalized restraint, compatible social orders, and cultural commonality. Institutionalized restraint is a favoring but not necessary condition, whereas compatible social orders and cultural commonality are necessary conditions. The causal logic at work is as follows.

States that embrace institutionalized restraint possess political attributes that make them especially suited to pursuing stable peace. Governments that accept restraints on their power at home are most likely to practice strategic restraint in th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter One Stable Peace
• Chapter Two From International Anarchy to International Society
• Chapter Three Anglo-American Rapprochement
• Chapter Four Rapprochement: Supporting Cases
• Chapter Five Security Community
• Chapter Six Union
• Chapter Seven Making Friends and Choosing Friends
• Bibliography
• Index