In his article “Liberalism and World
Politics”, Michael Doyle tackles several distinct views on liberalism as
presented by Schumpeter, Machiavelli and Kant. His paper may be viewed as a
good synopsis of the different liberalist views that exist in the academia. He analyses
how all the views presented although titled ‘Liberal’ have “fundamentally
different views of the nature of human being, the state, and the International
Relations”. One could question if apart from being "liberal", the liberalist school holds much common ground at all?
In this paper, Doyle has dedicated most of
his effort towards describing the theories that have already been put forward. Although,
he prefers Kent’s form of International Realism over Liberal Pacifism and
Liberal Imperialism he barely allows the reader to peak onto his views about
the order of the international system. He broadly touches upon the weaknesses
of two of the three theories that he does not see much strength in however; he does
not provide much input into the pre-established liberal phenomena. But, his
critique of liberal states collectively lies in their inability to grant
security to themselves or other nations in the internationalism system, abiding
by the concept of anarchy. He also mentions how the balance of power and
hegemony in the system gives way to ‘separate peace’, an idea that has been
encountered several times and may be considered central to liberalist thought.
As with most political discourses, the end
point is to achieve peace and curb any possibility of war. Despite the general
idea that liberalists ideally do to go for war with fellow liberals but, as the
current state of affair and the paper suggests, there is a perpetual war
between liberal and non-liberal states. This point of view could be supported
by both the World Wars which appeared to be a clash of ideologies however; insecurities
among nations in general could have also played a part.
I agree that there will always be a tension present amongst liberal and non liberal states as the states which claim to be 'liberal' want to spread their ideas into other states. While states with a different ideology resist this thereby creating a state of conflict.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both you Mahnoor and Zoha that there will exists tension and conflict between liberal and illiberal states to varying degrees.
ReplyDeleteWhat is more interesting to me though is the idea that Doyle puts forth - building off of Kant - that liberal states are generally friendly with each other and don't fight amongst themselves. I don't know if this argument is actually true, or if its just a definitional issue. Regardless, states will probably continue to be in conflict with one another for the foreseeable future unless there is broader, systemic change.