Being “one of the most peaceful eras” does not obviate violence.
Expanding free markets as a global growth hypothesis could be a far more important factor in establishing a peace, according to Columbia University’s Erik Gartzke calls a “capitalist peace.” Can one conclude that “ If it is true that democratic states don’t go to war, then it also is true that “states with advanced free market economies never go to war with each other, either.”
Is it a reason for even the left to support free markets without endorsing neoliberal capitalism because socialism remains possible with an increase in so-called free market ideologies.
Is this neoliberal excuse really an ideological construction meant to discredit socialist alternatives especially given threats like the climate crisis that socialism might be better equipped to address.
Technically there have never been free markets especially under capitalism and a capitalist peace is only trivially superior to a socialist peace under globalization. It may be spurious even under some hypothesized post-imperialist world system to connect democracy with the absence of military conflict.
Similarly, we would be hard pressed to prove whether imperialism has “withered away” as the BRICS countries function as a de facto “Second World” and the “second best” economy vies for the spot as hegemon.
Considering the dominance of actually existing socialism, like the “socialism with Chinese characteristics” in China, market size may not be as important as supply chains and the relative wealth of the actors in a trade network. The prospect of economic ruin does still not prevent rampant nationalism, ethnic hatred, and security fears from trumping the power of markets. The current crisis in Ukraine exemplifies that sorry state where combatants and their allies continue to trade during military engagements with only marginal effects on currency and energy flows.
The reality is that a socialist peace would be a democratic peace no different than a capitalist peace but sans the negative externalities of which Marx has made us aware.
Like the “low” terrorist threat level scale, the history of peace is fraught with unpeaceful conflicts, like the higher US COVID death toll caused during the time when a proper quarantine and contact tracing program in 2020 might have saved lives rather than promoting Sinophobia for partisan political purposes. Peace can function like a commodity and its manipulation by corrupt politicians obscures the need for differentiating peace from pacificism in the first instance.
While violence is unacceptable, it may be that symbolic, traumatizing violence is the biggest threat to world peace.
Socialism is a system of peace, justice and equality. The road to socialism begins with revolution in the United States. The prospect of economic ruin does still not prevent rampant nationalism, ethnic hatred, and security fears from trumping the power of markets.
Various perspectives on whether the US was or continues to be a hegemon have been presented since the end of the Cold War. Most notably, American political scientists John Mearsheimer and Joseph Nye have argued that the US is not a genuine global hegemon because it has neither the financial nor the military resources to impose a proper, formal, global hegemony.[53][54] This theory is heavily contested in academic discussions of IR, with Anna Beyer being a notable critic of Nye and Mearsheimer.[55] According to Nuno Monteiro, hegemony is distinct from unipolarity.[68] The latter refers to a preponderance of power within an anarchic system, whereas the former refers to a hierarchical system where the most powerful state has the ability to "control the external behavior of all other states."[68 en.wikipedia.org/...]
While there have been vast differences in the experiences of those socialist revolutions, they share one common feature: The socialist revolutions of the 20th century took place in countries where the level of productive forces was very low compared to the imperialist countries. Every successful revolution faced the primary task of developing their economies—while under constant military threat by world imperialism.
For that reason, Lenin described the challenges of building communism in 1920 in very practical terms: “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.” There was no hope in building socialism if the economy remained underdeveloped.
Because of the combined challenges of developing the productive forces under the gun of world imperialism, no socialist revolution has yet reached a stage where the “withering away of the state” could be imagined. Imperialism has seized on any weakness in the revolutionary states in order to foment counterrevolution.
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But World War I demonstrated that increased trade was not enough. The prospect of economic ruin did not prevent rampant nationalism, ethnic hatred, and security fears from trumping the power of markets.
An even greater conflict followed a generation later. Thankfully, World War II left war essentially unthinkable among leading industrialized — and democratic — states. Support grew for the argument, going back to Immanuel Kant, that republics are less warlike than other systems.
Today’s corollary is that creating democracies out of dictatorships will reduce conflict. This contention animated some support outside as well as inside the United States for the invasion of Iraq.
But Gartzke argues that “the ‘democratic peace’ is a mirage created by the overlap between economic and political freedom.” That is, democracies typically have freer economies than do authoritarian states.
Thus, while “democracy is desirable for many reasons,” he notes in a chapter in the latest volume of Economic Freedom in the World, created by the Fraser Institute, “representative governments are unlikely to contribute directly to international peace.” Capitalism is by far the more important factor.
The shift from statist mercantilism to high‐tech capitalism has transformed the economics behind war. Markets generate economic opportunities that make war less desirable. Territorial aggrandizement no longer provides the best path to riches.
Free‐flowing capital markets and other aspects of globalization simultaneously draw nations together and raise the economic price of military conflict. Moreover, sanctions, which interfere with economic prosperity, provides a coercive step short of war to achieve foreign policy ends.
Positive economic trends are not enough to prevent war, but then, neither is democracy. It long has been obvious that democracies are willing to fight, just usually not each other. Contends Gartzke, “liberal political systems, in and of themselves, have no impact on whether states fight.”
In particular, poorer democracies perform like non‐democracies. He explains: “Democracy does not have a measurable impact, while nations with very low levels of economic freedom are 14 times more prone to conflict than those with very high levels.”
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The failure of one theorist’s explanation of capitalist peace theory is their omission of almost every Latin American intervention between 1816 and 1992, a fact that allows the author to conclude that "joint highly democratic dyads are about 3 times more likely … to resolve their militarized conflicts with mutual concessions’ (Mousseau, 1998, p. 210; see also Bremer, 1993)."[37]
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The interdependent trade theory for the capitalist peace is built on the foundations of classical economic theory. This idea, which can be traced back to Kant, became the original theoretical explanation for the capitalist peace.[8] In 1996, Erich Weede tied trade and free markets to development and peace, proposing that trade interdependence caused peace between nations.[13] Weede followed this up with what he called the "capitalist peace".[14] However, the empirical findings of the link between trade and development have been drawn into question, as one study found that the proportion of GDP to foreign trade is only 0.08, measured by logged GDP per capita.[15] Stephen Gent and Mark Crescenzi have argued that economic interdependence has reduced interstate conflict over market power.[16]
Katherine Barbieri has pushed back on the commercial peace thesis, finding only limited empirical support for the thesis.[17] A 2021 study in International Security by Mariya Grinberg found that states frequently engage in trade even while they are conducting war against each other, which raises questions about the preventive power of trade interdependence.[18] Some scholars argue that asymmetric dependence and relative gains may spur conflict.[19][20][21][22] Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman argue that interdependence may spur conflict by provoking competition for important nodes in global economic networks.[6]
According to Dale Copeland, trade can have a pacifying effects on interstate relations, but only if states believe that they will reap the rewards of trade into the future.[5] Barry Buzan has argued, "Liberal and mercantilist structures each have both positive and negative impacts on the use of force, but these impacts become important only when they are complemented by noneconomic factors governing the use of force."[23]
The outbreak of World War I during a period of unprecedented globalization and economic interdependence has often been cited as an example of how economic interdependence fails to prevent war or even contributes to it.[24] Other scholars dispute that World War I was a failure for liberal theory.[25][26][27] Eric Gartzke and Yonatan Lupu argue that there was a lack of trade interdependence between the states that ignited WWI.[25] Patrick McDonald and Kevin McSweeney argue that globalization in the period prior to WWI revolved around reductions in transportation costs, not due to trade liberalization, which means that the pre-WWI period is not a great case for testing the capitalist peace thesis.[27]
A 2021 PNAS study found that trade openness considerably reduces the risks of conflict over strategic locations close to maritime choke points.[28]
Michael Mousseau has advocated for what he calls "economic norms theory", which entails that leaders of states with advanced market-oriented economies have a strong interest in guarding the principle of self-determination for all states in order to safeguard a robust global marketplace.[4] Leaders of states with weak internal markets have little regard for protecting the global marketplace.[4]
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