What Kant Preaches to the UN: Democratic Peace Theory and “Preventing the Scourge of War”
What Kant Preaches to the UN: Democratic Peace Theory and “Preventing the Scourge of War”

Summary/Abstract: This paper exploits academic parameters of the democratic peace theory to analyze the UN’s principal mission of preserving the world peace. It inquires into the intellectual horizons of the democratic peace theory – which originated from the Kant’s “perpetual peace” – with the aim of prescribing an ideological recipe for establishing solid foundation for peace among states. The paper argues that by promoting democracy and supporting democratization, the UN primarily works to achieve its fundamental mission of preventing the scourge of war. It explores practical activities that the UN undertakes to support democracy, as well as the political and normative aspects of such an enterprise, is beyond the reach of this analysis. Rather, the focus of the analysis is on the democratic peace theory. The confirmation of the scientific credibility of this theory is taken as a sufficient argument to claim that by supporting democracy the UN would advance one of its major purposes, namely the goal of peace.

• Details
• Contents