Perpetual Peace (Christine Porcaro, Week 5, Substantive)

While reading Michael Doyle’s paper on Liberalism and World Politics I could not help but think of the United States and the actions that it is taking and has taken. Under Kant’s theories on perpetual peace, the United States is an actor moving towards international peace. Kant’s theory has many of the same foundations as the Democratic Peace Theory. After World War II the talk of the United States has been the spread of Democracy throughout the world. With this type of foreign policy it would seem that the U.S. is well on its way of fulfilling Kant’s theory of “perpetual peace”. Though I wish this to be true I feel that this spreading of Democracy is not necessarily in the pursuit of peace but rather of personal interest and dominance in a region which in the end looks more like imperialism and not like an effort towards democratization and peace. The United States wears the mask of the good guy very well. Kant describes peace as, “an ethical duty because it is only under conditions of peace that all men can treat each other as ends, rather than means to an end”. The United States effort to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein so that democracy can spread in the Middle East is one way to look at the U.S. actions these past few years. However these actions can also just be looked at as selfish actions that in the end would benefit a wealthy few. The oil in Iraq is hard to ignore. It’s the huge elephant in the middle of the room. The United States took action in this region of the world because it knew that their interests lied not in establishing a democracy to create peace but in rich oil fields where money and power is just waiting to be taken. Kant says, “Republican representation and separation of powers are produced because they are the means by which the state is well organized to prepare for and meet foreign threats (by unity) and to tame the ambitions of the selfish and aggressive individuals.” In my opinion the actions taken by the United States has motives that are selfish and greedy and do not accurately represent the will of the people. If the spread of democracy will create perpetual peace I feel that it can not be masked by selfish interests that in the end only exploit other countries.