John Mearsheimer: disagreement

Transcript context

…Can I just sort of try to unpack that a little bit? So the democratic peace theory, I guess, would say that in democracies leaders are elected, and the underlying assumption is most people want peace, and so they will elect peacemakers. So the more democracies you have, the more likely you have peace. And then the realist perspective says that it doesn’t matter if the majority of people want peace. The structure of international politics is such that superpowers want to become more super and powerful, and they do that through war. You can’t make that argument that you’re making about democracies, because if you’re saying that democracies are inclined toward peace and that the electorate picks leaders who are inclined towards peace, then you have to show that democracies are, in general, more peaceful than non democracies, and you can’t support that argument. You can find lots of evidence to support the argument that democracies don’t fight other democracies. So the argument I believe that you have to make, if you’re going to support democratic peace theory, the main argument you have to make is that liberal democracies have a healthy respect for each other and they can assess each other’s intentions. If you’re a liberal democracy, and I’m a liberal democracy, we know we have value systems that argue against aggression, and argue for peaceful resolution of crises. And therefore, given these norms, we can trust each other, we can know each other’s intentions. Remember, for realists like me, uncertainty about intentions really helps drive the train. But if you’re talking about two democracies, the argument there is that they know each other’s intentions. And for you, sure, maybe democracies reduce uncertainty a little bit, but not enough to stop the train.…

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