Democratic
Peace Theory
The Democratic Peace Theory is an
international relations theory based on pro-democratic ideological pillars
arguing that democratic states are less likely to engage in war due to the fact
that executive leaders of democratic states are held accountable for
declarations of, and failed involvement in, war by public state elections
polls, and that the representative or parliamentary democracies, which are built
on democratic bicameral chambers, are filled with similar elected legislative representatives
that face the same scrutiny and public accountability at regional public election
polls. The theory is greatly weighted on
the assumption that enough democratically elected leaders within a
representative or parliamentary democracy will attempt to avoid war for domestic
political reasons, most importantly public reelection, and that the democratic
state will seldom engage into conflict with other democratic states. The theory goes even further by stating that
democratic states generally do not view foreign states with similar democratic
political infrastructures as hostile entities as they would view a state with a
different economic and political structure, such as communism or authoritarian
leadership, and that democratic states usually possess greater wealth than
non-democratic states, which in reality is a recent phenomenon created by the
post-World War II Bretton Woods system, and are more conservative in
policymaking with concern to large scale conflicts due to a fear of infrastructure
destruction and massive accumulating state debt, which again will place the
political leader at risk either at the national or regional election polls.
Representative
Democracy
The
Democratic Peace Theory has some legitimate points, which have more than likely
been true on multiple occasions throughout the history of post-Bretton Woods democracy,
but the theory itself remains another vague international relations theory
which attempts to highlight trends favorable to the theory by picking and
choosing historical compilations of numerical statistics, and does not take
into consideration the predictable motives of the most economically powerful
entities influencing domestic representative democracies, nor does it take into
consideration that the statistical trends that support the Democratic Peace
Theory may only be temporary characteristics actually associated with the
modern capitalistic globalization era, which in no fashion should be considered
a permanent international relations maxim.
The post-World War
II Democratic Peace Theory is not only questionable on an international level,
but completely invalid when applied to the Palestinian and state of Israel
problem, along with the Democracy Deficit in the modern Middle East as it
attributes to that highly propagated political land conflict. The theory itself is invalid for application
to the Palestinian-Israel problem because, first and foremost, the United
States of America, which is self-reputed as being one of the largest international
proponents of democracy, is the largest exterior factor impacting the
Palestinian-Israel problem and often engages American foreign polices based on
their often-manipulated form of representative democracy under capital bipartisan
lobbying influences. The United States has maintained a continuous political
and economic bias towards the state of Israel since the Cold War, which
Democratic Peace theorists would credit to the purported democratic
similarities, but the United States has also continuously contributed to the
democracy deficit in the Middle East by enabling authoritarian leaders to exist
as political carrot-eaters and puppets-for-a-price. On the one hand, the United States claims to
be the global leader of freedom and democracy while at the same time enabling
authoritarian leaders in the Middle East to resist the spread of democracy.
In
addition, the democratic process in the United States possesses hypocritically undemocratic
characteristics as the United States has
continuously circumvented the domestic democratic process by taking “military
action abroad more than 200 times during its history, but only five of these
actions were wars declared by Congress, and most were authorized unilaterally
by the president” (Rosato, 2003, p. 597).
Palestine
The
plight of the Palestinian people, especially in the occupied territories, is
greatly ignored by the international community based on several democratically-based
institutionalized structures. The Palestinian
political infrastructure, Palestinian territories and the Palestinian people
are not recognized as a state by the United Nations and therefore do not
receive the same international protections that recognized states on the
international stage receive. In 2009,
the Palestinian National Authority made a declaration stating that it accepted “the
jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in the territory of Palestine”
(Quigley, 2009, p.1) after accusations of Israeli atrocities during the
2008-2009 military aggression into the Palestinian territory of Gaza. The Palestine people were afforded no
inquiry or protection against Israeli state military aggressions due to the
legal loophole in the Rome Statute that “only states can give consent to ICC
jurisdiction over acts committed in their territory” (Quigley, 2009, p. 10). Despite vast international support from a
majority of recognized states within the United Nations General Assembly, which
illustrates that Palestinian statehood is democratically favored in the
international community, Palestinian statehood has been consistently blocked in
the United Nations Security Council, specifically by United States veto. A prime example isolating the Palestinians
from statehood, and the explicit failure of international democracy, can be
seen in 1998 when the Palestine National Council declared statehood for
Palestine and “one hundred and four states voted for this resolution,
forty-four abstained; only the United States and Israel voted against”
(Quigley, 2009, p.4). In utilizing its permanent
member of the United Nations Security Council veto against a majority United
Nations vote on the international stage, the United States was able to block
Palestinian statehood on behalf of Israel and leave the occupied territories as
a non-state entity without international recognition or international protection
against Israeli aggression and occupation.
At the same time, the United States clearly illustrated the hypocrisy
and failures of domestic representative democracy and displayed how those
hypocrisies, created through political and capital influences on publically
elected leaders desirous of reelection and career longevity can taint the international
democratic process.
Domestic
Representative Democracy
To
truly understand the reality of the Palestinian-Israel situation, it is
important to look at the biased enabler role that the United States plays on
behalf of Israel and why, through domestic representative democracy, that these
actions are even possible within a so-called democratic superpower state
holding so much economic weight within the Bretton Woods international economic
organizations, the World Trade Organization, and the United Nations.
In the United
Nations Security Council, the United States has utilized its veto power against
UN resolutions condemning Israeli aggressions and human rights violations, to
include illegal Israeli settlement building and territorial acquisitioning,
over 42 times between the years of 1972 and 2011 (Jewish Virtual Library, 2014).
Illustrating the broken international democratic
process, these United States vetoes were issued to protect Israel regardless of
the overwhelming international support for the resolutions condemning the
alleged Israeli aggressions. In
addition, the United States has provided Israeli with over 3 billion dollars in
annual economic and military aid since the Cold War era despite the Arms Export
Control Act that states that the “United States may stop aid to countries which
use U.S. military assistance for purposes other than legitimate self-defense”
(Sharp, 2014, p. 13). The trend of U.S. monetary
and military support for the state of Israel does not seem to be declining as
is evident by the year 2007 when “the Bush Administration and the Israeli
government agreed to a 10-year, $30 billion military aid package for the
10-year period from FY2009 to FY2018.” (Sharp, 2014, p. 4), and more recently
“during his March 2013 visit to Israel, President Obama pledged that the United
States would continue to provide Israel with multi-year commitments of military
aid subject to the approval of Congress” (Sharp, 2014, p. 5).
While
the pro-Democratic Peace theorist will quickly point out the co-relation
between the alleged democracy of the United States and the alleged democracy of
the state of Israel, the issue of undemocratic practices to support a fellow
so-called democratic state can be questioned along with the ethnic exclusivity
and human rights record of Israel.
Representative
Democracy Controlled by Capital
In
support of pro-Democratic Peace theorists, representative democracies are
easily manipulated by capital and political influence, regardless of human
morality. It is quite easy to avoid war,
finance a foreign state coup and state build, engage a rentier state, or
provide qualitative military power to a foreign ally if a majority of elected
government representatives can be persuaded, or purchased, to vote a certain
way on specific bills or resolutions.
This is the main reason that the U.S. government, despite the incredible
growth of the current U.S. national debt and Department of Defense budget cuts,
continue to financially and politically support an Israeli state that
consistently violates international law and human rights on several levels. Zionist lobbyist organizations such as the
American-Israel Public Affairs Committee consistently utilize collective
capital to sponsor and donate to congressional members, both democrat and
republican alike, who can be relied upon to vote favorably on proposed bills
that are beneficial to Israel, such as the United States–Israel Strategic
Partnership Act of 2013 which successfully secured heavy levels of U.S.
economic assistance to Israel. Each
year, regardless of how dire domestic American issues may be, leading
congressional representatives run with ‘hat in hand’ to the annual American Israel
Public Affairs Committee conference to make future political promises in
exchange for economic support and political longevity, and during an executive
presidential year those political stakes for any candidate that avoids an annual
American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference are extremely costly on a
political level.
AIPAC itself is a
behind-the-Congress political power constantly scouring the major American
college campuses for future congressional leaders, and the Zionist organization
sponsors full-paid trips to the state of Israel led by senior Democrat and Republican
leaders, in recent years led by the recently dethroned Eric Cantor and Steny
Hoyer, for all freshman U.S. congressional representatives. As if U.S. representative democracy was not
already vulnerable to manipulation by a powerful foreign lobby taking its
instructions from a foreign government, and in all fairness we must also point
out private sector influences, the major Jewish lobbyist organizations receive
social, political and financial support from Christian Zionist lobbyist
organizations, which possess larger numbers of adherents , who base their
entire political ideology on the religious belief that God promised a plot of
land to a specific ethnic group, and that Jesus will not rapturously return
until that promise is fulfilled.
Middle
East Democracy Deficit
In
opposition to the democratic peace theory, but still in support of the theory
that representative democracy is easily manipulated , the United States has
passed resolutions to provide foreign aid funding, or political carrots, to
many authoritarian leaders, and even leaders described as dictators, throughout
the Middle East. For decades, stemming
from the 1979 Camp David Accords, Egypt was the second highest recipient of annual
U.S. military foreign aid at 2 billion dollars a year, and continues to be a
recipient of U.S. foreign aid despite the Arab Spring and military coup that
ousted Hosni Mubarak. In reality, just
as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee pushed U.S. Congressional
members for political and economic sanctions that led to military invasion
against Iraq, and are currently pushing the same agenda against Iran, AIPAC lobbied
the U.S. Congress heavily for foreign aid to authoritarian Egypt in order to
ensure the state on Israel’s southern border, where precious pipelines exist in
the Negev, not to mention the Israeli Dimona nuclear reactor, was bought and
paid for by American tax dollars.
Sustained economic
and political rents from the so-called democratic states of the capitalistic
west to authoritarian leaders in the Middle East, such as the U.S. assistance
to bolster Egypt’s military during Mubarak’s regime, has been, and continues to
be, an enabler for authoritarian leaders in the oil-rich Middle East which
basically stonewalls the spread of democracy in the region and restricts the
successful advance of democracy.
Therefore, the Democratic Peace Theory will never be tested in the Middle
East because natural resource-hungry capitalist Democracies in the west promote
authoritarian leaders that cooperate in the Middle East and secretly fund coups
to overthrow those that do not cooperate.
Another
way that the democratic-capitalist west enables authoritarian leaders, and
therefore promotes the democracy deficit in the Middle East, is through the
rentier state process. Rentier states
“derive most or a substantial part of their revenues from the outside world and
the functioning of their political system depend to a large degree on accruing
external revenues that can be classified as rents” (Swarz, 2008, p. 604), and
therefore are states that are not economically at the mercy of western
democratic-capitalist exploitation and natural resource extraction. Economically troubled states without abundant
natural resources, such as are found in parts of South America, are often
forced to accept IMF loans containing SAP conditions that require the
infiltration of foreign investment, better known as natural resource extraction
and capital flight, and lured into exploitative regional trade blocs such as
Mexico’s involvement in the North American Free Trade Agreement. This economic assimilation and exploitation
is not always the case for rentier states because most rentier states,
especially in the Middle East, enjoy vast natural resources and are not
completely dependent on international capital from foreign sources. The process of rentierism comes in multiple
forms such as “bilateral or multilateral foreign-aid payments, such as foreign
development assistance or military assistance, which are termed ‘strategic
rents’” (Swarz, p. 14) and are not strictly limited to states that are heavily
laden with oil.
Conclusion
Summary
The
Democratic Peace Theory is a faulty theory at best because “the democratic
peace is essentially a post-World War I phenomenon restricted to the Americas
and Western Europe. Second, the United States has been the dominant power in
both these regions since World War I” (Rosato, 2003, p. 599). As we have illustrated in this paper, the
United States, as well as any representative democracy under a capitalist
system, is extremely vulnerable to domestic political manipulation through
capital lobbying which often creates state foreign policy that is quite
undemocratic on the international stage.
At the same time, the United State boasts democratic principles
throughout the halls of globalization while openly supporting authoritarian
regimes abroad, and utilizing presidential executive orders to circumvent
domestic democratic procedures. In
closing, the Democratic Peace Theory is invalid for application to the Middle
East, especially between Palestinians and the state of Israel, simply because
of the undemocratic involvement of the United States.
References
Jewish Virtual Library. 2014.
U.N. Security Council: U.S. Vetoes of Resolutions Critical to
Israeli. Accessed June 14, 2014. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/UN/usvetoes.html
Quigley, John. 2009. “The Palestinian Declaration to the
International Criminal Court: The Statehood Issue.” The Internet Journal of Rutgers School of Law
25, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 1-10. Accessed
June 14, 2014. http://lawrecord.com/files/35_Rutgers_L_Rec_1.pdf
Rosato, Sebastian. 2003. The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace
Theory. The American Political Science
Review, Vol. 97, No. 4. (Nov., 2003), pp. 585-602. Accessed on June 14, 2014. http://rrii.150m.com/t08/Sebastian%20Rosato%20-%20The%20Flawed%20Logic%20of%20Democratic%20Peace%20Theory.pdf
Sharp, Jeremy M. 2014.
U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel.
Congressional Research Center, April 11, 2014. Accessed June 14, 2014. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf
Swarz, Rolf. 2008.
The Political Economy of State-Formation in the Arab Middle East:
Rentier States, Economic Reform, and Democratization. Review of International Political Economy
15:4 October 2008: 599–621. Accessed
June 15, 2014. http://www.relooney.info/SI_Governance/Governance-Economy_2.pdf
Schwarz, Rolf. 2004. "State Formation Processes in
Rentier States: The Middle Eastern Case." Pan-European Conference on
International Relations, ECPR Standing Group on International Relations, 2004. Accessed June 15, 2014. http://columbiauniversity.org/itc/journalism/stille/Politics%20Fall%202007/Readings%20--%20Weeks%201-5/The%20Rentier%20State%20in%20the%20Middle%20East.pdf
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