Power and Justice in International Relations: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Global Challenges Book

In this short essay Immanuel Kant promotes the idea of perpetual peace. In order to reach this ideal, the interaction between peoples and states has to be reorganized. According to Kant, all states should become republics (that is, transform from despotic absolutist regimes into the rule of the people) that are primarily occupied with governing themselves (be it through an autocrat, an aristocracy or a democratic process). Only secondarily, in the interaction with other states, will the question of peace present itself.

He recognizes the natural state of man to be Hobbesian (a war of all against all), if not directly at least indirectly, and this manifests itself on both the national level and international level. Hence, there should be some sort of international federation that both acknowledges the sovereignty of the republics as well as being able to serve as a mechanism in order to smooth frictions and conflicts.

In the beginning of the essay, Kant mentions both the negative and positive articles of what states should not and should do. After this, he goes to lengths to demonstrate that the judicial system he promotes is in perfect alignment with the state of nature - which is proceeds in a teleological fashion. And finally, he explains how politicians (i.e. statesmen) can be made to act moral - squaring the circle, so to speak - through the use of philosophers. Philosophers, and the informed public at large, should have the freedom to express their thoughts, even if these aren't to the liking of the rulers. Through the use of public discourse, the statesman can navigate his state on its course to perpetual peace.

(In this, Kant discards Plato's ideal of the philosopher-king, recognizing that power distorts our vision of the truth.)

This, in a nutshell is Kant's essay. There's a lot more to say, but this is mostly historical details - not interesting to the general reader.

Now, Kant sketches an ideal world, in which cosmopolitanism and globalization (international law, international trade, migration, etc.) are deemed to be the characteristics of a world living in perpetual peace. Of course, this is primarily an empirical claim - and it is unclear to me how much of it has been validated in the time since Kant wrote his essay. Sure, humanity has developed tremendously and we are all (mostly) better off compared to just a century ago. Yet I think the current pandemic and the economic depression that followed in its wake have shown us the empirical facade of much of the cosmopolitan ideology. Socioeconomic inequalities have skyrocketed, public services have been cut at the expense of those worst off, mass migration leads to increased poverty and racial tensions, etc. etc.

But apart from Kant's future ideal being an empirical claim, it's also a theoretical claim. The claim that war should be prevented is, in its ultimate form, a moral claim. As both Hegel and Carl Schmitt have pointed out, in their critique of Kant, this cosmopolitan idealism treats deeply existential antagonisms - both between groups within a state as well as between states themselves - as non-existent. This is highly treacherous and, more importantly, highly dangerous, since it starts from the premisse of the universality of morals. There is no moral proposition that all people can agree on - there are existential differences between people and peoples about good and bad. Pretending this is not so, and eradicating war through application and enforcement of universal morality (i.e. human rights) will only lead to a new kind of war, a total war. (Schmitt's words).

I personally think this is true. It is a conundrum that any honest person caring about humanity has to face up to. It is simply not true that all people subscribe to the morality as is laid down in the human rights and the UN institutions. For example, there are many, many people worldwide who do not subscribe to the equality between men and women; or who do not accept homosexuality or atheism. This pits - at least in theory - all people against each other, again, in a fight to gain dominance in this existential struggle. It is not for nothing that in this cosmopolitan, globalized state the worlds sees global crises, global demonstrations, global agendas (UN Agenda 21, now Agenda 2030) being enforced in all countries, etc. We are living in a time of total war, just as Schmitt predicted, and it's the UN and its institutions against the world - that is, against all people and states that deviate from their agendas.

There are existential antagonisms and hostilities between peoples and between states. Any theory that seeks to jump over this primordial fact will forever remain an empty idea. But of course, Kant's theory on perpetual peace should primarily be read as a historical document, deeply embedded in the the context of the French Revolution and the transformation in Europe of feudal society into bourgeois society. An interesting little work...