All International Politics Is Local: The Diffusion of Conflict, Integration, and Democratization

1. Zones of Peace, Conflict, and Democracy

CHAPTER 1 Zones of Peace, Conflict, and Democracy The key to understanding the real world order is to separate the world into two parts. One part is zones of peace ... the other part is zones of turmoil. ... [I]f you try to talk about the world as a whole all you can get is falsehoods and platitudes. (Singer and Wildavsky 1996: 3) [N]orms and rules of behavior internationally can become extensions of the norms and rules of domestic political behavior. ... A system composed substantially of democratic states might reflect very different behavior than ... one composed predominantly of autocracies. (Russett 1993: 137-38) States that became (and remained) democratic ... found themselves in relatively cooperative niches that insulated them from extremely competitive, regional international politics.... [Such n]iches preceded substantial progress in democratization. (Thompson 1996: 142) Prologue: A Disparate World The field of international relations focuses on the political, economic, social, and cultural relations among societies and states. This book is about changes in these relations, in particular how peace and conflict coevolve with the emergence of democratic governance and integration among states. Where should we look for such linkages? A common approach in international relations research is to address global trends. Is conflict becoming more or less common? Are there fewer or more democracies in the international system? Systemic features or trends at the global level, however, are rarely clear-cut. Even very dramatic changes such as the introduction of nuclear weapons or the implementation of formal treaties rarely have identical implications for all states. The heterogeneity in the international system ensures that states face dramatically different regional contexts. 2 All International Politics Is Local This heterogeneity is reflected in remarkably different descriptions of the international system in the post-World War II era. On the one hand, the period can be seen as an epoch of a remarkably "long peace" or relative absence of war (e.g., Gaddis 1987). Many states that had clashed repeatedly in the past experienced an unprecedented period of generally peaceful relations after 1945 - with France and Germany the most notable example. This lack of overt conflict has been accompanied by increasing intergovernmental cooperation, greater transnational linkages between societies, and more favorable group perceptions. The long peace in Western Europe appears to reflect something beyond successful nuclear deterrence or mere luck. Yet, by other criteria, the postwar period seems to be one of the bloodiest periods of world history (e.g., Brecher and Wilkenfeld 1991). Even though a disastrous global nuclear war between the superpowers failed to materialize, a cursory glance below the global level reveals both extensive and persistent armed conflict. No long peace prevented severe interstate conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf (between Iran and Iraq), each of which claimed more than a million casualties. Countries such as Angola, Cambodia, and EI Salvador have experienced violent conflict within, with equally disruptive consequences. The emergence of new states and the dissolution of multinational states such as Yugoslavia and Ethiopia, which split along ethnic cleavages, have been accompanied by pervasive violence. In the Middle East, rivalry, mistrust, and insecurity has persisted even in the absence of outbreaks of war. Seen from these perspectives, the term long peace seems to be a misnomer. The heterogeneity within the international system has become more salient in the wake of the Cold War. The international system - and Europe in particular - displays seemingly disparate tendencies that suggest both increasing cooperation and conflict. Figure 1.1 displays in somewhat exaggerated form the disintegration and polarization of Eastern Europe at a time when Western Europe is reaching unprecedented levels of formal integration.! Although the changes in the former socialist countries have been remarkably nonviolent overall, increasing latent hostility, if not overt violent conflict, has accompanied many transitions and the emergence of new states. In sum, the new opportunities for cooperation as well as conflict in the wake of the Cold War have yielded dramatically different outcomes at the regional level. Zones ofPeace, Conflict, and Democracy 3 Fig. 1.1. European integration and disintegration Zones of Regional Clustering The marked regionalization of conflict and cooperation is well illustrated by Singer and Wildavsky (1996), who refer to coexisting zones of peace and zones of conflict and rivalry. Both cooperation and rivalry perspectives describe characteristic features of the international system, but they are best applied to certain regions or geographical clusters of countries. Similar patterns also apply for attributes such as...