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142 6 The Three Free World Theories Democratic peace is a theory of democracy, by democracy, for democracy; it is supposed to explain the behavior of democracies, it was conceived in democracies, and its political representations were put into use for the sake of democracies. The focus of this book is a free world theory. But democratic peace thesis is not the only free world theory. There are others; for example, soft power and the capitalist peace theory (or thesis). Soft power is connected to democracy in that its emphasis is on influence by consent, the supposedly democratic approach to influence, rather than by coercion. Though power is not absent from democratic politics,the expectation is that collective decision-making takes place voluntary and freely, so that people reach a collective decision, not coerced by use or threat of force; they should freely consent to the decision. At the heart of democracy lies the concept of rule by consent, which is also the essence of soft power. Put differently, it is a free world theory (or more accurately, a free world theoretical concept). So is the capitalist peace thesis, which focuses on the notion of free-market dynamics . I do not fully subscribe to the common identification of capitalism and democracy as the two can exist separately, and in certain circumstances, they can even exist in a state of tension. But one must admit that today the two generally come together, and are very often thought of as identical, or at the very least, conjoined twins. Moreover, once we expand our discussion from democracy to the free world, the capitalism-democracy relationship becomes more obvious again and less tenuous. Capitalism concerns the freedom to have property, and use it freely. Egalitarian critique would justly point out that those without property do not enjoy this freedom.More cynically , it can be argued that the “have-nots” are free to starve. And yet, capitalism is popularly identified with freedom, and it is an ideology of the free world.1 So even for those of us who do not fully subscribe to capitalist democracy , the relating of capitalist peace thesis to the free world would come as no surprise. Accordingly, it is quite natural for a book on the democratic The Three Free World Theories 143 peace thesis to discuss soft power and capitalist peace as the three represent three free world theories, as the title of this chapter suggests. This chapter discusses the political understandings and uses of soft power and capitalist peace in an effort to demonstrate the application of the theoretical model advocated in this book to areas apart from democratic peace. Thus, this chapter’s aim is to present support for the contention that democratic peace is not the sole purview of theory as a hermeneutical mechanism. Soft power came to dominate the Obama administration discourse on strategic matters, and capitalist peace replaced democratic peace in Netanyahu ’s politics of postponement. As those two cases are relatively new and still in the making, the analysis cannot be developed as thoroughly as the democratic peace analysis. Therefore, this chapter is mostly a preliminary analysis of what is a political work in process, of events that are unfolding before our eyes.As such, the aim of those two analyses is not to write a comprehensive political biography, but rather to hint at the applicability of the analysis and the variations within the hermeneutical mechanism process. The main difference stressed is that the theoreticians who were involved in constructing and developing the theories were also involved in introducing them into the political sphere. Joseph Nye Jr., who coined the term“soft power,” has been one of the foremost figures in translating the theory into policy guidelines, and Erik Gartzke, a leading theoretician of the capitalist peace thesis,propagates and advocates the capitalist peace as an effective and valuable policy tool. This is a difference that has some importance, as the following analysis shows. This chapter opens with a section on the story of soft power in the American political arena. This is followed by a section on the capitalist or economic peace thesis in Israeli politics. The two sections describe the theory , analyze the actions of the relevant theoretician, and then explore the theories’ fortunes in the various political spheres. ObamaandSoftPower Power is an elusive concept. It has been defined and characterized so many times in so many ways, yet still no general agreement exists. It can be, and indeed was, approached...

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