International Order and Individual Liberty: Effects of War and Peace on the Development of Governments

Air & Space Power Journal, Fall, 2004 by John H. Barnhill

International Order and Individual Liberty: Effects of War and Peace on the Development of Governments by Mark E. Pietrzyk. University Press of America (http://www.univpress.com), Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group, 4501 Forbes Blvd., Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, 2002, 272 pages, $44.00 (softcover).

For several centuries, one of the popular ideas in political science has been that democracies do not wage war on one another. Therefore, some people argue that the world needs more democracy if it is to have more peace. Historically, one does indeed find few cases of democracies opposing one another; it is also true, however, that until recently there have been few democracies and fewer still in sufficiently close proximity to fight each other. Peace happens, but democracy may or may not be a cause.

Examining the prevailing view and finding it deficient, Pietrzyk counters with an interesting argument that peace promotes democracy but does not make it inevitable. He spends a great deal of space defining the concepts, the background of the democracy-brings-peace theory, its flaws, and his alternative view that only secure states enjoy the luxury of freedom and pluralism (i.e., democracy). It is not inevitable that one brings the other, though. War promotes authoritarianism and centralization; peace promotes security. Peace can come through collective security, by way of geography that creates natural borders, from the protection of a hegemon, or through isolation. It is independent of the form of government.

Pietrzyk's case studies include the American Revolution, the French Revolution, Germany, and Israel. Interestingly, he uses Israel--an authoritarian, militarized democracy historically more at war than at peace--as the example that refutes his theory. He points out, however, that it falls to support the other view. The book is provocative in both its thesis and definition of the preconditions that promote peace as well as those that make it unlikely. It definitely warrants close reading.

John H. Barnhill

Tinker AFB, Oklahoma