ABSTRACT
Thucydides’History is one ofmy favorite books on international relations.2 Kant’s Perpetual Peace is the other. A brief contrast of these two writings will inform the discussion that follows.
Kant was long neglected by “mainstream” international relations (IR) theorists put off by the words “perpetual peace” that sound so fuzzily idealistic to the contemporary mind. But the neglect has been reversed by a recognition that he was describing phenomena that have recently emerged in some parts of the world, notably in most of Europe. The peace may not be perpetual, but it is actual in that most states with republican constitutions, substantial commercial exchange, and ties of international law and institutions – present-day equivalents of Kant’s three articles of perpetual peace – do not fight each other or expect to do so.3
The characteristics of law (within republics, and commercial and international law between them) in his “pacific federation” of sovereign states create norms and constraints for citizens and leaders. Equally, the institutions establish mutual interests so that citizens and leaders need not be “angels” guided solely by Kantian norms. Rather, constraints of interest can make even self-seeking devils wellbehaved “so long as they possess understanding” (Kant [1795] 1970: 112). Kant is the Enlightenment’s empiricist and systematizer of hope for human freedom in an ordered world.
