Approaching Perpetual Peace: Kant's Defence of a League of States and his Ideal of a World Federation

Abstract

The standard view of Kant's position on international relations is that he advocates a voluntary league of states and rejects the ideal of a world federation of states as dangerous, unrealistic, and conceptually incoherent. This standard view reigns in both the Kant literature and the debates among Kantian political theorists. However much John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas, for example, may disagree over whether Kant is right to defend a voluntary association of states, their dispute is premised on the standard interpretation of Kant's position. In The Law of Peoples, Rawls's appeal to Kant's purported reasons for rejecting the ideal of a world government serves as a theoretical short-cut, relieving him of the task of discussing the desirability of a world federation of states. 1 In Habermas's 1995 essay on Kant's Perpetual Peace, the case for transforming the United Nations into a cosmopolitan democracy with strengthened coercive powers is preceded by a lengthy argument showing that Kant's position in Perpetual Peace is riddled with contradictions and that Kant's own principles should have led him to argue for a federative state of states with coercive powers. 2 In this essay I argue that the standard view of Kant's position is mistaken and that he in fact holds a third position that combines the defence of a voluntary league with an argument for the ideal of a world federation with coercive powers. I do so via an examination of the three main criticisms that are usually leveled against Kant. These criticisms can be found throughout the Kant literature and in the writings of Kant's opponents, but they are particularly central to recent attempts to use Kant against Kant to advocate the establishment of a world government. First, he is criticized for scaling back, on empirical grounds, the ideal of a state of states to that of a voluntary non-coercive league of states, while still maintaining that pure practical reason demands a state of states. Critics charge that consistency requires that he advocate a federative state of states with coercive powers, and that Kant's appeal to the fact that states do not want to join such an institution makes for a decidedly un-Kantian line of argument. 3 Second, critics object that a state of states is not a contradiction in terms and hence that Kant should not have rejected it on grounds of conceptual incoherence. 4 Third, critics regularly object that a mere league would not help bring about peace because there is no practical difference between a voluntary non-coercive league and no league at all. 5