Are Liberal Peoples Peaceful?*

Abstract

RE liberal societies peaceful? Many liberals believe so, and John Rawls argues their case. Rawls holds that truly liberal societies are satisfied: they will not go to war for the sake of power, territory, riches, glory, or to spread their religion. “Their basic needs are met, and their fundamental interests are fully compatible with those of other democratic people s... There is true peace among them because all societies are satisfied with the status quo for the right reasons” (LoP, p. 46). 1 Rawls also offers a striking explanation for this thesis of liberal satisfaction: it is the internal political structures of liberal societies that make them externally non-aggressive. We believe that there are serious difficulties both with Rawls’s thesis that liberal societies are peaceful and with his explanation for why they might be so. Rawls has not established that liberal societies “will have no reason to go to war with one another” or with other peaceful states (LoP, p. 19). Moreover we hold that there are good grounds—even within Rawls’s own view—for doubting this pacific element of the liberal self-image. The plan of this article is as follows. First, we present Rawls’s taxonomy of societies and his general theory of foreign policy. Second, we check the democratic peace literature to see whether it offers prima facie support for Rawls’s vision of a peaceful world. Third, we set out the three internal features of liberal societies that allegedly make them peaceful. These three features are a commercial orientation, an indifference to economic growth, and a lack of desire to impose a comprehensive world-view on other societies. We then examine these three features critically, arguing that the first and third features do not rule out the pursuit of an aggressive foreign policy, and that the second feature is unlikely to be a feature of a liberal society. We then consider Rawls’s attempt to explain away historical examples of liberal aggression by attributing the aggressiveness to