Should The United States Promote Democracy Essay

Olivar, Marqz Verone V. Political Science 180

2014 -12667 Prof. Jean Paul Zialcita

A Quest for peace and kemerut

Why do states promote democracy

The history of mankind has been plagued with wars and conflicts to alleviate the hunger for power and domination over his brethren, and ambitiously, over the world. And through it all, countries have tried almost all ways possible to avoid such tragedies – proposing, delegating, even going to war themselves.

One major solution advocated by the liberal theory of international relations to avoid wars is the concept of democracy. This could be considered the dominant political system that has prevailed throughout the modern globe. However, John Owen (1994), a liberal theorist acknowledges

This theory posits that democracies do not go to war against other democracies, and has been embodied by most foreign policies, particularly by America in their strong commitment to democracy and liberal ideals. (Lowenkron, 2007) The democratic peace proposition has even become “the closest thing we have to empirical law in the study of international relations” (Levy, 1989, as cited in Owen, 1994, p. 87). Thus, the prevailing theory have become the leading explanation and justification used by superpowers like the United States, to wage wars and intervention missions to nondemocratic

Two intervening variable then emerge that relates the liberalism towards war and peace and ultimately, towards the creation of foreign policies – liberal ideology and democratic institutions.

Liberalism is not one complete ideology as others would perceive. In international relations theory, it is further divided into two by Benjamin Miller (2010) – offensive liberalism and defensive liberalism. And it is interesting to point out that the two approaches of Liberal IR theory are largely different from one another. The two variables identified earlier, liberal ideology and democratic institutions, could be attributed to the Miller’s two liberal