Arie M. Kacowicz

Explaining Zones of Peace: Democracies as Satisfied Powers?

In the ongoing debate on explaining why democracies do not fight each other, an attempt to establish a correlation between democracies and territorial demands is made by posing the hypothesis that well-established democracies do not fight each other since they are conservative powers, usually satisfied with the territorial status quo within and across their borders. If this hypothesis is corroborated by the historical evidence, then it is possible to speculate that the zone of peace among democracies might be expanded if more countries (not necessarily democracies) also become satisfied with the status quo. To test the relevance of this proposition, the relationship between democracies and territorial demands is examined in historical and geographical terms, through the analysis of international subsystems or regions as the unit of analysis. A zone of peace is then defined as a discrete geographical region of the world in which a group of states have maintained peaceful relations among themselves for a period of at least thirty years. The historical and geographical zones of peace identified since 1815 are: (1) Europe, 1815-48; (2) Europe, 1871-1914; (3) Western Europe, since 1945; (4) North America, since 1917; (5) South America, 1883 to 1932 and since 1942; (6) West Africa, since 1957; (7) East Asia, since 1953; and (8) Australasia, since 1945.

Regionalization, Globalization, and Nationalism: Convergent, Divergent, or Overlapping?

This article examines the interaction among the three forces that shape world politics in the contemporary system: globalization, regionalization, and nationalism. The main thesis suggested here is that these three forces cannot be assessed in isolation, independently from one another, nor from a perspective between or among them of either convergence or divergence. Rather, globalization, regionalization, and nationalism should be captured and studied as forces relative to and overlapping one another, sometimes antagonistic and sometimes cooperative toward each other, but never harmonious. This argument is theoretically relevant both in the context of the world political economy and of international security (with special reference to security complexes and pluralistic security communities). In this sense, I want to encourage our thinking about the phenomena of pluralistic security communities, and to do so by showing how the interaction of these three forces might make them possible. The Latin American case will provide an empirical illustration to those theoretical assertions. The article is structured in four sections. First, I briefly define the rather confusing and misleading concepts of globalization, regionalization, and nationalism. Second, I assess the possible linkages (convergent, divergent, and overlapping) among them. Third, I examine how the emergence of pluralistic security communities epitomizes the complex relationships among these three forces. Finally, I illustrate some of the theoretical arguments with reference to the Latin American region. The implication of the argument presented above is a plea for pluralism and a picture of indeterminacy regarding the mutual

The Problem of Peaceful Territorial Change

This article deals with the process of change in the international status quo of territories, and how such changes may be brought about “peacefully,” by means other than war. The main question I address is: Under what conditions and circumstances will alterations in the status quo of territories take place without warfare or other unilateral coercive means? In order to answer the above question, this study identifies three background conditions that facilitate peaceful territorial change: an asymmetrical distribution of power between the parties involved in the process; a similar type of political regime of the members of the dyad; and a convergence of norms and rules of international law and morality sustained by the parties with reference to the disputed territory. In addition, it is important to understand the variables that make the process of peaceful territorial change likely to occur. This process will be affected by the different interests of the parties in a given territory, their degree of cooperation and reciprocity, and their strategies of bargaining and negotiation.

Rashomon in the Middle East Clashing Narratives, Images, and Frames in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

This article presents the contending narratives of the failure of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The narratives refer to the ‘Oslo’ peace process of 1993-2000, the negotiations at Camp David (July 2000) and Taba (January 2001), and the ongoing asymmetrical war between Israel and the Palestinians since September 2000.They encompass the ‘official’ social reconstructions of how the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the PLO present the facts and interpret the attitudes of both parties. Moreover, those narratives are almost identical in their logic, though diametrically opposed to each other. Each party blames, totally and unconditionally, the failure of the peace process upon the malign intentions of political destruction and annihilation of the other.The rationale for the paper is that narratives, which are ‘stories with a plot’, do matter, since they shape our identity and our norms, which are crucial components of our reconstruction of social reality. In other words, narratives help to recreate self-perpetuating processes of wishful thinking and self-fulfilling prophecies by providing us with a moral and practical justification, ex post facto, for our acts.

Geopolitics and territorial issues: Relevance for South America

This paper surveys the impact of geopolitical thinking as applied to issues of territory in Latin America, with special emphasis upon its Southern Cone. The relevance of geopolitics is examined as an ideological doctrine and as a normative framework to understand territorial changes, territorial conflicts that have not escalated into fully‐fledged wars, and rare cases of actual wars fought in the twentieth century in South America. I question the changing meaning of geopolitical doctrines following the ‘third wave’ of democratization in Latin America by suggesting more ‘positive’ avenues for the former pernicious “implications of geopolitical doctrines, including economic development and regional integration. Finally, I juxtapose ‘conventional’ geopolitics with more recent ideas of ‘critical’ geopolitics and its potential implementation in the region.

Third World zones of peace

International relations scholars have traditionally sought to explain war rather than peace. As a result, explanations for peace have been understudied. Most international security research has emphasized the genesis of peace or the beginning of wars. In contrast, we should do more to examine the maintenance of international peace over extended periods. We can focus, as illustrations, on peace in two regions of the Third World: South America and West Africa. We can begin with two major questions: First, how can we explain the maintenance of peace at the regional level in general, and in South America and West Africa in particular? Second, can regional peace be maintained among states that do not sustain democratic regimes? The first question has been examined by both realists and liberals in the literature on the conditions of peace and the causes of war. For realists, the paramount question remains how to prevent war, rather than how to expand and deepen peace. Conversely, for liberals, this question add...

The quest for regional legitimation: Analyzing the Arab League’s legitimizing role in the Arab spring

ABSTRACT The topic of international legitimacy has returned to centre stage during the Arab Spring, in which the Arab League has apparently assumed a prominent legitimation role. Although some scholarship has studied how international organizations are decisive in legitimizing actors and their actions during conflicts, relatively scant attention has been focused at constructing a comprehensive analytical framework for this kind of assessment that could be also applied to regional organizations (ROs). This paper proposes that when actors are involved in battles over international legitimation, analysing their access to the socially identified brokers of three legitimation functions (appropriateness, consensus, and empathy) is key to assess their success. Particularly, we argue that relevant identity-based ROs may have a crucial legitimizing role by operating as brokers of regional consensus. For this purpose, two case studies – Bahrain and Libya – illustrate how the Arab League’s brokerage influenced the legitimation of the actors involved and their outcomes. The findings suggest novel implications about the decisive legitimizing impact of regionalism on conflict resolution.