“…The question of security is generally connected with international relations. And when I started looking into it I discovered it to be extremely complex. Most of all, what I am going to present here is my reflection on the complexity and ambiguity of the relationship between democracy, state and war, as war determines the problem of security itself.
To begin with, we can divide up the development of the monostate into certain phases. The first phase is consolidation. What does it mean? States make war and vice versa. During the course of some centuries the political map of Europe was dramatically simplified and what was at a certain point about 400 territories with each of them having a central rule turned into about 20 states at the beginning of the 20th century. This simplification is also called a consolidation. And of course war is an essential component of this. War is the way in which the states define their territories, achieve the monopoly on a certain territory by struggling with one another. So, war is constitutive to the state and state development. However, let’s do not forget the Weberian definition – the state is the monopoly of violence. And there is also this very important intuition by Hobbes that only the state can centralize the use of violence. The paradox is that the increase of violence in the long term diminishes the actual occurrence of violence. This is a very important development.
Then there is another phase which I like to call the rationalization of rule. For this, we can draw on Max Weber or characteristically draw on a Marxist expression saying that in this phase the state builds itself up by expropriating. The prince takes away from relatively independent people and institutionalizes certain kinds of power. What are these powers? They all have to do with violence – with fiscal exaction, military practice, judicial activities, police keeping etc… and this all – in the interest of professionalization of societal management. Without this, you could not have a civil society because a civil society exists only if single individuals or single bodies can plan their own existence autonomously with some insurance they are not going to be interfered with. Or if they are going to be interfered with it will be from the center and will be calculable. Power coming from the center is exercised in a predictable manner; all this makes possible the rise of civil society and the appearance of a market economy. Without a system of rights, you cannot have a progressive economy.
Let me remind you of the definition of the freedom offered by Montesquieu. Freedom – is a security of rights. And it has a very important juridical component. And another aspect of this second phase is, of course, the attempts on the part of the states to establish some degree of predictability even in their external relations, the institutionalization of professional diplomacy and if you want rules about how to go to war and what to do when you are at war.
The next phase is democracy and democratization. Again credible ambiguities and complexity arise. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville says – Democratic people are very reluctant to go to war. They have better things to do, they want to get rich, they want to do trade, they want to do business, but if some time they go to war, then they throw themselves into it with a great degree of commitment and identification with a political cause. An ambiguity is that in a democracy, in spite of the general pacific orientation, there are people, like officers, who are very interested in war actions and hostilities because their careers depend on wars.
Revolutionary wars are a new kind of war which is inspired by universal principals. France wanted to teach modernity or wants to teach freedom to the rest of the world; the universalistic impulse to share with others the benefits of the French civilization is associated with a great cruelty in some ways. People going to war are mass and they do this on behalf of universal values. Another interesting remark is Islam. Islam wars are also fought on behalf of universal principals based on the universal submission of people to Allah and they are very invasive. These ideas can be very penetrating and disastrous.
The second phase of democratic development is marked by the widening of suffrage. Things we like to identify with democracy such as suffrage and certain forms of redistribution are themselves associated with war. There is a kind of synchronism between the enlargement of military participation and the widening of suffrage. If you look at the case of Germany, possibly of Britain, certain reasons for creating a wealthy state have to do with creating an army which is more effective. Democracy means the entry of the masses into politics; and it is deeply associated with nationalism. In large democratic countries, people look after their welfare, consumerism, greater economic security. As nationalistic as they can be, people pay greater attention to economic concerns, so the market has a civilizing effect. It encourages people to look after themselves, and this egoistic moral goes against the commitment to general causes which may lead to war.
I will jump ahead to the contemporary situation, the current phase of democratization. Democracy is becoming the only universally acceptable form for legitimation. It does not reach as far as I thought, though. This is a very complex phenomenon. On the one hand, for a few decades large democracies have not made war with one another, which is reassuring. Democracies have adopted more wide-spread values and are less likely to go to war with one another. Still there is a lot of nationalism around associated with democracy. In one way, it goes along with the preoccupation about peace and security but it also inspires sometimes the cessation movements. People do define themselves as a nation. Sometimes, they claim they cannot be a nation without a state. And this can lead to all sorts of preoccupations with security, continuity, stability etc. However, we must recognize, I think, that the major threats to security now come largely from states or policies which are not associated with democracy, which are associated with ideals of theocratic or theological nature which do not acknowledge that the rule itself to some extent must be expressed and controlled from the bottom…”
