Essay about The concept of the Democratic Peace Theory

Betrayal, one of the most horrible things you could do to anyone your family, a friend anyone. To me it’s one of my all time most hated things a person could do and it’s almost unforgivable. In this book A Separate Peace by John Knowles two boys Phineas and Gene who are best friends at a boarding school in New Hampshire experience some of the worst kinds of Betrayal you could think of. Gene commits a very bad betrayal when he jousts the tree limb they are both standing on ending up with Finny falling and badly breaking his leg. This was no accident because Gene can’t stand the guilt.

Dealing with enemies has been a problem since the beginning of time. “I never killed anybody,” Gene had commented later in his life, “And I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform, I was on active duty all my time at Devon; I killed my enemy there.” In A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, the value of dealing with enemies is shown by Gene, who was dealing with few human enemies, but his emotions created far greater rivals than any human could ever posses.

Observation 1: when we talk about promoting democracy, there are many ways to carry out this promotion. The United States is not obligated to take one course of action. Rather, the US can alter and adjust its approach to what is most suitable for that situation. Different tools might be appropriate at different points of time as well as differing based on the severity of the situation.

Half a millennium ago, kingdoms were all the rage and those not under monarchial rule were savages and uncivilized creatures. In 500 years, democracy may not be the ideal Western government. We could, for say, come to the great realization that we should be ruled by artificial intelligence. It may be popular now to say that democracy is the best form of government, but that may not be true for the West in the future and it may even not be true for some parts of our present world. Some cultures would reject democracy, like some countries in the Middle East such as Afghanistan, where the U.S. is still attempting to prop up a democracy, despite Afghanistan’s high place on the Fragile States Index, by The Fund for Peace, with a score of 107.9, putting them at number 6 out of 178 measured countries. By this ranking, they fail in many aspects as a nation-state, such as protection.

Democratic Peace Theory is another example of how liberals prove that the spread of democratic principles is beneficial. M.W Doyle and R.J. Rummel came up with this theory in the end of the 20th century, which posits that democracies are hesitant to start a conflict with other democracies. “When the citizens who bear the burdens of war elect their governments, wars become impossible” (Doyle, 1986, p.1151). The reason of this theory is that liberal state that individuals, without the help from the government, are naturally very similar. Democracies are favourable in the setting environment where ideas of progress and liberty are common. Peace has to be established through diplomacy and war only used against authoritarian and undemocratic states in order to maintain the peace in the state system. The main example of the relevance of the theory is Europe Peace. Europe was the bloodiest continent on Earth for many centuries, but since 1945 because of the increased integration and cooperation there were no general wars between European states themselves. Liberals also mention the importance of the creation of collective security – institutions, which would be a legal framework for interaction in order to promote democratic values. Neo-liberals, such as Joseph Nye or Robert Keohane argue that

"Your surroundings may change but your essence and your personality pretty much stay the same" (Dewan). The setting of the novel A Separate Peace is at an all boys school located in New Hampshire. The characters and plot are finely woven into the fabric of this institution. However, would events in this novel turn out differently if the story was set in a public high school, with a diverse environment? The characters and plot of A Separate Peace are not solely driven by their surroundings because the boys would still break the rules, Gene would have internal conflicts, and the war would affect the students.

Charles Lipson in “Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace,” argues that Democratic Peace Theory offers an explanation as to why democracies, in particular, have avoided the war front. In his delineation, he cites the ideals of bargaining, mutual benefit, reluctance to bear the cost of war, and the restraint placed upon elected official as to why democracies, unlike non-democracies, have avoided conflict for as long as they have (Lipson 10). His argument, alike to other Democratic peace theorists, consist of the idea that all areas should be a democracy, as these benefits exist amongst democracies due to their shared values.

The civil war ended and it was soon the beginning of many hardships. “The Problems of Peacemaking” discusses all of the problems with the Northerners and Southerners becoming peaceful after the war. President Abraham Lincoln did many things to try to get peace after the war. When he realized it wasn’t going to be easy, he decided that a “Reconstruction Plan” could maybe help them get peace. After the civil war the South didn’t have many things left because everything they had was destroyed almost completely. People living in the south wanted to regain it back but they soon realized it wasn’t that easy to do. The white southerners lost some land and their slaves but that was nothing compared to the black southerners. Black southerners lost everything when they left to get freedom, besides a little bit of clothing and a few possessions they took with them. Blacks and whites had completely different meanings of freedom. The whites wanted to control what they did without the government’s input, and the blacks wanted to get freedom from the whites. The whites wanted white supremacy which is, they wanted to be more superior. The blacks just wanted to be control and own things such as land. General William Sherman’s “Special Field Order No. 15” helped give 400,000 acres of land to 40,000 freed slaves. Other methods were produced to help slaves get land, one of the most famous was the Freedmen’s Bureau. The Freedmen’s Bureau gave slaves food, health care, clothing, and education. The whites of course, disagreed with the Bureau and would have disputes about it. The disputes were all settled by the Freedmen’s Bureau. General Howard created the “Circular 13” which helped lease 40 acre plots to slaves and hoped to later sell it to them. He also made the Southern Homestead Act that made 46 million acres for sell to slaves in many states. It was later repealed because people thought slaves were taking advantage of it. Republicans had say in what happened during the reconstruction. The conservatives and radicals disagreed on their views. The radicals were more harsh. All the conservatives said was that the south should just take what was happening and do nothing about it. The radicals wanted to take away some rights from a

From juvenility to maturity, A Separate Peace combines classic American Literature with a thoughtful plot-line that is developed to affect the readers’ mind and heart. The author, John Knowles of Fairmont, West Virginia, had one clear purpose for writing this book. This purpose was to show the disastrous mental and physical problems which arise as the result of war, specifically the repercussions they have on the home front. A good lesson to learn from this book is that even a war three-thousand miles away can have just as much ramification as a war three miles away. This novel shows the transition of Gene Forrester and his friends from boyhood to manhood during a

At the Devon School in New Hampshire, in 1942, during World War II, the main character, Gene, becomes closer with his adventurous roommate, Finny, whose elemental charisma distracted them from the reality outside of the school. Throughout the novel the realness of the war becomes present and the war’s continuation parallels the growth of Gene, from a young innocent boy, to a man. These changes happen to align with one another and that coordination represents the theme of a loss of innocence in the novel. Due to the contradictory interactions with the war and the pursuit of adulthood, Genes development as a person runs alongside the progression of the war. In the novel, A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the relationship between the author’s use of war impacts the maturing of the main character Gene and further develops the theme of the loss of innocence.

Olivia leaves to meet the President at Camp David and. Stephen wonders why and Olivia explains that meeting at the White House would be too official. Abby asks if he is offering her to take back her old job, but Olivia reassures them saying they are friends.

Democracy is the solitary example of a genuine political system in most of the world. According to the text, “Today, sixty-two percent of the countries in the world are democracies.” For example, if the United States did not have the power to spread democracy, it could not influence the International Community to the benefit of national interests. The national interest of the United States not to spend limited resources on warfare when it can be used in a more productive manor. The growth of democracy puts the United States in smaller amounts of positions causing them to make the decision to go to war. A democracy generally does not go to combat with another democracy. The United States is a greatly functioned democracy. Along with Democracy,

The idea that democracies do not fight each other can be traced back to the writings of Immanuel Kant over two hundred years ago in essay ‘On Perpetual Peace’, however, only in the early 1980s and with the writings of Michael Doyle was the idea consolidated. According to Doyle and other advocates of the democratic peace theory, liberal democratic states have been able to maintain peaceful relations amongst themselves, but are prone to wage war against non-democratic regimes. In order to prove this theory, vast databases have been constructed of historical dyadic relationships between states as well as detailed breakdowns of incidents of inter-state war. The conclusions reached are best shown in the work of Bruce Russett who has argued that

This belief faced significant criticism, however, since free trade between states of different stages of development can result in a relationship in which the less developed state is dependent on the more developed state ( global South to North dependency). Many beliefs related to Liberalism actually face criticism as a result of an imbalance of power and influence between states. The Democratic Peace Theory, for example, suggests that conflict between two democratic states is unlikely – less likely than conflict between two non-liberal states or conflict between a liberal and non-liberal state. While history would suggest this to be true, there are multiple factors that contribute to this truth. For one, liberal states tend to be wealthier than non-liberal states. This means that they have less incentive to start war than a less wealthy state. Additionally, liberal states tend to have amicable relations with other liberal states – take Canada and USA for

1. International conflict among countries is more likely of what we may think. Today there are many different ongoing conflicts. International conflict is a stage of opposition, disagreement or incompatibility between two or more states (Malek). The term "international conflict" referred to conflicts between different nations and conflicts between people and organizations in different nations (Mr. Turetzky lec 11). It also applies to inter-group conflicts within one country when one group is fighting for independence or increased social, political, or economic power. International conflicts can be divided into two branches: private international conflict and public international conflict. A private international conflict is a disagreement