Traversing the Romance of a Liberal International Order: The Democratic Peace Thesis and the Regional Security Problematique in South Asia

The democratic peace hypothesis, which is embedded in the neo-Kantian romance of liberal cosmopolitan idealism, was framed in the spatiotemporal context of the Cold War bipolarity. Michael Doyle, who is one of its proponents, invoked the Kantian philosophical abstraction of ‘the perpetual peace’ by providing an intellectual defence and moral high ground for the values of the Liberal Capitalist world. In the post–Cold War setting, Francis Fukuyama re-casted the hypothesis and portrayed the triumph of liberal international order as ‘the end of history’. He attempted to reframe the democratic peace thesis, not only to celebrate liberal values as the normative exemplar for ordering a post–Cold War international system but also to provide an intellectual defence for the newly emerging space for American leadership in a post-hegemonic international system. This intellectual defence of the ethical supremacy of liberal idealism in the world, shaped by the leadership of the USA, was entrenched in the epistemological Imperialism of the West. Besides, it also reflected an exclusionary idea of the history of international relations that was heavily grounded in the chronology of the post-Westphalia international order. Situating ourselves in this framework, this article is an attempt to critique the epistemic foundations of the democratic peace hypothesis, by deconstructing its assertions in the geostrategic context of the regional security architecture in South Asia. The article criticizes the democratic peace thesis, using an analysis of the Kargil conflict (1999) between India and Pakistan, and by placing ourselves in the epistemological framework of the historical turn in international relations.