1 Liberal Process and the Great Power Confederacy

Great power peace is the most important banality in international relations theory. It is banal because it is over-determined. According to constructivists it is rooted in a Kantian culture and the development of an organic security community whose highest phase of maturity is characterized by a shared identity and “dependable expectations of peaceful change.”1 According to commercial liberals, in the tradition of Montesquieu and Richard Cobden, the answer is to be found in the intense economic intercourse and interdependence combined with the decreasing salience of physical territory.2 Kantian democratic peace theory explains how democratic institutions and norms work to create peace among democratic states.3 Others emphasize the way that international institutions facilitate order and peace.4 Realists have explanations of their own. Nuclear weapons have made war among the great powers virtually unthinkable.5 Others see great power peace as linked to American uni-polar hegemony.6 While banal because over-determined, the great power peace is the most important banality precisely because so much is riding on this question