Periods of peace between major powers in world history

• Main Author: McKinney, Jared Morgan
• Other Authors: -
• Format: Thesis-Doctor of Philosophy
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2020
• Subjects: Social sciences::Political science::International relations
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/143008
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

For most of history, peace has been “only a name,” as Plato once wrote. Even so, certain international systems have experienced extended periods of peace. What enables such peace? The discipline of International Relations has only asked (and attempted to answer) this question for a limited number of cases from the modern era. However, leading explanations—hegemony (Realist), regime type (Liberal), and security communities (Constructivist)—are not directly relevant to critical dyads in the contemporary international system. The question today is how major states—such as the United States and China—that do not share identities or regime type and yet are approximately equal in terms of power might coexist. Following the methodology of the nineteenth-century pragmatic philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, this dissertation seeks to provide an initial answer in three steps. In the first step, abduction, I propose a synthesis theory of multipolar peace. Drawing on the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes as well as IR theory and modern history, I theorize that there are three essential elements required to reach a state of peace. The first is for the parties to acknowledge the balance of power to be stable. The second is for the parties to recognize each other ‘thickly’ as equals. And the third is for territorial differences to be settled in a process seen as legitimate by the actors. In the second step, induction, I seek to test my synthesis theory of peace. Since the number of appropriate cases already used by the IR discipline are inadequate to robustly test the theory, I introduce three new international systems that meet my scope conditions. These are the Ancient Near East in the Late Bronze Age (c. 1500-1200 BC), Rome and Persia in late antiquity (3rd through 7th centuries AD), and Song China’s relations with its peers (10th through 13th centuries AD). In my final step, deduction, I apply my findings to U.S.-China relations in the contemporary era, considering how peace might be extended as China rises.