Peace, Justice and International Order

The international state system has lately undergone a huge development having to meet great changes and challenges. Two world wars in less than 50 years, in particular the cruelties of World War II and their dimensions, gave impetus to quick and enormous changes: the development of an extensive human rights regime, normative limitations to the legitimacy of warfare and the establishment of the United Nations (Martin and Reidy 2006, 3). The decline of colonialism and the end of the Cold War reshaped the international state system and power schemes. Globalization brought the world closer together, establishing new ways of communication and cooperation, but also new dangers and challenges, calling into question the autonomy of states or even their raison d’être. ‘One of the greatest challenges posed by this new international order has been that of providing appropriate standards of justice for this emerging system’ (Martin and Reidy 2006, 3). John Rawls contributed to this search, in 1993 with his Amnesty Lecture and then in 1999 with the homonymous monograph The Law of Peoples (LP).

The question of whether or not states that correspond to Rawls’ concept of peoples actually exist is essential to LP, especially where decent societies are concerned, as they seem to be mere constructions and Rawls does not satisfactorily answer the question of whether peoples exist beyond ideal theory. If there are no existing or historical decent societies, they might be invented to justify imposing liberal principles, the principles of the Law of Peoples, on non-liberal regimes. If decent societies lacked counterparts in the real world, Rawls’ justification for imposing the principles of the Law of Peoples on other societies would be pointless. They would remain liberal principles that are only honoured by liberal democratic societies and imposing them on other regimes would constitute a form of liberal imperialism, which Rawls in LP aims to avoid and which, from a Rawlsian perspective, constitutes a violation of liberal principles, foremost the principle of reasonable pluralism. Furthermore, the identification especially of decent regimes would enhance the applicability of LP to international relations and therefore the potential to be helpful for improving real world conditions. It might be an appealing model for liberal regimes to improve their relations with states qualifying as decent, not only as they are suitable cooperation partners, but also to enhance international stability and justice and to advance peaceful relations.

With The Law of Peoples, Rawls has contributed to the discussion not only on the moral status of the diverse types of political regimes, but also to their foreign relations as they should be to enhance stable peace and justice in the international order. The project at hand hopes to have contributed to that debate by exploring, analysing, testing, defending and critiquing LP from within and beyond the Rawlsian framework. Recalling the course of this undertaking, Rawls’ ideal theorizing and his realistic utopian framework has been positioned within Rawls’ work and in relation to the real world. A profound analysis of central aspects of LP and Rawls’ terminology, specifically, the differentiation between peoples and states, as well as his typology of political regimes, functioned as a baseline for understanding and discussing LP. The applicability and value of Rawls’ theory to and for international relations were assessed. The problems and contributions of the principles of the Law of Peoples and the Society of Peoples were investigated. It was explored whether at least aspiring decent peoples exist, and discussed whether the democratic peace thesis could be enlarged to a decent peace thesis.