Traditional Paradisms for the Causes of War Applied to the International Trading System: Nation-State Institutions in a World of Market-States

Authors

Antonio F. Perez, The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of LawFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2005

Abstract

The first object of this paper, therefore, is to consider in very general terms the intellectual history of the study of the relation between trade and peace, using two key texts from the beginning and the end of the Cold War - first, Kenneth Waltz's "Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis" 3; and, second, Philip Bobbitt's "The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History.

The second part of this paper will argue that Waltz's normative commitments are revealed in the order of his presentation and Bobbitt's normative commitments are revealed in the ostensibly descriptive thesis he advances concerning the triumph of the so-called market state.

The third part of this paper asks how we should formulate the question of the relation between war and peace, and it will argue that, until we make distinctions that are explicitly normative in character about the moral significance of different modes of "free" trade or "protectionism" and different modes of "peace" and "war," it will be inevitable that nominally descriptive analysis will be distorted by hidden normative premises.

Recommended Citation

Antonio F. Perez, Traditional Paradisms for the Causes of War Applied to the International Trading System: Nation-State Institutions in a World of Market-States, 37 STUD. TRANSNAT’L LEGAL POL’Y 178 (2005).