On September 11, 2001, four commercial airplanes were taken over by terrorists and used to bring terror upon the United States.  The damage done to the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and the deaths of more than 3,000 people remain shocking images in the American mind.  Combating terrorism remains a challenge to the United States and the world.  The United Nations, before and after these attacks, had constantly urged states within the international system to work together to combat the violence.  Many countries in the United Nations have constantly asserted the post-September 11 era as a new era in war.  It is obvious the terrorist methods of combat share little resemblance to combat in earlier wars, like the wars of the Cold War.  However, the cooperation in the international system that many leaders are describing as “new” is only a Kantian theory brought a century forward.  

        The United Nations was established with a similar Kantian consideration.  However, its power to control and maintain cooperation between nations is constantly questioned by its critics.  The Bush administration slighted the United Nations by ignoring its request  for further weapons inspection in Iraq.  The Bush administration argument for the war stood fundamentally on their belief that it was in the United States security interest to invade Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction.  In addition, the Bush administration argued they would not concede their security to the world’s body.  The argument the Bush administration posed resembled a realist interpretation of the international system.  The United Nations continually recalls Kant’s idealistic idea for cooperation to combat international problems while the Bush administration continues to depend on a combination of realist thoughts, like national interest, to denounce the United Nation’s stance.  Thus, the argument between the United Nations and the Bush administration on the Iraq War and United States national security in general is a contemporary idealist thought versus realist thought argument.  Accordingly, an examination of idealist thought, in particular Immanuel Kant, and realist thought, in particular Max Weber and Hans Morgenthau, and their application to contemporary politics demonstrates that the argument between idealism and realism remains an accurate description of the international system.

        Immanuel Kant’s theory on international relations is founded upon a few idealist assumptions.  For idealists, human nature is sinful and driven by self interest.  However, idealists also believe that human nature can become the center of genuine, peaceful, and cooperative relationships within the anarchic international system of states.  Idealists, like Kant, assume that a strong basis of education on good habits and morality with strong institutions within the state will develop a moral state of human beings.  The state’s laws, or principles, bring about the maturation of the moral civil society.  Kant writes,

        “the civil state, regarded purely as a lawful state, is based on the following a         priori principles:

        1. The freedom of every member of society as  human being.

        2. The equality of each with all the others as a subject.

        3. The independence of each member of a commonwealth as a citizen.”

Kant’s theory on the moral development of the state weighs heavily on the idea that the civil state will uphold these principles.  

        Kant describes the relationship between man and freedom as follows:

        No one can compel me to be happy in accordance with his conception of the         welfare of others, for each may seek his happiness in whatever way he sees fit,         so long as he does not infringe upon the freedom of others to pursue a similar         end which can be reconciled with the freedom of everyone else within a         workable general law-i.e. he must accord to others the same right as he enjoys         himself. 

Kant’s idealist thought of human nature transformation is transparent in this quote.  His civil society, or state, encompasses an equality and freedom afforded to all men that does not inhibit other men.  He believed there was an “original contract” among men of the civil society.  The development of this original contract is out of “sheer necessity” for all man to maintain his freedom.  He believed that man would reason toward this contract to uphold his complete freedom because in an anarchic state, boundaries on one’s freedom simply can be overstepped.

        The “original contract” present in the moral state, Kant believed, would carry over to the international system of states.  He believed the international system of states, despite the lack of government ever present in the international system, would become a transparent representation of the new moral civil society within the state.  Kant held a vision of a confederation of states, driven by their constant worry and annoyance with “universal violence,” that would displace the anarchic system with a “cosmopolitan constitution.”  Thus, Kant’s very distinct separation from realist thought is his belief that peace was not a break in war but rather an end.

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        Taken as a whole, Kant’s theory can be explained in three phases. First, there is an incorporation of the selfish and power hungry human being into a moral, equality and freedom promoting, collective society establishing the new civil society, or state.  He writes, “just like individual men, they [the states] must renounce their savage and lawless freedom, adapt themselves to public coercive laws, and thus form an international state, which would grow until it embraced all people of the earth.”  Second, Kant believed the new moral state would become disgusted by the violence and war in the international system.   ...

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