The Democratic Peace Theory and US Post-9/11 Interventionism:

Abstract

The current study aims at investigating the Democratic Peace Theory in essence and its relation to United States interventions following the September 9th ,2001 attacks on the world trade center in New York City. It introduces the concept of The Democratic Peace Theory which is rooted in the work of Immanuel Kant in 1795. It offers a descriptive account to the theory‟s statement being one of the most important international relations regulations asserting that democratic states are less likely to go to war with each other. The study discovers the relationship between democracy and peace and draws upon the significance of democracy leading to and causing peace. It offer insights into The United States striving to spread democracy worldwide and farther explains its foreign policy and the most significant incident that elaborated its foreign policy principle of democracy promotion, thus the 9/11 attacks. The case study that is prominent to US attempts at „democracy promotion‟ is Iraq: “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, 30th March 2003. The study also concludes that the U.S allegedly prioritized its democracy promotion in order to tackle the problem of terrorism, the call for democracy in Iraq didn‟t meet with the primary goal of “peace”, it rather left it with destruction and chaos. The Democratic Peace Theory was used by the USA as a justification for the invasion of Iraq, yet this theory didn‟t uphold the enforcement of democracy nor taking military actions to preserve it. Invoking the propositions of the DPT to justify the use of destructive force under the pretext of spreading democracy is, therefore, baseless and unjust.