ABSTRACT
The notion of ‘democracy by force’ has been associated with the post-9/11 Bush Doctrine as (implicitly) articulated in the US National Security Strategy (NSS) of 2002. 1 More generally, it refers to ‘democratic peace’ as first formulated by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant in 1794 in his writing ‘On Perpetual Peace’. According to this thesis, democracies do not wage war against each other—a trend supported by the presumption of the positive effects of liberal democracy and market economy on international peace and stability. 2
