How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace
Charles Kupchan
Princeton University Press, 2010
Hard Cover $29.95 USD
Rarely does one read about peace. It is a given that if you pick up any newspaper on any day of the week, you can read about war. Wars dominate the headlines and chances are that a closer look at many of the stories that make news will have some element of conflict; from grumblings over strained relations between China and the US, to bloody conflict in Darfur. Charles Kupchan proposes that it is a mistake to take for granted or fail to pay to attention to peace in his latest book. Rather than yet another jaded account of why war breaks out, How Enemies Becomes Friends looks at where and, more importantly, how peace emerges.
How Enemies Become Friends mines the previously neglected study of peace and provides a bold and original account of how nations can replace competition with lasting friendship. The author asks the reader to reconsider the unquestioned idea that the world is gripped by an unstoppable cycle of conflict. In examining the circumstances under which animosity between nations has dissipated in the past, Kupchan has produced an innovative account which offers insights for peace-building today.
A senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former member of Clinton’s National Security Council, Kupchan is well placed to comment on matters of diplomacy. As a starting point of his study, Kupchan provides an ambitious theoretical background that draws on a broad range of ideas on the international system. Touching on Hobbesian and Weberian articulations of power, Kupchan privileges no single theoretical approach, and this results in a rather eclectic chapter which would be hard to follow for those not already attuned to classical studies of the international system. However, the author moves swiftly on to an extraordinarily diverse set of case studies which allows the reader to place Kupchan’s blueprint for a new global order in a historical context.
At first glance, the use of cross-cultural studies spanning centuries seems arbitrary. One questions how the unification of the Swiss Cantons, the normalization of US-British relations, the formation of the Iroquois Confederation in upstate New York and the demilitarization of the Franco-German border can possibly be grouped together. However, Kupchan cleverly links and uses these historical events to make a compelling case for a tiered process through which stable peace can be achieved between enemies.
Such analysis of the currency of peace—the concessions and accommodations used in the past to promote mutual trust—could not have been published at a more timely moment. The escalating confrontation between the United States and China, most recently over Beijing’s dispute with Google over Internet censorship sees the countries fast travelling down a dangerous route. This book provides historical lessons for both powers, and suggests that the brakes be applied to this developing rivalry.
After the much-discredited go-it-alone drive of the Bush administration, Kupchan is not alone in his appreciation of collaborative action today, particularly with regards to America’s relations with emerging powers such as China and Iran. In his inaugural address, US President Barack Obama informed those regimes "on the wrong side of history" that the United States "will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist." Professor Kupchan, like President Obama, believes that diplomatic engagement with rivals can be achieved.
In many ways, How Enemies Become Friends evinces Obama's thinking on this issue. Kupchan’s analysis makes clear that in reaching out to adversaries, Obama is on the right track to rapprochement. Descriptions of successful rapprochements between Norway and Sweden, Argentina and Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia, are held as evidence that history supports Obama’s current strategy of engagement. The key insight of this book is that to be successful, diplomatic engagement requires considerable time to produce peaceful relations. Following this argument, Kupchan is implicitly critical of those who call Obama’s efforts to engage with Tehran premature.
Critics of Obama’s outreach to adversaries would do well to look at Kupchan’s analysis of cases of successful rapprochement. The cases share a commonality in that each took between five to 10 years of negotiation, concessions and confidence building to reach a point where mutual antagonism could end. Kupchan’s conclusion that breakthroughs with hostile countries are achievable counters the charge that Obama should abandon efforts to engage with Iran.
How Enemies Become Friends is an ambitious book, which, through a combination of theoretical understanding and in-depth case studies, delivers a powerful argument that champions Obama's policy of engagement with Iran and China. Such an important topic demands vigorous analysis, which Kupchan is well qualified to deliver. Kupchan acknowledges in his conclusion that the instances of peace he identifies throughout history are rare but emphasizes that this is not a reason to abandon the possibilities of rapprochement today. Rather, it is all the more reason to strive to make such diplomatic successes more frequent and durable. This book is entitled to serious consideration by those in the field of international relations.
