DEMOCRATIC PEACE THEORY: EXTERNAL POLITICAL DIMENSION

Abstract

At first glance, the concept of democratic peace (or liberal peace) may look like theoretically exhausted theme of the scholarly discourse in the fields of political science and international relations. Nevertheless, it represents the core of the most powerful democracies ’ foreign policies, which is being used for justification of their concrete endeavors such as export of democracy That kind of mechanical understanding dominant in the policy-making and militaiy circles ignores some of the main postulates of the original theoretical concept, and most of all leads towards misuse of the Kantian vision of eternal peace. The article gives critical oveiwiew of the theoretical, conceptual and practical consequences of the application of democratic peace thesis at the beginning of the 21 century. The focal point is the need of deconstruction of the myth of democratic peace.