Abstract
The unprecedented destruction, human suffering, and advances in weapons technology that occurred during World War II spawned an intense push by the international community to create global peace. To create lasting peace, the international community adopted liberal peacebuilding, which includes “the promotion of democracy, market-based economic reforms, and a range of other institutions associated with ‘modern’ states…” The theory supporting liberal peacebuilding is the democratic peace theory, which posits that democracies do not go to war against each other. While there is some support for the democratic peace theory, there also exist strong arguments against it. This chapter will argue that war-averting agreements among countries are only possible when the issue(s) involved are not of significance to at least one party; otherwise, diplomatic negotiations are most likely to fail, and armed conflict is often the end result. This is because critical issues are more akin to zero-sum games than other issues. One side’s gain is another side’s loss when the issue is one in which all parties consider it not negotiable.