The revenge of 'democratic peace'

The Russo-Ukrainian war may have given democratic peace a new lease of (research) life. The stronger-than-expected reaction of liberal democracies coupled with the poorer-than-expected battlefield performance of the Russian military, invites us to re-apply the logic of democratic peace. To understand the strong reactions of liberal democracies, I apply a militant interpretation of Kant's perpetual peace and reexamine the role of trade interdependence in capitalist peace. To understand the battlefield performance of Ukraine, I examine theories of war-fighting with an emphasis on the legitimacy mechanism. To understand the battlefield performance of Russia, I examine the deleterious impact of corruption and preference falsification (vranyo). To the extent that the field is still generating novel research that advances our understanding of the impact of regime type on international conflict, democratic peace remains a progressive research programme.