PAPER PREPARED FOR PRESENTATION AT THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE IN POLITICAL SCIENCE,
NEW YORK, APRIL 27 2007.
Giuseppe Mazzini and
the liberal legacy on promoting democracy through force
Stefano Recchia,
Department of Political Science, Columbia University
Email: [email protected]
1
Abstract:
Giuseppe Mazzini, the inspirational leader of the Italian anti-imperialist struggle for
national independence, ranked among the most influential European public figures of the mid19th century. He also made a seminal contribution to the development of modern liberal
internationalist thought. Mazzini was the first to explicitly predict the emergence of a separate
or “dyadic” peace between republican nations. In addition, he developed what remains
perhaps the most sophisticated classical liberal analysis of democratic nation-building and its
relationship to foreign military intervention. Yet Mazzini has largely fallen into oblivion
today among international relations scholars and political theorists. Contemporary IR scholars
sometimes mention him en passant along with figures such as Immanuel Kant, J.S. Mill and
Richard Cobden, usually to contrast his putative “messianic” interventionism with the more
prudent internationalism of the latter (e.g. Waltz 1959; Smith 1992; Moravcsik 1997; Wight
2005). The principal aim of this paper is to show how this reading of Mazzini’s international
theory – based on patchy translations and incomplete English editions of his writings - is
fundamentally incorrect.
Mazzini dismissed the possibility of imposed “regime change” on moral grounds,
arguing that a people would truly deserve to be free only if domestic revolutionaries were
both willing and able to defeat the native forces of tyranny on their own. More fundamentally,
Mazzini in many regards anticipated J.S. Mill’s consequentialist critique of imposed regime
change, insisting that democracy thus achieved could hardly be sustained and would indeed
soon relapse into anarchy or dictatorship. According to Mazzini, foreign military intervention
could be justified only (A) as counter-intervention, to re-balance the situation on the ground
once another foreign army had already intervened, or (B) as humanitarian intervention in the
face of large-scale massacres of civilians. The relevance of Mazzini’s writings to
contemporary US foreign policy and broader questions of international relations theory
warrants a systematic reappraisal of his arguments.
2
Giuseppe Mazzini and the liberal legacy on promoting democracy through force
“I do not believe that regime change, by itself,
can be a just cause of war.” Michael Walzer1
There is an influential line of argument in the contemporary US foreign policy debate
which maintains that American economic and military power should be used assertively for
moral purposes abroad. Following what has become known as the neoconservative logic in
foreign affairs, putting an end to tyranny and spreading democracy abroad are not only worthy
goals in themselves; the elimination of inherently hostile dictatorial regimes and potential
breeding grounds for terrorism should also be seen as effective means for advancing US and
broader international security.2 President George W. Bush and his administration acted
coherent with this type of reasoning, when they insisted on the promotion of democracy in the
broader Middle East as a justification for the war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003.3
Public intellectuals and scholars associated with the neoconservative paradigm have
often attempted to legitimate their calls for a more systematic use of American power abroad
by means of implicit, and sometimes quite explicit, references to the classical liberal tradition
in foreign affairs. 4 The association of contemporary neoconservatism with classical liberalism
is indeed superficially plausible. Liberalism, in its various philosophical guises, has always
been concerned with freeing individuals from tyranny by providing them with consent-based
political institutions. In addition, the international realm has always been central to liberalism;
Kant’s famous intuition that liberal regimes would not be aggressive in their foreign relations
1
Walzer 2006: vii.
Kristol and Kagan 2000; for an illuminating critique, see Jervis 2003.
3
In a speech at the United Nations in late 2004, Bush insisted that thanks to the American intervention, Iraq
would soon become a beacon of freedom in the Middle East: “For too long, many nations … tolerated, even
excused oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability”, but the time had now come to acknowledge “the
transforming power of freedom” and consequently “strive to build a community of peaceful democratic nations”
in the Middle East (quoted in New York Times 2004)
4
See e.g. Kurtz 2003; Fukuyama 2006; for an early version of the same argument, see Arkes 1986.
2
3
is still reflected today in the well-grounded empirical hypothesis that consolidated
democracies have established a “separate peace” between themselves. Finally, although there
was never a consensus among liberals on the issue of military intervention, some classical
liberals – most notably Giuseppe Mazzini and John Stuart Mill - did not a priori exclude that
the use of military force abroad might sometimes be justified on moral grounds.
I argue, however, that the association of contemporary neoconservatism with classical
liberalism is unsustainable upon a closer analysis of the latter. If anything, contemporary
neoconservative thought and ensuing political practices represent a rather crude flattening and
deliberate aberration of the nuanced theoretical arguments developed by thinkers such as
Immanuel Kant, Giuseppe Mazzini, and John Stuart Mill. There is not a single classical liberal
thinker who was willing to justify wars of aggression as a matter of principle to promote
democratic “regime change” and liberal self-government abroad. To prove my argument, I
show that even those liberal thinkers who appear most willing to justify foreign intervention
clearly rejected military action abroad as a means to promote democracy. I focus in particular
on Giuseppe Mazzini’s international political theory, and occasionally compare his thinking
to that of his less radical contemporary J.S. Mill. Among classical liberal internationalists,
Mazzini and Mill did in fact go farthest in supporting the possibility of foreign intervention by
military means.5
In the first part of the paper, I identify the key elements of Mazzini’s theory of
republican government and show how he derives from this an original causal explanation for
the
“separate
peace”
between
self-determining
nationalities.
Although
Mazzini
underestimated the disruptive nature of modern nationalism, he lucidly identified domestic
republican government as a necessary – and potentially sufficient - condition for international
peace. In the second part of the paper, I discuss Mazzini’s argument on democratic nation-
5
If line of argument is convincing, then the critical thesis that liberal thought in international relations “has
always been imperialist”, due to its alleged principled willingness to use military force to change the constitution
of foreign societies (Jahn 2005: 177-8) should also be dismissed as plainly unsustainable.
4
building and its relationship to foreign military intervention. Present-day international
relations scholars sometimes refer to Mazzini en passant along with figures such as Immanuel
Kant, J.S. Mill and Richard Cobden, usually to contrast his putative “messianic”
interventionism with the more prudent internationalism of the latter.6 Kenneth Waltz, for
instance, has interpreted Mazzini’s activist internationalism as sufficient proof that liberalism
sometimes displays a crusading tendency and “develops a hubris of its own.”7 The principal
aim of this paper is to show that this reading of Mazzini’s international theory – based on
patchy translations and utterly incomplete English editions of his writings - is fundamentally
incorrect. Mazzini crucially thought that lasting democratic governance within states could be
established only by means of a successful domestic revolutionary struggle. Although he
repeatedly called for transnational cooperation and programmatic alliances between
revolutionaries, his views on foreign military intervention are surprisingly prudent.
Foreigners, Mazzini believed, could legitimately intervene only in the face of an imminent
humanitarian disaster, or to re-balance the situation on the ground if there had already been
another foreign intervention to support the local tyrant.
1. Mazzini and the Wilsonian legacy in modern liberal internationalism
Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) is today largely remembered as the prototypical
“liberal nationalist” and the intellectual founding father of the Italian political nation. Born in
Genoa on June 22, 1805, he became soon involved in the Italian anti-imperialist struggle for
national liberation, of which he became the leading revolutionary mind and chief political
agitator. In 1830, after a short time spent in prison on charges of conspiracy against the
Austrian imperial domination, he left Italy to spend most of his remaining life in exile; first in
Switzerland, then France, and finally England. From the late 1830s, London became his home
6
7
Waltz 1959: 103-111; Smith 1992: 14-15; Moravcsik 1997: 525; Wight 2005: 104-8.
Waltz 1959: 111.
5
of choice, and from there he continued to publish and intensified his efforts to coordinate
what he saw as an emergent pan-European struggle against the imperial domination of the
Habsburgs, Ottomans, and Romanovs over Italy, Central Europe, and the Balkans.
Mazzini’s political career reached its zenith in the spring of 1849, when for a short
period of about three months he stood at the centre of European events: in March 1849, a
constituent assembly established the revolutionary Roman Republic, and Mazzini became its
political leader – a function in which he displayed surprising skills of statesmanship and
diplomacy.8 But in June 1849, the Roman Republic succumbed to a French military
intervention in support of the pope and Mazzini went back to his exile in London. In his later
years, Mazzini became increasingly disenchanted with the advancement of Italian national
unification under Piedmont’s monarchical leadership, which he saw as utterly incompatible
with his republican ideals. Also, he sensed that patriotic movements under monarchical
leadership might soon degenerate into a chauvinistic and bellicose nationalism.9
Mazzini was a prolific if somewhat unsystematic writer (his collected works take up
almost 100 volumes). Apart from his revolutionary activities, he made a seminal contribution
to the development of modern liberal internationalist thought. More generally speaking, he
probably ranked among the most influential European public figures of the mid-19th century.
Yet he has today largely fallen into oblivion among international relations scholars and
political theorists. Accordingly, there are surprisingly few scholarly analyses of his
international relations theory. Among anglophone scholars who display some familiarity with
Mazzini’s writings today, most rely exclusively on his highly moralistic late essay “On the
Duties of Man” (1860), which is hardly representative of his rich international political
theory. But roughly a century ago, Mazzini’s writings were well-known and extremely
influential among authors of the more activist or “Wilsonian” branch of liberal
8
Lord Palmerston, then British foreign secretary, reportedly described Mazzini’s diplomatic dispatches from
Rome as “models of reasoning and argument” (quoted in Wight, 2005: 113).
9
Mazzini 1871a.
6
internationalism. Mazzini was an ardent supporter of national-democratic revolutions; he
crucially recognized the importance of states’ domestic regime type for their foreign-policy
behavior, and ultimately thought of democracy as a necessary condition for international
peace. For these and other reasons that will be clarified in this essay, Mazzini can in many
ways be regarded as the founding figure of revolutionary or Wilsonian liberal
internationalism. This school of thought should be seen as fairly autonomous within liberal
internationalist thinking, since it diverges on several points from the more evolutionary
liberalism of Immanuel Kant, as well as from the status-quo oriented liberalism of Richard
Cobden, John Bright, and what later came to be known as the English interwar “idealists”,
such as Norman Angell and Alfred Zimmern.10
Mazzini’s fundamental intuition - later elevated into an explicit foreign-policy
doctrine by US president Woodrow Wilson - was that the diffusion of national selfdetermination and democracy would lead to the progressive establishment of a more just and
peaceful international order. Indeed, Mazzini was one of the first to foresee that selfdetermining republics would progressively establish a “separate peace” between themselves.
Although Mazzini could not have anticipated the excesses of chauvinistic nationalism in the
decades that followed his death, he was sophisticated enough to realize that liberal principles
of individual rights, state sovereignty, and national self-determination would often be less
than perfectly compatible. His voluntaristic conception of national self-determination, based
on the ideas of free association and individual consent, did not blind him to the dangers of a
potentially aggressive nationalism to both individual liberties and world peace.11
There is evidence that US president Woodrow Wilson himself was directly and
profoundly influenced by Mazzini’s political writings. Traveling to attend the 1919 peace
conference in Paris, Wilson visited Genoa to pay tribute in front of Mazzini’s monument. On
10
My classification he differs notably from that of “English school” international relations theorists such as
Martin Wight and Hedley Bull, who associated “revolutionary internationalism” with Immanuel Kant.
11
See e.g. Wight 2005: 103.
7
that occasion, he claimed to have closely studied Mazzini’s ideas and added that he intended
to make them an explicit guiding principle of US foreign policy.12 Wilson’s belief that the
spread of democracy and national self-determination would have a pacifying effect on
international relations, in particular, can be directly traced back to Mazzini’s political thought.
The American president also appears to have been inspired by the Italian liberal revolutionary
in his conviction that national self-determination ought to be seen as inextricably linked to the
principle of government by consent.13 If anything, Mazzini was somewhat more skeptical than
Wilson himself about providing virtually unqualified support in principle for claims of
national autonomy and self-determination: for Mazzini, national independence should be
ultimately judged by its purpose, and it could never be justified on the basis of pre-political
appeals to ethnicity or primordial kinship. Although Mazzini was clearly influenced by
romantic thought, he always considered the nation to be an essentially political concept. The
nation was for him a free association of equal citizens, united by commonalities of law and
custom.14 Mazzini was thus a patriot much more than a nationalist, and indeed there is
evidence that he condemned nationalism as absolutely wrong.15
1.1. National liberation and republican self-government as means to individual
freedom
Mazzini’s liberal republicanism resulted from a deep, religiously motivated conviction
that individuals and collectivities alike have a God-given moral duty to respect each other’s
freedom and autonomy.16 Mazzini did not deny the historical contribution of eighteenthcentury Enlightenment thought, and what he saw as the related discourse of universal human
12
Mac Smith 1994: 221.
Lynch 2002: 427-29.
14
Mazzini 1860: 885.
15
Mac Smith 1994: 12.
16
Mazzini thus accepted the fundamental equality of all human beings, regardless of gender, race, or nationality,
as an indisputable fact. He actively supported the emancipation of women and called for the full integration of
former American slaves into the civil and political life of their nation (Mazzini 1865).
13
8
rights, in helping to overcome feudal and aristocratic privilege and challenging despotic
authorities everywhere. However, he considered this rationalistic rights-based discourse as
“purely negative” in its value, unable to mobilize the masses and to arouse popular passions in
the context of mid- and late nineteenth-century Europe. The language of individual rights, he
believed, could not explain why people should sacrifice their immediate interests to the
superior cause of national liberation. Logically and morally, he considered that duties were
prior to rights.17 Moreover, if the new rights-based discourse were applied to collectivities and
national self-determination was itself framed as an inalienable “right”, this might lead to
dangerous instances of nationalistic self-assertion.18 Mazzini thus concluded that excessive
reliance on the language of rights would be insufficient, and probably undesirable, to achieve
national self-determination and republican government. He also he never considered either
national self-determination or republican government to be ends in themselves. Rather, he
saw both as politically consequential means to allow for individual self-realization within a
patriotic community of equals. Although Mazzini’s reasoning was not explicitly analytical or
deductive, the following logical steps can be identified in his argument:
First, the cause of nationality would actively facilitate the entry of common people into
politics. The popular energies liberated in the framework of revolutionary struggles for
national liberation would logically, and almost naturally, lead to the establishment of
republican governments. In other words, patriotic activism either leading to or reinforcing
national self-determination is identified as a sine qua non condition for sustainable
democracy. Mazzini regarded democracy in the absence of a common feeling of nationality if not necessarily of a common cultural background - to be politically meaningless, if not
altogether impossible. Universal suffrage in the absence of patriotic association, which would
17
18
Salvemini 1957: 26-7; see also Wight 2005: 96.
Mazzini 1871a.
9
have to be further “illuminated by a truly national education”, he regarded as a sterile and
uncertain method.19
Second, Mazzini identified a crucial pedagogical element in universal suffrage and
other forms of republican participation, as well as in the popular struggle to bring them about.
As a political revolutionary inspired by Rousseau’s theory of democracy, Mazzini
underestimated the importance of constitutional safeguards to prevent democracy from
degenerating once it had been established.20 But he understood remarkably well that a
properly functioning democracy within states would have challenged existing practices of
exclusion and discrimination “in the name of a common humanity.”21 A revolutionary
struggle for republican government, followed by secure democratic participation, would
educate the citizens to see each others as equals, ideally transcending the borders of their
nation. Republican self-government, so Mazzini believed, would promote a more universal
conception of what it actually means to be human.
National liberation and democratic revolution were thus both conceptually and
politically inseparable for Mazzini. Only by advancing the two together, by means of popular
education and insurrection, could they act as a powerful “instrument through which we can
achieve the goal” of universal human emancipation.22 The Italian people, like other subject
nationalities, should never fight for national self-determination without also struggling for
republican participation at the same time. Achieving the former without the latter would lead
to tremendous disillusionment and the mere substitution of new masters for old. Mazzini thus
regarded national self-determination as a necessary, though by no means sufficient, means to
make true republican government possible. In their virtuous interplay he identified a concrete
possibility to advance the implementation of liberal freedoms.
19
Mazzini 1849: 212 (my translation).
Haddock 1999: 327.
21
Urbinati 2005: 20.
22
Mazzini 1849: 214 (my translation).
20
10
1.2. Mazzini on the separate peace between self-determining republics
Mazzini considered the triumph of national self-determination and republican
government to be necessary means for the full realization of individual freedom. Republican
government, based on the principle of nationality, would constitute a medium through which
individuals everywhere could learn to recognize each others as equals. Crucially, Mazzini
believed that individual freedom thus conceived would also open the possibility of a
progressively more peaceful international system. Mazzini presents us with a rough empirical
hypothesis on the relationship between domestic regime type and interstate conflict: as
democracy spreads within states, those states will progressively establish a peaceful
international order between themselves. The hypothesis that republican nations would be
peaceful in their foreign relations has a long pedigree in liberal though. However, previous
thinkers from Spinoza to Kant had predicted that republics would be generally peaceful in
their foreign relations; i.e. they had hypothesized what present-day international relations
scholars would call a “monadic” democratic peacefulness.23 On the other hand, Mazzini
develops what is perhaps the first explicit statement of the “separate peace” hypothesis
between democracies: although democracies will continue to fight wars against despotic
regimes, democratic nationalities will not engage in war with one another. Mazzini also puts
forward an original theoretical argument to explain this expected behavior.
Some authors have argued that Mazzini’s own version of the democratic peace
hypothesis suffers from an excessive reliance on the language of duties. The constraints that
Mazzini imposes on national self-determination would be “essentially moral”, and while it
may well be that republican nations ought to recognize some crucial moral limits to their
23
To my knowledge, Spinoza’s Tractatus Politicus, published in the late 17th century, first hypothesized the
pacifying effect of democracy on foreign affairs: Spinoza suggests that when the king’s counselors, i.e. his
ministers, are democratically elected “the majority of this council will never be minded to wage war, but rather
always pursue and love peace. For besides that war will always cause them fear of losing their property and
liberty, it is to be added, that war requires fresh expenditure, which they must meet, and also that their own
children and relatives … will be forced to turn their attention to war and go soldiering” (Spinoza 2004).
11
liberty to secure international peace, it is by no means clear whether, or why, rational political
leaders should always abide by this duty.24 Closely related, E.H. Carr, the English political
realist, chastised Mazzini for allegedly believing that national self-determination would result
in a natural “harmony of interests” between democracies.25 Mazzini’s argument on the
democratic peace is certainly open to criticism. However, the above-mentioned readings do
not fully capture the complexity of his reasoning: first, although Mazzini’s language is
certainly permeated with notions of morality and duty, his argument on the relationship
between democratic nationalities is fundamentally political and entails a quite sophisticated
causal explanation. Moreover, Carr was unambiguously wrong when he attributed to Mazzini
the belief in a natural “harmony of interests” between democratic nations. As I will argue in
more detail below, Mazzini believed that democratic nationalities could establish a lasting
peace between themselves in the long run, but their interests would certainly remain anything
but harmonious. Indeed in the short run, only their common alliance against the European
despots would ensure that democracies would not fight each other.
Like most self-respecting liberal internationalists of his time, Mazzini displayed a
profound mistrust in the workings of the European balance of power. He thought that
unyielding pursuit of the balance had only lead to a steadily growing arms race under the
pretext of making international relations more secure.26 On the other hand, he identified an
“indisputable tendency” in his epoch towards a reconstitution of the European continent in
accordance with the principle of nationality:
“These states, which have remained divided, hostile, and jealous of one another so long as
their national banner merely represented the interest of a dynasty or caste, will gradually
become more and more intimately associated through the medium of democracy. The nations
will be sisters. Free and independent … they will gradually unite in a common faith and
common pact, in all that regards their international life.”27
24
Urbinati 2005: 13; see also Mac Smith 1994: 218.
Carr, E.H. 1939 [2001]: 45.
26
Mazzini 1871: 149.
27
Mazzini 1849a: 275; emphasis added.
25
12
Mazzini thus hypothesized that once a nation had freed itself from foreign rule and
established its own representative political institutions, its behavior towards other
democracies would become increasingly less conflictual. There is some superficial
resemblance here between Mazzini’s reasoning and Kant’s famous argument on the peaceful
nature of republican citizens, as developed in the first Definitive Article of Perpetual Peace:
“If … the consent of the citizens is required to decide whether or not war is to be declared, it
is very natural that they will have great hesitation in embarking on so dangerous an
enterprise. For this would mean calling down on themselves all the miseries of war, such as
doing the fighting themselves, supplying the costs of the war from their own resources,
…and, as the crowning evil, having to take upon themselves a burden of debt which will
embitter peace itself.”28
Kant’s illuministic faith in rational and risk-averse individuals led him to believe that
the majority of citizens in a republic would naturally value the benefits of peace and political
stability over the uncertainties of aggressive warfare. On the other hand, Mazzini’s immediate
political goal has always been the liberation of subject nationalities, and he did himself
repeatedly call upon individuals to rise beyond their merely material interests. Hence,
although Mazzini shared Kant’s fundamental belief in the pacifying effects of democracy
within states on their international relations, he identified an essentially different causal
mechanism at work.29 Mazzini’s argument relies less on the putative pacific inclination of
republican citizens, and more on the progressive abolition of mutual distrust, and hence of the
security dilemma, between democratic nationalities.
Mazzini believed that the political leaders of newly established democracies would
have an immediate interest in stable relations with their neighbors, to facilitate national
economic growth as well as overall democratic consolidation. The leaders of such new
28
Kant 1795: 100.
This should be hardly surprising, given that it remains unclear whether Mazzini actually ever read Kant
directly (Urbinati 1996: 214; Wight 2005: 97).
29
13
democracies would thus have strong incentives to refrain from any hostile behavior in their
foreign policy, and they should make their peaceful intentions as explicit as possible. Any
failure to do so would inevitably threaten the young nation’s existence and with it the
(political) survival of its leaders. Mazzini had no doubts that “the comprehensive life and
national growth of a people fundamentally rely on the trust that other peoples have in it.”30
Newly established democratic regimes would therefore have to signal their peaceful
intentions, by following a low-profile but nonetheless principled foreign policy intended to
elicit their neighbor’s trust. This could already greatly reduce the security dilemma between
democratic regimes and their neighbors, in principle diminishing the likelihood of wars that
nobody wanted. The basic underlying logic of the security dilemma, more systematically
analyzed in recent decades by Robert Jervis and others, implies that when statesmen do not
know each other’s intentions, they are likely to see many of the steps pursued by other states
to bolster their security as inherently threatening.31 However, Mazzini thought that even when
newly established democracies restrained themselves in their foreign policy and consistently
signaled their peaceful intentions, they could not feel entirely secure so long as powerful and
potentially aggressive despotic states continued to exist in their neighborhood. Mazzini
expected, not without reason, that the old European despots would “for a long time look down
with instincts of envy and suspicion” on any newly arising democracy.32
Any newly established democracy would have strong incentives to enter into a mutual
defensive alliance with other democracies, to increase its chances of survival. This is the first
central element in Mazzini’s theory of democratic peace: as “natural allies”, new democracies
would establish between themselves a collective defense agreement to protect their still
fragile domestic order from the aggressiveness of foreign despots. In his illuminating 1871
30
Mazzini 1871: 143 (my translation).
Jervis 1978.
32
Mazzini 1871: 157 (my translation).
31
14
essay on “International Politics” (“Politica Internazionale”), Mazzini insisted that normatively
speaking Italy should be taking the lead:
“The international policy of Italy should first of all, and to increase its power in the face of
future developments, aim to establish itself as soul and center of a League of Europe’s minor
states, closely united in a collective defense pact against the possible usurpations of one or the
other great Power. In this way Spain, Portugal, Scandinavia, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland,
Greece, and Romania would constitute with Italy … a pact of independence and freedom, to
which it shouldn’t be difficult to obtain the accession of England.”33
Hence, although Mazzini dismissed the old European balance of power in his antiimperialist rhetoric, he was well aware that the new democracies themselves would have to
engage in balancing behavior if they wanted to survive. Common security interests would
lead to close foreign-policy coordination between democracies, fostering increased mutual
understanding and the gradual abolition of the security dilemma between democracies. This
might lead to spillovers into issue-areas other than security, fostering growing international
institutionalization.
In addition, the citizens of democratic nations would be naturally led to recognize each
other as moral equals, leading to steadily growing trust between democracies and facilitating
further international cooperation.34 Mazzini’s argument comes strikingly close to what Doyle
(1986) has identified as the central causal logic underlying the modern “separate peace”
between liberal democracies:
“Domestically just republics, which rest on consent, then presume foreign republics also to be
consensual, just, and therefore deserving of accommodation. The experience of cooperation
helps engender further cooperative behavior… In short, fellow liberals benefit from a
presumption of amity; nonliberals suffer from a presumption of enmity.”35
33
Ibid.; emphasis added (my translation).
Ibid.
35
Doyle 1986: 1161.
34
15
Mazzini never had any doubt that democracies would establish between themselves a
new type of international relations, based on enlightened self-interest as well as trust,
increasing transparency, and institutionalization. What would essentially begin as a security
alliance between new democracies was expected to progressively deepen and expand,
resulting in a peaceful confederation that might eventually include all democratic sates within
the international system. At the European level, Mazzini believed that this close association of
democracies would eventually lead to the establishment of a continental parliamentary
committee, in which each people would be represented by one individual and have an equal
voting right. Beyond Mazzini’s revolutionary fervor and his passionate denunciation of the
great-power politics of the day, the essence of his causal argument may actually come fairly
close to explaining the emergence of a “separate peace” between liberal democracies over the
past six decades: after the end of the Second Word War, the world’s western democracies
created a defensive security alliance under American leadership, to protect their freedom from
what was perceived as an inherently expansionist and “despotic” communist threat. The
institutionalization of this western alliance under NATO’s collective defense pact, in
combination with the market-regulating liberal institutions that emerged from the Bretton
Woods agreement, promoted increasingly close contacts and exchanges between the western
democracies. Presumably, following Mazzini’s logic, this led to growing levels of interdemocratic trust and cooperation, thus reducing the security dilemma between democracies.
In recent decades, the democratic peace has become increasingly solid with the progressive
enlargement of liberal institutions to non-western nationalities.36
According to Mazzini, nation-states should be considered as only one necessary step
in the progressive continental association of democracies, which might culminate one day in
the constitution of a United States of Europe.37 Extrapolating from the Italian historical
experience, he was convinced that different cultures and races could be amalgamated over the
36
37
This is, roughly speaking, the story told by G. John Ikenberry (2001: Chap. 6 and 7).
Mazzini 1850a: 202-3.
16
centuries, giving rise to a new and larger people.38 Mazzini even foresaw the establishment of
a world congress of democracies in the distant future. But like Kant before him, he believed
that a world state would be impossible and probably undesirable, since a single global
Leviathan might well be able to enforce security, but at the price of imposed uniformity and
political tyranny.39 Normatively speaking, Mazzini thus concluded that a plurality of
independent republics, closely associated at the regional level and with certain weaker global
institutional links, would be a sufficient condition for peace, while also crucially able to
safeguard individual freedom and political participation.40
Table 1:
Mazzini’s causal explanation of the “separate peace” between democratic nationalities
Short term:
Long term:
-
“Natural” security alliance among newly established
democracies against remaining powerful despots.
-
Recognizes importance of balancing dynamics, in spite
of anti-imperialist rhetoric to the contrary.
-
Conflicts remain; no automatic “harmony of interests.”
-
Democratic peoples and their leaders learn to trust
each other; the security dilemma is progressively
reduced between self-determining republics.
-
Increasing inter-democratic cooperation and
institutionalization.
-
Continental confederation of democracies
38
Mazzini 1836: 217.
Urbinati 1996: 204.
40
This vision of an ideal world order, based on regional confederations of independent republics and various
asymmetric layers of global institutionalization, comes surprisingly close to contemporary models of “global
pluralism” as developed by liberal communitarians (see e.g. Walzer 2000).
39
17
2. Beyond the myth of Mazzini as a “messianic interventionist”
Mazzini undoubtedly believed that the spread of national self-determination and
democratic regimes would establish solid foundations for a future international peace.
However, his primary intellectual as well as practical concerns had to do more with the means
by which independent and democratic nations could be brought about. Mazzini was clearly no
liberal pacifist who believed in a natural “harmony of interests”, like his contemporary
Richard Cobden, or someone who followed Kant in the belief that republican peace would
automatically triumph in the long run, fostered by the “asocial sociability” of human beings.
Quite the opposite, Mazzini was a revolutionary who felt impatient with long-term
evolutionary processes and believed that history could be actively shaped by the human will.
Mass-popular domestic insurrections would therefore be necessary in the short run, to
establish free European republics based on the principle of nationality. In other words,
national-democratic revolutions would be a necessary condition for the advancement of
human freedom and equality, as well as the consolidation of international peace in the long
run.
Mazzini’s often inflammatory rhetoric, calling upon established democracies to “act”
in the face of imperial oppression abroad, seems to have misled several readers concerning his
stance on foreign military intervention. Relying on utterly incomplete English editions of his
writings, contemporary international relations scholars in particular have come to see in
Mazzini the prophet of a crusading military interventionism and founding figure of the
“neoconservative” agenda in foreign policy. This reading of Mazzini’s contribution to
international relations theory seems to have first been put forward by Kenneth Waltz in his
1959 masterpiece Man, the State, and War. Waltz relies on a short and patchy selection of
Mazzini’s revolutionary writings in English language, edited in Calcutta in the 1940s to
18
support the Indian national struggle for independence from British rule.41 Based on these
writings, Waltz identifies in Mazzini the foremost advocate of a liberal “messianic
interventionism”, which justifies the use of force for promoting democracy and national selfdetermination abroad.42 Similarly, and relying exclusively on secondary sources, American
IR scholar Michael J. Smith assumes that Mazzini supported foreign military interventions to
topple tyrannical regimes. Smith has also gone farthest in explicitly, and perhaps overly
hastily,
associating
Mazzini
with
contemporary
“liberals
re-christened
as
neo-
conservatives.”43 Finally, according to John Vincent and Martin Wight, two foremost
representatives of the “English school” in IR scholarship who probably read Mazzini more
closely than others, the Italian revolutionary was calling for a crusade in support of
democracy, in the context of which “the doctrine of non-intervention was not valid.”44
But a closer reading of Mazzini’s writings on international politics reveals that he was
in fact never an advocate of indiscriminate military intervention abroad, either for the purpose
of democratic “regime change” or any other political cause. Mazzini’s approach to
international politics combines a principled moral outlook with a more consequentialist line of
reasoning, based on concrete experience and a keen appreciation for the power dynamics at
play in European diplomacy. Any normative theory of international relations – he believed ought to start from a close analysis of empirical reality, and it could “be perfected in no other
way than by dealing sincerely and thoroughly with individual cases as they successively
arise.”45
41
Mazzini 1945.
Waltz 1959: 103. Waltz does not seem to realize that when he quotes Mazzini as calling upon England to
intervene militarily on the European continent, what Mazzini actually meant was counter-intervention against
conservative foreign powers that had already intervened to suppress democratic revolutions (cf. ibid, 88-96).
43
Smith 1992: 14-15.
44
Wight 2005: 106-8; see also Vincent 1974: 60-1.
45
Mazzini 1851: 308.
42
19
2.1.
The pitfalls of democratic “liberation” from abroad
Mazzini’s writings on international politics contain some highly original intuitions and
ideas, but they lack the systematicity and rigor that is characteristic of other great liberal
writers. Nonetheless, Mazzini’s unique combination of revolutionary zeal, sophisticated
political analysis, and principled moral argument made him highly influential in his own time
and much beyond. Mazzini’s ideas have reportedly had some influence on various nationaldemocratic revolutionary movements in the twentieth century, from Nehru’s India to Nasser’s
Egypt and various Bolivarian movements in Latin America.46 Of course, Mazzini’s immediate
political goal consisted in the liberation of Italian territory from foreign rule and the
achievement of national unification. Ideally, the Italian insurgents should coordinate their
efforts with other national-democratic movements in Central and South-Eastern Europe.
Mazzini believed that only a closely organized revolutionary movement, relying on peaceful
propaganda where possible and on limited force where necessary, could liberate Italy as well
as other oppressed nationalities from the rule of foreign despots and their proxies.
Mazzini always thought of the Italian struggle for national unification as part of a
broader European insurrection aimed at the emancipation of subject nationalities. He therefore
repeatedly called for the organization of a “Holy Alliance” of peoples, aimed at the
coordination of revolutionary activities throughout Europe against the existing alliance of
monarchs.47 However, notwithstanding his insistence on the need for transnational
cooperation between revolutionaries, Mazzini always remained convinced that the
emancipation of subject nationalities ought to be realized through essentially domestic means.
Mazzini clearly believed in the legitimacy of domestic democratic revolutions, including
violent ones where despotic repression made peaceful protest impossible and no other means
were thus available. But he stressed quite unequivocally that liberty could never be
46
47
Howard 1978: 49.
See Mazzini 1849a.
20
“delivered” to a subject population from the outside. Subject nationalities, he insisted, should
“not look for liberty at the hands of the foreigner.”48 Each people should find its own path to
liberty and collective emancipation, relying on its own memories of political oppression and
its broader cultural and historical background.
Italians, like other subject nationalities, would have to fight for their own freedom if
they wanted to become self-determining in the future. Mazzini expressed his strongest
contempt for the naïve “credulity of all those who believe that the Italian nation must expect
liberation from abroad.”49 He clearly considered that each subject population had the inherent
capacity to liberate itself from its domestic despots, provided that the popular will was
adequately mobilized. No people would truly deserve national liberation and republican selfgovernment, unless it could achieve them by its own effort and sacrifice. In addition, Mazzini
already sensed that liberty that had not grown domestically could be hardly sustained. Already
in some of his earliest political writings, Mazzini argued that the idea of liberty could only
bear fruit on a given territory, if nurtured by a massive and sustained mobilization of the
popular will. And this mass-popular mobilization could itself result only from coordinated
political efforts at the domestic level.50 It would thus not only be desirable in the abstract, but
also politically expedient for each people to fight and possibly win the democratic
revolutionary struggle on its own.
Mazzini went still further, insisting that the very republican institutions to be
established in the case of victory against the domestic tyrant ought to be autonomously
developed by each people. He explicitly insisted on the process by which each people could
best establish its own representative institutions: true democracy could emerge only if special
“national committees” worked out adequate solutions for each country, relying on the nation’s
48
Mazzini 1831: 123.
Mazzini 1839: 5.
50
Mazzini 1836: 207.
49
21
particular “moral, economic, and social conditions.”51 While the republican principle itself
should be considered universal, its specific political and institutional setup within each
country ought to be carefully modeled on the prevailing conditions on the ground. In
Mazzini’s own words, “a people pretending to substitute its own solution to the specific social
problems that appear in a different way in each country would thereby commit … an act of
tyranny and violate the vital principle of Democracy.”52 Moreover, the straightforward foreign
imposition of democratic institutions would be more likely to undermine the cause of liberty
than to actually support it. Any foreign power willing to intervene would inevitably pursue its
own agenda, and “regime change” achieved with the assistance of foreign armies might
simply supplant one’s own domestic tyranny with a puppet democracy controlled from
abroad.53
The view that democracy imposed by foreign armies could not be lasting is today most
closely associated with John Stuart Mill, one of Mazzini’s most influential liberal
contemporaries. The two men’s views on this issue, like on many others, are strikingly
similar; something that indeed should not be surprising given that Mazzini had quite regular
meetings with Mill during his exile in London.54 Mill himself openly acknowledged his
“highest admiration for Mazzini”, although he did not always sympathize with the latter’s
revolutionary mode of working.55 But like Mazzini before him, Mill also believed that if a
people really desired popular institutions and was consequently willing to engage in an
“arduous struggle” for freedom, it would be able to overcome virtually any native tyranny
without foreign military assistance.56 Freedom could not be imposed through the force of
foreign bayonets, and any attempt to do so would be plainly absurd - a “solecism in terms.”57
51
Mazzini 1851a: 79 (my translation).
Ibid. (my translation).
53
Mazzini 1835: 32-3.
54
Pichetto 2004: 145.
55
Mill 1870: 1759.
56
Mill 1859: 382.
57
Mill 1836: 374.
52
22
Mill, who like Mazzini was skeptical of supporting non-intervention irrespective of the
general circumstances, could not insist on this latter point often enough: if representative
government were introduced into a country by foreigners, in the absence of a home-grown
democratic political culture and without clear majority support, free institutions would not
survive for long.58 Both Mazzini and J.S. Mill, who are often thought of as the most
“interventionist” among classical liberal writers, thus had no doubts that stable democracy
could only emerge at the end of a long and often painful domestic political struggle.
2.2.
Domestic revolutionary violence as a legitimate ultima ratio
As previously shown, Mazzini clearly thought that coercive foreign intervention for
the purpose of democratic regime change was both illegitimate and strategically unwise.
However, it may be worth reiterating that Mazzini was hardly a moderate who relied
exclusively on long-term evolutionary processes; he was a political radical who believed that
revolutionary struggles for democracy – including violent ones - could sometimes be
legitimate and indeed necessary. History and nature could only provide the background
conditions that would make it possible for free nations and republican governance to arise.
Thereafter, each people would have to embrace that possibility for itself, striving to bring its
idea of liberty to fulfillment. This does not mean that Mazzini was a warmonger who blindly
called for violent insurrection, regardless of the circumstances. Indeed, his thoughts on the
legitimate means to be used in the national revolutionary struggle display a sophisticated
combination of moral awareness and strategic considerations.
According to Mazzini, the first requirement for successful national revolutions was a
strong leadership with a coordinated political strategy. He believed that the earliest national
insurrections in Italy had failed primarily due to the lack of such a strong leadership united by
58
Mill 1959: 382; see also Doyle 1997: 399-400.
23
a common belief in the national cause. “Missing were the leaders, missing were the few that
could have directed the many” - he argued with his usual pathos - “missing were the men
strong in faith and spirit of sacrifice, who would have grasped the feelings of the multitude …
concentrating their passions into a single cause, namely that of victory.”59 Successful
revolutionary leaders would have to go beyond mere coordination of their activities; they
would also have to empathize with the masses, developing a targeted campaign of popular
education and propagandistic persuasion.
Mazzini clearly saw the peaceful struggle for people’s hearts and minds, and their
mobilization for the national cause, as both strategically and morally prior to any possible use
of revolutionary violence. Among the available means to rally public opinion behind the
cause of national liberation, Mazzini mentions politically active associations, public meetings,
and - perhaps most important - the press and popular newspapers.60 Public opinion always
remained central to Mazzini’s liberal political project; he hoped that if public support for the
revolutionary cause were sufficiently large, change would be peaceful or at least violence
could be minimized.
Only where free speech for the purpose of popular education and mass-mobilization
were entirely proscribed, force would sometimes have to be used from an early stage, to gain
a position from which one’s voice could be heard in the first place.61 Mazzini clearly thought
that these conditions broadly applied to mid-nineteenth-century Italy, in the face of harsh
restaurationist repression by the Austrian and Borbonic despots and their local clients. But
revolutionary violence for the cause of democracy and national liberation should be used only
as a last resort, when all other means of achieving political change had either failed or were
plainly unavailable. Moreover, once the decision to take up arms had been taken, any war of
59
Mazzini 1832: 221-2 (my translation).
Mazzini 1839: 166.
61
Salvemini 1957: 70; see also Mac Smith 1994: 51.
60
24
insurgency would have to be “fought within the strict limits of necessity.”62 Insurgents should
essentially try to create alarm by means of partisan guerrilla warfare and small-scale military
operations, with the objective of weakening the despotic government’s control of the territory
and arousing the attention of international public opinion. The democratic revolutionaries
should always avoid direct confrontations with the enemy in open battle, since they would
almost certainly succumb against an organized army.63 Ideally, Mazzini thought, small acts of
insurgency would trigger brutal governmental repression, which would make the despotic
regime even more unbearable and thus progressively increase the revolutionaries’ public
standing, both among the subject population itself and abroad.
There is no doubt that Mazzini had a sophisticated grasp of both the strategy and
tactics of modern revolutionary warfare, although his role was primarily that of a theorist and
ideologue. In an 1832 essay significantly titled “Rules for the Conduct of Guerrilla Bands”,
Mazzini anticipates several elements later developed by modern classics such as Mao
Zedong’s On Guerrilla Warfare. Specifically, Mazzini insisted that:
“The principal aim of the bands will be, constantly to damage and molest the enemy with the
least possible exposure or danger to themselves, to destroy their ammunition and supplies,
shake their confidence and discipline… The means by which to attain this aim are – to attack
the enemy as frequently as possible in the flank or rear; to surprise small detachments, … to
interrupt their communication and correspondence; … The best time for attacking the enemy
is at night, during refreshment, or after a long march.”64
At the same time, Mazzini’s concerns went crucially beyond mere considerations of
revolutionary expediency: although his arguments are not those of a systematic moral
philosopher, his writings display a principled attention to matters of both jus ad bellum – the
conditions under which the use of force would be legitimate, and jus in bello – the rules of
just combat in actual warfare. Mazzini considered the life of civilians to be sacred, and mainly
62
Mazzini 1871c: 276 (my translation).
Mazzini 1835: 472.
64
Mazzini 1832a: 373-5.
63
25
for this reason he always strongly opposed terrorist activity against civilians, as opposed to
guerrilla warfare against occupation armies.65 In the long run, any revolutionary struggle
would lack legitimacy and would be doomed to failure, unless a majority of the population
clearly displayed its willingness to support it. Both moral and prudential considerations thus
led Mazzini to insist that regardless of the circumstances, insurgents should always be careful
to avoid unnecessary damage to persons and property. The motto of revolutionary guerrilla
bands should be: “Respect for women, for property, for the rights of individuals, and for the
crops.”66 Throughout his life, Mazzini insisted that democratic insurgents should make every
effort to fight the war “as virtuously as possible, and to conclude it as soon as possible.”67
3. What are the legitimate means of foreign interference?
Notwithstanding widespread assumptions to the contrary, Mazzini’s views on the
conditions that justify coercive foreign intervention are ultimately quite conservative. Mazzini
certainly thought that the liberal European powers of the time, and England in particular,
should have been much more outspoken in supporting the double cause of democracy and
nationality throughout the continent. However, Mazzini clearly considered that promoting
democracy and national self-determination abroad would not be sufficient as a “just cause”
for foreign military intervention. His arguments are partially moral and partially
consequentialist. For instance, he anticipated that intervening foreigners would never have
“pure” humanitarian motives, and their local influence resulting from straightforward military
intervention might hamper the cause of national-democratic revolution as often as it would
actually advance it.
65
Mac Smith 1994: 9.
Mazzini 1832a: 369.
67
Mazzini 1871b: 327 (my translation).
66
26
Table 2: Mazzini on legitimate foreign interference
YES
Military intervention for
democratic regime change
Counter-intervention to
neutralize previous intervention
in support of despotic regime
X
X
Military intervention for
national liberation
X
Diplomatic and economic
support for domestic
democratic insurgency
X
Humanitarian intervention in
the case of large-scale
atrocities against civilians
X
3.1.
NO
Military counter-intervention to balance previous interventions in support of
the despots
Mazzini was certainly no propounder of an absolute rule of non-intervention. He
believed that if a people really wanted to be free, it would be able to liberate itself from its
own native tyrants, by means of a sustained revolutionary struggle that could legitimately
include violent insurrection as a last resort. But when the local tyrants were being actively
supported by foreign armies and foreign money, it would be practically impossible for
domestic insurgencies to succeed – regardless of how much the people cherished their own
freedom. Mazzini observed a reality in which the conservative great powers openly supported
each other and intervened militarily abroad to suppress democratic popular uprisings: the
Russian army had intervened in Hungary in 1849, France had sent an expeditionary force in
support of the pope to crush the revolutionary Roman republic (which Mazzini had led)
during that same year, and Austria had repeatedly intervened on the Italian peninsula to
support its despotic local proxies against popular patriotic uprisings. The principle of
27
nonintervention – Mazzini concluded - now essentially meant intervention on the morally
wrong side. “Intervention by all who choose, and are strong enough, to put down free
movements of peoples against corrupt governments. It means co-operation of despots against
peoples.”68
Far from supporting messianic “crusades” to spread democracy abroad, Mazzini was
essentially calling for liberal counter-intervention, to neutralize any previous intervention in
support of the despots and thus leave the insurgents with a realistic change of success. If the
rule of nonintervention is to mean anything, he insisted, “it must mean that in every state the
government must deal directly and alone with its own people.”69 Following a classical liberal
line of argument, Mazzini thought that if the government of a state was tyrannical, the people
had an inherent right to rebellion. But national-democratic revolutions could never succeed
against the overwhelming power of foreign armies. Hence, as soon as a foreign power had
intervened to crush an ongoing democratic insurrection, other liberal states would
automatically acquire a right of counter-intervention and they should fight a just war to
rebalance the situation on the ground:
“Should the government of a neighboring despotic state, either invited by the vanquished
party or fearing the contagion of liberal ideas in its own territory, invade the convulsed
state with armies, and so interrupt or repeal the revolution, then the principle of Nonintervention is at an end, and all moral obligation on other states to observe it is from that
moment annulled.”70
The only legitimate goal of counter-intervention would be to rebalance the situation on
the ground, so as “to make good all prior infractions of the law of Non-interference.”71 British
counter-intervention on Italian ground, for instance, would have been justified and probably
required by moral duty in 1849, when a French military expedition was sent to crush the
68
Mazzini 1851: 305.
Mazzini 1851: 304-5.
70
Mazzini 1851: 305.
71
Ibid.
69
28
revolutionary Roman republic. As Mazzini later recalled in a letter to a British friend: “Ah! If
you had in England, condescended to see that the glorious declaration of non-interference
ought to have begun by taking away the French interference in Rome! How many troubles
and sacrifices you would have saved us.”72
Mazzini’s argument on counter-intervention was again closely echoed by J.S. Mill,
who similarly argued that in the case of a native tyranny upheld by foreign arms, the reasons
for non-intervention would cease to exist.
“A people the most attached to freedom, the most capable of defending and making a good
use of free institutions, may be unable to contend successfully for them against the military
strength of another nation much more powerful. To assist a people thus kept down, is not to
disturb the balance of forces on which the permanent balance of freedom in a country
depends, but to redress that balance when it is already unfairly and violently disturbed”73
According to Mill, like for Mazzini, intervention to enforce non-intervention was
always rightful and always moral. However, both acknowledged that counter-intervention by
military means might not always be prudent. Indeed, most of the time the liberal European
nations would have to limit themselves to nonviolent means of support for nationaldemocratic revolutions abroad.
3.2.
Nonviolent liberal interference in support of national self-determination
It seems that a particularly difficult question for Mazzini to answer must have been the
following: what about actual foreign imperial rule over subject nationalities – such as most
notably Austrian rule over large parts of northern Italy and central Europe, Russian rule over
Poland, and Ottoman rule over the southern Balkans? Should all these instances be considered
as a form of permanent external intervention that would legitimate foreign counter-
72
73
Mazzini 1860b: 236.
Mill 1859: 383.
29
intervention by military means? This is where Mazzini’s arguments, and his inflammatory
rhetoric, seem to have mislead several of his readers. Mazzini clearly believed that an
absolute rule of non-interference could be legitimately upheld only in a future world of
independent republics, “in which all the due conditions of Nationality have been attended
to.”74
In real nineteenth-century Europe, he insisted, a few powerful monarchies such as the
Habsburgs and the Ottomans were ruling over a number of subject peoples to which they were
essentially foreign. Hence, simple neutrality and passive indifference were not ethically
acceptable options for the liberal nations of Europe in the ongoing struggle between
despotism and democracy. Neutrality towards the cause of republican freedom and national
self-determination were dismissed by Mazzini as “a declaration of political atheism that
denies any principle and rejects any humanitarian belief.”75 Some have concluded from
Mazzini’s arguments against neutrality in the case of foreign imperial rule that he was in fact
envisioning a liberal right of military intervention to support the cause of national selfdetermination abroad.76 However, I would like to suggest that this stems from a fundamental
misinterpretation of what Mazzini actually meant by liberal “interference.”
Mazzini was clearly opposed to secret diplomacy and what he saw as its most
prominent offspring - the European balance of power. The former he dismissed as a
“supremely intricate science based on uncertain transactions, … and corruption”; the latter
was in his view merely fostering a continental arms race under the pretext of preserving
international stability.77 He certainly thought that liberal states had a duty to publicly express
their disapproval of despotic regimes and their oppressive political practices, particularly in
the case of foreign regimes ruling over subject nationalities. And he consequently called upon
liberal states to more wholeheartedly support the cause of democracy and the emancipation of
74
Mazzini 1851: 301.
Mazzini 1835b: 47-8 (my translation); see also 1871: 164.
76
This reading was put forward, most notably, by John Vincent (1974: 60-1); but see also Howard 1978: 47-9.
77
Mazzini 1871: 147-9 (my translation).
75
30
subject nationalities in Europe. But again, he did not call for an indiscriminate policy of
interventionism: he hoped instead that “a new method of international procedure” would
gradually emerge, “which will be distinct, it is believed, from a wretched neutrality on the one
hand, and from a boisterous military activity on the other.”78 His often rhetorically loaded
appeals for liberal “interference” are thus best understood as calls for a more principled and
active - though essentially nonviolent - liberal foreign policy.
The British government, in particular, ought to more unequivocally support the cause
of democracy and nationality in Europe, by making full use of its diplomatic clout and
economic means of persuasion. But Mazzini unequivocally stated that “it would not be
necessary for that government to plunge itself into a revolutionary crusade, which no one
dreams of invoking.”79 In other words, Mazzini was counseling against foreign military
intervention to facilitate national liberation, on moral and particularly prudential grounds. In
this regard, Mazzini’s line of reasoning can be seen as even more prudent than J.S. Mill’s,
given that the latter justified, at least as a matter of principle, foreign intervention in “the case
of a people struggling against a foreign joke”80 Presumably Mazzini believed that the
senescent multinational empires of the Habsburgs and the Ottomans would almost inevitably
collapse, if only their subject nationalities were able to coordinate their struggle in the future
and rise at once.81
As long as the despotic powers did not send their armies across European borders to
crush democratic revolutions abroad, the liberal nations of Europe should themselves refrain
from military intervention. Under similar circumstances, “sympathy manifested abroad” and a
supportive liberal diplomacy should be sufficient to revolutionary success, provided that the
people themselves were genuinely committed to their freedom. Mazzini was convinced that
peaceful diplomatic assistance and economic support from abroad could have “more influence
78
Mazzini 1851: 308.
Mazzini 1847: 319; emphasis added.
80
Mill 1859: 383.
81
See e.g. Mazzini 1871: 164.
79
31
than is generally thought on the progress of fallen nations.”82 Several years later, when an
independent Italian state had finally emerged, he concluded that the “moral support” offered
by European liberals to the cause of Italian unification had been crucial.83 Mazzini thus
clearly thought that a supportive international environment could greatly advance the cause of
national liberation and democracy. Even the most despotic of European powers would find it
more difficult to repress peaceful protests and national-democratic insurgencies under the
eyes of an attentive international public opinion.
3.3.
Humanitarian (military) intervention
The only instance beyond counter-intervention where Mazzini thought that foreign
military interference would be justified was the rescue of innocent civilians from actual
massacre. As one scholar has cogently put it, “Mazzini envisaged an international society in
which nations, as a matter of international duty, could combine to counter some glaring wrong
being done within an independent nation.”84 When civilians were being killed en masse by
their own government, or some “glaring wrong” was happening in the context of a protracted
civil war, then liberal nations would not be absolved from concern in the matter, but rather
would have to act upon their conscience and intervene according to their possibilities.85
Mazzini’s reflections on humanitarian intervention – incomplete as they are - were clearly
spurred by repeated instances of European military interference in the Ottoman empire,
allegedly to protect its Christian populations from religiously motivated violence. Although
Mazzini was ultimately uncertain about the justifiable extent of such interventions, he sensed
that the question might become increasingly relevant in the future, as improved means of
transport and communication would increase our sense of belonging to a common humanity:
82
Mazzini 1839: 5.
Mazzini 1861: 27.
84
Vincent 1974: 61.
85
Mazzini 1851: 307.
83
32
“It begins to be felt that, in some way or other, nations should exert an influence on the
general affairs of the world, proportionate … to their intrinsic merits and their capacity for
acting nobly; and farther, that this necessity becomes greater and the likelihood of meeting it
more determined, as the increase of our means for locomotion and for intercommunication
between one land and another is reducing our earth to a more manageable compass, and
making its inhabitants more conscious of being but one family.”86
Once again, Mazzini anticipated a line of argument that became central to the
scholarly debate about international ethics more than a century after his death. It may be
interesting to note in this context that Michael Walzer, the doyen among contemporary
normative theorists of military intervention, relies heavily on J.S. Mill in his seminal Just and
Unjust Wars but seems to be entirely unaware of Mazzini’s seminal contribution to the
subject. Partially for this reason, it seems, Walzer ends up explicitly justifying foreign
military intervention in support of national self-determination (which Mazzini rejected), in
addition counter-intervention in civil wars and humanitarian intervention in cases of
enslavement or massacre “that shock the moral conscience of mankind.”87 Similarly, John
Rawls’s argument on just war in the Law of Peoples echoes some concerns that Mazzini first
brought to the fore: liberal states first ought to “expose to public view” the despicable
behavior of “outlaw” despotic regimes, which do not only oppress their own population, but
also engage in imperialist practices abroad. Thereafter, if “the offenses against human rights
are egregious and the society does not respond to the imposition of sanctions”, Rawls
concedes that forceful intervention in the defense of human rights might sometimes be
acceptable.88
Incidentally, it seems that Mazzini would have considered unilateral military
intervention as perfectly legitimate once a just humanitarian cause had been unequivocally
identified. On the other hand, his contemporary J. S. Mill had argued already a few years
86
Ibid.
Walzer 2006: 86-108.
88
Rawls 1999: 93-4 (fn.6); see also p. 81.
87
33
earlier that multilateral intervention might offer superior guarantees in terms of impartiality,
and therefore if the liberal European nations “interfere at all, it should be jointly, as a general
European police.”89 In this particular regard, the contemporary liberal consensus seems to
have evolved beyond Mazzini’s own intuition, given that today only multilateral humanitarian
intervention, ideally carried out within the framework of the United Nations, is considered to
be truly legitimate.
4. Conclusion:
Giuseppe Mazzini ranked among the most influential European public figures of the
mid-19th century, and he made a seminal contribution to the development of modern liberal
internationalist thought. Yet Mazzini has largely fallen into oblivion today among
international relations scholars and political theorists. This paper has tried to suggest that the
relevance of his thinking to contemporary US foreign policy, as well as to broader questions
of international relations theory, warrants a systematic reappraisal of his arguments.
In particular, Mazzini was the first to explicitly predict the emergence of a separate or
“dyadic” democratic peace between self-determining republics. Mazzini believed that the
spread of national self-determination, together with democracy, would advance individual
freedom and foster human understanding across the European continent and possibly beyond.
He predicted that in the short run, Europe’s new democracies would be natural allies against
the remaining despots and form a collective defense agreement to preserve their freedom;
something akin to a rudimentary version of NATO. In the longer run, the further expansion of
institutional links and cooperation between democratic nationalities would promote increasing
trust and mutual understanding, thus abolishing the security dilemma and establishing
“perpetual peace” between democracies. Mazzini clearly underestimated the disruptive impact
89
Mill 1837: 374-5.
34
that more chauvinistic and illiberal forms of nationalism would have in the decades following
his death. However, notwithstanding Mazzini’s pathos and his often moralizing rhetoric, his
argument captures the essential pathway of relations between the world’s leading liberal
democracies since 1945.
Mazzini also developed what remains perhaps the most sophisticated classical liberal
analysis of democratic nation-building and its relationship to foreign military intervention. He
thought that the primary instruments to be relied upon in the fight against despotic regimes
were popular education and domestic mass-mobilization for the cause of democracy. In the
face of foreign imperial occupation, democratic revolutionaries could also legitimately rely on
small-scale insurrectionary violence to win “hearts and minds” among the local population
and attract international public attention. But violence should always be seen as a last resort,
where no other means were available, and any harm to civilians ought to be avoided. Mazzini
also consistently called upon the liberal nations of Europe - and England first of all - to
support the cause of freedom and popular government abroad, by naming and shaming the
oppressors and offering direct economic assistance to pro-democracy organizations in foreign
countries. However, Mazzini fundamentally dismissed the possibility of imposed “regime
change”, arguing that a people would truly deserve to be free only if domestic revolutionaries
were both willing and able to defeat the native forces of tyranny on their own. More
fundamentally, he anticipated in many regards J.S. Mill’s consequentialist critique of imposed
regime change, insisting that democracy thus achieved could hardly be sustained and would
indeed soon relapse into anarchy or dictatorship. According to Mazzini, foreign military
intervention could be justified only (A) as counter-intervention, to re-balance the situation on
the ground once another foreign army had already intervened, or (B) as humanitarian
intervention in the face of large-scale massacres of civilians.
In spite of Mazzini’s often passionate rhetoric and revolutionary zeal, he was well
aware that principled morality in international relations would always have to be combined
35
with a more consequentialist type of reasoning, to have a realistic chance of improving the
human condition in a highly imperfect world. He thus considered that is only by “dealing
sincerely and thoroughly with individual cases as they successively arise” that the liberal
practice as well as the “theory of international polity can be perfected.”90 In conclusion,
Mazzini was quite far away from being a “crusading” or messianic interventionist, and those
contemporary international relations scholars who see him as the intellectual forebear of
present-day neoconservatism are decisively mistaken.91 Outside the world of “ideal theory”
and in international relations probably more than elsewhere, cosmopolitan moral duty always
needs to be balanced against the likely consequences of one’s actions.92 Perhaps the most
powerful argument against democratic regime change by means of military force, as classical
liberals like Mazzini and Mill knew all-too well, is that beyond being immoral it would be
very unlikely to succeed. Today this lesson is being painfully relearned by foreign-policy
makers in the United States and beyond.
90
Mazzini 1851: 308.
See Waltz 1959: 103-11; and particularly Smith 1992: 14-15.
92
In contemporary IR theory, this sophisticated blending of duty-based morality and act consequentialism is
probably best represented by Hoffmann 1981.
91
36
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