"CEAC Commentary" introduces news analyses andopinions in Japan on topics related to regional
cooperation and integration in East Asia, but they do
not represent the views of CEAC as an institution.

August 21, 2014

Awake the Goodness of Human Nature

By KONDO Seiichi
The democratic peace theory is one of the major theories of international politics. This
theory postulates that democratic countries do not wage wars. It says that since the people are themost vulnerable to the potential devastation of war and they participate in policymaking,international conflicts will be handled both rationally and peacefully and no war will occur. However,
why are wars still continuing to be waged (under the name of defense and nationalself-determination) despite the fact that democracy has spread across the world? Needless to mention
the Middle East and Eastern Europe, even Great Britain, recognized as a country of democracy by its
own people and the rest of the world, resorted to force in its Falklands War with Argentina and theUnited States carried out armed intervention in Iraq. These wars gained an overwhelming support
from general populations. Is democracy incapable of deterring wars?

The answer to this question is “No.” These above-mentioned wars were waged not because
the system of democracy is defective but because the system did not work as it should have. Even
democracies could wage wars when political parties, important actors of democracy, prioritize theirown party’s interests with a focus on obtaining public popularity and the people heat up withnarrow-minded nationalism or become indifferent to the whole society, pursuing only their owninterests. You do not need to quote from Adventures of a Bystander by Peter Drucker and Escapefrom Freedom by Erich Fromm to reconfirm that the Nazis was a democratically elected politicalparty. Not only war, but also a wide range of problems facing today’s world, including a successionof financial crises, terrorism, global warming and poverty, are occurring because democracy and freemarket economy mechanisms do not work properly and political parties, companies, the media andindividuals are all pursuing their own short-term self-interests.

Human nature has both good and evil aspects. The level of civilizations is determined by
how you can highlight the goodness of human nature and how you can put the evilness of humannature under control. However, currently, under the systems of democracy and free market economy,
everybody is showing their evilness of greedily prioritizing their own short-term self-interests. This
trend is being fueled by intensifying global competition and society allows it. Amidst this situation, asense of responsibility and public mindedness that should accompany freedom is forgotten. This hascaused human beings to fail to fully utilize a system that was painstakingly created throughnumerous occasions of bloodshed in the long history of trial and error on the part of humankind.

If I stress the importance of restoring the goodness of human nature and of betting back to“virtuous” politics and economic management, people may laugh it away as an immature andimpractical argument. However, there is no other solution. This is also a significant point of
discussion when you think about the future of China, which is ardently trying to restore honour fromits humiliated history since the Opium War by rising to a global political, economic and militarypower. Ahead of China are the two options of pursuing global hegemony by twentieth-century
Western-style military and economic powers and of becoming a “virtuous” great power, whichancient China used to aim to be, based on its criticism of the former. Recently, I have heard that aJapanese businessman argues about “virtue” rather than corporate management in his speech in
China, which moved his Chinese audiences and led them to appreciate positively Japan. If this is afact, I suspect that it makes much sense to preach on virtue. Let’s awake the goodness of humannature that is staying in everybody’s heart.
(This is an English translation of the article written by Mr. KONDO Seiichi, former
Commissioner for Cultural Affairs, which originally appeared on the e-forum“Hyakka-Somei” of CEAC on August 1, 2014.)