Immanuel Kant, John Rawls and Juergen Habermas on the problem of the possibility of perpetual peace

The following is a critical analysis of John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas's contemporary reformulations of Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace, and focuses on their respective interpretations of Kant's arguments in favour of the 'negative surrogate' of a foedus pacificum (league of peace) and against the 'positive idea' of world government. It is argued that, however problematic, Habermas's World Parliamentary Democracy, based on the constitution of a reformed United Nations, is superior to Rawls's Society of Peoples---the contemporary ideal of peace must not subordinate the interests of individual persons to the peoples to which they belong, it must be in accordance with the development of a post-Westphalian order, and it must allow for the further development of Kant's idea of a law of world citizenship. It is further argued that Habermas's proposal is the one that is most likely to result in a 'soulless despotism,' as it is not clear that the ideal of peace must necessarily seek the further nullification of state sovereignty and thereby affirm a single, unified, global system of law and litigation. Kant was correct to suggest that a lasting global peace must on the rejection in principle of the threat of use or force among states, including that of a world state.