The idea of perpetual peace in international relations : A contextual reading of Raymond Aron’s peace and war.

Abstract

Are Raymond Aron‘s views on war and strategy still relevant to twenty-first-century scholars who try to think about war1 ? It is this question of Jean-Vincent Holeindre that motivated us to read Peace and War (1962) in view of contextualizing it. In this book, Raymond Aron presents his theory of international relations as the science of peace and war. Peace is considered in its relation to power and Aron thinks that only an international legal system could lead to perpetual peace. A contextual reading of Peace and War enables us to perceive the need to reform the United Nations System and, in a special way, it‘s Security Council. That is why a particular attention has been given to the necessity for Africa to be given an important place in the United Nations Security Council in order to talk about her own problems in her own way, with her own voice. Beyond Aron‘s legacy, alongside with the need to have an International enforced law system, peace-building in the world must be grounded on education and humanism. That is why Ubuntu has been presented as an African approach to peace-building and conflicts resolution that could contribute in promoting social solidarity at national level, at regional level and at international level so as to foster a system of global solidarity.