Ideological Fundamentalism in International Politics
Ideological fundamentalism refers to when ideology convinces the public that politics is a struggle between good and evil. People no longer assess states based on what they do in the international system but on the political identities assigned to them.
Kenneth Waltz, the godfather of neorealist theory, observed that Western democracies had a proclivity toward ideological fundamentalism. Waltz wrote:
💬 “Citizens of democratic states tend to think of their countries as good, aside from what they do, simply because they are democratic... democratic states also tend to think of undemocratic states as bad, aside from what they do, simply because they are undemocratic.”
Citizens of democracies also think of their countries as being more peaceful because they are democratic. Because it is believed that democracies are more peaceful and less likely to start wars, it has laid the foundation for “democratic wars” as invading non-democracies to make them democratic is believed to make the world more peaceful. Western democracies have subsequently committed themselves to perpetual war with the promise of delivering Kant’s perpetual peace.
Ideological fundamentalism is to some extent embedded in human nature as human beings are social animals that have organised in groups for tens of thousands of years for security and meaning. Human beings instinctively organise into the in-group (us) versus the diametrically opposite out-groups (them). The out-group as our opposite reaffirms our own identity – we can only identify as white if there is black, only west if there is east, only civilised if there are barbaric, only democratic if there are authoritarians, and only good if there is evil.