Written by Wu Yu-Shan.
Image credit: Xiamen Island, Lieyu Island and Kinmen Island by BreakdownDiode/ Wikimedia Commons, license: CC BY-SA 3.0.
Translated from the keynote address at the Lung Ying-tai Cultural Foundation’s Think Salon: “Without Peace, What Happens to Democracy?”
The most urgent task for contemporary Taiwan is to establish a public body of knowledge surrounding “Peace Research.”
This discipline originated from the tragic lessons of World War II. In the post-war era, Western scholars sought to systematically understand the causes of war to prevent history from repeating itself. During the Cold War, the nuclear arms race between the US and the USSR, coupled with the reality of “Mutual Assured Destruction” (MAD), pushed peace research to a central position—because once a nuclear war erupts, it destroys not only the battlefield but potentially the entire world.
Peace research can be summarised into three core inquiries. The first one concentrates on the impact of peace and war. The costs of total conflict and nuclear war are immense. We must strictly comprehend their impact on life, society, and institutions. The second inquiry focuses on the causes of peace and war. We want to understand what factors foster peace, and what conditions push a society toward war. The third inquiry emphasises conflict avoidance and cessation. The core concern is how we can reduce miscalculation, prevent escalation, and design mechanisms for de-escalation and armistice. This is closely tied to peace advocacy.
These three form a clear analytical framework: start with the impact of war and peace, proceed to inquire into their causes, and finally consider what actions can be taken to alter those causes to achieve the goal of avoiding or stopping war.
Taking the war in Ukraine as an example, the discussion should not stop at how the war is being fought or its impact on the international order. We must ask, “Why did it come to this?” and further reflect on “Can Taiwan avoid repeating these mistakes?” This is precisely the analytical path provided by peace research.
Taiwan’s Status Quo: A Looming Shadow
In recent years, Taiwan’s external security environment has visibly deteriorated. Military threats from across the strait have escalated, cross-strait relations have rapidly declined, and domestic combat readiness measures are advancing, including the extension of conscription service and significant increases in the military budget. In international assessments, the risk of conflict in the Taiwan Strait is constantly being revised upward, with 2027 being the most frequently mentioned timeline. Standing here in 2026, that date appears exceptionally close.
The spectre of conflict has completely overshadowed the relatively relaxed atmosphere of just a few years ago. War is no longer a distant possibility but an imminent risk that must be squarely faced.
In this context, the need for peace research is urgent, yet Taiwan’s public discussion and institutional preparedness in this field remain severely insufficient. Doubts occasionally surface in society: Is peace merely a naive fantasy? Does advocating for peace amount to self-disarmament? Is pacifism just a delusional ideology? Precisely because these doubts exist, it is all the more necessary to use peace research as a foundation to clarify the causes of war and peace, basing public debate on knowledge rather than labels.
Peace is the Soil of Democracy
Peace research concerns not only the safety of life but also the survival of democracy and freedom. Relevant discussions usually revolve around two interconnected questions.
First: Does democracy contribute to peace? Democratic Peace Theory suggests that democratic systems better reflect the interests of the general public, making it difficult for decision-makers to easily mobilise society toward war. This perspective focuses on whether citizens possess sufficient knowledge, understanding, and capacity for participation to collectively judge major risks. Here, we study how democracy impacts peace.
Second: How do war and the threat of war affect democracy? Here lies a structural dilemma: to protect democracy and freedom, society may feel it must prepare for war; however, once a society remains in a state of long-term combat readiness or under the shadow of war, democracy and freedom often begin to erode. Here, we study how peace impacts democracy.
Looking at the historical conditions of modern democracy, most democratic systems were nurtured in “realms of relative peace.” The United Kingdom and the United States became models of constitutional democracy partly because their maritime geography provided relative safety. Conversely, continental European nations, with connected borders and imminent threats, faced a rockier road to democratic development. Democratic institutions require the protection of rights, checks and balances, and pluralistic compromise—traits that are not conducive to rapid decision-making in times of crisis. Therefore, liberal democracy is more likely to generate and deepen only in contexts of relative safety and stability.
Peace is the soil in which democracy grows.
The Three Surges of ROC Constitutional History
The constitutional development history of the Republic of China (ROC) displays a similar pattern: the three historical windows closest to realising democracy all appeared during moments when peace and stability appeared promising. The first window followed the 1911 Xinhai Revolution and the founding of the Republic. However, this was quickly interrupted by Yuan Shikai’s attempt to restore the monarchy and subsequent political turmoil. The second window opened with the end of WWII and Japan’s surrender. Peace seemed within reach, allowing for the formulation of a democratic constitution in 1947. Yet, it was soon replaced by the martial law system due to the civil war and the cross-Strait separation and confrontation since 1949. The third window opened in the 1990s. At that time, Taiwan held an economic lead, Beijing adopted a relatively moderate foreign stance, and the international backdrop featured the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Cross-strait tensions were relatively mild, allowing Taiwan to complete democratisation.
These three historical surges of constitutionalism all appeared during windows of peace. Particularly in 1990, with the economic and military power of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait given the same weight, Taiwan was at a historical high point relative to the other side, accounting for roughly 25 percent of the aggregate national power of mainland China. The Taiwanese society had greater confidence in security and peace at that time, allowing the democratic transition to proceed. This experience reaffirms that the threat of war deters democracy, while a space for peace is often a necessary condition for democratic deepening.
Three Challenges for Nascent Democracies Under the Shadow of War
Nascent democracies under the shadow of war typically face three overlapping structural challenges. The first one is an external threat. The encirclement by the authoritarian bloc, interference in democratic elections, the projection of “Sharp Power,” and the pressure from military imbalances and grey-zone tactics via new technologies keep a nascent democratic society in a chronic state of high insecurity.
The second challenge is the security dilemma. In the new Cold War landscape, the logic that “national security trumps all” is ascending. To respond to threats, freedoms of speech, association, academia, and the economy may be restricted, creating the paradox of “restricting freedom to protect freedom.” The critical questions are: Who draws the line for these restrictions? How do we prevent emergency measures from becoming normalised, or worse, repeating historical authoritarian control?
An analogy can be made to the human immune system. A normal immune response eliminates viruses, but an overreaction can trigger a “Cytokine Storm,” causing destruction greater than the virus itself. The same applies to democratic societies, triggering protective mechanisms under national security pressure. If the “State’s T-cells” overreact and wrongly attack the normal functioning of society, the foundation of democracy may be eroded by its own reaction. This is like a Hobbesian Leviathan that is considered a necessary evil against anarchy, despite its own abuses of power. Obviously, such a condition cannot be regarded as a reasonable state of affairs.
The third challenge is cultural deficit. Nascent democratic societies are often familiar with concepts of elections and sovereignty, but have difficulty internalising the values of checks and balances, judicial independence, and constitutional liberty. People may be more concerned with their elections than their liberties. When external threats rise, the most worrying outcome is not necessarily an immediate return to authoritarianism, but a slide into the grey zone of “Illiberal Democracy”: retaining elections and party competition, while the autonomy of the media, judiciary, academia, and independent institutions is gradually eroded, and democratic legitimacy is ironically used to justify restrictions on freedom.
Conclusion: To Protect Democracy, We Must First Protect Peace
During a pandemic, patient mortality is often caused by three main factors: viral attack, immune system overreaction, and pre-existing conditions. Correlating this to nascent democracies, external authoritarian threats are like the virus; excessive restrictions on freedom under the security dilemma are like the immune storm; and cultural deficits represent the system’s pre-existing frailty.
Facing external threats, the response should not be too weak, or democracy will not survive, but the response must also be calibrated to avoid infringing upon the fundamentals of the liberal democratic system. As society moves closer to war, survival and security become the primary considerations, and the risk of overreaction rises accordingly. As a nascent democratic system does not have robust safeguards against a “slide” into illiberal democracy, utmost attention is needed to make sure that restrictions on liberties do not go beyond what is absolutely necessary and that they strictly follow the rules of law. However, as the prospects of war loom large, it is increasingly more difficult to balance between liberties and security.
Therefore, if we cherish liberal democracy, we must strive to lower the shadow of war. As Pope Francis said, “war is madness” and always “a defeat” for humanity.” President Lai Ching-te has also noted, “Peace is priceless, and war has no winners.” To guard peace is to guard democracy itself.
Yu-Shan Wu is an Academician and Distinguished Research Fellow at Academia Sinica. His major interests are in political and economic transitions in (ex-)socialist countries, constitutional engineering in nascent democracies, and theories of international relations and Cross-Taiwan Strait relations. He has authored and edited 26 books and published more than 170 journal articles and book chapters in both English and Chinese.
Note: This article is compiled from the summary of Academician Wu Yu-Shan’s lecture “Without Peace, What Happens to Democracy?” at the Think Salon on March 16th, 2025.