Philosophical Politics of Peace: A Critical Study of "Peace Through Strength" in Contemporary War Discourse
Author: Natasha Kiran, Hafiz Ahmed Saeed Rana, Muhammad Sohail
Abstract
This paper contends that current geopolitical analysis performs a conceptual inversion of “peace”. Instead of designating a moral horizon that limits violence through justice, rights, and accountable institutions, “peace” is re-described as the outcome of such coercive, particularly the “deterrent”, domination of escalation ladders and militarized “stability”. The thesis is that “peace through strength” operates as a justificatory technology: it justifies the securitization of adversaries as existential threats, shifts reasoning from standard political debates to emergency, and reframes violence as the absence of coercive peace. This is not a neutral transformation; it is a set of ethical reductions that, while reducing peace to negative peace (that is, the suppression or postponement of overt violence), ignores the fact that positive peace involves the structural transformation of violence into a peaceful and lawful order. The analysis draws, necessarily, on Johan Galtung’s negative and positive peace, the just war theory”s normative limits on the use and conduct of war, Immanuel Kant’s Toward Perpetual Peace as opposed to juridical peace, and securitization theory (Copenhagen School and its critical revisions) as an explanation of how “threat” talk justifies the adoption of the unprecedented. The Iran–U.S.–Israel conflict (2025–2026) will be the main, but not only, case study. Through critical discourse analysis of U.S. official documents and statements (White House releases, U.S. strategy documents, U.S. Central Command summaries) and U.N. peace and human rights documents. The arguments are developed that show how the strategic use of the word “peace” is employed along with the ethics of war implications.
Keywords
Redefining Peace; Peace Through Strength; Perceptual Peace; Securitization; Political and Moral Philosophy; Just War Theory; Iran–US–Israel Conflict.
References
Aloyo, E. (2015). Just war theory and the last of last resort. Ethics & International Affairs, 29(2),
187–202.
Associated Press. (2026). [AP News article at the provided URL; title not recoverable from current
access]https://apnews.com/article/be298023201a3e4b709b11372aa6e045
Associated Press. (2026). US military action in Iran considered unlikely to lead to regime change. AP
News. https://apnews.com/article/iran-intelligence-assessment-trumpad20c1f1168d4318af516d7b19d372e7
Balzacq, T. (2005). The three faces of securitization: Political agency, audience and context.
European Journal of International Relations, 11(2), 171–201.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066105052960
Department of War/U.S. Department of Defense. (2026). 2026 National Defense Strategy.
Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167–191.
Kant, I. (1795/2009). Toward perpetual peace: A philosophical sketch (J. Bennett, Ed./Trans.;
copyright 2017).
McDonald, M. (2008). Securitization and the construction of security. European Journal of
International Relations, 14(4), 563–587. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066108097553
McMahan, J. (2015). Proportionality and necessity in jus in bello. In S. Lazar & H. Frowe (Eds.), The
Oxford handbook of ethics of war. Oxford University Press.
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. (n.d.). Human rights,
peacebuilding and sustaining peace. OHCHR.
Reuters. (2026, March 2). Factbox: Top U.S. general outlines initial timeline of U.S. military
operation in Iran. Al-Monitor. https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2026/03/factbox-topus-general-outlines-initial-timeline-us-military-operation-iran
State of Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (2025, December 20). Joint statement on the Seventh
Qatar–United States Strategic Dialogue: An enduring strategic partnership.
The White House. (2025, December). 2025 National Security Strategy [PDF].
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-SecurityStrategy.pdf
The White House. (2025, June 22). SUNDAY SHOWS: President Trump’s pursuit of peace through
strength in Iran.
The White House. (2026, March 1). Peace Through Strength: President Trump launches Operation
Epic Fury to crush Iranian regime, end nuclear threat.
The White House. (2026, March 5). America’s unstoppable momentum in Operation Epic Fury.
U.S. Central Command. (2026, March 3). Operation Epic Fury fact sheet: First 72 hours.
United Nations General Assembly. (2016). A/RES/71/189: Declaration on the Right to Peace.
United Nations. (2016). A/RES/70/262: Review of the United Nations peacebuilding architecture.
United States Naval Institute News. (2025, June 27). Report to Congress on Israel–Iran conflict, U.S.
strikes.
Wæver, O. (1995). Securitization and desecuritization. In R. D. Lipschutz (Ed.), On security (pp. 46–
87). Columbia University Press.
Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (Eds.). (2001). Methods of critical discourse analysis. SAGE.
DOI: 10.52279/jlss.08.03.295308 | 295-308 | PDF