In the ongoing debate on explaining why democracies do not fight each other, an attempt to establish a correlation between democracies and territorial demands is made by posing the hypothesis that well-established democracies do not fight each other since they are conservative powers, usually satisfied with the territorial status quo within and across their borders. If this hypothesis is corroborated by the historical evidence, then it is possible to speculate that the zone of peace among democracies might be expanded if more countries (not necessarily democracies) also become satisfied with the status quo. To test the relevance of this proposition, the relationship between democracies and territorial demands is examined in historical and geographical terms, through the analysis of international subsystems or regions as the unit of analysis. A zone of peace is then defined as a discrete geographical region of the world in which a group of states have maintained peaceful relations among themselves for a period of at least thirty years. The historical and geographical zones of peace identified since 1815 are: (1) Europe, 1815-48; (2) Europe, 1871-1914; (3) Western Europe, since 1945; (4) North America, since 1917; (5) South America, 1883 to 1932 and since 1942; (6) West Africa, since 1957; (7) East Asia, since 1953; and (8) Australasia, since 1945.

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This paper examines the interaction among the three forces that shape world politics in the contemporary system: globalization, regionalization, and nationalism. The main thesis suggested here is that these three forces cannot be assessed in isolation, independently from one another, nor from a perspective of either convergence or divergence among them. Rather, globalization, regionalization, and nationalism should be captured and studied as forces relative to and overlapping one another, sometimes antagonistic and sometimes cooperative toward each other but never harmonious. This argument is theoretically relevant both in the context of the world political economy and international security, with special reference to the phenomenon of pluralistic security communities. The Latin American case provides an empirical laboratory to test these theoretical assertions. RESUMENEste artículo examina la interacción entre los tres factores que dan forma a la política mundial en el sistema contemporáneo: la globalización, la regionalización y el nacionalismo. El principal argumento que aquí se sugiere es que el impacto de cada una de estas tres fuerzas no puede ser estimado aisaldamente, separando una de la otra, y tampoco desde una perspectiva de convergencia o divergencia entre estas tres tendencias. Más bien, la globalización, la regionalización y el nacionalismo deberían ser capturados y estudiados como fuerzas superpuestas y relacionadas; a veces de modo antagónico, otras de modo cooperativo, pero nunca armoniosamente. Este argumento es teóricamente relevante tanto en el contexto de la economía política internacional como en el de la seguridad mundial, especialmente con referencia al fenómeno de las comunidades de seguridad pluralistas. En este sentido, el caso de América Latina ofrece un laboratorio empírico para poner a prueba estas afirmaciones teóricas.

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