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International Relations theory about East Asia has increasingly argued that East Asia before Western penetration enjoyed a protracted peace. As explanations, a Chinese military hegemony would fit realist theory fairly well, while a cultural peace based on shared Confucian norms would be a significant anomaly. A Confucian Long Peace challenges widely held, albeit Eurocentric, realist presumptions including the perils of anarchy, the arms-racing and misperception of the security dilemma, and the regularity of power balancing. This article therefore investigates, first, whether such a peace did in fact exist, and, second, whether this might be attributed to Confucianism. A cultural peace theory requires a strong anti-war cultural norm and a shared sense of community. Skepticism is established by examining three comparative cultural spaces that nonetheless did not enjoy a culturally informed peace: the classical Greek citystate system, early modern Christendom, and the contemporary Arab state system. All were deeply riven and competitive. Nevertheless, empirical investigation of the last Chinese (Qing) dynasty before the Western arrival (1644-1839) demonstrates that it was remarkably peaceful toward its Confucian neighbors, while more 'normally' exploiting its power asymmetry against non-Confucian ones. Processtracing specialized Chinese practices toward fellow Confucians suggests that the low Confucian war finding emanates from cultural restraint.

Fifth century Greeks distinguished between hegemonia (legitimated leadership) and arkhe (control). Thucydides employed this distinction to track the changing nature of the Athenian Empire during the Peloponnesian War, and the ways in which a diminishing concern for balancing self-interest against justice corroded Athenian authority, made survival of the empire increasingly problematic and encouraged the disastrous expedition to Sicily. The Melian Dialogue—often cited by realists to justify a power-based approach to foreign policy—is intended to symbolize this decay. Building on our analysis of Thucydides, we examine the British, Soviet and American experiences with hegemony. A striking feature of the contemporary American situation is the extent to which American leaders claim hegemonia but deny any interest in arkhe. Rightly or wrongly, much of the rest of the world has the reverse perception. This seeming contradiction has important implications for US foreign policy and world politics more generally.

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