Description
Rationalist IR theorists assume that under anarchy there is always a permanent state of fear and uncertainty. And many other scholars open up spaces for trust as a precondition for peace/cooperation rather than the unavoidable tragedy. However, the former president of South Korea and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Kim Dae-jung, said “we try all our best to keep peace on the Korean peninsula. It does not matter if the other side is good or evil. It is not because we trust them, but because we hope peace.” As we can see in this short phrase, trust and hope should be distinguished in terms of a precondition for cooperation/peace. In this sense, first, this paper conceptually disentangles hope from trust and argues that a state leader’s hope for peace should not be dismissed as a lack of vigilance or as “cheap talk”; rather, it can transform a conflict by initiating conciliatory gestures between adversary states, leading to increased cooperation. Second, borrowing concepts and theories from psychology studies, this paper investigates the conditions under which state leaders can experience hope. Based on these theoretical reviews, this paper finally explores the role of hope in the initiation and types of conciliatory gestures between two adversary states.
