If one assumes that the extraordinary record of democracies not attacking one another is simply down to a similarity of government, then one would also have assumed that the Soviet Union and China, both Communist countries for many years would have become allies during the Cold War, when in fact by the 1950’s they were bitter rivals. Therefore it must clearly be the shared system of democracy that makes the fundamental difference to whether peace remains or not.
However, the theory of “democratic peace” is not universally accepted by students of international relations and is discredited by those who support the theory of international relations known as realism.
In his 1994 State of the Union address promoting the spread of democracy, President Clinton made three major assumptions, firstly that democracy is desired by every nation and secondly that it could easily be exported to every nation. History has shown that the desire of America for every nation to accept democracy is not always shared by the nations themselves i.e. the USSR during the Cold War, Cuba and China. Different economies and cultural values have shown that the spread of democracy is not always possible.
Furthermore, America’s own view of itself as a crusading hero bringing the much heralded and glorified system of democracy to undemocratic nations has often lead to America becoming involved in costly and counterproductive foreign interventions which have rarely ended with the results that they had originally hoped to obtain. The two prime examples of this are Vietnam and Iraq.
The third assumption made by President Clinton in his 1994 speech, was that with every nation following the democratic system of government that America’s own security would be ensured. However he clearly ignored the fact that all states, regardless of the system of government, acts first and foremost in their own self interest. As a result, even in an entirely democratic world, states will strive to ensure their self-preservation in the world, regardless of how this is interpreted or whether it upsets other states.
Realists have also dismissed the suggestion that democratic states do not go to war or at the very least come dangerously close. Realists have pointed out that Great Britain and France nearly went to war in 1898 over an outpost in Egypt, Great Britain and the United States clashed in the War of 1812, Spain was a democracy at the time of the Spanish-American War of 1898, Germany was just as democratic as Great Britain and France on the outbreak of World War 1 in 1914 and as recently as 1954, the United States secretly supported an armed raid that brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala. Supporters of the “democratic peace” theory have argued that the examples of wars used to discredit the theory are not truly relevant because the countries used as examples don’t truly qualify as democratic countries by the modern definition of the term.
R.J. Rummel has also attempted to explain America’s covert interference in other countries including Guatemala, Chile, Iran and the Dominican Republic, “Democracies have engaged in covert action. However, this was done secretly by agencies of government, such as the CIA, operating with minimum democratic oversight. The agencies were really enclaves of power acting abroad without the normal restraints of democratic leaders and outside of the democratic culture. They were insulated from the effects of freedom that operate within a democracy.”3
Realists have also questioned the very ideas that constitute the “democratic peace” theory. It has been argued that democracies are constrained from going to war against other democracies because of their liberal views, yet they are rarely constrained from threatening war, the most prominent examples of this are the disputes between Greece and Turkey and Israel and its neighbours. “Democratic peace” supporters would justify this by pointing out that often the route of the problems that exist between states such as Greece and Turkey date back hundreds of years and are not the fault of democracy and if anything it is democracy that is preventing these long time enemies going to war.
Realists have raised the question as to how “democratic peace” theorists can be sure that a world of democratic states would never experience war when such a world has never existed. They argue that even if evidence does suggest that there is less likelihood of war between two democracies, it is absolutely impossible to guarantee that such a thing would never happen. R.J. Rummel has attempted to answer this question by stating that “All predictions are based on the past”4 and because the past has shown that democracies have not gone to war he can justify his argument.
Realists have also attempted to explain the lack of war between democracies from 1945 onwards by suggesting that because of the bipolar system of global control that saw the United States and the Soviet Union battle for supremacy up until the demise of Communism in Russia in the early 1990’s, many democratic countries have avoided possible conflict because they feared the USSR more than they feared another democratic country. As Kenneth Waltz wrote “A bipolar world tends to be more peaceful than a multipolar world.”5 While “democratic theorists” accept that the Cold War may have accounted for the lack of war between democracies, it does not explain why there have not been wars between democratic states before or since, while in Europe, unity has continued to grow rather then hostility.
One argument Realists use against the “democratic peace” theory is that democracies themselves are not entirely free of violence as the continued troubles in Northern Ireland and French massacres in Algeria have shown. However “democratic peace” theorists argue that on average democracies have much less violence than other forms of government, regarding examples of democracies with "high" levels of internal violence, one can easily point to cases of much more deadly violence within non-democracies. The Teiping Rebellion in China during the 19th century may have killed 20,000,000 people, even possibly 40,000,000. The Mexican Revolution near the beginning of our century left about 2,000,000 dead, the Chinese Civil War that was fought from 1928 to 1949 and killed at least 10,000,000 Chinese. Even the much lesser internal conflicts in smaller non-democratic nations have been deadly. The list is long and sad, including El Salvador (during its non-democratic periods), Colombia, Haiti, Sri Lanka, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Cambodia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Czar's Russia, Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia, and Uganda. Just recently 500,000 or more Rwandans were likely slaughtered in a couple of months of civil war.
Finally “democratic peace” theorists argue that regardless of the several critiques raised of the “democratic peace” theory, it does not mean that a genuine link between democracy and peace can’t be made.
Arguably the most damaging dispute to the claims of “democratic peace” theory is that democracies are not always peaceful. Great Britain, arguably one of the world’s best established democracies suffered for several decades from terrorist attacks by separatist groups angry at the British government over the division of Ireland and on September 11th 2001, the United States of America was attacked by the Al-Qaueda terrorist network, with the loss of more than 3,000 American lives. Clearly loss of life on that scale ca,
But most of the controversy has focused on the second conceptual problem, the definition of "democracy
While there are undoubtedly problems with the “democratic peace” theory, what critics of that theory cannot ignore is that since 1946 there has not been a single military conflict between the countries of Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, all democracies and also very importantly all members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Therefore this had lead many doubters of “democratic peace” theory to look for other factors present in all democratic societies that might explain low level of warfare between democracies. Many political analysts have argued that it is capitalism, also a trait of all OECD countries and not shared democracy that explains the low level of warfare between these countries.
Commercial pacifists argue that open market societies are deeply against war. While they accept that democracy contributes to peace, they believe the more important reason for pacifism within and amongst democracies was commerce. Contrary to the argument of “democratic peace” theorists, commercial pacifists contend that democracies in the past have been extremely warlike, a prime example being the basis for democracy itself Thucydides’ Athens. Commercial pacifists argue that what has transformed democracy from that time to its present day state was the development of capitalism. Paine going as far as to claim that “If commerce were permitted to act to the universal extent it is capable; it would extirpate the system of war.”
Much of commercial pacifists’ beliefs can be traced back to 18th century writer Adam Smith. Smith argued that the “wealth of a neighbouring nation, though dangerous in war and politics, is certainly advantageous in trade. In a state of hostility, it may enable our enemies to maintain armies superior to our own; but in a state of peace and commerce it must likewise enable them to exchange with us to a greater value, and to afford a better market.” At the time of his writing, in the mid to late 18th century, Smith’s argument had little relevance for Western Europe, where states such as France, Prussia and Russia, controlled by absolute monarchs were bitter rivals with strong barriers discouraging trade. However the next three hundred years in European history would be the most bloody and violent in its entire history, combined with the massive detrimental effect war had on the European economy in the 20th century. Economic troubles in Germany following the end of the First World War almost certainly contributed to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the horrific effects of the Second World War convinced most Europeans of the need to band together and create some form of economic union which would help restore their economies and also prevent a future war breaking out. The establishment of the European Economic Community in 1956 (today it has metamorphosed into the European Union) an institution which was established with the hope of promoting greater trade and economic integration between the original six member countries. Therefore one might argue, and clearly many leading European politicians at the time thought so to, that it was the economic integration of Western Europe in the last 40 years that has kept peace between these various countries, not because they share a similar democratic style government
Smith seemingly goes on to further link capitalism with the gradual decline of war in democracies by stating that “Among a nation of manufacturers there is no leisure time. All is work, and every soldier is a labourer taken from manufacturing…Militias thus tend to be very unreliable…Sovereigns thus form professional standing armies which must be paid in times of peace as well as war. War being very costly, there then follows a natural incentive both to maintain peace and to neglect defence.” Admittedly Smith’s assessment hasn’t massive modern day relevance, he seems to imply that the spread of capitalism and industrialisation would remove the requirement of a military but the United States of America, self proclaimed home of democracy, maintains the world’s largest military force. However we should consider that while a democracy maintains a large military it does not keep it to protect themselves from fellow democracies like Spain or Australia, when it has had problems with other democracies such as in 1956 when it objected to British and French involvement in the Suez Canal, it used economic sanctions not military force to show its displeasure. America and other democracies maintain their military to protect themselves from attack from non-democratic regimes like the unprovoked attack on America in 1941 by the Japanese, if such regimes or there modern day equivalent such as Saddam Hussein in Iraq were removed and replaced by democratic governments, Smith’s prediction would be far more likely to be realised.
Joseph Schumpeter offers a more modern and complete understanding of the role that capitalism has played in democracy and war than Smith. Schumpeter expands on an argument made by “democratic peace” theorists by claiming that the people of a capitalist society are “democratized, individualised, rationalised” Schumpeter justifies his argument that capitalism promotes peace by arguing that “Citizens have become rational materialists and have eschewed psychological militarism and chauvinism.” He also insists that the ordinary citizen against war because in the modern world, war has no benefit for the ordinary citizen, however at this stage, it must be stressed that the reason the citizen has any power in this situation to express a political opinion is because of democracy, so we should never remove the importance of democracy existing for capitalism to play its role in peace keeping.
John Mueller expands on Schumpeter’s opinion claiming that “War…has become obsolescent. A durable long peace among the developed industrial powers has changed international relations.” Mueller claims that the “physical cost of war…have made it intolerable and since World War I has become rationally unthinkable.” Mueller explains the Second World War by describing Hitler and Mussolini as “ridiculous aberrations” that began the war.
Does democracy bring peace? The answer is most likely yes it does. The evidence shows clearly that the single most obvious answer for the widespread peace throughout the Western world is that they all share the same style of government; democracy. This is not to say that all democracies are peaceful, many have become involved in conflicts with non-democratic countries which would imply then that democracies are not afraid of making war on other countries, however evidence shows that democracies are cautious of war with other democratic countries, this leads me to conclude that democracy would bring peace, but only if all the countries of the world subscribed to this particular political choice..
Footnotes
1] P289 of World Politics
2] (American President Bill Clinton in his State of the Union Address to Congress, Jan. 25, 1994)
3] (R.J. Rummel, “The Miracle That Is Freedom: The Solution to War, Violence, Genocide, and Poverty”, Martin Monograph Series No. 1 Moscow, Idaho: Martin Institute for Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution, University of Idaho, 1996).
4] (R.J. Rummel, “The Miracle That Is Freedom: The Solution to War, Violence, Genocide, and Poverty”, Martin Monograph Series No. 1 Moscow, Idaho: Martin Institute for Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution, University of Idaho, 1996).
5] (Kenneth Waltz, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Better,” Adelphi Papers, Number 171, London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981).
