Re: [metatuning] Peaceful Democracies

We are a democracy and we are at war with everybody. opps i forgot we aren't
a democracy!

"X. J. Scott" wrote:

> This is an interesting theory.
> Also the definition of Democracy was interesting.
> And the bit about Finland I did not know, good trivia there.
>
> ---
>
> PEACEFUL DEMOCRACIES
> By Arnold Beichman
> The Washington Times
> June 13, 2002
>
> http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20020613-90259000.htm
>
> One of the biggest reasons, if not the biggest, for supporting
> democratic nations like Israel and Taiwan against their
> enemies is not merely because they are democracies but,
> equally important, that history shows that democracies do not
> fight each other regardless of cultural, political and
> economic differences between them. In other words, the more
> democracies in the world, the greater assurance of world
> peace. Modern wars have either been between dictatorships,
> theocratic or secular, or between a democracy and a
> non-democracy.
>
> Recent wars in the Middle East have been between Iraq and
> Kuwait and between Iran and Iraq, none of which are
> democracies, and there have been seven wars between Israel and
> Arab states in the last half-century. Yet Turkey, a
> functioning democracy whose people also practice Islam, is a
> friend and ally of Israel. In all seven wars against Israel,
> Turkey has stood aloof.
>
> More than two centuries have passed since the first modern
> democracy was established in Philadelphia. In that time there
> have been countless wars, but none between any two
> democracies, and in modern times none between Western,
> liberal, democratic capitalist countries. In fact, Immanuel
> Kant, the great German philosopher, predicted in 1795 that a
> world of democracies would create what he called "perpetual
> peace."
>
> In other words, America's crusade for democracy is no search
> for moonbeams. It is a policy of hard-headed realism.
> President Bush is aware of this "perpetual peace" phenomenon.
> In his June 1 West Point graduation speech, he said,
> "Competition between great nations is inevitable, but armed
> conflict in our world is not. More and more, civilized nations
> find ourselves on the same side -- united by common dangers of
> terrorist violence and chaos."
>
> Europe, a continent of democracies, is today nearer to a
> durable continental peace than at any time since the 19th
> century and the 100 year Pax Brittanica. Who can envision war
> among any of the democracies in the European Union? Germany
> versus France? Or even among non-EU members -- democratic
> Russia versus the Baltic democratic states?
>
> But there were wars in the last century, the century of
> totalitarianism, in which governments like the Soviet Union,
> Communist China, Nazi Germany and others became enemies of
> their own people. Professor Rudolph J. Rummel, a University of
> Hawaii political scientist, has been compiling statistics of
> mass murder and genocide in modern times by governments
> against their own peoples. His research has led him to the
> fearsome conclusion that 20th-century dictatorial governments
> killed more of their own people -- three times as many -- as
> have been killed in all civil and international wars put
> together. As of 1985, governments had killed 119,394,000 of
> their own citizens. The overwhelming majority of the victims
> (115,423,000) were killed by nonfree governments more "in cold
> blood than in the heat of battle."
>
> Two definitions. Democracy is a system with four
> prerequisites: It exists, first, when a nation holds periodic
> elections; second, when the adult population has the right to
> vote regardless of race, religion, color or economic
> circumstance; third, when the media and political parties are
> free to oppose an incumbent government and, last, when there
> is an undisputed rule of law. Where governments are
> accountable to voters, war against another democracy becomes
> impossible, because such an adventure would lack an essential
> legitimacy. War is a military conflict between two independent
> states that leads to more than 1,000 casualties, according to
> Mr. Rummel.
>
> The University of Hawaii political scientist studied 353 pairs
> of nations who engaged in wars between 1816 and 1991. He found
> that democracies fought non-democracies in 155 cases;
> dictatorships fought each other in 198 cases. There isn't a
> single instance of a democracy fighting another democracy to
> this very day.
>
> In his study of the two world wars, Dean Babst, another
> scholar, found that 33 independent countries were involved in
> World War I, of whom ten were democracies who never fought
> each other. Fifty-two independent countries took part in World
> War II. Fourteen of the 15 democracies were on the same side.
> The exception was Finland, which, having been attacked by
> Stalin in 1940, then sided with Nazi Germany when it invaded
> Russia in June 1941. Britain and a few Commonwealth countries
> formally declared war against Finland. But no actual fighting
> took place between Finland and any other democracy.
>
> What explains this "democracy peace" phenomenon? Mr. Rummel
> offers four reasons: Democratic peoples resist bearing the
> costs and deaths of war; diversity of institutions and
> relations within and between democracies inhibit belligerence
> among them; thanks to a civic culture of negotiation and
> conciliation, democratic leaders are basically dovish in their
> interaction with other democracies; democracies see each other
> of the same kind, sharing the same values, and thus are more
> willing to negotiate than fight.
>
> Or as Edmund Burke in his "Letters on a Regicide Peace" put it
> perhaps more lyrically, "Nothing is so strong a tie of amity
> between nation and nation as correspondence in law, customs,
> manners and habits of life. They have more than the force of
> treaties in themselves. They are obligations written in the
> heart."
>
> --
> Fight domestic terrorism; resist those who subjugate liberty.
>
>
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-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
http://www.anaphoria.com

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