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Bogus Democratic Peace Theory

Liberal democracies do not tear up international agreements or wage war on other democracies. ~David Cesarini We have heard some version of this for a very long time. Does it matter to anyone that it is obviously not true? Note that Cesarini doesn’t say, “they tend not to” or “they usually don’t,” but very simply […]

Liberal democracies do not tear up international agreements or wage war on other democracies. ~David Cesarini

We have heard some version of this for a very long time. Does it matter to anyone that it is obviously not true? Note that Cesarini doesn’t say, “they tend not to” or “they usually don’t,” but very simply that they don’t do these things. That’s ridiculous.

Aside from the glaringly obvious examples of the South African War, the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, and WWI, there is always the war between the Union and the Confederacy, whose status as liberal democracies can’t be denied except for the purpose of defining liberal democracy so that it automatically supports the “democratic peace” hypothesis. As for not tearing up international agreements, has Cesarini been paying attention for the last couple of decades? The U.S. has illegally attacked at least three countries in violation of the U.N. Charter, and its respect for the Geneva Conventions during the last decade has not exactly been outstanding. If he doesn’t accept that Lebanon was a democracy at the time, he can argue that the 2006 war against Lebanon doesn’t count, but it certainly wasn’t because of any inherent mechanisms of accountability, transparency, and restraint on the part of the Israeli democratic process. Democratic peace and most democracies’ respect for international law are contingent on a lot of other things, most of which have nothing whatever to do with the democratic element of their governments.

As more countries democratize, it will simply be a matter of time before the democratic peace theory is conclusively shown to be the pleasant fantasy that it is. After all, states typically war with one another for the sake of influence, wealth, and power, and it is rare for a state to embark on a war primarily because of ideological hostility to another state’s form of government. As long as there are states competing for power, wealth, and influence, there will be inter-state wars, and the one fairly certain thing that democratization will achieve is that it will make those wars longer and more total than they would otherwise be. Democratization doesn’t reduce inter-state conflict, and isn’t necessarily conducive to peace.

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