This is a popular neo-con myth, that by spreading US style Democracy (thorugh the force of a gun obviously) is good for the World. because Democracies never Wage War against each other; Democracy isn’t a bad thing, but these idealistic ideas in the end up creating more danger in the World rather then less.
http://www.thefridaytimes.com/inews5b.htm
Do democracies never fight each other?
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Ammar Ali Qureshi
PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH THINKS future threats to the United States can only be removed by replacing despots and authoritarian governments by democracies. This means two things: pre-emptive strike can have a moral basis and democracy is a value system that restrains states from going to war and thus promoted peace.
He isn’t the first to expound the thesis on democracy. President Clinton in his 1994 State of the Union address declared that democracies never warred with each other. Thus, promoting democracy abroad was to be an important objective of his foreign policy.
Is it correct to say that democracies do not fight each other and promoting democracy would ensure peace? It is probably true that well-established democracies do not go to war with each other. On the other hand, less stable and immature democracies are as likely to stumble into war as any authoritarian regime. States traverse a long path, characterised by many setbacks and even reversals, before becoming mature democracies. They can’t be expected to start behaving like mature democracies immediately after the process of democratisation has begun. Importantly, it is during this transition period that incipient democracies are extremely vulnerable to impulses of bellicosity and belligerence.
Recent history of transition democracies, emerging after the disintegration of USSR and its communist allies, also provides examples of inchoate democracies going to limited or full-blown war with each other. Transition democracies engaged in conflict with each other during the last 12 years include countries such as Armenia and Azerbaijan, Serbia and Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia, and Russia and Chechnya.
Indeed, most of these conflicts in the former communist countries have been attributed to the twin tide of democracy and nationalism. History shows that the twin forces of democracy and nationalism, in a country formerly ruled by authoritarian regimes (dynastic monarchies or totalitarian communist states) have often led to war, starting with the expansionary wars of French Revolution. If one takes into consideration civil wars also then it is quite pertinent to note that the American Civil War (1861-65) was the first war between democracies. During this war, General William Sherman clearly perceived that the resisting power of a democracy rests more on the strength of the people’s will than on the strength of its armies. However, it is wrong to assume that masses in fledgling democracies find war a popular pastime or an attractive option. In fact, it is the ruling elite in these unstable democracies that tries to deflect domestic pressures or worries by shoring up nationalist sentiment and subsequently going to war.
In transition democracies, a former authoritarian regime is replaced by a weak central authority governing on the back of a tottering domestic coalition, cobbled together in haste to assume power and consisting of diverse and conflicting interest groups. The main partners or players in these domestic coalition often pursue incompatible agendas, rendering ruling coalition unstable and in desperate need of mass support. In order to gain mass support, different players in the political battlefield appeal to nationalist sentiment to rouse the masses. Once aroused, masses are very difficult to contain. Different interest groups aligned with the ancien regime, such as military, also find it extremely attractive to arouse nationalist sentiment in the masses as the twin impulses of nationalism and militarism strengthen these institutions and help them to challenge a weak central authority. Moreover, an unstable ruling coalition, riven with ethnic divisions, conflicting religious ideologies and diametrically opposed political orientations, in a nascent democracy often finds it very attractive to deflect domestic worries by assuming a belligerent attitude, on the back of aroused nationalist sentiment, towards neighbours and by seeking victories abroad.
The point is not that America should stop spreading the gospel of democracies across the globe. It has definitely been seen that mature democracies hardly go to war with each other but it is dangerous to assume that democracies, whether nascent or mature, stable or unstable, will automatically avoid war. It is laudable to promote democracy but at the same time it is prudent to remember that democratizing states are extremely war-prone during the initial decade. It is also equally wrong to assume that all democratizing states will go to war or become nationalistic. However, it is important to keep in mind that both these outcomes, going to war or becoming nationalistic, are extremely likely in the case of transition democracies. There have been instances in the twentieth century when transition democracies have eschewed war, militarism and nationalism. Germany and Japan, in the post 1945 World War II history, are obvious examples but both these countries were occupied by the Allied Forces, who were themselves mature democracies. More importantly, these transition democracies received generous economic reconstruction package under the Marshall Plan. Apart from providing economic assistance, occupying forces also guaranteed the defence of these transition democracies by forming NATO, a military alliance, against the communist threat.
All those who profess blind faith in democracy’s restraining influence towards war would do well to read this chilling warning from Liddell Hart, a prominent British military historian and strategist, in his highly readable and brief book Why don’t we learn from history (1971 edition).
“The history of ancient Greece showed that, in a democracy, emotion dominates reason to a greater extent than in any other political system, thus giving freer rein to the passions which sweep a state into war and prevent it getting out- at any point short of the exhaustion and destruction of one or other of the opposing sides. Democracy is a system which puts a brake on preparation for war, aggressive or defensive, but it is not one that conduces to the limitation of warfare or the prospects of a good peace. No political system more easily becomes out of control when passions are aroused. These defects have been multiplied in modern democracies, since their great extension of size and their vast electorate produce a much larger volume of emotional pressure”.
