Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "Democracies don't go to war easily because they concern themselves with matters like economic prosperity and casualties, matters of much smaller importance to tyrants."
No, democracies go to war less easily mostly because the people who live in democracies don't feel like fighting. What democracies are good at is translating the desires of the people into actions by the state. When the people want war, democracies fight.
The American people wanted a war with Saddam, now they're fighting. The Iraq invasion was entirely an "optional" war. But since the US population thought it was a great idea, it happened.
Your comment on economic prosperity is true only to the extent that democracies are economically prosperous. And even then, the example of our invasion of Iraq shows that Democracies are not disinclined towards war.
Democracies are in favor of war when they think that it will be quick and easy and lead to advantages. This is how the US got into Iraq three years ago. This is how the US got into Vietnam 50 years ago. And this is how Israel got into Lebanon just 4 weeks ago.
Now to have a war you must also have some sort of underlying hatred or fear. For example the US hated Saddam Hussein and was afraid of Communism in Vietnam. The lack of war between democracies is mostly caused by a lack of hatred. There is no great hatred between the US and Canada, for example, so there has been no war.
Through history, there have been few examples of democracies that hated one another. When there are examples, there was war, as the history of the US shows. This is the contribution of democracies to peace, that is, the absence of hatred rather than any less inclination to go to war. And the reason for the lower inclination is that in dictatorships, hatred can be very personal between leaders.
Along this line, I've been a bit worried by the trend I've seen in the US. Even though we're a democracy, we still keep grudges going for far longer than is reasonable. Our grudge with Iraq is an example, but also the ongoing grudge with Cuba. In both these cases, the US simply refused to make true peace. In our case, the hatred seems to be something that is kept alive in the bureaucratic classes.
The impact of prosperity on war is far greater. Countries that are prosperous are somewhat less inclined to fight because they don't seeing their pretty things get broken. When prosperous countries do decide to fight it is usually because they can't imagine that their enemy is strong enough to break their pretty things. Sometimes they are correct in this. For example, neither Saddam Hussein nor the Iraqi resistance has been capable of bombing the United States. Nor was Vietnam so capable.
But sometimes democratic countries get into wars that they fail to realize will result in widespread destruction in their homeland because of overconfidence. I doubt that many people in Germany would have voted for Hitler and German rearmament if they had realized that by the end of it, Berlin would be a smoking ruin and the country divided into four occupied substates. Israel's actions in Lebanon also appear to be an example.
Re: "But the point about Arab democracies is that they are much less likely to go to war than Arab tyrannies."
You have no evidence of this, only supposition.
Re: "War is a quick decision when only man needs to say 'yes' to it, and it tends to silence the opposition in a wonderful way."
Taken out of context, I could imagine you were describing how George Bush singlehandedly got the US into Iraq. Perhaps you should read once again Gilbert's famous conversation with Goering:
We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
snopes.com
But let's get back to the Iraq example. Before Bush began beating the drums of war, what percentage of the American people cared about Saddam or Iraq? The percentage is far, far smaller than the percentage of Jordanians who hate Israel. The main difference between the US and Jordan is that the American people had the additional impetus that they expected that the war would be quick and easy, as the Kuwaiti liberation had been.
Again, it is the fear of destruction and defeat that stops democracies that hate each other from going to war. As that fear is decreased, as the overconfidence rises, the probability of war increases. The difference between the enthusiasm for conflict in Israel 4 weeks ago and the long faces now is a great examples of this. This 4 week drop in enthusiasm has to be a historical rarity.
For example, when Europe went to war in the summer of 1914 they were still quite enthusiastic about it 4 weeks after the opening of hostilities. Perhaps that's because these were real countries going to war, rather than tiny little runt states. Overconfidence contributes to democracies starting wars, and it Israel suffers from one of the most amazing cases of overconfidence ever seen. One is reminded of the Jewish state's decision to take on Rome two millennia ago. Simply put, runt states should not convince themselves that they are big dogs and can do what the big dogs do. When you are a little dog, sometimes rolling over is better than fighting.
-- Carl |
