Democracy and War

Breukelen, Netherlands: Memorial to those who died
for peace, freedom and democracy

Democracies don’t fight with each other. It’s a thesis that politicians in democratic countries often put forward. It’s one reason for them to stimulate the development of democracies in the world. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to find exceptions to this rule, for instance:
- the Sicilian Expedition: Athens vs. Sicily (415-413 BC).
- the War of 1812: USA vs. Britain.
- the US Civil War (1861-1865).
- the Fashoda Crisis: Britain vs. France (1898).
- Ecuador vs. Peru, a long-lasting conflict that several times led to war and violent incidents in the 20th century.
- the Cod Wars, more or less violent incidents between the UK and Iceland about fishing rights.
- the Spanish-American War (1898).
- the Kargil War: India vs. Pakistan (1999).
There have been more such wars and incidents, but it is striking that during the last hundred years military conflicts between democracies have become exceptional. Moreover, if they took place, in most cases there are good reasons to maintain that they are not contrary to the thesis (more about this below). Therefore, it is generally accepted that the thesis is true, especially formulated this way: Mature democracies do not fight each other. This is seen “as close as an empirical law” in political science. (source, p. 79) But then the political conclusion of this thesis simply follows: Do everything you can to promote the development of democracies, if you want peace.
I’ll pass over why democracies don’t wage war against other democracies (see Mintz and Geva, 1993). However, though I think that we absolutely must promote democracy (and not only because it is a way to prevent war), it’s not simply so that the more democracies there are, the less war there is. “Mature” democracies avoid war against each other, indeed, but wars are not only fought either between democracies themselves or between authoritarian states themselves, but also between democracies and authoritarian states against each other. Democratic states do wage war, but usually only against authoritarian states, although they still tend to be less warlike than authoritarian states. However, not without reason I talked about “mature” democracies, for the thesis doesn’t apply to democratic states in general. As Manfield and Snyder have shown in their article “Democratization and War”, young democracies that are in the process of becoming full democracies tend to be more bellicose than full or “mature” democracies. Young immature democracies often still have authoritarian traits and nationalism is often an important element in the political debate in these countries. Semi-authoritarian leadership usually represents more the interests of the economic and political elite than the interests of the people as a whole. Nationalism (which often just was a reason that such states became democratic; cf Eastern Europe) can also make that a country opposes to other countries in case of a conflict, instead of looking for ways to settle the conflict, especially when such countries are led by semi-authoritarian leaders. Then there is always the chance of a fallback on the road to democracy. For such reasons, young democracies can be more prone to wage war than mature democracies. The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is a case in point. The Serbia-Croatia conflict is another example. Here we can also mention the Kargil War and the later wars or violent conflicts between Ecuador and Peru. Young democracies are often not able to solve and absorb interior and exterior conflicts and tend to choose violent nationalist solutions. Or as Manfield and Snyder say (p.89): “In principle, mature democratic institutions can integrate even the widest spectrum of interests through competition for the favor of the average voter. But where political parties and representative institutions are still in their infancy, the diversity of interests may make political coalitions difficult to maintain. Often the solution is a belligerent nationalist coalition.” Then, an emergent democracy can even develop into a belligerent dictatorship, as we see in Russia today.
Nevertheless, it often happens that young democracies take the road to mature democracy without falling back into belligerent nationalism. After the Second World War, Germany and Japan smoothly developed into full democracies, “due to occupation by liberal democracies and the favorable international setting provided by the Marshall Plan, the Bretton Woods economic system, and the democratic military alliance against the Soviet threat”, so Manfield and Snyder (p.95). In recent years, the Latin American countries have democratized without nationalism and war. (ibid.) Therefore, there is no reason to be afraid of democratizing authoritarian states, thinking that it will increase the risk of war. As Manfield and Snyder conclude their article (p. 97): “In the long run, the enlargement of the zone of stable democracy will probably enhance prospects for peace. In the short run, much work remains to be done to minimize the dangers of the turbulent transition.”