Michio Kaku claims that no two democracy have ever gone to war with each other.
And in some bizarre way, I think he uses this as justification as why the world should become democratized.
Haha…
Wars in Classical Greece between democratic city-states, Punic Wars, the American Revolution, American-Indian Wars, French Revolutionary Wars, Quasi War, War of 1812, the War Between the States, Spanish-American War, Anglo-Boer War, First World War, Second World War (Western Allies vs Finland), Indo-Pakistani Wars, 20th Century American shennanigans in Iran/Guatemala/Chile/etc, Israel’s wars with Lebanon, the Yugoslav war with NATO, Russia’s war with Georgia a short while ago…
I’m sure I’m forgetting some.
If you believe that democracies never go to war, it means that you have your own idiosyncratic definition of “democracy” which doesn’t gel with objective and fair comparison with no nationalistic bias. It boils down to, “States that I like never go to war with each other.”
Obviously, India and Pakistan come to mind.
Michio Kaku is a smart physicist, but when it comes to politics and environmentalism he is as deluded as any state-indoctrinated fifth-grader.
The “democracies don’t go to war” thing is a correlation, not a causation. Highly capitalistic countries don’t go to war, highly capitalistic countries tend to become democracies too. So democracy is a symptom, not a cause.
Also, when democracies go to war they often just stop being democracies, validating the theory that democracies don’t go to war. Germany and Japan were democracies before ww2. If anything, the history of trying to bring about peace by implementing artificial democracies should show how horribly wrong that notion is.
@James: A few of those pairs only contain one democracy, which doesn’t count if the claim is that no two democracies go to war. Classical Greece wasn’t democratic in the way we mean today. Democracy is when a government can change without bloodshed, usually by election. The Greeks had some voting going on, but that couldn’t get rid of the government. Same with “democracy” in the Soviet Union.
“If you believe that democracies never go to war”
no, that democracies never go to war with each other. in other words a democracy vs another democracy.
The American revolution was not between two democracies.
I had a political science professor in college that made the same comment.
Can you get rid of the government in any Western democracy today? I don’t want to split hairs here. All full-capacity citizens in Athens or Syracuse had the same political rights under the law. That’s the best you can say about any democracy today - the fact that there are more full-capacity citizens relative to the rest of the population doesn’t seem terribly relevant - we are talking about a broad swathe of society; not just ten guys ‘voting’ in a room. In some ways, they were more democratic than countries today, because they didn’t delegate so much law-making power to tiny ‘representative’ senates, or world government mandarins overseas for that matter.
I didn’t mention the USSR… Wrt WW2, I only meant the war between Britain/USA etc against Finland, which wasn’t terribly violent, but still fits the definition of a legal and factual war - Britain bombed Finland, and performed acts of war at sea against Finnish shipping.
I’m willing to accept that it was between a bunch of democracies on the one hand, and broadly-democratic Britain on the other.
Only adult property holding males were allowed to vote in athens.
@Laotzu del Zinn
and only people over 17 are allowed to vote in America… What’s your point?
But werent the Orange Free State and South African Republic democracies when The U.K. went to war with them? I think so…
When encountering such a claim one must remember what Democracy means: in most cases, as George Orwell stated, it merely represents approval of the political system whereas facism deonted disapproval. When you understand this it’s obvious that two Democracies can never go to war with each other.
Strange how one could fit Albert Einstein in there too.
Which doesn’t matter. Democracy is a system where the population can get rid of the government without bloodshet. It doesn’t mean that everybody can vote.
Sure.
What about the American Civil War? If we only count more modern democracies it could be simply that they haven’t been around long enough for more serious conflcts to arise between them. Aside from that, Kaku is a crank.
The democratic distinction is hazy enough to allow for any interpretation.
Lets see. Greek democratic city states vs other Greek democratic city states, Rome vs Greece, the UK vs France (at least initially, depending on whether you consider French Republicanism and British Constitutional Monarchy to count), the USA vs Great Britain (war of 1812), WW1 (Germany actually had a somewhat democratic system at the time), Germany was democratic up until the Nazis took over (democratically, might I add), and I think Japan was, even while it was off empire building. Pakistan vs India, Argentina vs the UK, Mexico vs the USA (at least, while Mexico was democratically ruled), etc etc etc
He leaves out the biggie democracy vs democracy war in the history of the USA where 600,000 died and there were 1.2 million casualties all to keep one already formed democracy the Confederate States from breaking away from a more tyrannical democracy the Union.
Michio Kaku: mkaku@aol.com
from his website. He welcomes questions and comments.
Hans Hoppe has something to say about this:
Another point that could be made is one that Aristotle made. That was that there is basically a cycle of governments that become favored and emerge over time.