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From: "M.A. Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <Recipient list suppressed>
Subject: Does Democracy Promote Peace?
Date: Thursday, April 26, 2001 3:38 PM
~~for educational purposes only~~
[Title 17 U.S.C. section 107]
Does Democracy Promote Peace?
By James Ostrowski
Does democracy promote peace? We are told continually that
it does. Let's compare the rhetoric to the reality.
Not to be confused with a republic, a democracy is a system in
which, theoretically, what the majority says goes. The reality,
however, is more complex and much uglier. In a democracy,
various political elites struggle for control of the state apparatus
by appealing to the material interests of large voting blocks with
promises of legalized graft.
Thus, we may modify our definition of democracy to mean a
system in which our rulers are chosen by a majority of those
who bother to show up on election day, exclusive of those who
lack the minimal mental skills required to cast a lawful ballot.
In modern democracies, individuals allegedly retain certain
rights that cannot be overridden by the majority. Who defines
and enforces those rights? Officials chosen by the majority.
So much for individual rights in a democracy. Probably the
most salient feature of modern democracy is the bizarre notion
that whatever the majority says constitutes sublime moral
principle.
In truth, democracy is nothing more than the numerous bullying
the less numerous. It is an elaborate rationalization for the strong
in numbers to impose their will on the electorally weak by means
of centralized state coercion. What a formula for peace! If
democratic states can impose their will on their own minority
populations, why not impose their will on other countries, states,
and peoples, particularly if they are not democratic? Strange it
is, though, that pugnacious democrats always forget the principle
of majority rule when war comes. They have never sought the
prior consent of the majority of the inhabitants of the nations
they seek to conquer, subdue, and rule.
Modern democracies tend to extensively intervene in the free
market by means of high taxes, welfare, and subsidies in
order to buy the votes that keep the politicians in power. As
Ludwig von Mises demonstrated, each intervention into the
economy causes problems that lead to the demand for ever
further interventions. Government thereby creates its own
demand. Eventually, the economic problems become
intractable, leading to the inevitable temptation to create a
foreign policy distraction. Combine that with the fact that war,
while undeniably harming the economy, gives the appearance
of stimulating the economy, and we have a formula for why
democratic governments would have a motive for war. Any
similarities between this discussion and FDR's desperate
bid to get us into World War Part II is purely intentional.
Democracies also have the means to fight wars. Analysts of
war spend too much time thinking about why wars are fought
and far too little time contemplating the means of war. The
resources for war are acquired by conscription, taxation,
confiscation, and inflation. Without cannon and cannon fodder,
there are no wars. With their aura of legitimacy, democracies
are particularly adept at utilizing all these means. Since citizens
tend to identify with the democratic state, there is usually little
trouble conscripting troops and confiscating the economic
resources required for war.
True, democracies rarely fight each other. That's like saying
that seven-foot-tall men rarely fight each other. There just
haven't been that many democracies around in the last 150
years, and, furthermore, six of them are English-speaking
countries. What are they going to fight about-their accents?
Democracies do, however, like to fight non-democracies.
They did so in World War Parts I and II. Suppose they
gave a war and the democracies didn't show up.
But, you may say, the non-democracies started all these
wars. Really? The United States was looking for any excuse
to get into World War Part I-against Germany. Examination
of the international law quagmire that led to American
involvement in World War Part I leads me to conclude that
the United States had four options: declare war on Germany,
declare war on England, declare war on both, or mind its
own business. Democracies, however, do not seem to
mind their own business. What is clear is that the scope of
American involvement in that war far exceeded anything
justified by the alleged cause of that involvement: German
attacks on American shipping in the North Atlantic.
The United States has always seemed to get attacked
just when its leaders were plotting to drag the nation into
war by any means possible-Fort Sumter, Remember the
Maine, the Lusitania, etc. What a relief; we got attacked.
What about Japan and Pearl Harbor? It seems our
mind-our-own-business democracy wanted Japan out of
China. Our leaders wanted China in the hands of the mass
murderer Chiang or the megamurderer Mao. An oil embargo
was imposed on a country that had no oil. Thus, the United
States provoked Japan into starting a war. That does not
mean that Japan was justified, merely that it was, in its own
mind, provoked. No democratic provocation, no war.
Two of the most important wars in modern history were
fought in part for the express purpose of advancing democratic
principles. In the case of World War Part I, this is well known.
Woodrow Wilson called it the war "to make the world safe for
democracy." We have heard this refrain over and over again
as the rationalization for war: in Korea, Viet Nam, the Balkans,
Kuwait-oops, strike that, Kuwait was an Oriental despotism.
Lesser known is the role of the democratic idea in causing
the most destructive war ever fought in the Western Hemisphere.
Why did Lincoln order armies into peaceful old Virginia, which
had not been involved in the attack on Fort Sumter? Let him
speak for himself:
"[W]e divide upon [all our constitutional controversies] into
majorities and minorities. If a minority . . . will secede rather
than acquiesce [to the majority], they make a precedent
which, in turn, will divide and ruin them; for a minority of
their own will secede from them, whenever a majority
refuses to be controlled by such minority . . . the central idea of
secession, is the essence of anarchy."
First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861. (For further
discussion of this passage, see, J. Ostrowski, "Was the Union
Army's Invasion of the Confederate States a Lawful Act?" in
Secession, State & Liberty, David Gordon, ed., [New Brunswick,
NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998]).
Thus, a substantial motive for Lincoln's invasion of the South was
to preserve the principle of majority rule, that is, the ability of the
majority to impose its will on the minority. The War Between the
States revealed the true nature of democracy as bullying. It just
so happens that we usually put up with it, and the bullied minority
is scattered throughout the nation. In the War Between the States,
however, the bullied minority was clustered together and willing to
fight. Democracy, ultimately, is majority rule at gunpoint. Such a
philosophy is perfectly consistent with a tendency to fight wars.
Democracy's main contribution to war is to encourage minority
groups that feel exploited by the majority to attempt to secede.
The bullying majority-like any slave master-rarely lets its subjects
go in peace, and thus war breaks out. The provocateur is almost
always the majoritarian state, and that state's rationalization for
fighting is always the preservation of the majority principle. Lincoln
taught them well. In recent years, Lincolnian wars have raged in
Northern Ireland, the Middle East, East Timor, Chechnya, Georgia,
the Balkans, India, and elsewhere.
Perhaps the leading cause of war in the foreseeable future will
be the struggle of peoples who constitute a minority in their
countries to escape from oppressive democratic majority rule
by those animated by alien ethnic, cultural, religious, economic,
or philosophic values.
In the meantime, there are still opportunities for good, old-fashioned
wars caused by our bumbling, stumbling, holier-than-thou,
democratic meddling all over the planet. Let me get this straight.
The crisis over the incident in the South China Sea is really about
Taiwan. We are so committed to the Taiwanese people's right
of self-determination that we supported Chiang Kai-shek and
crew who, in the words of Joseph Stromberg, "imposed themselves
on the Taiwanese people-in a near-perfect example of a
conquest state." Chiang had been so bad at running
China-fourth-ranked mass murderer of the century-that he
managed to make even Mao look good! Are you getting the
feeling that the United States has never really had a clue about
China?
Forget apologizing for what happened in the sky the other
week, or for Bush's recent remarks. Let's apologize for one
hundred years of meddling in China, and promise that in the
future the Chinese will not have to put up with any activity off
their shores that we wouldn't tolerate off of ours.
But no, the forces of democratic meddling, the neoconservatives,
have pushed for escalation of the conflict. They complain that a
"superpower" should not be exposed to "public international
humiliation." Remember what happened the last time the empire
was being subjected to an extended public humiliation. After it
was beginning to look like the federal government was being
made a fool of by a "bunch of religious nuts with guns," they
rolled in a tank, and eighty-one people were killed. Gentlemen,
you are not dealing with David Koresh here.
Does democracy-institutionalized coercion-promote peace? No.
The only thing that promotes peace is peace, which is just
another name for individual liberty.
APPENDIX
AMERICA'S WARS TO MAKE THE WORLD SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY
(By no means an exhaustive list.)
a.. 1861-? War Between the States: First modern total war against
civilians.
b.. ? - 1898 Indian Wars: We needed Indian land for polling places.
c.. 1893 Invasion of Hawaii: Don't knock it. Without this war, we would
have been left out of WWII.
d.. 1898 American-Spanish War: remember the main point was
imperialism.
e.. 1899-1902 American-Philippine War: Hey, didn't we win the
Philippines in the American-Spanish War?
f.. 1917-1918 World War Part I: Made the world safe for Hitler.
g.. 1941-1945 World War Part II: Made the world safe for communism.
h.. 1950-? Korea: No declaration of war; no declaration of
peace.
i.. 1964-1975 Viet Nam: Made southeast Asia safe for genocide.
j.. 1982 Lebanon: Let's lose one for the Gipper.
k.. 1983 Invasion of Grenada: Tiny island invasion boosted national
morale.
l.. 1989 Invasion of Panama: Tough love for an ex-CIA guy turned
drug dealer.
m.. 1990-? Gulf War. We needed petroleum to get the voters to the polls.
n.. 1999 Kosovo: Made it safe for the KLA to attack Macedonia.
o.. Coming Soon: 2002 China/Taiwan: Made Taiwan safe for the
China haters.
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