This Week's Evil Islam Thread

[Fragony]

Democracy is better at peace, democratic countries usually don't go to war with other democratic countries

@Hax, book is meant for the layman

[rory_20_uk]

Democracy is better at peace, democratic countries usually don't go to war with other democratic countries

Rather a broad brush. America has been in "kinetic situations" for years now, tirelesly helping other countries by "sending the Marines". Britain isn't much better on that score.

[Fragony]

Rather a broad brush. America has been in "kinetic situations" for years now, tirelesly helping other countries by "sending the Marines". Britain isn't much better on that score.

Nor any democratic country, we are no pacifists. But how likely is it that the Dutch and English go to war again, or Germany and France.

[Rhyfelwyr]

New Model Army: run by a dictator, but efficient

It was hardly run by a dictator.

Anyway, democracy is one one of many factors that determine how well a country can fight wars. Although you listed militaries there, the democratic success theories are more concerned with the war machine in general. Lake's 1992 studies on rent-seekign for example show democracies utilise their resources more effectively for war.

Rather a broad brush. America has been in "kinetic situations" for years now, tirelesly helping other countries by "sending the Marines". Britain isn't much better on that score.

If anything this supports the democratic peace idea, since the idea is not that democratic leaders are peace-loving idealists, but that public opinion constrains them, since the public tend to feel the costs of war. The fact that the US could only take covert actions in places like Nicaragua, Chile etc and not declare open war is due to the fact that it was a democracy.