|
As others have pointed out, the statement that
"democracies" are less likely to start wars than "authoritarian
systems" may not tell us much about the real world. First of all, one tends
to define "democracy" according to one's political biases. Is there
less democracy in Castro's Cuba than in Peru today -- for the average person?
And if the U.S. government installs a military regime in Indonesia in the 1960's
that kills perhaps a million and suppresses all freedom, do we say that the U.S.
government was practicing democracy because U.S. citizens were allowed to vote
in 1968?
And finally, there is the cart and the horse. On the
eve of war, and even during the years that lead up to war, there are often
crises that cause governments to drop their "democratic" facade. In
other words, the forces that lead up to war could be what provokes what
some call authoritarianism in the first place.
So the whole thesis has problems of ethnocentrism,
implied assumptions over what types of freedoms are more important than others,
and probably at least some mixing up of cause and effect.
Alan Spector
|