Democratic peace theory is one of the most influential theories in international relations. It is widely considered to have first been put forth in 1964, when an article by amateur sociologist Dean Babst entitled «Elective Governments – a Force for Peace» was published in Wisconsin Sociologist magazine. Relying on statistics, Babst asserted in his article that there were no wars between independent countries ruled by «elected governments» between 1789 and 1941. He pointed to the existence of a cause-and-effect relationship between the specific political system of democratic countries and the mutually beneficial peaceful relations that they maintained between each other.
The ideas presented by Babst were revisited by American international relations specialists Melvin Small and David Singer in 1976. Babst’s ideas were applied in a research program that was part of a project to systematize the data about wars through history.
Possessing, as they thought, a great amount of statistical information, Small and Singer criticized Babst’s ideas because they believed democratic countries had waged just as bloody wars as authoritarian countries, and just as frequently. Small and Singer explained the absence of military conflicts between democracies from 1789 to 1941 by the relatively rarity of democratic governments during that period, and of governments that even more rarely had common bounds. Most wars occurred between neighboring countries. Today RJ is talking to an old critic of democratic peace theory — even though it owes him its popularity – David Singer.
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It sounds idiomatic when people try to say that democracies have hardly ever gone to war against one another. Well, in a way that’s true. But remember that over the last two hundred years we haven’t seen a great number of democracies. Because they are so few, democracies have a low probability of going to war with one another.
Democracies – particularly advanced industrial democracies – have been involved in most of the brutal wars since WWII. As you know, my own country – the United States – appears to be a free, open and democratic society. But look how President Obama is persuading the people that the war in Afghanistan is a war of necessity. He tells the American people that in order to prevent terrorist attacks on North America, the Taliban must be defeated in Afghanistan. This is absolutely crazy. It is so easy to persuade people of the necessity of going to war and to give their support to it.
Another question is whether democracy is a more or less stable phenomenon of modernity. When the Soviet Union collapsed, many people in the West said that this demonstrated the stability of democracies, which were more responsible and more peace-loving. Francis Fukuyama wrote about «The End of History,» but now he is sorry about what he wrote. He was basically saying that history was over because the communists had been defeated. I think that when the Soviet Union collapsed, many people in the West, and especially in the United States, began to think that this demonstrated the moral and pragmatic superiority of their democracy. A syndrome that associated a more or less free market economic system with the democratic system emerged. But this is not historically correct.
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It is not an outlandish idea to try to set out common standards of democracy; it could in fact be a very good idea. Firstly, we should try to develop indicators, criteria and benchmarks of how democratic a society is, how free its citizens are, how the straight the elements in the country are, and how much access they have to clean water, education and full employment, for example.As a matter of fact, the United Nations has developed a program that has some very good indicators of what a healthy society should look like.
But you don’t see the leading industrial societies playing a very serious or energetic role in this. We – the Americans, the English, the French or the Italians – want more free societies that are more democratic and more egalitarian. Yet, when push comes to shove you don’t see these things happening. In the final years of the Bush Administration, the US was giving large amounts of money to African societies for public health initiatives. That was great, but it was such a small amount. An indicator does not consider the number of people in tropical Third-World countries who do not have mosquito netting, so people are falling ill with malaria and a number of other tropical diseases all the time. This is a crime, a scandal. I guess that I am saying that I am very, very skeptical – even cynical – when I hear all this talk.
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The last eight years of American foreign policy under the Bush Administration did a lot to promote and apply democracy all over the world. They were allegedly trying to help Third_World countries move towards democracy, but this was not true. They were interested in and sought the defeat of left-wing regimes. It was really a left-right issue, not one of democracy. In other words, it is possible to say that the Bush Administration was not really interested in or in favor of modern democratic regimes. They were interested in regimes that would keep the socialists and communists and even social democrats out of power, and they were looking for more right-wing regimes that were more agreeable to US foreign policy interests.
If you take the average Asian, Middle-Eastern, African or Latin American society, where there is not much wealth – this wealth is generally very badly distributed and very unequal. The American regime was able to use its economic power, its political power, and all kinds of strategies, tricks and games in most of these countries, so that they were generally able to strengthen right-wing regimes.
If you recall the years right after World War II when the Soviets and Americans were beginning to compete, both superpowers began to spend much effort and money, and use weapons and military force to install regimes that were more supportive of their cause. And so both the Russians and Americans caused tremendous damage in Third-World countries. They were basically trying to expand their spheres by extending their economic hegemony in the Third World. It was relatively easy, because these were weak societies with weak leadership and weak political systems. It did not cost a great deal for the Russians and the Americans to give away weapons that regimes in power wanted – it was a very obvious form of bribery.
When you look at the Third World today, you’ll see that most countries are not actually developing. They are becoming increasingly reliant on exporting natural resources – typically only one resource per country, such as petroleum or gas, minerals or diamonds, or water. And all of these countries have very poor, fragile and vulnerable economies. Therefore, I don’t think that that it is actually true to talk of an increasing number of democracies in today’s world. It is important to define what we call democracy. Countries may have elections, as have taken place in Afghanistan recently, but you certainly would not call that a democratic society.
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We do know that in most Muslim countries for example, even if they are seen as «democratic», a large proportion of the population in that society have either very limited rights or no rights at all. And with the issue of women’s rights in many Islamic countries, it is also very difficult: Women can be kept out of politics, kept out of business, even kept out on the street. And to look at the example of Malaysia – where things look better on the surface – while the economy has been in good health for the last twenty years and it looks like a truly happy and prosperous society to the visitor, this is in fact not the case. It is a very autocratic society, and due to the struggle between the Chinese and its enemies in this country it is a very dangerous place to be.
Let us also examine the example of Zimbabwe in Africa; you would hardly say it is democratic. We even find that South Africa, which is probably as close to a democratic society as there is in Africa, is not very democratic at all. There are a lot of people living in poverty, of no political class, who have very little access to wealth, education, or even to drinkable water. What I’m saying is that in the West, thanks to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, it seems that we are going back to the period when Robert McNamara was president of the World Bank. There has been a very successful propaganda campaign promoting the idea of flourishing democracies and free markets across the world. But we know that is not true. The consequence in today’s world is that wealth is diminishing and the wealth of economies is diminishing even further. So, I am not so sure. I am not a very enthusiastic believer in democracies.