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That's not the theory of Democratic Peace. The theory of Democratic Peace is that democracies don't go to war with other democracies -- not that they can't be

That's not the theory of Democratic Peace. The theory of Democratic Peace is that democracies don't go to war with other democracies -- not that they can't be manipulated into war with autocracies.

ekianjo 13y ago
Well what's the point of the Democratic Peace theory anyway, since there are a great number of non-democratic countries all around the world, holding nuclear weapons or other extremely harmful weapons - Democracies going to war with Autocracies carry a lot of dangers as well.
- saraid216 13y ago
  The point of the theory is that, if those autocracies were converted to democracies, then the risk would disappear because they would no longer be interested in war. This effectively justifies being world police, which is only one of the reasons I disagree with the theory.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    > if those autocracies were converted to democracies That's the key flaw of that theory, you'd need War in the first place to change the power in place in such countries, and even in Iraq where this was actually done, the actual democracy you get out of it is dubious at best.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      To clarify, are we talking about what the theory is, or whether the theory is correct? Because I'm trying to explain the former, while you seem to be going at the latter. The theory exists. That it's flawed isn't something I dispute. I pretty much think that the theory of democratic peace, as well as the idea that democracies are magically economic engines of amazingness, are complete wishful thinking and hindsight justification for people who can't grasp why we'd do democracy for its own sake.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> The theory of Democratic Peace is that democracies don't go to war with other democracies The Democratic Peace conjecture doesn't really deserve to be called a "theory"; if you define democracies narrowly enough that you can get anywhere close to having a reasonable argument that there aren't plenty of examples of wars between democracies, then you've also defined them so narrowly that, given the total incidence of war and the number of democracies existing at any given point in history, you'd expect very close to zero total wars between democracies if two democracies were just as likely to go to war with each other as any other pair of nations. Its like using the historical record to argue that nations with manned space programs don't go to war with each other.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  > if you define democracies narrowly enough that you can get anywhere close to having a reasonable argument that there aren't plenty of examples of wars between democracies Exactly. The time period where democracies actually exist is incredibly narrow then, therefore this theory suffers from a sample bias. Besides, there are many examples of systems very close to actual democracies (i.e. Republics or Monarchical Republics with some form of representation) going to war against each other in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe, where actual democracies would probably have followed the same path.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Besides, there are many examples of systems very close to actual democracies (i.e. Republics or Monarchical Republics with some form of representation) going to war against each other in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe, where actual democracies would probably have followed the same path. Plus, once you have a notable number of things most people would call democracies in the 20th and early 21st centuries, you've got several wars between them, that necessitate narrowing the definition of democracy to salvage the Democratic Peace interpretation.

That's not the theory of Democratic Peace. The theory of Democratic Peace is that democracies don't go to war with other democracies -- not that they can't be manipulated into war with autocracies.

ekianjo 13y ago

Well what's the point of the Democratic Peace theory anyway, since there are a great number of non-democratic countries all around the world, holding nuclear weapons or other extremely harmful weapons - Democracies going to war with Autocracies carry a lot of dangers as well.

saraid216 13y ago
The point of the theory is that, if those autocracies were converted to democracies, then the risk would disappear because they would no longer be interested in war. This effectively justifies being world police, which is only one of the reasons I disagree with the theory.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  > if those autocracies were converted to democracies That's the key flaw of that theory, you'd need War in the first place to change the power in place in such countries, and even in Iraq where this was actually done, the actual democracy you get out of it is dubious at best.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    To clarify, are we talking about what the theory is, or whether the theory is correct? Because I'm trying to explain the former, while you seem to be going at the latter. The theory exists. That it's flawed isn't something I dispute. I pretty much think that the theory of democratic peace, as well as the idea that democracies are magically economic engines of amazingness, are complete wishful thinking and hindsight justification for people who can't grasp why we'd do democracy for its own sake.

dragonwriter 13y ago

> The theory of Democratic Peace is that democracies don't go to war with other democracies The Democratic Peace conjecture doesn't really deserve to be called a "theory"; if you define democracies narrowly enough that you can get anywhere close to having a reasonable argument that there aren't plenty of examples of wars between democracies, then you've also defined them so narrowly that, given the total incidence of war and the number of democracies existing at any given point in history, you'd expect very close to zero total wars between democracies if two democracies were just as likely to go to war with each other as any other pair of nations. Its like using the historical record to argue that nations with manned space programs don't go to war with each other.

ekianjo 13y ago
> if you define democracies narrowly enough that you can get anywhere close to having a reasonable argument that there aren't plenty of examples of wars between democracies Exactly. The time period where democracies actually exist is incredibly narrow then, therefore this theory suffers from a sample bias. Besides, there are many examples of systems very close to actual democracies (i.e. Republics or Monarchical Republics with some form of representation) going to war against each other in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe, where actual democracies would probably have followed the same path.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Besides, there are many examples of systems very close to actual democracies (i.e. Republics or Monarchical Republics with some form of representation) going to war against each other in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe, where actual democracies would probably have followed the same path. Plus, once you have a notable number of things most people would call democracies in the 20th and early 21st centuries, you've got several wars between them, that necessitate narrowing the definition of democracy to salvage the Democratic Peace interpretation.