From: livesey@solntze.wpd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec
Subject: Re: War and democracies
Date: 9 Oct 1992 17:37:12 GMT
Organization: sgi
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: solntze.wpd.sgi.com

In article <1992Oct9.155034.8983@eua.ericsson.se>, etxjpll@eua.ericsson.se (Peter Lund) writes
|> 
|> A well functioning democracy, is a country where firstly all basic 
|> democratic demands are satisfied, e.g. freedom of thought, speech 
|> and meeting. Regular elections a.s.o. 
|> 
|> But "well functioning" includes much more. A resonable educated 
|> population, a large and totally free press with a large flow of 
|> information that reaches >95% of the population, a long democratic 
|> tradition, free people that can afford to use their freedom and 
|> tolerance in the society.
|> 
|> With this definition, I guess no country would be labeled "a well 
|> functioning democracy" before this century started, now in the 
|> third world or in east Europe.

But now you've hung all kinds of ancillary properties on the
side of Democracy.    It's no longer Democracy, period, but
a Democracy with, among other things "tolerance in the society".
It's no longer any period of history, but the twentieth century
only.   It's no longer just a voting population, but a well-
educated voting population.

Your original claim was that no-one could find you a war between
democracies.   You said " Wars between democratic nations are 
impossible!"

Now your claim is that no-one can find you a war in the twentieth
century concerning democracies which - both? - have a well-educated
population and a tradition of tolerance.

My problem with this is simple.    I believe we can all agree 
that dictatorships can behave in brutal and warlike ways.   I'd 
say that this is because the big decisions are made by one, or 
a small number of people, and these people have a tendency to 
be brutal and warlike people: that's how they got to be dictator.

What worries me is that a democracy is pretty much the expression
of its population's consensus.   And we've seen in history that
populations can develop imperialist, or racist, or aggressive
consensuses.     There were plenty of European nations that were
functioning democracies at home, and imperialist abroad.   The
US was a functioning democracy when it was still a slave-owning
society, and while it carried out a form of genocide against
American Indians.

There just doesn't seem to me to be any mechanism in democracy
itself to prevent this happening again.   Indeed, I believe
that many thoughtful people saw tinges of colonialism in the
Gulf War.    And we know that there were strong elements of
colonialism and racism in the Viet-Nam war.   And yet both the 
Gulf War and the Viet-Nam war had the explicit approval of 
democratically elected governments, and widespread support 
among the populations of the countries involved.

And I am not saying that either the Gulf War or the Viet
Nam War were purely racist and/or colonialist.    The issues
were too complex for that in both wars.   But it's precisely
in the case of complex issues that a democratic society
can fall into the trap of waging aggressive war.   Democracy
is a system for implementing opinion.   It does not, IMHO,
ensure that this opinion will be wise.

jon.