The Myth of Democratic Pacifism Academics and pundits routinely assert that democracies do not wage wars against other democracies. If only it were so. A no answer is now unassailable dogma in the halls of aca-deme. It is dogma too in the corridors of power, where it drives the Clinton Doctrine of peace and security through a crusade for democracy. The best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace, the president has said, is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere.
Democracies don t attack each other.
The idea, democratic pacifism, is not new. Enthusiasm grew in the 1980s, in part from some brilliant Kant-revival pieces by geopolitical theorist Michael Doyle, more from the worldwide outbreak of democracy. Criticism of democratic pacifism is not new either. In Federalist 6, Alexander Hamilton attacked the paradox of perpetual peace as wrong and dangerous wrong because it is naive about popular passions, dangerous because quack nostrums steal attention from real remedies. In a republic, Kant thought, a majority would refuse to bear the cost of aggressive war.