To eradicate world poverty was one of the reasons we developed the world democracy campaign in the first place, because eradicating world poverty is one of the conditions for sustainable world peace. The other condition is creating global democratic institutions to give a voice to the now voiceless. So the topic of this year s Democracy Forum is perfectly timed for us. And the evidence shows that peace can only be sustainable in a democratic regime as war is costly and no woman likes to see her son or husband leave for war to possibly never come back. The greatest opposition to the Chechen war were ordinary Russian women clamoring for their sons.
Ordinary people have more opportunity in a democracy to put the brakes on war.
The more truly democratic a country is, the more successfully will citizens be able to oppose war. It does not always work but it works better than in a non-democracy. The second condition to prevent war, as France did successfully with Germany since World War II, is to anchor potential belligerents in a supra-national structure which eventually has enough moral and legal authority that war becomes unthinkable. Today, war between France and Germany is indeed unthinkable, an incredible achievement if one remembers the visceral hatred between these countries just a short time ago, and the 80 million dead of the two world wars. Wars and the preparations for war which absorb so many resources make a mockery of any poverty-reduction programme.