Why Is Nobody Willing to Kill Over the Language of Administration in Strassburg?

The highly-intelligent Daniel Nexon restates the "realist" position in foreign affairs, and brings to mind all the reasons that I think it is profoundly misguided:

The Duck of Minerva: Rising Powers, War and the Economists: Given that war is always costly (in terms of revenue, resources, lost consumer production, damage, death, etc.) two rational actors always ought to find some negotiated settlement preferable to going to war. Of course, the presence of an indivisible issue, incorrect information about a rival's objectives, or the inability of one (or both) sides to make a credible commitment to upholding the settlement all may lead rational states to opt for war.

Moreover, we often forget just how close Germany came to winning World War I. The Schlieffen Plan almost worked. Germany would probably have won the war - and, ironically, the next few decades would almost certainly have been much better for humankind - if the United States had not intervened on the side of the Entente. I am not suggesting the war would have been "worth it" in economic terms... but that's the whole problem with Angell's and Brad's analysis: wars are almost never worth the costs, and yet states keep on fighting them.

It seems to me that Daniel's final claim--that "wars are almost never worth the costs" they impose on both sides--is simply false before 1850 or so. To the decision makers and to those who choose them, wars before 1850 or so are not negative-sum but positive-sum contests:

• Consider the War of the Austrian succession. The expected value to Friedrich from attacking was positive: he might well gain a province, and what else was he to do with the army his father had built? And the expected value to Maria Theresa from resisting to the utmost was positive: to compromise with Prussia by revising the Pragmatic Sanction would break the dam holding back a host of other territorial demands on the Habsburg Empire.
• Consider Henry V's reopening of the Hundred Years' War, which Shakespeare traces to advice given by his father Henry IV to "busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels." The Lancastrian dynasty is illegitimate and insecure: getting the young hotbloods who would otherwise be recruitment fodder for revolts out of the kingdom was a big plus. Indeed, had the Lancastrians only made the Yorkists a generation later their viceroys for France...
• Consider the Wars of the Counter-Reformation, where death--on either side--guarantees a martyr's crown and a special high place in Heaven.
• Consider the Wars of the French Revolution, where the attitude of the Convention was that it was glorious for Frenchmen to die for Liberty, and the attitude of Emperors, Kings, and Czars was that it was honorable to die in the punishing of the Godless French regicides.

Before 1850, most leaders simply did not care about the death and destruction that make modern democratic states regard wars as negative-sum contests, or do not care enough for those considerations to outweigh others--different beliefs about the will of God, domestic political benefits from war, gaining a reputation as a tough guy in foreign affairs more broadly, or regarding battle as an honorable human enterprise and a short but glorious life as better than a long one--that make wars positive-sum contests.

Since 1850 things have changed. The death-and-destruction costs of war--even non-nuclear war--have multiplied beyond previous imagining. Those who choose leaders are now a broad set of voters rather than a narrow coterie of aristocrats. We--at least we who live in democracies--ought to have outgrown war outside of the limited cases of (i) Osama bin Laden and his ilk, and (ii) missions of mercy to overthrow tyrants.

Have we? Well, quite possibly.

It has been a hundred and ninety years since Britain and the United States fought a war--in spite of sharp conflicts of geopolitical interest and the usual "indivisible issue[s], incorrect information... inability... to make a credible commitment." It has also been a hundred and ninety years since Briton fought Frenchman (save for certain unpleasantnesses involving elements of the French fleet after the French surrender of 1940)--if you'd told the Duke of Wellington on the evening of June 18, 1815 that it was the beginning of more than 190 years of Franco-British peace, he would have choked on his soup. It has been eighty-five years ago since a U.S. president decided to send armed force across the Rio Grande to "teach the Mexicans... to elect good men." It has now been sixty years since an army crossed the Rhine bearing fire and sword. How long do you have to go back to find a previous period of sixty years without a watch on the Rhine? I think you have to go back to the second century BC, before the Cimbri and the Teutones crossed the Rhine to challenge the armies of the Consul Gaius Marius for control of the Rhone Valley.

Before I read any more "realists" writing about a Chinese-American cold (or hot) war in Asia, I want them to come up with an explanation of why the War of 1812 was the last Anglo-American war. Why not 54'40" or fight? The claim that "wars are almost never worth the costs, and yet states keep on fighting them" doesn't seem to apply to relationships between some states since 1850 or so.

The "realist" school has absolutely no clue as to why there has been no Franco-British or Anglo-American war in 190 years, no Mexican-American war in 85, and no Franco-German war in 60. The language of administration in Strasbourg is simply not something that people are willing to kill or die for these days. Which kinds of states study war (against each other at least) no more? And why not? Those are, I think, the most interesting questions in the academic study of international affairs.

Comments

[Jon Livesey]

" Which kinds of states study war (against each other at least) no more?"

My answer would be: states which value the interests they have in common higher than those on which they conflict.

The US and UK since 1812 have had interests that conflicted, but the interests they had in common included a peaceful border with Canada, the eradication of the slave trade, the protection from European adventurism the Royal Navy afforded the US, and the continued access to North American resources that a good relationship with the US guaranteed to Britain. To put it another way, both US and UK were freer to pursue expansionism in other directions when they freed themseles from armed conflict with one another.

It would be smart for the US to see if it can establish the same sort of relationship, based on mutual benefit, with China. The US and UK in 1813 didn't have to love one another, or admire each other's political system. They just had to recognize that each of them had more to lose than to gain from hostility. A sensible relationship with China today could lead to the sort of convergence that the US and UK have experienced since 1812, and both sides might learn much in the process.

Relations with the Islamic world, on the other hand, will be much harder to settle, because the two societies are a couple of centuries apart. It's very hard to appeal to material self-interest in a society where some parents express pride when their sons and daughters die in suicide bombings, and when belief structures seem to have more in common with seventeenth century Europe than with the twenty first century.

[anne]

Brad DeLong:

The "realist" school has absolutely no clue as to why there has been no Franco-British or Anglo-American war in 190 years, no Mexican-American war in 85, and no Franco-German war in 60. The language of administration in Strasbourg is simply not something that people are willing to kill or die for these days. Which kinds of states study war (against each other at least) no more? And why not?

Think of the Einstein-Freud exchanges of letters on prospects for broad peace, and think of the hope in this passage which is yet too modest for the countries that might be added. We must think of this matter often.

[anne]

Jon Livesey

Fine comment indeed :)

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5487&u=4|25|...

Male Baltimore Oriole Feeding Chick
New York City-Central Park.

We can think peaceful thoughts :)

[grytpype]

" Which kinds of states study war (against each other at least) no more?"

One answer is that democracies don't wage aggressive war, but that is no longer true of course after the invasion of Iraq by the United States.

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=4529&u=182|144|...

Adult Baltimore Oriole Looks on as Chick Takes First Flight
New York City--Central Park, North Woods.

[anne]

However we were led, I wonder, did we respond in going to war out of fear? I have often wondered this.

[Andrew Cory]

Prof. DeLong,
I just sat down to procrastinate over write an essay on Kenneth Waltz’s theories. Waltz seems to have decided that between Russian defeat by Japan during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904 and Russia’s 1917 defeat by Germany in the First World War, not to mention the tanking of the Soviet GDP, etc, that Russia was somehow a great power between 1875 and 1935...

Jon Livesey,
Sorry to nitpick, but the Anglo-American War of 1812 lasted until 1814, with the final battle being fought on 8 January 1815...

[anne]

Andrew Cory

Russia was a great power from 1875 to 1935 in that from Napoleon on, from Ivan, much before, Russia would have swallowed all who sought to subdue her internally. Tolstoy understood.

[WH]

There was plenty of tension in the 19th century between Britain and the US even after the war of 1812 and there are certainly times it could have boiled over into more fighting. At least until the Civil war period, I think its possible that more fighting could have broken out.

But Britain chose to focus its imperial ambitions elsewhere on the whole (China, India, Africa, Central Asia). 1776 and 1812 had both showed Britain that it was not easy to conquer America on land. As far as Latin American went, both had a joint interest in throwing out Spain, and later, ensuring that other European powers did not replace Spain [Britain's trade with Latin America was very lucrative ]. Add to the fact that the USA provided a bit of a safety valve for English and Irish poor. The USA did not challenge the Britain anywhere outside of the Americas and there was no threat to Britain proper from the USA either, so there were even less grounds for figthing.

After the Civil war, the US's rapid industrialization increased commercial links with Britain, and made war even less likely.

Two more things to note: the absence of war or serous tension between countries over a period of time might make future war even less likely as old grudges or dislikes die out. So once you have an extended period of peace, you may see more peace (ditto for war).

Also, at least till WW-1, many wars were fought by European powers (and Japan) for colonies that did bring wealth to the colonial power. These days, maintaining colonies is far harder and more expensive. The same Britain that once ruled half the world can barely maintain troops in half a dozen small areas (Falklands, Ireland, part of Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo). That reduces the incentive for colonial style wars greatly.

[John Emerson]

In most of the cases listed, wasn't "other enemies" the answer?

After 1812 the US was busy expanding West, and a deal was cut on "54-40" in 1844. (Perhaps an example of what Brad was talking about, but what else was Britain doing then?)

After 1815 France was made powerless for awhile, and then Britain balanced Germany against France.

"No Franco-German war in 60 [years]." Mm, Soviet threat?

"No Mexican-American war in 85 [years]". US had its hands full? Mexico was already dominated? Mexicans felt the time was not ripe to invade Texas?

"The US and UK since 1812 have had interests that conflicted, but the interests they had in common included ... the eradication of the slave trade..." Henry Adams was in the US embassy to Britain during the Civil War, and he wondered why Gladstone's policy tended toward the Confederacy despite the British anti-slavery convictions.

It made a lifelong cynic out of Adams, and he played his role in instigating th fake Spanish-American War, which might have served as a model for a certain other war I could name.

[Lee A. Arnold]

The powers-formerly-known-as-Western all stopped fighting because the technological powers of modernity have wowed everyone with plenitude, as well as the communication thereof, and the broadening effects of scientific education.. For precisely the same reason it seems unlikely that China will ever go to war, over any object other than Taiwan--but of course it will be far better pleased to win back that island through sheer peaceful cleverness.

It seems more useful to take this as the general rule about states, and then examine an aberration like Nazi Germany for its specific causations.

As for the new condition of war, we are left without guidance by the definition of "rational," unless one includes committing suicide, which may make the designation meaningless, unless you are prepared to take cost/benefit into metaphysic realms. We are now in a the period when our military is reckoning with the thesis of Martin van Creveld, and others, that war has changed; and moreover that this has catapulted us into a new and unknown epoch in history. A cross-border enemy with no standing army, a transcendent ideology, and possible access to weapons that allow small groups to wield extraordinary destruction, has become ordinary.

Respectfully, Brad, your last question might be refined. Of course states still study war, and no doubt against each other, if only to help avoid it. But even so, the answers as to why the West is in comity, may only go part of the way toward achieving a peaceful globe.

[jim]

It's worth pointing out that a couple of people managed to fight short wars which were minimally disruptive or costly, ending the war when their political objective had been achieved, even though their side was winning: Otto von Bismarck in 1866 and George H. W. Bush in 1991.

[Dale]

Totally aside from calculations of material gain or loss there is a growing segment of the human population suject to a post conventional moral outlook. The state and nationalism have, to a certain extent, lost the aura of the sacred. More and more of our background assumptions are aflow and subject to reasonable criticism.

[Bruce Wilder]

It is really important that humans start to think of themselves as maturing beyond war. Excellent thought.

As for Nexon, the counterfactual remark, "Germany would probably have won the war - and, ironically, the next few decades would almost certainly have been much better for humankind" tells us a great deal about his general outlook. It is typical of a certain right-wing fantasy, which attributes the rise of the Nazi's in Germany to the failure of Versailles (which in this odd view is attributed not to the "realist" French, who got the treaty they wanted, but to the idealist Americans and Brits, who didn't). Gone in this fantasy worldview is any trace of the reactionary, anti-rational (and yes, antisemitic) authoritarianism of the German Empire, which is the true root of German fascism.

European warfare since the Peace of Westphalia was a mix of relatively small-scale conflicts fought mainly with semi-professional armies and navies, which fit the idea of "rational" states contending among themselves, and other, sometimes fiercer conflicts, whose subtext was not contention among States, but, rather, revolution: the long, slow process by which the feudal order was overthrown across Europe. The Dutch Revolt, the English Civil War, the French Revolution, the wars and insurrections of 1830 and 1848, the wars of Italian unification, and, finally, World War I, had their common origin in the resistance of a reactionary old order to modernization and the overthrow of feudal institutions, which had concentrated political and economic power in the hands of an hereditary, landed aristocracy. The American Revolution and the American Civil War belong, in important respects, to this same context.

That the immediate danger of war(s) is concentrated in and around the Islamic world ought to be interesting and important, and not something, which has to reduce us to gibbering nonsensically about the Clash of Civilizations. It ought to get us to thinking more about modernization and its discontents and consequences.

The success of the Whigs and their successors in 1689, 1707, 1832, 1867, 1911 can give us some hope that civil war is not the only way an old order can pass away.

[Bruce Wilder]

It is really important that humans start to think of themselves as maturing beyond war. Excellent thought.

As for Nexon, the counterfactual remark, "Germany would probably have won the war - and, ironically, the next few decades would almost certainly have been much better for humankind" tells us a great deal about his general outlook. It is typical of a certain right-wing fantasy, which attributes the rise of the Nazi's in Germany to the failure of Versailles (which in this odd view is attributed not to the "realist" French, who got the treaty they wanted, but to the idealist Americans and Brits, who didn't). Gone in this fantasy worldview is any trace of the reactionary, anti-rational (and yes, antisemitic) authoritarianism of the German Empire, which is the true root of German fascism.

European warfare since the Peace of Westphalia was a mix of relatively small-scale conflicts fought mainly with semi-professional armies and navies, which fit the idea of "rational" states contending among themselves, and other, sometimes fiercer conflicts, whose subtext was not contention among States, but, rather, revolution: the long, slow process by which the feudal order was overthrown across Europe. The Dutch Revolt, the English Civil War, the French Revolution, the wars and insurrections of 1830 and 1848, the wars of Italian unification, and, finally, World War I, had their common origin in the resistance of a reactionary old order to modernization and the overthrow of feudal institutions, which had concentrated political and economic power in the hands of an hereditary, landed aristocracy. The American Revolution and the American Civil War belong, in important respects, to this same context.

That the immediate danger of war(s) is concentrated in and around the Islamic world ought to be interesting and important, and not something, which has to reduce us to gibbering nonsensically about the Clash of Civilizations. It ought to get us to thinking more about modernization and its discontents and consequences.

The success of the Whigs and their successors in 1689, 1707, 1832, 1867, 1911 can give us some hope that civil war is not the only way an old order can pass away.

[Jack]

Professor Delong appears to be reasoning towards a recent and hotly debated thesis in international relations called "The Democratic Peace" thesis. Through statistical analysis some scholars have concluded that the practical absense of war between democracies in the modern era indicates strongly that some thing or things within the political structure of such states makes their relations with one another always that of peaceful, if not wise, diplomacy.
Of course, such an analysis based on statistical correlation cries out for causal explanations. Kant, and John Rawls following him, claimed that since democracies are politically liberal (as a historical contingency if not a definitional necessity) they are not compelled to fight one another over "comprehensive doctrines," as in religious wars. Democratic leaders also must justify a decision to go to war to the populace--something prohibitively difficult considering that same populace will shoulder most of the burden of actually fighting. Finally, economic liberalism (again perhaps only contingently tied to political democracies) allows states to curb desires for territorial aggradizement, a common cause of warfare, by providing an alternative method for obtaining the materials they need or want: trade. All of this would of course alleviate the stress of the anarchic stucture of international relations that realists use to derive so many of their conclusions; a powerful weapon in the arsenal of those who would oppose realism theoretically and practically, I think.

[John Emerson]

It seems more useful to take this as the general rule about states, and then examine an aberration like Nazi Germany for its specific causations.

I hope that this is right, but it seems like wishful thinking to me.

I've heard tons of anti-war arguments, pacifist and otherwise, and if I really believed them I would be reluctant to believe that any of the wars I know about had ever taken place at all. But the wars did take place. WWI, WWII, Bosnia, Iraq I, Iraq II.

I'm starting to feel like Tacitus, for Christ's sake.

[andres]

The Democratic Peace thesis assumes that democratic government is a given--either nations are democratic or they are not, with the origins of the political system being exogenous. This is a highly dangerous assumption to make.

Unless they institute a truly ironclad Social Democracy, all democratic nations over the course of time become more and more economically stratified, and this stratification not only leads to drastically increased corruption, it also leads to the undermining of the very social foundations needed to maintain democracy. Rome in 400 B.C. was a reasonable approximation to an ancient democracy (except for slavery of course), but by the time of Pompey and Caesar 300 years later a massive degree of corruption and senatorial oligarchy led to both wars of aggression (Gaul, Pontus) and civil wars.

To take another example, Germany in 1914 was a constitutional monarchy, and even had a substantially progressive (in theory) opposition party in the Social Democrats. But the Reichstag almost unanimously voted to support the German war effort in August, and the German population threw their whole weight behind the war effort. The only way to explain this unanimity is the huge degree of influence that the German industrial and Junker oligarchy had over the print media and above all, academia and the educational system--a _balanced_ study of history and the social sciences was not on the curriculum for any but the most advanced graduate students. Neither is it in the U.S. educational curriculum today. It is in this way that Gramscian class hegemony is perpetuated.

Brad's assertions about the lack of conflict between European countries is true because European countries are much less economically stratified than the U.S.today or Wilhelmine Germany, and because they still retain traumatic memories of their attempted suicide of 1914-1945. The same _cannot_ be said of the U.S. today. It could be that the Iraq quagmire will prevent any new war in the next few years, but in a couple of decades I predict that some new self-serving clique will control the executive and legislative branches, and will not hesitate to put american servicemen and foreign civilians at risk to serve their own geostrategic ends.

Thus does the Democratic Peace thesis come apart. Far better, I think, to start replacing it with a Socialist Democratic Peace thesis (socialist as in Scandinavia, Netherlands etc, _not_ Communist China or USSR).

[andres]

"We--at least we who live in democracies--ought to have outgrown war outside of the limited cases of (i) Osama bin Laden and his ilk, and (ii) missions of mercy to overthrow tyrants."

Brad, I question even those. The best way to fight Osama bin Laden and his ilk is to take away their potential young recruits. Go on manhunts, yes, but to make war on entire nations with anti-terrorism as a pretext is pushing the envelope too far, as our troops in Iraq are finding out.

And you are on _very_ poisonous ground with the second assertion. Should the U.S. have launched unprovoked attacks against Mao's China or Stalin's USSR? Even without nuclear weapons, I don't think it's the right approach. Bad as it sounds, I think in their hearts most of Iraq's people would rather that the U.S. not have invaded. They would still be living under Saddam Hussein, but anywhere between 50,000 - 100,000 Iraqui soldiers and innocent civilians would still be alive.

Try the following: "We--at least we who live in democracies--ought to have outgrown war outside of the limited cases of (i) self-defense against foreign invasion or small groups of terrorists (ii) to stop foreign military aggression or genocide in progress." That I think is something that most of us can live with.

["As You Know" Bob]

grytpype notes above:
"One answer is that democracies don't wage aggressive war, but that is no longer true of course after the invasion of Iraq by the United States."

Think it through: It still may very well still be true, as your counterexample does not stand up to scrutiny.
The government of the United States that attacked Iraq was not democratically elected. Therefore, your example does not refute the notion that democracies don't wage aggressive war.

[Jon Kay]

Andres: re need of Social Democracy for peace: how about some numbers. Especially since your counterexamples aren't stable democracies, with free and fair elections determining the head of government. Rome had freeish elections, later, but had a notoriously buggy and unstable constitution. And when was Rome peaceful?

[Alex]

One forgets, but there were significant Anglo-American political crises as late as the 1890s (Venezuelan border), in which there was a real nationalist reaction against the UK. The Canadian border, Caribbean and naval problems were n't sewn up until the Hay-Pauncefot Agreement of 1901. But the point is the habit of mind to solve problems through compromise, or to put it another way, a basic assumption of being members of a society.

It strikes me that the "neofunctional spillover" that was meant to lead Europe to a federal state has functioned as well outside the EU as inside it. One of the Crooked Timber mob suggested the other day that the EU should be renamed the DU - Democratic Union - to get round the "Turkey is only 5% European" meme.

[P.M.Lawrence]

In point of fact, throughout the nineteenth century the British had an interest in suppressing US flowering, and between 1815 and the 1830s actually had the opportunity to do something effective about it. It's just that the British weren't working to any such grand design and were misled by those short term interests that earlier commenters have referred to. The British as a whole would have been far better off taking such steps then, and arguably the world as a whole would have been (since the US strength contributed in 1918 would have been on tap from 1914 or so, bot as natural resources and in terms of industrial base which would have been in Britain instead). That is not to suggest that it would have assisted higher values, but

A Hudson's Bay Company represntative gace humanitarian aid to US settlers in the Oergon Territory, enabling them to become viable. Compare and contrast this with Indians helping colonists in Massachusetts. From a realpolitik point of view - not an ethical one - these were definitely bad moves.

[P.M.Lawrence]

Oh, the realistic military options Britain had available against the young USA did not include invasion and occupation, but rather incursions and sort of ringbarking. Strategically, the right sort of stalemate would have been good enough. Think of how the Mormons and Boers were unable to establish themselves in good locations in the face of these techniques.

[Dan Nexon]

Although it warms my heart to be called "highly intelligent" by Brad DeLong, this is also probably the first time in my life I've been accused of being an unadulterated realist *and* of holding right-wing fantasies (I suggest Bruce read a bit more of the Duck of Minerva before he jumps to conclusions about my fantasy life).

I'll probably write a followup post tonight - after I've been sufficiently gorged on baseball and what they think passes for food at RFK - but a few quick comments are in order:

1) If Brad is mostly pointing out that cultural factors - such as standard practices of dynastic politics, many of which tended to generate "indivisible" issues - make wars *appear* rational, I have no disagreement. There is a real risk here, though, of using revealed preferences to construct a rationalist account of war. Fearon's point (which is actually a critique of structural-realist explanations for war) is that, given the parameters I discuss in my post, there should always be a range of negotiated outcomes that are more favorable than warfare. In principle, a dynastic ruler not caring about the fate of his or her average subject shouldn't change that.

2) Bruce is right that German fascism had it roots in 19th-century (and older) German cultural practices (consider Mosse's fabulous The Nationalization of the Masses, among other works). He's also correct that there was anti-semitism in Wilhelmian Germany. But was that anti-semitism any less prevalent or, looking prospectively from 1914, more dangerous than that in France or Russia? No. Don't fall pray to the kind of post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy that someone like Daniel Goldhagen does.

Furthermore, I can't imagine that Bruce is suggesting that absent Germany's defeat, the collapse of the Second Reich, and the Treaty of Versailles the Nazi party would have come to power in Germany. Wilhelmian Germany was a transitional democracy; in retrospect, its future looked to be brighter than what we got.

[Dan Nexon]

Although it warms my heart to be called "highly intelligent" by Brad DeLong, this is also probably the first time in my life I've been accused of being an unadulterated realist *and* of holding right-wing fantasies (I suggest Bruce read a bit more of the Duck of Minerva before he jumps to conclusions about my fantasy life).

I'll probably write a followup post tonight - after I've been sufficiently gorged on baseball and what they think passes for food at RFK - but a few quick comments are in order:

1) If Brad is mostly pointing out that cultural factors - such as standard practices of dynastic politics, many of which tended to generate "indivisible" issues - make wars *appear* rational, I have no disagreement. There is a real risk here, though, of using revealed preferences to construct a rationalist account of war. Fearon's point (which is actually a critique of structural-realist explanations for war) is that, given the parameters I discuss in my post, there should always be a range of negotiated outcomes that are more favorable than warfare. In principle, a dynastic ruler not caring about the fate of his or her average subject shouldn't change that.

2) Bruce is right that German fascism had it roots in 19th-century (and older) German cultural practices (consider Mosse's fabulous The Nationalization of the Masses, among other works). He's also correct that there was anti-semitism in Wilhelmian Germany. But was that anti-semitism any less prevalent or, looking prospectively from 1914, more dangerous than that in France or Russia? No. Don't fall pray to the kind of post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy that someone like Daniel Goldhagen does.

Furthermore, I can't imagine that Bruce is suggesting that absent Germany's defeat, the collapse of the Second Reich, and the Treaty of Versailles the Nazi party would have come to power in Germany. Wilhelmian Germany was a transitional democracy; in retrospect, its future looked to be brighter than what we got.

[angry moderate]

This is an important intellectual fight to have. The problem for me with the IR realists - and they have plenty positive to offer, they were a voice of sanity in the lead-up to the iraq war - is that they claim their theory is an analytical and descriptive one, but then turn it into a normative one, and rail against any state that doesn't behave the way it's "supposed to". Mearsheimer always slips from the analytical into the normative. {One must say that this is also something that economists do with utility-maximization}.

The Democratic Peace is one of three broad processes giving hope for the future, the other two being the tendency of economically advanced countries to democratize, and the tendency of economically advanced countries to have low fertility. None of these are laws, just poorly understood tendencies (well the demographic transition is reasonably well understood). In particular, we don't know how well the Democratic Peace will hold up if we get to the happy point where most of the globe is ruled democratically.

The main point is that the democratic peace is not inevitable; it's based on a normative framework that Brad and some of the commenters have sketched out. It needs to be fought for and it has enemies. Brad identifies the realists. But one of my two major 'realist' arguments against the iraq war was that it threatened the democratic peace, that by going to war despite the fact that the populations of the world's democratic countries overwhelmingly opposed the war we were undermining the normative base of the democratic peace. This could just be a blip from a retrograde administration, but it could also be a trend in a very, very dangerous long-term direction. [Reason #1 that anarchy is very often worse than tyranny - especially an exhausted and contained tryanny - has, alas, been borne out all too well].

[Graydon]

The question about the Rhine is easy, Brad -- the effects of industrial warfare remain a matter of living memory.

It's only when that span hits a hundred years or so that it becomes meaningful.

More generally, the political process has started to assume numeracy. This is new. (The restart of the Hundred Years War was over wool, but very few of the people prosecuting that war on either side were doing the math; they were after industry-as-loot, not an advantageous cost-benefit ratio adjustment.)

More generally, the idea that democracies do not fight wars is nonsense. Look at the Athenians of Classical Antiquity -- the citizen class had to fight, in a scrum with spears, and they voted to attack anybody who pissed them off for generations.

What we're seeing now is the side effect of a personal calculus which has a good life as a non-exceptional state; normal amounts of toil can lead to major improvement.

You'll note that the policy objectives of the Bush administration are to get rid of this; if you want to pursue a militaristic line of policy, you must have a large class of people who have deeply internalized that their lives are valueless. This has historically been accomplished through either crushing poverty or relentless indoctrination. (Crushing poverty is the more stable long term solution.)

More generally, the inability of an industrial state to profit from war supposes a strictly material calculation of profit.

I don't think that's the calculation either the US or the Chinese are using; questions of self image are clearly coming into the question.

[anne]

Perhaps we are forgetting something, we are forgetting that we have so recently passed through the age of Gandhi and Dr. King, and are even now passing through the age of Mandela and Tutu. Imagine the miracle of a freed India or South Africa. Imagine a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There was a time when Einstein would seek conversation with Freud over the promise of world peace, and though on the eve of World War II, and though Freud could not be other than doubtful, nonetheless the conversation was hopeful.

[anne]

Daniel Goldhagen is everywhere in Germany understood and appreciated, for he was remarkable in showing a culture of ethnic vehemence that came to be peculiarly nurtured in what would be Germany. If Germany is presently a culture in which peace is continually prized, there were generations of so much the opposite and decades of ever fiercer directed contempt for Jewish life.

[anne]

WEB Du Bois in 'Souls of Black Folk' points out how late it was in human history that people beyond absurd heroes mattered culturally. If this is everywhere intimated and called for in biblical history, nonetheless as Du Bois shows us the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries begin the history of 'everywoman' or man. That history may make it ever more difficult in future to toss away lives trivially in war.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/08/arts/design/08smit.html?ex=1270612800&en=6936019592ca8398&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

From a Mushroom Cloud, a Burst of Art Reflecting Japan's Psyche
By ROBERTA SMITH

Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture," currently wedged into Japan Society, is not just another art exhibition. It is a fast-moving visual spectacle with a mission, orchestrated by the Japanese artist-impresario Takashi Murakami - he of Vuitton bag fame....

Yet this exhibition is not simply about the relationship between high and low art, a distinction that is especially hard to make in Japan and that Mr. Murakami argues does not exist. Instead, his goal is to show how Japan's popular culture reflects its national psyche, which also sheds some light on the psyche of its chief protector, the United States.

The exhibition's title pointedly incorporates the code name for the atomic bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Prominently displayed in the first gallery is Article 9, Chapter 2 from the Japanese constitution that went into effect in 1947. It reads, in part, "The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right," and "The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized."

This show proves once more that pop culture provides an especially direct view of the repressed unconscious of creator, consumer and society alike. In Mr. Murakami's eyes, the connection is especially close in Japan because the collective unconscious has worked overtime to absorb the largely unexamined trauma of Japan's role in the war, the atomic-bombing of two of its cities and the prolonged American occupation.

Mr. Murakami holds that these traumas have created a lot of displaced emotions - anxiety, shame and a pervasive sense of impotence - that have found their outlets in popular culture. (Fittingly, the show's title also evokes the way Japan's dependence on the United States has kept it from growing up.) These feelings are reflected in two opposing tendencies. One is a fascination with violence and power, visible in the building-crunching monsters and mushroom-cloud explosions frequently used in Japanese animation. The opposite pole is an infantalizing sense of powerlessness that is played out in the obsession with what is called kawaii, or cute, as exemplified by Hello Kitty and other irresistible characters....

[shah8]

Um, I think most parties here are *really* missing a point.

The world, post WWII, was either a dipolar or unipolar world. I don't think too many people are taking in account how much easier it was to take actions in account, with one, or maybe two sets of critical foreign officials. It makes rationality in realpolitik much more possible.

Worlds with multiple axises of power makes total wars much more likely to happen, regardless of whether democratic governments are involved or not. Examples, in my mind, includes the classic example of Italy as it was fought over by multiple European powers. Also, contrast the Iran Iraq war with with Yom Kippur War. The major functional difference between the two wars was that the US, the Soviets, and Israel acting a regional hegemon in the Iran Iraq war compared to something solely of the US and Russia shadow participation in the Yom Kippur War. Thus, it was the Yom Kippur War that was stopped by the two superpowers when it was about to turn into a grinding fight (and no, Israel didn't win that war, if anyone did, it was the Egyptians...everyone else lost position at least diplomatically. In any event, Egypt was still fighting and able keep fighting.)

In the Iran Iraq war, the religeous leadership continued the Shah's policy of sending Kurdish paras over the border to keep Saddam off balance, and Saddam wanted to end that, plus keep uniting all Arabs under the Ba'athist flag, so he invaded Arabistan in the south of Iran...After a lack of success offensively, he turned to the defensive, and was largely successful. However, Saddam tried to sue for peace after a few years. He didn't manage to do so for more than half a decade afterwards. This was because the Iranians were processing so many diplomatic signals that they really didn't catch on that they were being bled to death by Israel's generosity as well as the US.

A major reason that the Confederacy in the US Civil War, as well as the factions in the Spanish Civil War hung on for so long was that there were so many entities with power offering slender fronds of hope that material assistance would come. The US itself is one example of a long war that was waged long enough to get that crucial help from France that was needed to end it.

As the US crumbles, the conflicts in Iraq and Aftghanistan is only the beginning...In a multipolar world, many more ugly conflicts can continue...

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5394&u=16|3|...

Blue-winged Warbler Feeding
New York City--Central Park, The Pool.

Of course, here can be peace.

[Dan Nexon]

"Daniel Goldhagen is everywhere in Germany understood and appreciated, for he was remarkable in showing a culture of ethnic vehemence that came to be peculiarly nurtured in what would be Germany."

The politics of Daniel Goldhagen's embrace by the Germans are extremely complicated, and don't change the fact that his argument is poorly argued, poorly evidenced, and simply wrong. I see now that we're moving from a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy to one of argumentum ad populum. Sigh.

The better book on Police Battalion 101 is Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men. Better books on the origins of the holocaust are numerous, but I'm generally a fan of George Mosse's work if you're looking for cultural/ideological accounts. Norman Naimark's discussion in Fires of Hatred of the proximate causation of the holocaust is accessible and worth taking a look at.

[Henry Farrell]

What Dan says about Daniel Goldhagen. There was a very messy and inconclusive debate. The best contribution imo was from the somewhat neo-connish Jacob Heilbrunn, who wrote some very compelling critiques of Goldhagen in both the US and German presses (and got savaged for his troubles as a self-hating Jew by some of Goldhagen's supporters).

[anne]

Dan Nexon

You are thoroughly splendid, and I understand and will consider. I will like you more however when you tell us about Washington birds, and not the baseball playing kind; or are those other birds?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/14/opinion/14taylor.html?ex=1255492800&en=6f805b298f0aa5e7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

What Derrida Really Meant
By MARK C. TAYLOR

Along with Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida...will be remembered as one of the three most important philosophers of the 20th century....

During the last decade of his life, Mr. Derrida became preoccupied with religion and it is in this area that his contribution might well be most significant for our time. He understood that religion is impossible without uncertainty. Whether conceived of as Yahweh, as the father of Jesus Christ, or as Allah, God can never be fully known or adequately represented by imperfect human beings.

And yet, we live in an age when major conflicts are shaped by people who claim to know, for certain, that God is on their side. Mr. Derrida reminded us that religion does not always give clear meaning, purpose and certainty by providing secure foundations. To the contrary, the great religious traditions are profoundly disturbing because they all call certainty and security into question. Belief not tempered by doubt poses a mortal danger.

As the process of globalization draws us ever closer in networks of communication and exchange, there is an understandable longing for simplicity, clarity and certainty. This desire is responsible, in large measure, for the rise of cultural conservatism and religious fundamentalism - in this country and around the world. True believers of every stripe - Muslim, Jewish and Christian - cling to beliefs that, Mr. Derrida warns, threaten to tear apart our world.

Fortunately, he also taught us that the alternative to blind belief is not simply unbelief but a different kind of belief - one that embraces uncertainty and enables us to respect others whom we do not understand. In a complex world, wisdom is knowing what we don't know so that we can keep the future open....

[Jon Kay]

I am a believer in increased democratic peace, just as a statistical observation. It explains why we have more peace recently. It's certainly not an absolute. Perpetual war appears to a part of humanity, and indeed I'd guess that we'll eventually see a modern democracy go to war with another one (Athens did), but there's no question that it seems to be rarer, as a fact of life, than wars between democracies. So, realpolitikers, why is that?

And while you're explaining that, can you explain certain other aspects of the world that your theory seems to miss?

Why was Athens a superpower in Ancient Greece? Why were its troops, man for man, better than vaunted Sparta's?

You keep telling us that the balance of power is determined mostly by population and resources. So why is the US so much more powerful today than Russia, China, and India? How did a tiny little island like Britain get a world-dominating empire, way bigger than anybody else'? According to you guys, they shouldn't had the capacity when going up against the bigger Spain and France. The answer, of course, is freedom, but that doesn't weigh in your scales, so you have to resort to excuses or luck, like Bismarck calling us lucky.

[Ralph]

Historically wars have been started on miscalculation as much as by careful considered realist calculations.

[sm]

Democratic peace:

It's not enough to have elections to be a democracy: the influence of elections on policy in the US or Iran is debateable (in the true sense of the term).

Most of the democracies (or countries with elected governments of one sort or another) are pretty new. Let's see what truly democratic polities with more than one or two generations of democratic experience do. That does cut down the number of democracies to measure, but that's appropriate.

Did a democratically mature Athens attack other democracies? Was Athens ever a mature democracy with all those slaves and metics?

[jon livesey]

"No Franco-German war in 60 [years]." Mm, Soviet threat?

I think that's true, but it goes a bit farther than that. Before WWII and even more-so before the Great War just about European country was a little empire, with its own military, foreign policy, and its own "interests". Even a country the size of Denmark could find itself at war, mobilize an army, and go marching off to defeat.

What changed after 1945 is that western European countries mostly abandoned the effort to be fully sovereign in all dimensions, and accepted specialised roles within NATO. They no longer maintained all three branches of armed force in their full generality - France and the UK are arguably exceptions - they conducted only limited foreign policy operations, leaving the US to negotiate with the USSR on their behalf, and they no longer competed to maintain overseas possessions.

In that changed environment, which was brought about, as you say, by an external threat, war between European powers has come to seem simply pointless. In fact, an anti-war psychology has emerged that leads Europeans to sound very hostile to any military action, and makes them hyper-critical of US and UK actions outside Europe.

jon.

[WH]

and indeed I'd guess that we'll eventually see a modern democracy go to war with another one (Athens did)

Already happened, kiddo. Russia against Chechnya, India against Pakistan.

Why was Athens a superpower in Ancient Greece? Why were its troops, man for man, better than vaunted Sparta's?

Well, now who won the Pelponesian wars ? And when Macedonia became one of the world's greatest powers, were they a democracy ? What about Rome ? Ghenghis Khan ? The Turks ? Even Imperial Spain ?

You keep telling us that the balance of power is determined mostly by population and resources. So why is the US so much more powerful today than Russia, China, and India? How did a tiny little island like Britain get a world-dominating empire, way bigger than anybody else'? According to you guys, they shouldn't had the capacity when going up against the bigger Spain and France. The answer, of course, is freedom, but that doesn't weigh in your scales, so you have to resort to excuses or luck, like Bismarck calling us lucky.

Do tell ? How much freedom was there for Indians in the British Empire ? How much for Irish ? Please spare us all this talk of great British freedoms.

And while Britain's navy was indeed the most powerful in the world, its army was often startlingly weak. It was no match for Napoleon's Grand Army by itself, or for the Kaiser's forces, let alone Hitler's Wehrmacht.

It wasn't only luck, but luck was certainly a factor -- for instance Germany's late re-unification prevented it from being a challenger till the late 1800s. Unified, the Kaiser's Germany was more than a match for England. It took the combined might of England, France, Russia (to some extent) and the United States to beat it.

[sm]

I'm not sure who here is citing Russia vs. Chechnya as democracy attacking democracy, but it's an excellent example of how you have to be careful with asserting a country is a democracy if it's had one or two elections.

[hey]

love the assertion that social democracy is necessary for peace. love the implication that leftwing governments are by definition peaceful.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

WH: what's your point about the british army's weakness? they knew that and actively intended it. Britain was hesitant of having too strong an army during peace time as a threat to liberty and thus focused on maintaining balance of power on the continent. that way they could come in on one side or the other and be decisive (worked fairly well up till 1914).

as for the lack of democracy in the us... you're out of power and it's the axis of the shrill and all, but jebus

[Jon Kay]

> Well, now who won the Pelponesian wars ?

Well, now that you mention it, the Spartans' alliance got their asses handed to them consistently until they had a big democratic city on their side - Syracuse. Not a big victory for dictatorship/oligarchy.

> Do tell ? How much freedom was there for Indians in the British Empire ? . . .

Rather little, really. But the British themselves were free. And that's how the could keep so much of the rest of the world unfree.

> And while Britain's navy was indeed the most powerful in the world,
> its army was often startlingly weak.

Britain's navy was stronger than its army because its leaders were smart, democratically elected leaders, who understood geopolitics and that it was vital to them to have a great navy but only important to have a good army.

> It wasn't only luck, but luck was certainly a factor ... Germany's late
> re-unification prevented it from being a challenger ... Unified, the
> Kaiser's Germany was more than a match for England. It took the
> combined might of [the Allies] to beat it.

By stark contrast with Britain, Germany's prewar naval buildup and rush to war were just dumb, the sort of thing an unelected leader does. Germany and all its allies were in no danger of winning because fronts went nowhere in WWI. The war ended when, oh, yeah, the British figured out tanks. Freedom won by outsmarting slavery.

When you have to keep resorting to luck, your theory needs work.

[Jowett]

Actually, I think that Nexon seems to be coming much more from the liberal internationalist tradition of Norman Angell and Joseph Schumpeter, as opposed to a "realist" position, by arguing that war is irrational. The entire conception of states as rational actors that try to maximize their interests using cost-benefit analysis (states as firms) is a very neo-realist, Waltzian idea. While your conclusions may differ from many realists, your fundamental assumptions seem much closer to the neo-realist tradition. I think it's much more fruitful to think of schools of thought in international relations as ways of thinking about states and other international actors as opposed to conclusions about the likelihood of war and peace.

[rea]

"Why was Athens a superpower in Ancient Greece? Why were its troops, man for man, better than vaunted Sparta's?"

Well, they weren't. Amphipolis, Delium, Syracuse . . .

[WH]

"Well, now that you mention it, the Spartans' alliance got their asses handed to them consistently until they had a big democratic city on their side - Syracuse. Not a big victory for dictatorship/oligarchy."

Where do you get your history from ? Athens had a more powerful navy, but the Spartan army was considerably more powerful. Long before Athens invasion of Syracuse, Sparta handed out some serious drubbings to Athens at Chalcidice and Amphipolis. Sparta did not attack Athens again until several years after Athens disastrous war in Syracuse. And then they did, they build a powerful Navy and defeated Athens.

I notice you didn't comment about the unelected Macedonian Alexander who conquered much of the world (far more than Athens did).

"Britain's navy was stronger than its army because its leaders were smart, democratically elected leaders, who understood geopolitics and that it was vital to them to have a great navy but only important to have a good army."

Did Britain have a democratic leadership when the Spanish Aramada was beaten ? When did it become democratic ? Did its democratic leaders suddenly discover the wisdom of a fine navy, or were they simply following what previous monarchs had done as well ?

"By stark contrast with Britain, Germany's prewar naval buildup and rush to war were just dumb, the sort of thing an unelected leader does."

Germany wanted colonies like those posessed by England and France. The only way to obtain colonies was through war, and through building up a navy. It need hardly be added that great intelligence was hardly displayed by elected French or English leaders either. Certainly the history of futile wars fought by England (Nepal, Afghanistan) would dispel that notion. And Britain and France displayed no great wisdom in the run up to WW-I either.

" Germany and all its allies were in no danger of winning because fronts went nowhere in WWI. "

Please read a little history. Germany came very close to winning several times (in 1914). In fact, its outflanking France by moving through Benelux was a brilliant (if immoral) manuever. Germany was able to hold out against France, England, the US and Russia. Even Lidell Hart called it an unprecendted feat.

"The war ended when, oh, yeah, the British figured out tanks. Freedom won by outsmarting slavery."

This is revisionist history par excellence. Tanks had a peripheral role at best in WW-I. Initially they were ineffective, and later they made some impression, but the Germans quickly figured out ways of combating them. It need hardly be added that Germany came up with its own major weapons in WW-I (such as Big Bertha and poision) so all war innovations were hardly on the Allied side. I would suggest reading Liddell Hart's book or any other good book on WW-I

[ERG]

Someone will doubtless explain why Britain's policy of building up a strong navy was a brilliant idea (although bear in mind that Britain's powerful navy considerably predates its democracy) while Germany's building up an army and a navy was a dumb idea.

[andres]

Someday, god bless it, I and others in this blog will be able to spar with a troll who was a history major in college. WH does a pretty good job in dealing with the democracy vs. dictatorship in wartime position (hmmm. so freedom outsmarted dictatorship in WWII? News to Uncle Joe, who helped us win that war.) However, there is one more assertion to note:

"love the assertion that social democracy is necessary for peace. love the implication that leftwing governments are by definition peaceful...as for the lack of democracy in the us... you're out of power and it's the axis of the shrill and all, but jebus"

There's a lot more _love_ coming your way, pal.

Let's try a standard definition of democracy as a system where (1) all individuals have a certain number of rights (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness and everything relevant to them) which cannot be violated by any majority, and (2) provided that (1) is respected, all other decisions should be made according to the will of the majority, apportioned proportionally according to the rule 1 person = 1 vote.

Where is the US today, according to this definition? Well, it could definitely be more authoritarian, _but_:

* The Senate and the Electoral College have always been legislative bodies in violation of rule (2), as have state senates.

* Corporate boards are elected on the basis of voting by purchased shares,which again violates rule (2). Also, the news media in the US are for the most part not controlled independently, but by half a dozen or so of these corporations.

* With the Iraq war, the US Senate abdicated its constitutional responsibility to declare war, thus letting the President begin the war whenever he thought it was convenient.

* Thanks to the Patriot Act and related hysteria, the current administration has felt free to violate the 6th amendment right to legal counsel and the right of habeas corpus. By authorizing torture in various settings, the current government has also violated the right against self-incrimination.

* The recent Supreme Court decision, one of the worst since Plessy v. Ferguson, allows governments to take over private property (under eminent domain) not just for public use, but to turn it over to whatever private parties contribute more to legislative elections.

* Lastly, too many people in the "conservative" wing are attacking the Establishment Clause by putting up religious scripture in public places, asserting that the US is a Christian country (though I doubt Catholic and Orthodox Christians will find much confort in that...) and other dreck.

The last three points all violate definition (1). By the way, none of the above will change if we elect a Democratic president or even a Democratic congress, at least as long as the anti-terrorist hysteria goes on. But in any case, you are at least still free to go on in your fairy tale, comfortably naive belief that the US is a truly democratic country, while more countries like Iraq get bomb-plastered decade after decade.

Sorry if most of the above is obvious to the majority of readers, but somebody still has to say it now and then.

[Jon Kay]

I notice that you still haven't explained why the larger states didn't beat out first Britain and then the US if freedom is so useless.

> Long before Athens invasion of Syracuse, Sparta handed out some
> serious drubbings to Athens at Chalcidice and Amphipolis.

The Athenians won at Pylos and Cythera. Pylos made them sue for peace, and Cythera kept them looking for peace through the years. My memory was rusty, and I'd forgotten about Amphipolis exhausting the Athenians as well. Maybe this was a draw.

> I notice you didn't comment about the unelected Macedonian Alexander
> who conquered much of the world (far more than Athens did).

Macedonia's size and Alexander's thoughtfulness were enough to overcome democratic advantages of single city-states. Unfortunately, nobody figured out how to construct a large, stable, democratic state until 1879.

> Did Britain have a democratic leadership when the Spanish Aramada was beaten ?

My claim was that the British Empire happened while they were free, which is true. It's true that maybe one in four or five monarchs was smart enough to grok navies. But the good always went to bad as soon as the smart guy was dead. Just like everything other aspect of life under monarchies.

Yep, free countries make mistakes all the time, but they're a ton less frequent, and their citizens work alot harder and more innovatively at everything except brown-nosing.

> Germany came very close to winning several times (in 1914).

I think not. Details, please.

> Initially [tanks] were ineffective, and later they made some impression,
> but the Germans quickly figured out ways of combating them.

Churchill wrote that it took a long time for the British to get them right, but once it happened, the trench lines stayed broken. Yeah, I know, people point out that the Germans had lost skillions attacking the French, but the French had repeatedly done the same on their side without the trench lines breaking. The Western Front had merely swayed back and forth here and there on a large map for years. With tanks, the entire front moved inexorably toward Berlin.

> "By stark contrast with Britain, Germany's prewar naval buildup and rush to war were just dumb, the sort of thing an unelected leader does."
>
> Germany wanted colonies like those posessed by England and France. The only way to obtain colonies was through war,

The method Germany followed until Willy II was little wars (IMHO already counterproductive). Why the big war? Why the unwinnable race? Germany had litle hope at either.

[Wh]

"I notice that you still haven't explained why the larger states didn't beat out first Britain and then the US if freedom is so useless."

I never said that freedom was useless. I simply said that it has not necessarily the overwhelming factor in success. Georgraphy also played a role (with Britain's European rivals stuck in wars with each other, with Britain taking sides adroitly to maintain the balance of power in the continent).

"Maybe this was a draw."

Sparta won. That was not a draw.

"Macedonia's size and Alexander's thoughtfulness were enough to overcome democratic advantages of single city-states."

As it happens, it was Philip who conquered most of the city states. But Alexander was able to conquer the far larger Persian Empire and travelled all the way to India. Sparta and Athens had both managed to repel Persian attacks before at Thermopylae and Marathon, but only Alexander was able to conquer so far and wide.

Some of the greatest conquerors in world history: Alexander, Cortez, Pizarro, Ghenghis Khan, Tamerlane, Cyrus have been military despots or the representatives of despots.

"My claim was that the British Empire happened while they were free, which is true"

Your claim was that the British Navy was because of smart actions of democratic leaders. That is a very dubious reading of history. The defeat of the Spainish Aramada took place under monarchic rule, and much of the work done to build the Navy was done under Oliver Cromwell (Cromwell may have been anti-royalist, but he was no democrat). Future British democratic leaders just carried on this tradition. Ditto for the Empire, to a large extent. Britian had a strong and expanding empire under monarchic rule -- its just that they were not focusing on India and China (both much harder to reach) at that time.

In fact, a good argument can probably be made (although I'm not making it) that Britain LOST its empire as it became more democratic. After general Universal suffrage, Britain lost its centuries old empire in a few decades.

[ What about the Spainish and Portugese's Empires incidentally ? Those laster for centuries. Spain held South America far longer than Britain Held India]

"With tanks, the entire front moved inexorably toward Berlin"

False. Again, I would recommend reading any good work of WW-I history. Tanks had a minor role in WW-I. Few of the allies had mastered the art of using tanks properly. And when it came to war innovations, the Germans came up with as many as the Allies (including huge artillery guns and poison gas).

Lidell Hart history of the First World War referrred to Germany's fighting on for 4 years against France, UK, Russia (and later the US), countries that far outstripped it in population and resources (and Britain also brought in colonial forces from its vast empire) as an unprecendented military achivement.

"Why the big war? Why the unwinnable race? Germany had litle hope at either."

In WW I ? Germany came close to winning quite a few times (especially in the early days). Again, I would recommend Lidell Hart's book and other descriptions of the Battle of the Marne. If Paris had been taken, as in 1870, we would probably have seen peace terms that involved Germany getting most French colonies. So its certainly not the case that Germany had little hope at winning the war (at least on land). It could be argued that their decision to challenge the Royal Navy at sea was a mistake.

And in the middle of WW-I, the fact that England and France were democratic -- the average soldier in the trench was as much an expendable pawn for the allies as for the GErmans.

[Jon Kay]

> I never said that freedom was useless. I simply said that it has not
> necessarily the overwhelming factor in success. Georgraphy also
> played a role

There are several countries with bigger populations and/or more resources. So why, then, has the US so far been more successful? My answer is: more freedom. By the way, I predict that India will catch up with US GDP by 2050, now that globalization has pushed them to work on corruption.

> ...with Britain taking sides adroitly ...

My point exactly! But also, because individuals were enabled by freedom to go settle and make their fortunes overseas. The French and Spanish (worst of all) allowed less freedom to their citizens to settle, engage in non-trading business, and oppress the inhabitants.

> Sparta won. That was not a draw.

...they could only manage a draw without a democracy on their side. And they could only do that well because single-city democracies are less stable and worse at picking leaders.

> False. Again, I would recommend reading any good work of WW-I history.

...well, I'm just a lightweight. I've only read Tuchman and Churchill's 6-volume series. We seem to have read about completely different wars.

> If Paris had been taken, as in 1870, we would probably have seen peace terms

...as in 1940. Paris != Allies. And that's the fundamental reason why WWI was a mistake by any measure: Germany wanted to take on half the world, not just France. They were happy to provoke Russia, Britain, its commonwealth, AND the US. And their choice of partners was decaying regimes - Austria and Turkey. And that's why Willy II AND Hitler both lost. And Napoleon and, recently, Milosevic and Saddam. But modern democracies only make mistakes about small wars.

> Britian had a strong and expanding empire under monarchic rule

Not until Parliament grew strong. Don't confuse exploration with settlement.

[P.M.Lawrence]

WH, the Indians in the British Empire had exactly the same rights and privileges as any other British subject. Indians in India didn't have the vote - and neither did the British in India. Indians in other parts of the Empire had the same voting rights as other subjects there; that was one reason Indians like Gandhi got their noses out of joint in South Africa, when that changed in racist directions in a bid to conciliate the Afrikaners. And, yes, an Indian got elected to Westminster during the 19th century.

So what the objections boil down to is a criticism that developments had not yet led to local expression of democracy - but that was bound to be the case, transitionally, just as the whole transition to democracy was for Britain itself. There was never any intrinsic discrimination against Indians, right up until democracy started to be granted imperfectly and distorted by local privileged classes. And that isn't very different from how democracy works in India today, or in any other so-called democracy.

This is connected to Athenian metics and slaves not having the vote, incidentally. They just weren't Athenians. At an individual level many of these could indeed hope to become first Greek (i.e. non-barbarian in culture) and then a citizen of one or another Greek city state. For a long time Athens was more open to such naturalisation than most, and the progression barbarian/metic/citizen was a realistic hope often attained in one's children if not in one's own person. It got more and more tenuous over time, which is not coincidentally related to the time frame of Athens' inner decay.

[WH]

There are several countries with bigger populations and/or more resources. So why, then, has the US so far been more successful? My answer is: more freedom.

Historically, the US's success is over a very small period when compared with the vast period of human history.

.they could only manage a draw without a democracy on their side. And they could only do that well because single-city democracies are less stable and worse at picking leaders.

Sparta won decisively. And one could argue hat single-city democracies should be more democratic since they could follow direct democracy.

..as in 1940. Paris != Allies. And that's the fundamental reason why WWI was a mistake by any measure: Germany wanted to take on half the world, not just France. They were happy to provoke Russia, Britain, its commonwealth, AND the US. And their choice of partners was decaying regimes - Austria and Turkey.

The appropriate comparison is not with 1940, but with 1870, where Germany forced peace terms on France easily. Germany in WW-I was probably far more similar to other colonial powers than it was distinct. Similarly the partners in each side in WW-I were very largely the work of geography and chance than whether they were democracies or not. Britian had propped up the weak Turkish Empire against Russia earlier when it suited them.

Also, its often forgotten how close Germany and Britain came to signing a non-aggression treaty. After all Britian fought France pretty aggressively most of the late 19th century. [ Not to mention that RUssia was pretty decaying itself, and France was not that much better].And Germany was most eager not to fight the US -- it was a calculated gamble on the use of unrestricted U-boat warfare to weaken England without provoking the US. If it had paid off, history would have been substantially different.

So if Germany had taken Paris, France likely sues for peace and gives up its colonies in Africa, which is what Germany was after.