But quickly, I’d mention some stuff. One, abb1 is right (despite the cynical tone of the post, lol)—I see no reason why there should be a national interest in putting warfare against ALL democracies off the table. In any case, the historical record has plenty of examples of democracies fighting dirty wars against democracies. (Chile, Iran, even Italy—the ‘strategy of tension’ being variously connected to CIA efforts to undermine the Italian left—and elsewhere in NATO Europe—the latter two having to do with support for false flag/stay behind operations operated by NATO.) Insofar as nations have or do not have similar (but not conflicting) interests with another country, they most obviously won’t fight.

The most I could see on this point would be for someone to say (a) insofar as democracy inherently codifies certain interests that are similar in all democracies [and this already seems an untenable proposition to me] then the number of issues provoking warfare are reduced; and (b) maybe certain cultural similarities ON TOP of the existence of a democracy will do the trick. Again, neither one seems a convincing argument anyway.

See, that’s an interesting one. I was watching the BBC’s Newsnight last night, and they had this interesting first bit of a report suggesting state-owned Russian firms had systematically sold off US gov’t bonds in response to the US intervention in Georgia. The reporter went on about how this was the first time a nation put its geopolitical interests ahead of its economic interests.

But that isn’t true, now, is it? Plenty of states throughout history have sacrificed enormous amounts of treasure for geopolitical interests. I can point to two specific, though controversial, instances. Firstly, the UK during the Second World War. When Hitler offered the UK a peace settlement after the fall of France the British cabinet had a real debate about whether to accept it or not (though no one knew it at the time.) Many did realise that the economic costs of continuing in the war would be monumental—and they were right. By the end of the war the UK had expended 25% of its economic might to continue the war. In the long term one can’t really make the argument that the UK economy was better off for the sacrifice either, as the UK entered a 30-year period of sclerotic economic growth. I’m not the first to make this theoretical, of course, but it does go to show that some interests do override economic interests as well.

Secondly, again the UK, post-WWII decided to expend an enormous amount of money—read, hard currency: dollars—just to maintain the empire East of Suez, whilst rejecting the beginnings of economic coöperation with the continent. As Anthony Eden once famously put it: ‘This is something which we know, in our bones, we cannot do.’ Why, you ask? Because, after some airy-fairy comments about ‘family’ connections with other countries, he argued that Britain would become just another country in Europe with millions of people on an island everyone else ignored. That doesn’t seem like a recipe for economic>political interests. And again, in the context of 30 years of slow growth—despite not being one of the conquered nations—the UK chose to put strictly economic interests on the back burner.

Does this go a long way to undermining DPT? Hardly. But it is only one slight example of nations, even democratic ones, very often putting geopolitical issues over economic ones.

They certainly might define their interests that way, but why would they? It wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever.

It would make a lot of sense, however, to define their interests as avoiding wars with those who can kick their ass. Now, those who can kick their ass are likely, in turn, to be highly developed industrial nations. These highly developed industrial nations are likely to have their populations ‘commodity fetishized’ (aka: perceiving themselves as ‘consumers’ rather than ‘workers’) enough to be allowed to participate in occasional highly managed referenda (arrangement known as ‘democracy’). So, there you go.

RCMoya @ 30: “insofar as national interests align, I agree, democracies will not fight”. Question is how natl interests get defined. Democracies may define their interests to include avoiding war w other democracies, for various reasons.

Hitler certainly did not get into power through free and fair elections, rather he was appointed by President von Hindenburg as a result of backstairs intrigues. At the time, the Nazis did not have a majority in the Reichstag and in the two elections of 1932 the Nazi vote declined from 37% to 32%. Hitler’s first government was a coalition in which he held the chancellorship, but there were only two other Nazis in the cabinet. This government ruled by decree under the presidential emergency powers (Article 48), as had the previous von Schleicher and von Papen governments – democracy had been effectively dead in Germany since the fall of Chancellor Bruning in 1932. Given this, and the fact that Hitler had lost decisively in the presidential elections, it was hardly a popular mandate for Hitler and what he went on to do.

Also, Hitler was no democrat, but he did get into power through free and fair elections, and would have won free and fair elections in 1939. By this criterion Putin could also easily win free and fair elections. In fact, I find it hard to think of a war in the last 100 years that would not have been supported by the population in free and fair elections.

I endeavor to be hostile to ideas that aren’t true. I was sympathetic to this idea when I thought there was good evidence for it.

So that concerning events like the recent slaughter in South Ossetia by the Georgian military, and the subsequent invasion of Georgia by Russia, the will of the people in the US can be counted on to be decisively pro-Georgian and anti-Russian. Hi Dave.

Even though if the people of the US, decent folks all in all, knew what had really happened, their sympathies would be with the South Ossetians first, the Russians second, Georgian civilians third, and the supposedly democratic Georgian government and its “advisers” dead last.

You said “as if it is not open to dispute that what ‘democracy’ means is having the opportunity (not even exercised by almost half of us) to tick a box every four years in order to pick our preferred team of post-Thatcherite technocrats.”

I said
“Critiques of western democracies which focus on the undesirable [to the critic] consequences of formally free elections have a nasty habit of sounding like one would prefer it if people were obliged to vote differently… Democracy, once again, is a mechanism. Stop using it as a value-judgment, and we can all say what we mean about how we’d prefer people to think and behave.”

On the planet I inhabit, that’s a direct response.

Other than that, I think I have said before that I am not interested in arguing with you. You rarely seem to do much more than assert your opinion in a dogmatic and vitriolic way, which too often imo borders on verbal abuse. There are more pleasant ways for me to spend my time.