[lbo-talk] Peace, War, Inequality (Was Geras on Morality)

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Sat May 1 07:54:48 PDT 2004


--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Have you any objections to the factual accuracy of
> the
> observation that capitalist democracies tied into
> international agreements tend not to fight each
> other?
>
> jks
>
> --
> Yugoslavia under Milosevic was roughly democratic,
> wasn't it?
> The US was very democratic by the standards of the
> time, and that didn't stop the Civil War... (not
> "fighting each other," I know.)
>

Supposing these examples are conceded. The thesis still looks incredibly robust. Matter of fact I wouldn't give you Slobo's Yugoslavia as an example of a particularly democratic country -- one with cpmpetitive political parties, extensive civil liberties, and universal suffrage. It had the last, but not the other two. Be that as it may, U don't want to get into that argument.

Against your two examples over 150 years, one which was a civil war and the other a war involving a civil war in an at-best half-democratic country, we have hundreds of wars, big and small, over that period, involving nondemocracies that -- this point should be neglected -- are not enmeshed in the web of international agreements, or wars of imperialist aggression (many carried out by democracies), or of national liberation, some against democracies. Btw, the point is not that democracies are pacific in general, just towards each other, and the web of agreements part is important too.


>
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