Home - Politics - The World - How to end war and famine

How to end war and famine: Make every country a democracy

Introduction

• The Holocaust In Comparative And Historical Perspective makes some of Rummel's central points:
  1. Ethnic diversity does not correlate with democide. Homogenous states are not the most peaceful. There is no significant correlation.
  2. Culture, race, religion or geography do not correlate with democide. There is no significant correlation. Everywhere in the world could commit democide if it is totalitarian. Similarly, everywhere in the world can refrain if it is democratic.
  3. Sadly, education and prosperity do not correlate with democide. There is no significant correlation.
  4. Only one thing correlates with democide. A powerful, non-democratic state correlates with democide (and civil war, and foreign war). Democracy correlates with no democide and peace. This isn't an argument. This is empirical fact.

How to end war:

• Democracies don't go to war with each other. Ever. Non-democracies go to war with other non-democracies all the time. And non-democracies go to war with democracies. But democracies never go to war with other democracies.
  • Counter-arguments by Matthew White
  • Response by Rudolph J. Rummel

• Democratic peace theory
  • List of possible exceptions to democratic peace theory

• Never At War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another by Spencer R. Weart, 1998
  • Chapter 1

• The Nobel Peace Prize Should Go To Those Who Really Support Peace by Andrew Bernstein - "War is caused by statists". Democracy and capitalism bring peace and prosperity. "it was capitalism that gave mankind its longest period of peace - an era in which there were no wars involving the entire civilized world - from the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. If we truly want to recognize and promote the cause of peace, let us award a peace prize to Capitalism."

Non-democracies stand alone. Democracies stand together:

• It's interesting how non-democracies fight each other. You'd think Hitler and Stalin would make natural allies. They had the same philosophy - the individual is worthless and exists to serve the state. They should have been allies in the war on democracy. And yet their war was the most brutal.
• Non-democracies can't be allies of each other for the same reason that criminals can't trust each other.

• And similarly, democracies do make good, trusted allies of each other, for the same reason that the police can trust each other. The police stand together, while ultimately each criminal stands alone. And the democracies stand together, while ultimately each non-democracy stands alone.
• Note how Iraq in 1991 and Afghanistan in 2001 each stood alone against the allied democracies. Despite a lot of outrage and noise, in the end none of their fellow non-democracies came to help them.
• Again, Iraq in 2003. Despite all the "anti-war" hysteria, no country actually went to help the Iraqis. Despite the "fury" of the Arab street, the outrage of the Arab League and the America-hatred on the western left, no country actually joined Saddam's side to fight for him. America had 50 allies with a combined population of 1 billion (see also here). Iraq was alone. They were alone because they were a non-democracy.

• World War Two:

  The Onion says it better than anyone, how dictators can't make stable alliances. In Our Dumb Century, their hilarious fake history of the 20th century, on the Japan-Germany alliance in WW2: Japan Forms Alliance With White Supremacists in Well-Thought-Out Scheme, Sept 1, 1939. German Chancellor Adolf Hitler praises his new allies Japan, likening them to "a very advanced clan of yellow apes". "I salute you, chinky-dinky rat men", says Hitler, "When Germany stands victorious on a conquered Earth, and Aryan supermen wipe out the undesirable mud races one by one, your like will surely survive to be among the last to be exterminated."

  • Similarly, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union lasted from 1939 until ... 1941 when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, killing millions of its people!
  • Doing deals with countries like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and Imperial Japan is like doing deals with street thugs and gangsters. One minute you're their friend, and everyone's slapping each other on the back. The next minute they kill you.

• Non-democracies will always war against each other, because it is in their nature.

How to end famine:

• Another interesting point is that famine is not an act of nature. Famine is always caused by government.
  • Democracies do not have famines. Ever. See also here and here.
  • Amartya Sen says there has never been a famine in a working democracy.
  • The 19th cent Irish famine - A famine in a democracy?
  • In fact, it seems that since improvements in agriculture, even normal tyrannies do not cause famines; you need socialism now to cause a famine, as we have seen recently in Ethiopia and North Korea. [The Black Book of Communism] claims that since 1918, no countries in the entire world have had serious famines, except for the socialist and communist countries.

• Earthquakes and disease are basically caused by government too:
  • OK, the natural phenomena themselves aren't, obviously. But how many people die is determined largely by what kind of government you have.
  • "Events" don't just happen, by Mark Steyn.
  • Why did so many have to die in Bam?, by David Aaronovitch - on the Iranian earthquake.

How to bring about world peace: Make every country a democracy

The only thing that will ever end war on earth is democracy. Nothing else will end it. Only democracy.
And democracy will end it. The entire world becoming democratic will mean the end of war and famine, forever.

The future: Can the whole world become democratic?

• Democratic Peace Clock - With present trends, the entire world may be democratic by 2025. If so, war and famine will end. This is Rummel's central argument, based not on some political point of view or analysis, but on statistical historical fact:

• Optimism in the War on Islamic Fascism

• Universal Democracy? (and full paper, Can the Whole World Become Democratic?) by Larry Diamond. - History will end when every country in the world is a democracy. This could actually happen. This is an age of hope.
• The triumph of George W. Bush - Mark Steyn signs up for the program: ".. the US and its allies should be at the very least philosophically committed to regime change in all dictatorships. The delay between the fall of the Taleban and the fall of Saddam was a little too long: there should be an informal target of one tinpot thug per year, to be removed by whatever means are to hand."
• Why Democracy? Ten reasons to support democracy in the Middle East by Victor Davis Hanson, February 11, 2005 - "4. The democratic idea is contagious. ... It is not a neocon pipedream, but historically plausible that a democratic Israel, Palestine, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iraq can create momentum that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and eventually even a Syria or Iran would find hard to resist."

• Mark Palmer
  • Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025 - Replacing every last dictator on earth with democracy is not only desirable; it is doable. Palmer proposes that "dictatorship itself must be recognized as a crime against humanity."
  • One Down, Dozens More to Go: A plan for ridding the world of dictators, review of Palmer by Claudia Rosett - This is a plan for the world for the new century. The UN signing on to this plan "would be the real start of meeting all those grand U.N. Millennium Development Goals, not by holding endless conferences on ending poverty, hunger and war but by eliminating their root cause: dictatorship."
  • From Dictatorship to Democracy - A manual of methods to topple dictators, by Gene Sharp.

• Students for Global Democracy
• Arthur D. Edelstein
  • The World's Dictators in 2005

• Ch.1 of Palmer's book makes the basic case:
  • The "root cause" of famine in the world is non-democracy.
  • The "root cause" of refugees in the world is non-democracy.
  • The "root cause" of poverty in the world is non-democracy.
  • The "root cause" of environmental degradation in the world is non-democracy.
  • The "root cause" of corruption in the world is non-democracy.
  • The "root cause" of war in the world is non-democracy.
  • The "root cause" of genocide in the world is non-democracy.
  • The "root cause" of terrorism in the world is non-democracy.
• These are the universal truths unacknowledged in the world today. These things - war and poverty and famine and so forth - have for ages been regarded as part of the human condition. But what if they are not part of the human condition, but rather features of non-democracy - which has flourished for 5,000 years but may end?
• It is really not an exaggeration to say that non-democracy is the root of all major human evil, and that bringing about global, universal democracy will be as close as we can get to paradise on earth. Fascism, communism and Islamism can now be seen merely as branches of the ancient enemy that is non-democracy. The struggle will end when non-democracy ends.

"There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom. We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. ... Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time. So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."
"Our country has accepted obligations that are difficult to fulfill, and would be dishonorable to abandon. Yet because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find it. By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well - a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world. ... America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength - tested, but not weary - we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom."
- President Bush's speech, Inauguration, Jan 2005.