Rudolph J. Rummel's
central argument is that some conclusions
can be drawn from history's
wars, genocides and mass murders.
They are not simply bad things that happened.
We can learn a lesson from them.
A lesson
that will ensure they never happen again.
Ethnic diversity does not correlate with democide.
Homogenous states are not the most peaceful.
There is no significant correlation.
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.
Sadly, education and prosperity do not correlate with democide.
There is no significant correlation.
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.
Democracies
don't go to war with each other.
Non-democracies go to war with other non-democracies all the time.
And non-democracies go to war with democracies.
But democracies never (or rarely) go to war with other democracies.
Even if it is not quite zero wars between democracies,
it still seems that stable democracies rarely go to war with each other,
compared with non-democracies,
especially since 1945.
From
Rudolph J. Rummel.
Also here.
Even if it is not quite zero wars between democracies,
the pattern would still look roughly like this.
Number of dead in wars.
From
Rudolph J. Rummel.
Again, even if it is not quite zero wars between democracies,
the pattern would still look roughly like this.
Arguments between democracies:
In 1982, Argentina was a dictatorship
and went to war with the UK over the Falkland Islands.
Now the obnoxious Argentine President
Cristina Kirchner
is making renewed aggressive claims on the Falklands.
However she runs a democracy,
and so war is unlikely.
Here the Falkland Islands newspaper
The Penguin News
amusingly uses the filename
"bitch.jpg" for a photo of her in Feb 2012.
Insults and posturing on both sides are likely as far as it will go this time.
Since the bloodbath of the early and mid 20th century, war has actually been on the wane.
From Steven Pinker,
24 Sept 2011.
He also points out in
this video
that society was much more violent in the distant past.
Primitive societies,
which live in anarchy without government or police,
are incredibly violent.
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.
Non-democracies stand 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.
Iraq was alone.
They were alone
because they were a non-democracy.
Again,
Hamas under attack from Israel in 2008-09.
None of their allies were willing to die for Hamas:
"not only was there no divine intervention, no earthly power came to Hamas' aid either. Not their fellow Islamists in Hizbollah. Not their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank. Not even their sponsors, Iran.
Everyone had kind words for them, but in the end they faced the full power of the Israel Defence Forces alone."
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."
In fact, in 1940, the Nazis actually said they would prefer to be allied with Britain
against Japan.
They suggested that:
"Sooner or later the racially valuable Germanic element in Britain would have to be
brought in to join Germany in the future secular struggles
of the white race against the yellow race,
or the Germanic race against Bolshevism." (*)
I wonder did they tell their Japanese allies about this?
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 never have famines.
87 million people died of famine in the 20th century.
None in democracies.
From Rudolph J. Rummel.
See
here
and
here
and
here.
Even if it is not quite zero
famines in democracies throughout history,
the pattern would still look roughly like this.
Democracy? Prosperous, and Never a Famine
by Rudolph J. Rummel.
"no democratically free people have ever had a famine. None. This is so important that I will put an even sharper point on it.
By the very nature of freedom, a free people are immune to one of humanity's worst disasters, a famine."
Amartya Sen says there has never been a famine in
a working democracy.
See Democracy as a Universal Value
[The Black Book of Communism]
claims that since improvements in
agriculture, even normal tyrannies do not cause famines -
you need socialism now to cause a famine.
It claims that
since 1918,
no countries in the entire world have had serious famines,
except for the socialist and communist countries.
The Irish Famine, 1845-50
- 1 million Irish died, and the population was nearly halved by death and emigration,
while food continued to be exported from the country and rent continued to be extorted from the starving people.
How could capitalism cause a famine?
How could there be a famine in a democracy?
Most famines are caused by politics not nature
(e.g. the 20th century Communist famines
of Russia
and China),
and the 19th century Irish Famine was no different.
Caused by a combination of vicious religious-based
17th and 18th century dispossession,
reducing the population to serfdom,
forced to pay constant rent and tithes merely to exist,
followed then by unyielding 19th century laissez-faire
with no state intervention and no welfare
(as if there was some kind of fair competition going on),
it meets the criteria of the killing
by
"democide"
of 1 million Irish people by Britain.
It stands as the greatest crime ever committed by Britain against any other nation
in its long history.
It also stands as one of capitalism's great failures.
How could capitalism cause a famine?
One answer is that the capitalism was brand new,
and the famine more reflects the culmination
of two centuries of
anti-capitalist restrictions
on commerce, trade, education,
land and property ownership,
and so on.
Also noted is that British rule in Ireland
was not properly democratic at this point,
which meant that no serious state response
to the famine could be demanded.
What Caused the Irish Potato Famine? by Mark Thornton, The Mises Institute monthly, April 1998.
He blames the land confiscations and the system of tenancy by landless serfs:
"Land tenancy can be efficient, but the Irish had no rights to the land they worked or any improvements they might make."
He also blames protectionism in the
Corn Laws.
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 mid-century.
If so, war and famine will end.
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, 27 Dec 2003, 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."
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."
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.
Matt Harding
does a silly dance all over the world.
A glimpse of the future when everyone in this beautiful world is free.
"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.
One minute you're their friend, and everyone's slapping each other on the back.
The next minute they kill you.
