Democracy and Security

Matthew Evangelista, Harald Muller, Niklas Schoernig, Matthew Evangelista, Harald Muller, Niklas Schoernig

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781134079902
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

It has become generally accepted wisdom that democracies do not go to war against each other. However, there are significant differences between democratic states in terms of their approach to war and security policy in general.

This edited book offers a broad examination of how democratic preferences and norms are relevant to security policy beyond the decision of whether to go to war. It therefore offers a fresh understanding of state behaviour in the security realm. The contributors discuss such issues as defence policy, air war, cluster bombs, non-lethal weapons, weapons of mass destruction, democratic and non-democratic nuclear weapon states' transparency, and the political and ideological background of the ongoing 'Revolution in Military Affairs'.

It has become generally accepted wisdom that democracies do not go to war against each other. However, there are significant differences between democratic states in terms of their approach to war and security policy in general.

1
Introduction

Harald Müller and Matthew Evangelista

Are all states “functionally alike units” (Waltz 1979)? Do the pressures of the international system oblige them to behave similarly in order to ensure their survival under the dire circumstances of anarchy – differences in culture, ideology, and political system notwithstanding? Or is the internal fabric that produces policy not just the neutral transmission belt of systemic imperatives, but the source of conduct that produces, in the end, external behavior which differentiates states from each other on the basis of their different internal life? Specifically, does democracy matter on matters of security, war and peace?

This is, of course, one of the oldest debates in the discipline of International Relations. Michael Doyle (1983a, 1983b) brought the issue back to the English-language debate in the early 1980s, one decade after Ernst-Otto Czempiel (1972, 1981) did the same in Germany, drawing on a much older theoretical tradition dating back to Immanuel Kant. To summarize the accumulated insights on the relationship between democracy and war we need no more than four statements: 1) democracies almost never fight wars against each other; 2) democracies appear to enter into military disputes and war slightly less frequently than other political systems, but not very much so; 3) democracies thus fight wars almost as frequently as others; 4) democracies are more likely to win the wars they fight than to lose them (Russett and Oneal 2001; Huth and Allee 2002; for a critical overview Müller and Wolff 2006).

Democratic Peace¹ comes in two variants: monadic theory postulates that democracies are generally more peaceful than other regimes; dyadic theory maintains that the degree of peacefulness varies with the regime type of the partner state in the dyad. Both variants, however, rely on similar causal mechanisms (Müller and Wolff 2006: 42–58; Rosato 2005). Explanations are found in institutional, rationalist and normative-cultural variables, which combine to suggest this general understanding: Citizens in a democracy refuse the use of force abroad first for utilitarian reasons – fear for life, limb, and property – and second for normative reasons – respect for human life and dignity. Democratic institutions produce a preference for non-violent conflict management which is expected to influence preferences for the state’s external behavior as well. In addition, complex democratic decision-making and institutions are posited to create transparency, checks and balances, and a slowing-down of the decision-making process – factors not conducive for pursuing a bullying and force-prone foreign policy. The institution of democratic elections is assumed to bind leaders – interested in staying in power – to the preferences of their voters.²

In the version of the “Kantian peace” developed by Bruce Russett and John Oneal (2001), democracy works together with economic interdependence and international organization in feedback loops to reinforce the peaceful effects of all three variables: democracies are not just particularly peaceful, but also more open to mutually beneficial trade and more prone to enter international organizations even at a slight cost to their national sovereignty. International organizations, in turn, foster democratic stability and mutually advantageous relations, creating additional incentives for keeping the peace; international organizations create confidence, lengthen the “shadow of the future” (the expectation that states will continue to interact over the long term), and thus reduce the security dilemma and maintain a stable framework for international trade.

This productive research program on the Democratic Peace did not lack critics. The statistical critique focused on the relative rarity of the actor democracy and the event war throughout the period for which data exist (1813 to the present) and thus doubted the significance of the statistical results (Henderson 2002). The overlap critique pointed to other variables in which democracy was embedded and which may be more relevant for the findings than democracy proper (Rasler and Thompson 2005). The causal-mechanism critique looked into the proposed causal processes and found them either incoherent or empirically faulty (Rosato 2003, 2005; Müller 2004; Müller and Wolff 2006). And more recently, a regional-cultural critique suggests that democracy produces its peaceful effect most convincingly only in the transatlantic area, whereas elsewhere the effect is weaker or completely absent (Goldsmith 2006). If the research program is nevertheless still thriving, it is because the basic finding, the almost complete lack of violent conflict between democracies, has proved remarkably robust under diverse assumptions, a fact even admitted by sharp critics (Henderson 2002: 3). Recent work on “democratic wars” as the other side of the Democratic Peace has opened a new, potentially important chapter in the research program (Geis, Brock and Müller 2006).

Studies of the Democratic Peace conducted at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) have relied on the concept, also derived from Kant, of antinomy. “Antinomy is understood as a law-like proposition from which a secondary proposition and its very opposite can be deduced” (Müller 2004: 516). An illustration of antinomy is found in a common interpretation of the basic statistical finding of Democratic Peace theory: democracies by their nature are peaceful towards other democracies, yet bellicose towards non-democracies. A further illustration concerns what PRIF scholars call the

Janus-like quality of democratization: without democratization, democracy is inconceivable, and to this extent it serves peace; but for all sorts of reasons, processes of democratization have either been accompanied by violence or have triggered it, thus repeatedly jeopardizing democracy’s chances of development.

(Antinomies of Democratic Peace. n.d.)

The concept of antinomy is a useful starting point for examining the relationship between democracy and war in a broader perspective – the main task of this book. Beyond the “classical” question, Do democracies fight and win? we ask: Are democracies different in a) how they prepare for war, that is, arm; b) how they fight; and c) in the degree to which they are willing to limit the instruments of war, that is, to pursue arms control as a tool of security policy?

From a range of theoretical perspectives one might hypothesize that democracies would exhibit particular characteristics in the realm of warfare. If we look at humans as utility-maximizers and risk-avoiders, for example, citizens in democracies should have a better chance than subjects of non-democratic countries to make their preferences felt to politicians, and thereby to influence policies in a cost-saving, war-avoiding direction. This assumes, though, that the costs and risks of war are significantly above zero; that they exceed those of peace; that citizens have a relatively accurate understanding of the relative costs and risks; and that citizens can convey their preferences to politicians and government officials who, in turn, will act in accordance with those preferences. These assumptions about democracies may seem intuitive, but, as we shall see, they do not always stand up to scrutiny.

We might also expect that the value content of democratic constitutions, with their particular emphasis on human rights, would point in the same direction of restraint in warfare. Human life, human integrity, human dignity, and human well-being carry an intrinsic value. As the Kantian tradition suggests, democratic constitutions prohibit governments from using their “subjects” in an instrumental way. As time went by and as those values took root and became embedded in the identity and the thinking of democratic citizens and in the political cultures of democracies, it became riskier than before for elected politicians to ignore those values and the norms derived from them (Cederman 2001; Merom 2003). In addition, one might assume that politicians, being citizens of these democracies themselves, are not completely untouched by their value environment, even though there is ample evidence of unscrupulous and immoral behavior in the high echelons of democratic leadership. Liberal-democratic values within society could be expected to encourage policies that pursue war-avoidance and security cooperation, concern for the humanity even of enemies, and rejection of over-armament at the expense of human needs. Following from these assumptions, two particular norms can be understood to represent the main behavioral manifestation of democracies at war (Gentry 2006). “Force protection” emphasizes the value democracies are supposed to place on their citizen-soldiers and the unwillingness to squander their lives in reckless military engagements. Weapons and tactics can be designed to minimize the loss of soldiers during conflict. The second norm, “civilian casualty avoidance,” entails avoiding excessive harm to non-combatants. These two norms come into conflict when efforts to protect one’s own soldiers lead to increased civilian casualties on the other side. Nevertheless, pursuit of these norms could distinguish democracies from other types of states. If that assumption proved true, we would still be left with the question of what accounts for differences among democracies in their relative commitment to these norms and how they reconcile the tension between them.

Statistical studies suggest that when democracies choose to fight, they tend to win their wars (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 1999). Winning wars requires thorough preparation. Nowadays it is commonplace to suggest that democracies are more capable than other political systems of mobilizing their resources, and that market democracies tend to possess more resources than other states because of their generally superior wealth and economic performance. It is worth remembering, however, that it was the introduction of mechanisms of state planning that allowed the allies to mobilize to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II, as the Western democracies adopted elements of the central-planning system that characterized the Soviet Union – the country that bore the main brunt of the military effort. Nor were state control and planning Bolshevik inventions. They were evident in the so-called war economies of the major powers during World War I, as the economist Otto Neurath pointed out as early as 1919.³ During and after World War II, many prominent observers, from Eugen Varga (1946) in the East to E.H. Carr (1939/46) in the West, believed that planning would come to dominate the economies of capitalist states and would even supplant the pursuit of profit as the engine driving economic growth (see the discussion in Evangelista 2007). Although these expectations proved mistaken, the governments of capitalist democracies in the postwar era did come to play a major role in preparation for war.

The relationship between democracy and arms is embedded in the broader relationship between democracy and technology (Barber 1998). Arms are a specific application of technological progress. Common wisdom holds that technology is, by nature, impartial and amoral. It offers opportunities among which to choose. “Swords to ploughshares” captures this ambivalence nicely. It is the same metallurgical technology which is behind either use. States decide which use to make of it.

The theory of the “technological imperative” is one way of understanding the relationship between states and armaments (Buzan 1987; for a critique, see Reppy 1990). Proponents of the theory understand scientific and technological progress in the industrial age as in effect a law of nature. They point to large institutions for research and development established in all major states in industry, universities, institutes, and governmental facilities. Technical progress moves ever forward, with each new development crowning past work and opening the door for the next breakthroughs. States can choose to develop technology mainly for civilian purposes, but the logic of the security dilemma argues that in an anarchic world of nation-states they do so at considerable risk. Not knowing if their rivals in the international environment would also chose to favor civilian priorities, they may find themselves at the receiving end of a military-technological asymmetry at their own peril. Exploiting for military purposes what technological progress has to offer thus seems to be a rule of prudence in an environment of insecurity and high uncertainty. Moreover, since military hardware emerges only at the end of a long chain of research, development, production, and deployment, it is risky to wait for clear evidence that the enemy has exploited a certain technology before seeking to match it. Rather than accepting a possibly dangerous, if temporary, capability “gap,” states assume that their potential enemy will pursue the same technical options that their own research reveals, and that the rival state will inexorably chose to use these options to its military advantage. One state’s own technical progress is thus the basis for projections of future threats. To put it bluntly, the most technologically advanced state conducts an arms race against itself. This characterization of the United States during the Cold War (Senghaas 1972) is even truer today, in the absence of any credible challengers in the realm of military technology.

According to a generalization particularly common since the end of the Cold War, democracies tend to be the leaders in technological development. The combination of a liberal market economy – with its emphasis on competition – with the freedom of thought, speech, publication and science provides natural advantages for institutionalized creativity. Authoritarian states are good in pushing powerfully along a chosen technological route. Yet they are more prone to miss unlikely routes and to become stuck in blind alleys. Numerous studies during the Cold War attributed differences in technological innovation, including in the domain of weapons procurement, to economic and organizational factors – not type of political system per se (e.g., Kaldor 1986; Evangelista 1988). With the demise of the Soviet Union, the reassertion of the United States as the world’s hegemon, and the apparent triumph of market economics and liberal democracy – what Francis Fukuyama (1989) calls the End of History – the advantages in the sphere of technological innovation formerly associated with particular economic and organizational forms has increasingly come to be associated with democracy as the bearer of all good things. In the domain of technology, including military technology, the current wisdom holds that democracies march at the head of the column. If democracies are indeed the innovators in military technology – and the United States clearly seems to occupy that role today – we are still left with the question of how they make choices about which technologies – and which types of weapons – to pursue.

As of today, democracies are the most heavily armed group of states in the world, and they possess the most modern weaponry. Together they make up more than 75 percent of world military expenditure, with the United States alone accounting for a staggering 50 percent. If anything, then, we can conclude that there is nothing in the nature of democracies that prevents them from arming to the teeth. On the contrary, measured by the almost negligible threat which they have faced since the end of the Cold War – a threat, that is, against which huge armed forces and superior military hardware would be of significant utility – they appear particularly inclined to do so.

Many theories of foreign-policy behavior would have no trouble accounting for democracies’ excessive armament. Indeed, the literature on bureaucratic politics and the “military-industrial complex,” not to mention numerous variants of Marxist approaches, seems especially well-suited to explain the phenomenon. It is more puzzling for Democratic Peace theory. Kant insinuated, and his modern pupils reemphasize his argument, that citizens in a republic are not only shy of the risk to life, limb, and property which war imposes upon them, but equally reticent to accept the (unnecessary) costs of its preparation if that can be helped (Kant 1795/2003: 345, Kant 1793/2003: 311–12). This seems only logical. The average citizen in a modern, liberal, participatory democracy built on a market economy is believed to carry at least some traits of “economic man” (or woman): an innate desire to optimize utility and to achieve cherished objectives at a minimum of cost. This calculus should favor emphasis on sufficiency in military preparations, not a drive towards redundancy, abundance, and overwhelming superiority.

If the expectations that Kant’s followers derive for a pacific orientation of the world’s major democracies seem particularly problematic in the case of the United States, that does not mean that one cannot apply Democratic Peace theory to understand the way t...