According to R J Rummel from 1816-1991 there has never been a war between two democracies. By democracies he means liberal democracies (democracies that endorse most/all of the universal declaration of human rights would be considered ‘liberal’). This may not be true (the fact that Finland joined the Axis against France/the UK/the US is an example of it not being true, the US civil war is another example) but by and large this seems to be the case that liberal democracies do not fight wars with each other. Most wars seem to be between two dictatorships (Iraq vs Iran) or a dictatorship and a liberal democracy (the current war in Iraq) but never a liberal democracy vs a liberal democracy.
Why is that? Is it because there have been so few liberal democracies in history that there hasn’t been time, or that the liberal democracies of the world currently have no motive to go to war? Is it because the kind of country that becomes a liberal democracy generally doesn’t have the strife necessary to start a war? At current I think there are about 90 liberal democracies on earth representing about half the governments on earth, so you’d assume one or two would declare a war but so far nothing like that happens.
Natan Sharansky in his book The case for democracy argued that the reason democracies are less warlike is because they do not need external enemies and because they allow internal criticisms. A country which is oppressive needs to keep the public in line and supportive of the regime, it does this by exaggerating or making up enemies and claiming the regime is protecting the people from these enemies to keep the public supporting the regime and willing to put up with abuses out of fear of bigger abuses from the outside threat. This leads to a population ready for war and filled with hate for the enemy, resulting in war. But this alone doesn’t explain much, because democracies are just as warlike as non-democracies according to Rummel, they just do not declare war on each other. The argument about internal criticisms doesn’t add up either because the war in Iraq was very unpopular in places like Spain or the UK but they still joined the coalition. The vietnam war was very unpopular but it lasted for 14 years, so internal criticism doesn’t seem to effect a democracies willingness to declare war too much.
Is it that democracies have nothing each other would want? Liberal democracies seem willing to declare war just as often as dictatorships, and they seem just as willing to ignore the criticisms of the public at home when declaring war, but they do not declare war on each other. What is the reason for this?