A central tenet of neoconservative ideology is the idea that democracies are inherently peaceful and democratically elected governments do not wage war against each other. President Bush never tires of repeating this during his speeches.
I repeat to you that I think countries ought to feel comfortable
with having democracies on their borders. After all, democracies are
peaceful countries. Democracies don’t fight each other, and democracies
are good neighbors
But paradoxically a peaceful democratic world can only come about through war: the more wars, the more peaceful the world will be. "Bad leaders" need to be bombed in order to establish liberal democracies. "Good people" will die in the process as unfortunate "collateral damage", but the democracies (read, the United States) have an implicit right to bomb because our intention is to create peaceful democracies.
Thomas Speckmann explores this idea in an interesting essay in this month’s Merkur: Frieden schaffen nur mit Waffen ( loose translation: Building peaceful nations with guns).
Speckmann looks at military interventions in the recent past – including the US-led invasion of Iraq – and is skeptical that the outcomes were worth the sacrifice. He sees wars as inherently dehmanizing and as incapable of leading to successful democratic nation-building:
Doch nicht die Taten selbst sind das größte Problem. Die Geschichte
kennt genügend Beispiele der Verrohung und Entmenschlichung im Zuge
militärischer Operationen. Vielmehr ist es die ernüchternde Erkenntnis,
daß es offensichtlich zum Wesen der Kriegführung auch von sogenannten
Friedenstruppen gehört, derartige Entgleisungen nicht verhindern zu
können, die zur Abkehr vom Konzept militärischer Interventionen
aufruft. Denn die destruktiven Folgen derartiger Eingriffe, die meist
einen Frieden gegen die Vernunft erzwingen wollen, ohne Chance auf
einen nachhaltigen Erfolg, überwiegen bei weitem den eigentlich
angestrebten Nutzen, den die auf den ersten Blick hin ermutigenden
Zahlen des humanitären Hilfsengagements der Vereinten Nationen
versprechen.
Speckmann credits Samuel Huntington with the theory of peaceful democracies, but idea can actually be traced back to Kant’s essay Perpetual Peace (Original German: Zum ewigen Frieden). Kant is rather pessimistic concerning human nature: he posits that peace is fundamentally an unnatural state. The only hope for perpetual peace is a "republican constitution:"
The republican constitution, besides the purity of its origin (having
sprung from the pure source of the concept of law), also gives a favorable prospect for
the desired consequence, i.e., perpetual peace. The reason is this: if the consent of the
citizens is required in order to decide that war should be declared (and in this
constitution it cannot but be the case), nothing is more natural than that they would be
very cautious in commencing such a poor game, decreeing for themselves all the calamities
of war. Among the latter would be: having to fight, having to pay the costs of war from
their own resources, having painfully to repair the devastation war leaves behind, and, to
fill up the measure of evils, load themselves with a heavy national debt that would
embitter peace itself and that can never be liquidated on account of constant wars in the
future. But, on the other hand, in a constitution which is not republican, and under which
the subjects are not citizens, a declaration of war is the easiest thing in the world to
decide upon, because war does not require of the ruler, who is the proprietor and not a
member of the state, the least sacrifice of the pleasures of his table, the chase, his
country houses, his court functions, and the like. He may, therefore, resolve on war as on
a pleasure party for the most trivial reasons, and with perfect indifference leave the
justification which decency requires to the diplomatic corps who are ever ready to provide
it.
This is perfect logic: why would citizens agree to a war that is so damaging to their own interests? But this also points out the weaknesses in existing constitutional republics. The invasion of Iraq is an illustrative case Great Britain joined the invasion even thought the overwhelming majority of the citizens opposed it. The United States led the invasion after its citizens were lied to about potential threats to national security. What is lacking is something that Kant could not have anticipated in 1795: a courageous and free press.
