Korean Job Discussion Forums

[northway]

[Kuros]

Yeah, I was expecting some Greek examples. The WWII example was very clever but also deliberately controversial.

[Madigan]

Right. Democracy without the institutions of the rule of law, like an independent judiciary, is no better than mob rule.

[repeatpete]

Menino80, this is a great topic but with all due respect, why on earth choose such bloody awful examples?

Nazi Germany, Italy, Japan versus: France, the US, Norway, Denmark, the UK

good luck arguing Nazi Germany was a democracy ...... unless you plan on heavy use of 'canard', 'caveat' and 'parsimony' and so outgunning those dependent on hagwon issued dictionaries.

Ok, ribbing aside, I think you would have far stronger support were you to have cited the American Civil War (two democracies), World War I with Germany V Great Britain and France.
(the latter war being perhaps an example of 'half-a-democracy' V democracies)
For the Canadians this goes without saying..the war of 1812?
In the early stages, up to 1795, the French revolutionary wars saw democracies (of a sort) fighting each other. France V Great Britain and the Dutch Republic.
I think, at certain points, India vs Pakistan? Certainly in 1947-9 I think both were democracies.
And..., allegedly, CIA backed operations against Chile, Guatemala and Iran.
Also, as previous posters mentioned, the ancient Greek city states.

Menino 80, in simply my own lousy, coffee-break grabbed between classes, opinion, I agree, the idea 'democracies never go to war' is too often lazily spouted and treated as a truism when as you say, it does need a fair bit of qualification.

[northway]

I agree that it's an intellectually lazy argument, but I'm not sure if I'm willing to concede the Confederacy as a democracy, what with a massive proportion of it's population being disenfranchised due to property requirements or the fact that they were black. Sure, there were elections, but there was relatively low participation in those elections.

[jvalmer]

[aq8knyus]

Finland and the UK, WWII.

I am not a believer in DPT as it could as widely be argued that countries with MacDonald�s don�t go to war with each other much.

However, if we could define democracy as full sufferance then no country would be a democracy until at least 1918. Meaning all the examples above are void, plus Canada was a province in 1812 and did not get control of its foreign policy until 1931 as a result of the Statute of Westminster so it cannot be termed a democracy.

In any case I agree with the India/Pakistan exception as well.

[northway]

[Menino80]

[aq8knyus]

Did Finns ever actual shoot at British troops?[/quote]

I am not sure either way, all I know is that Britain made a specific declaration of war in 1941 just after the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

It was a unique situation though.

The main problem I have with DPT is that it seems superficial, I think a better explanation of the fact that few of the major democratic powers have gone to war with one another would be the legacy of the Cold War balance of power and the greater economic interdependency of the global economy.

Also there aren't exactly many democratic powers in the world, and the ones that do exist share a relatively similar cultural/social background or are proteges of these nations.