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Can Democracies Fight Each Other?

I was surfing the net the other day when a short-minded argument caught me off guard in a laughing fit:
Democracies don't fight each other.
It was based, supposedly, on a theory proposed by German philosopher Emmanuel Kant, but this guy goes way back in the beginnings... before the founding of modern democracy as we know it. The idea is based on the same line as Wafa' Sultan's baseless remarks on Islam and the so-called "Clash of Civilizations". She argued that civilizations "compete" and that "there is no clash of civilizations". She furthermore claimed that the gap between what she refers to as "barbarity" and "civilization" causes such clashes, with the "barbarians" on the attacking front.

This assumption is as childish as the "jealousy breeds contention" theory, along with the "they hate us for our freedoms" clause used by rightwingers quite often in the media. This is also based on the idea that the only viable form of democracy or government is the one representative in their states. That is, they claim they represent "democracy", while their enemies are "dictatorships".

To look at it from a material perspective, we can see that there have been tensions between several democracies in the past and present. For example, we have the rising tensions between the democratically-elected South American leftist governments such as those of Chavez and Morales. There is also the nuclear debate between the U.S. and Iran, which had a leader who was democratically elected, as well as the decades-long conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, who supposedly both have democratically-elected governments. This, of course, nullifies the above statement in a material way.

Let's go back in time, and assume that "civilization", according to Wafa Sultan, is the best form of state. We know of the great tensions between Troy and Greece, as well as the battles fought between two great civilizations: that of Alexander of Macedonia and that of Darius III of Persia. However, regarding "civilization" and "barbarity", Sultan's view is nullified with the fact that the war between the "barbaric" Britons and the "civilized" Romans was started by the Romans themselves, in which they were the aggressors.

Now, let's take a look at it from a philosophical point of view. Democracy is a political product. Therefore, it is an intra-specific factor in the state, and only determines how a state governs its own people, not how it influences relations between two states. Relations are determined by international affairs, not political affairs within the nation. That being said, relations can get heated between nations, and this can lead to the nations battling it out in an open conflict if the condition becomes necessary.

Don't make silly assumptions like this, people. Governments can fight each other and have fought each other regardless of how they rule their people.

So, yeah, Democracies can fight each other.

Salaam, from
Saracen

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