Freedom's Peace
Dean
I have observed here more than once that a remarkable fact of life is that democratic nations--defined as those which enshrine universal suffrage, free speech, and free press into their systems of law--simply do not, as a rule, go to war with each other. The exceptions are generally short-lived, low-intensity, and debateable. If you doubt this, I have a simple challenge: name the exceptions.
I am not the first person to have observed this. That honor goes to political scientist R.J. Rummel--who, I am rather excited to see, has recently joined the pajama-clad hordes of the blogosphere.
I suggest that if you maintain a blogroll, you add him to it. He's got lots of good stuff on there, on a regular basis.
Something else that I've noted here on Dean's World before is that, in the last 100 years, it is impossible to find a case of a famine which was not caused by a government. I always startle people when I say it, because most people are convinced that famine is caused by overpopulation.
No, it isn't.
In the last century, mass starvation has, always and everywhere, been caused by political actions taken by governments. There has never been a time in the last century when there wasn't enough food available for delivery to starving people. The only places you ever find people starving is where some government is either grossly incompetent, or, as is more often the case, intentionally starving people for political reasons. There are also short-term, freak occurrences (such as people being cut off from food supplies by a flood), but food aide is always available before mass starvation occurs unless government actions prevent it.
While I've known this for a long time, it didn't occur to me until Rummel pointed out on his blog: even though democracies have often been struck with the awful droughts that would have created millions of deaths under other types of regimes, or had famines before they became democratic (remember, "democratic" is defined as univesal suffrage, free speech, and free press), in all of human history, not one democratic nation has ever experienced a famine.
If you doubt this, I suggest again that you try to name the exception.
So:
Lesson one is that free people almost never go to war with each other.
Lesson two is that they don't let each other starve, either.
Democracy isn't a slogan, and it's not a gushy feeling. It's a matter of both personal and national security: the more of it the world has, the safer we all are.
Anyway, be sure to check out Professor Rummel's blog.
That is true.
R. J. Rummel is excellent. His book, "Death by Government", should be read by everyone (though not necessarily too close before dinner or bedtime). I'll quote it again:
"What the have-nots have not is freedom."
-Ayn Rand
FREEDOM - Yes - that's the key and what this war is about. See this post and link I put up at Roger L. Simon's yesterday:
Why no famines in a democracy? Because those with food are free to send it to those without. Even if the food supply in a particular area collapses completely, areas outside it are free to ship their surplus to that area.
In addition, people in a free society can buy the food they need. And have enough money left over to provide for those without. The lettuce crop fails in the San Joaquin; Arizona, Texas, or even Florida can take up the slack.
Democracies have more complete, more comprehensive infrastructures than non-democracies. Combined with a more prosperous populace, it makes the transportation of goods easier, and on a per unit basis, cheaper than in a non-democratic country. In other words, sending food to another part of the country is easier and cheaper, which makes it easier and cheaper to handle a shortage when it occurs.
And the government doesn't have to get involved.
If the beef cattle industry in Washington State had to destroy all its stock for any reason, they can buy beef and beef byproducts from other states, and ship it in.
And if a small democracy has a nationwide drought. They can buy food from other nations and import it. Without the government getting involved in any substantial way.
Democracy, it's what's for dinner. :)
Moreover, the need for a good calorie source with very little room with which to grow it meant that the tenant farmers were dependent on one high-calorie variant of the potato. (You grow the same variety of potato by growing from the "eyes"; you can grow different variants by planting seeds but then you never know what you're going to get.) This means monoculture, and monoculture means when a disease strikes, it takes out everything.
Not only does democracy prevent famine, good food promotes political citizens— because they have the energy to concentrate beyond survival.
This is one reason why states like North Korea, Iraq under Saddam, and even pre-1945 Japan will not fall from within: their people are too damned hungry to agitate for change.
Note that sometimes democratic nations run colonies in which they allow horrors to happen. France, a democratic nation, treats some of its colonies abysmally, denying them democratic representation. The result, if not quite as oppressive as dictatorship, is often terrible abuse.
The Irish potato famine occurred at a time when the UK was not particularly democratic (there was not universal suffrage) and in a nation they ruled as a colony (Ireland). Even still, what democratic institutions they had shamed them greatly on the matter.
It was said more than once that democracies produce the most fervent, largest, best equiped armies in the world, and those most willing to die for their country. I guess when man is given a say in his government, he is willing to fight and die to keep it. Scary if you think about China's army and how many would join it if they were given a choice and a voice instead of an order from on high. But then, China wouldn't be one of freedom's enemies...
As for China: I constantly worry about the future there. They are becoming more open but are still an oppressive oligarchy. As is so often the case, their communism has sort of degenerated into a rough form of fascism. Where will it lead? I would like to believe to eventual freedom but I just don't know.
I think the only true hope for China's democracy is to make the military there unhappy with their conditions under communist rule. That won't be easy, and pushing too far will result in a junta.
But if you can make the military just unhappy enough they won't be the backbone of communist rule. The main reason the Tienenman Square disaster happened was the military. I think they would have killled those demonstrators with or without orders and the 'commrades' in power don't strike me as the kind to reign the military in.
You just have to push the part of choice in your government into the military eschalons, and then downward into the rank and file, to stand a chance. I think many in China don't fight for democracy because they're oppressed by the military. I don't think they fear the secret police quite like the Soviets did, but they have a deep and abiding (and very well founded) fear of the Chinese Army and Navy.
I'll be very amazed if the push for freedom isn't supported by the military, or atleast not crushed by them.
Additionally, though these people are not dying in famines, millions die each year in democratically elected countries due to malnutrition. In Bangladesh alone, it is estimated that 200,000 a year die due to diarrhea and other diseases, which they have been left vulnerable to due to malnourishment. As recently as 1998, people were dying from hunger in Mexico. Things have improved somewhat since then, though. But Mexico was undoubtedly democratic in 1998. Perhaps can be considered evidence that democracy helps stop local outbreaks of hunger from turning into widescale famine, since it was widespread outrage at the evidence of systematic abuse of rural Mexicans that led to improving conditions.
Mexico was a corrupt one-party oligarchy, at least until the election of Vicente Fox in '98, and I'm not sure where it stands now. As late as '98, it was not uncommon for the ruling PRI party to give people food if they voted for them, and to withhold it if they didn't.
I suspect that what really happens is that after people are fed, they start to work their way up Maslow's heirarchy of needs:
http://www.awa.com/norton/figures/fig1703.gif
"Malnutrition related diseases" is not starvation and it is not famine, Jim.
I am sure msny of them die in democracies.
You can be as certain as you like, but you have given not a single example yet.