Layne, Christopher. "Kant or Can't: The Myth of Democratic Peace". International Security, Vol.19, No.2 (1994): 5-49.

Layne, Christopher. "Kant or Can't: The Myth of Democratic Peace". International Security, Vol.19, No.2 (1994): 5-49.

• Democratic peace theory is, like, really important within IR theory: it is the main theory dealing with how domestic political factors affect international relations, belief in the theory has influenced American foreign policy through democracy promotion as a strategy, and some claim that a critical mass of democracies in an international system with falsify realist assumptions of anarchy (5, 46-47).
• The author believes that the political claims extrapolated from democratic peace theory are both dumb and dangerous, because they may lead to the US taking unnecessary security risks, and underestimating the threat which Germany and Japan may pose to the United States, simply because they are democracies (47-49).
• Democratic peace theory proposes that democracies are unlikely to go to war with each other because they have institutional barriers to war built into the democratic system, or because shared norms between democratic states prevent conflict (6, 8).
• The argument that democratic institutions prevent war against other democracies was first posited by Immanuel Kant, and later expanded upon by Michael Doyle. They argued that, since the soldiers fighting in wars are the same ones voting in elections, the populace of democracies will be opposed to war (8-9).
• Additionally, democracies normally have constrained executives, intense political competition, and widely distributed responsibility to make decisions regarding war. All of these prevent the sort of decisive action that declaring war requires, since the diverse political institutions will not all agree (9).
• The argument of institutional constraints on democracies, in particular public opinion, does not explain democratic peace. Firstly, if it were true, it would prevent war against dictatorships as well as other democracies by inculcating a general reluctance to go to war. This is clearly untrue, as there are plentiful examples of belligerent public opinion driving democracies towards conflict (12).
• The argument that democratic norms prevent war holds that the proscription of violence in the domestic politics of democracies translates to the international level, making the population view violence as an illegitimate way of settling disputes. Moreover, democracies respect each other for following these norms, and trust other democracies because they believe they will share their aversion to conflict (9-10).
• The primary contention between democratic peace theory and the realist school of IR is that the former believes that democracies behave in fundamentally different ways in the international system and can even transform its nature, whereas realist hold that structural anarchy stimulates conflict and that changes in domestic politics -- like democratization -- cannot alter the source of international conflict (12).
• To test democratic peace theory, the author examines four case studies were democracies almost went to war with each other. The behavior of the states during these crises is examined to see whether it more accords with realist theory or democratic peace theory (14). The case studies are: the 1861 Trent affair, the 1895 Venezuela Crisis, the 1898 Fashoda Crisis, and the 1923 Ruhr Crisis.
• In 1861, tensions were high between Britain and the USA because the US blockade of Confederate ports denied the British textile industry its supply of cotton. The immediate incident occurred on 8 November 1861, when the USS San Jacinto intercepted the British mail ship Trent leaving from Havana, Cuba, and arrested two Confederate diplomates onboard the craft (16).
• Public opinion in Britain was outraged and demanded war with the United States in retaliation. The British government of Lord Palmerston issued an ultimatum to the USA demanding that the US condemn the actions of the USS San Jacinto and release the Confederate diplomats, or face war with Britain (16-17).
• The British government believed that the US would only respect a display of overwhelming military force, and publicly prepared for war, sending hundreds of warships and thousands of troops to Canada. To the British, the issue was a matter of international prestige after America had disrespected their honor (17-19).
• American public opinion was strongly against the release of the Confederate diplomats, whose capture was one of the few Union victories in late 1861. Americans were already angry at Britain for maintaining relations with the Confederacy, and saw the UK as abetting the rebellion (19-20).
• The Lincoln government did eventually give in to all British demands, but only because it did not believe it could afford simultaneous wars with the Confederacy and the UK, especially after receiving intelligence that France supported the UK's position. Conflict with the UK would have driven Britain closer to the Confederacy, making Union victory in the Civil War more difficult (20-21).
• Tensions over the border between Venezuela and British Guyana simmered during the 1890s, during which Venezuela pressured the US to arbitrate the dispute. The Cleveland administration obliged, seeing this as an opportunity to enforce American hegemony on the Western hemisphere. British Prime Minister Salisbury rejected American arbitration in December 1895, prompting the US to declare that any aggression against Venezuela was an attack on the United States (22-23).
• The Salisbury government rejected the Monroe Doctrine and an attempt at American arbitration. It believed that Britain's military superiority would force the United States to back down, or face military defeat (24). British opinion changed in 1896 only because of a sudden souring of relations with Germany and growing doubt that the UK could best the US militarily without losing part of Canada (25).
• Although British public opinion was hostile to President Cleveland's enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine, it also strongly supported peace with the US. The Salisbury government seems to have never considered public opinion in its decision-making process. In the US, there was general support for the Cleveland administration, although no one in the public wanted war (26).
• The Fashoda Crisis was the termination of a decade-long struggle between France or Britain for control over Egypt, during which the French tried to compel Britain to end its military occupation of Egypt. In 1893, the French engineer Victor Prompt suggested that damming the Nile River at Fashoda would make British military control of the Nile River valley, including Egypt, untenable (28-29).
• In response to report that France was moving to occupy Fashoda, Britain ordered Lord Kirchner -- newly victorious over Mahdist forces in Sudan -- to meet the French expedition under Jean-Baptist Marchand in Fashoda. On 19 September 1898, the forces met in Fashoda, behaving peacefully, but prompting an international crisis (30).
• France's prestige as a world power had been partially staked on the success of the Fashoda initiative, and its looming military failure in light of British occupation of the Sudan threatened to topple the French government, or even lead to a military coup, when coupled with public outrage over the Dreyfus Affair. Foreign Minister Theophile Delcasse begged Britain to give them a concession in return with withdrawal, but was faced with a British demand to withdrawal from Fashoda or face war (30-31).
• The French retreat from Fashoda was occasioned by a recognition that France could not, even with Russian assistance, beat Britain in a war, and that this military defeat would be more damaging than diplomatic defeat, especially considering British willingness to go to war (32-33).
• The uncompromising position of the Salisbury government on Fashoda was supported by a belligerent public opinion, which was willing to fight France to defend British honor. War with France was supported by both government and opposition in Parliament, and attempts by Prime Minister Salisbury to reach a diplomatic agreement were condemned by both Tories and Liberals (31-32).
• The 1923 Ruhr Crisis resulted from the occupation of the Rhineland by French and Belgian troops in response to Germany missing payments on war reparations. This was also a tactic used to France to secure its initial war goals against Germany by establishing de facto control over the left bank of the Rhine and the majority of European coal and steel production (34-35).
• Although incapable of waging an actual war, the German people fiercely resisted French occupation during the 1920s, engaging in civil disobedience and sabotage. The French were seen as enforcing the hated Versailles system, and attempting to further weaken and divide the Germany state (36-37)
• The French policy of occupation was strongly supported by the French public, which continued to hate Germany. The French political class was similarly anti-German, and French politicians, like Prime Minister Raymond Poincare, saw continued moves against Germany as essential to their political survival (35).
• Whereas Britain and the USA saw a democratic Germany as a chance to establish general European peace, the French continued to see Germany as an enemy state, with no practical differences existing between Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic (36).
• The four case studies provided by the author manifest a lack of theoretical utility on the part of democratic peace theory, as in each case the reasons why democracies did not go to war were explained by realist balances of power, with little to no explanation being provided by democratic peace theory. The fact that their potential foes were also democracies does not seem to have played any significant role in the politics of war in the four case studies (38).
• The statistical evidence used to support democratic peace theory has a number of methodological errors. Firstly, as a historical survey, there are a very small number of democracies, making war between them unlike even discounting their democratic nature. Moreover, many of the pairs of democracies catalogued as 'peaceful' are very distant -- e.g., Sweden and Australia -- and would not have any reason or opportunity to go to war regardless of domestic politics (39).
• The classification of countries as democratic or undemocratic is also troublesome, as the criteria are unclear. For example, the classification of Britain under George III and Germany under Wilhelm II as undemocratic appears to be created solely to avoid categorizing the War of 1812 and the First World War as wars between democracies. Moreover, the limitation of the study to international wars seems to unfairly exclude the American Civil War (40-41).
• The author suggests that whether states become democratic or liberal depends on the amount of military pressure they face from other states. A state without many close enemies would feel more free to develop democratic institutions than one constantly threatened by extinction. If this hypothesis is true, than democracies would be uncommon in high-conflict areas, making war between democracies statistically unlikely (44-45).