[Here I have used China under Mao as the worst example of what a life can be like for a people lacking a democratic peace--fear, insecurity, mass poverty, totalitarianism, and mass murder by the multimillions. Now, I will be more specific about the democratic peace itself. The following was first published December 13, 2004]
We have learned much about international relations and politics that provides new insight into old problems. We have learned that:
• Democratic freedom is an engine of economic and human development, and scientific and technological advancement.
• Freedom ameliorates the problem of mass poverty.
• Free people do not suffer from and never have had famines.
• Free people have the least internal violence, turmoil, and political instability.
• Free people commit virtually no democide (government genocide and mass murder). Freedom is therefore a solution to democide; the only practical means of making sure that “Never again!”
• Free people do not make war on each other, and the greater the freedom within two nations, the less violence between them. Globalizing freedom is therefore a solution to war.
• Power corrupts, impoverishes, and kills.
This constellation of inter-connected truths sums up the democratic peace and the consequences of excessive power. Fostering freedom is then a moral, Kantian imperative, as well as a practical and realist solution to many of today’s most pressing problems, especially war, violence, democide, famine, and national impoverishment.
I leave to my website the scholarly and scientific analyses establishing these iron laws of history. Here, I will use them to shed bright light on more light on what, how, and why of the democratic peace.
