Liu Xiaobo - Nobel Peace Prize

Listening to the award ceremony of the Nobel Peace Prize of Liu Xiaobo today it was claimed that:

"never before have two democracies gone to war against each other."

Anyone have any comment or anything to substantiate this?

... and the following countries declined to attend the award ceremony:

Russia,
Kazakhstan,
Colombia,
Tunisia,
Saudi Arabia,
Pakistan,
Serbia (which changed its mind and attended),
Iraq,
Iran,
Vietnam,
Afghanistan,
Venezuela,
the Philippines,
Egypt,
Sudan,
Ukraine,
Cuba
Morocco.

See any great democracies on the list?

you define a "democracy" ;)

A huge amount of ink and bytes have been spilled on that topic ("no wars betwixt democracies") and the related topic of "democracies success vice internal insurgencies". The search engines are your friends. :D

Regards

Mike

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jmm99

you define a "democracy" ;)

A huge amount of ink and bytes have been spilled on that topic ("no wars betwixt democracies") and the related topic of "democracies success vice internal insurgencies". The search engines are your friends. :D

Regards

Mike

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I suggest what we saw here was China doing a little arm twisting or getting kindred spirits (with no human rights or democratic conscience) to agree with them. Not a great success I note.

With WikiLeaks we see the US version with the added "influence" over certain large financial (credit card) service providers. Note with great success either I note.

JMA,

You cited

Quote:

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never before have two democracies gone to war against each other.

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How about World War One? Germany was a parliamentary democracy, Austria-Hungary maybe less so, Russia was not, France, Great Britain and Belgium were.

A few decades before the Franco-Prussian War?

Exhausted my instant history memory on a Sunday evening.;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by davidbfpo

JMA,

You cited

How about World War One? Germany was a parliamentary democracy, Austria-Hungary maybe less so, Russia was not, France, Great Britain and Belgium were.

A few decades before the Franco-Prussian War?

Exhausted my instant history memory on a Sunday evening.;)

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David, I just don't know. Heard the award speech and that sounding odd (and interesting) so thought I would see if anyone here thought the same.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JMA

"never before have two democracies gone to war against each other."

Anyone have any comment or anything to substantiate this?

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It is the so-called “Democratic Peace Theory”, a tenet of liberal-interventionism and neo-conservatism alike.

Thomas Friedman offered his own version of democratic peace theory in his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, with his “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention” whereby he argued that no two nations with a McDonald's franchise have ever gone to war with each other.

Tom Friedman, however, is a buffoon; right after Lexus was published NATO started bombing Serbia, which had McDonald’s. Other exceptions to the Golden Arches theory have been: Russia-Georgia, India-Pakistan, Israel-Lebanon.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bourbon

It is the so-called “Democratic Peace Theory”, a tenet of liberal-interventionism and neo-conservatism alike.

Thomas Friedman offered his own version of democratic peace theory in his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, with his “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention” whereby he argued that no two nations with a McDonald's franchise have ever gone to war with each other.

Tom Friedman, however, is a buffoon; right after Lexus was published NATO started bombing Serbia, which had McDonald’s. Other exceptions to the Golden Arches theory have been: Russia-Georgia, India-Pakistan, Israel-Lebanon.

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Thank you, I was wondering where they got it from.

I went through this debate in an IR class - the closest we got was Turkey vs Greece.

Liberal democracies haven't fought each other because:

1. They're still quite new; and

2. They've been too busy fighting everybody else.