A Science of War
Do democracies make better lovers?
From Ukraine, Syria and Gaza to the centenary of the First World War in 2014, news junkies and students of history cannot help but wonder if war is a perpetual feature of civilization. German philosopher Immanuel Kant wondered as much in a 1795 essay entitled Perpetual Peace, concluding that citizens of a democratic republic are less likely to support their government in a war because “this would mean calling down on themselves all the miseries of war.” Ever since, the “democratic peace theory” has had its supporters. Rutgers University political scientist Jack Levy, in a 1989 essay on “The Causes of War,” reasoned that the “absence of war between democratic states comes as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations.” Skeptics point out such exceptions as the Greek and Punic wars, the War of 1812, the U.S. Civil War, the India-Pakistan wars and the Israel-Lebanon War. Who is right? Can science answer the question?
In their 2001 book Triangulating Peace, political scientists Bruce Russett and John Oneal employed a multiple logistic regression model on data from the Correlates of War Project that recorded 2,300 militarized interstate disputes between 1816 and 2001. They assigned each country a democracy score between 1 and 10, based on the Polity Project, which measures how competitive its political process is, as well as the fairness of its elections, checks and balances of power, transparency, and so on. The researchers found that when two countries score high on the Polity scale, disputes between them decrease by 50 percent, but when one country was either a low-scoring democracy or an autocracy, it doubled the chance of a quarrel between them.
Kant also suggested that international trade (economic interdependency) and membership in international communities (transparency and accountability) reduce the likelihood of conflict. So Russett and Oneal included in their model data on the amount of trade between nations and found that countries that depended more on trade in a given year were less likely to have a militarized dispute in the subsequent year. They also counted the number of International Governmental Organizations (IGOs) that every pair of nations jointly belonged to and ran a regression analysis with democracy and trade scores. Overall, democracy, trade and membership in IGOs (the “triangle” of their title) all favor peace, and if a pair of countries are in the top 10th of the scale on all three variables, they are 83 percent less likely than an average pair of countries to have a militarized dispute in a given year.
How has the democratic peace theory held up since 2001? With all the conflict around the world, it seems like peace is on the rocks. But anecdotes are not data. In a 2014 special issue of the Journal of Peace Research, Uppsala University political scientist Håvard Hegre reassessed all the evidence on “Democracy and Armed Conflict.” He stated that “the empirical finding that pairs of democratic states have a lower risk of interstate conflict than other pairs holds up, as does the conclusion that consolidated democracies have less conflict than semi-democracies.” Hegre is skeptical that economic interdependence alone can keep countries from going to war—the “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention” popularized by Thomas Friedman’s observation that no two countries with McDonald’s fight—unless their economies are in democratic nations. He wonders, reasonably, if there might be some other underlying factor that explains both democracy and peace but does not suggest what that might be. I propose human nature itself and our propensity to prefer the elements of democracy. Peace is a pleasant by-product.
Whatever the deeper cause may be the long-term trends are encouraging. According to Freedom House, there were no electoral democracies (with universal suffrage) in 1900, 69 in 1990, and 122 in 2014—63 percent of the 195 countries in the world. That’s moral progress. The other 38 percent—particularly the theocratic autocracies desirous of thermonuclear weapons and bent on bringing about Armageddon—means we must remain vigilant. Otherwise we run the risk that Kant’s perpetual peace will dissolve into the source of his essay title inspiration: an innkeeper’s sign featuring a cemetery. This is not the type of perpetual peace toward which most sentient beings strive.
November 17th, 2014 at 9:37 pm
Today however, all these conflicts seem to involve one particular religion. It is safe to say if the USA did nothing, the religious division and sectarian violence would rise even higher.
Proof you ask?
http://m.bbc.com/news/world-30086435
Global terror attack deaths rose sharply in 2013, says report
If the US intervention continues, this violence with undoubtedly be directed more towards the USA. The Northern part of Africa and most of the Middle East will fall to religious authority.
With these democracies divided on the cause of world conflict it will be easy for these united religious forces to conquer their enemies without nuclear weapons.
I submit they are proving it.
November 19th, 2014 at 4:16 am
JFK Assassination
Michael Shermer cherry picked all of his data to make the case for no conspiracy in the JFK assassination article. Not one mention of the overwhelming evidence for conspiracy. His two references, Gerald Posner’s Case Closed and Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History are among the few books claiming no conspiracy. Both Posner and Bugliosi have worked for the CIA. Over 1,000 books have been written on the JFK assassination and over 90% of them outline one or more conspiracies.
Two books that show a clear conspiracy are Robert Groden’s JFK: The Case for Conspiracy and Michael Collins Piper’s Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy. Both implicate the Intelligence Agencies who are the people who could pull it off and cover it up. They are the masters of cover ups, lies, covert actions, black operations and false flag operations. Neither the Office of the President or the leaders in the House and Senate Intelligence Oversight Committees have control of the Intelligence Agencies. They are a law unto themselves.
November 19th, 2014 at 5:48 am
I assume that the burden of proof lies not with Michael Shermer about the Kennedy conspiracy theory but with the conspiracy believers.
John Fishwick
November 19th, 2014 at 9:09 am
I am less concerned whether my nation wages war against another democracy than I am whether we wage an unwise – or unjust – war. Note that among the top weapon selling nations, we find some sterling examples of democracies: e.g. England, France and the good ol’ US of A. These nations also tend to send their militaries into other nations quite often – just not into ‘democracies.’
This makes me suspect there are other factors which cause a ‘false correlation.’ The “democracies do not fight among themselves” effect could be due to developed Western democracies tending to pick on weaker, resource-rich, under-developed third world nations. Western democracies have been caught interfering with under-developed nations – destabilizing their governments and supporting pro-West tyrants. Western powers sometimes intervene militarily to deal with a nation they ‘mucked up’ … so it may be just a side effect of first-world meddling that they (Western Democracies) never invade a nation with a high democracy score.
If this is the case we have much less reason to be proud.
November 19th, 2014 at 10:47 am
JFK assassination – refer to the following:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/11354786
November 19th, 2014 at 10:55 am
Bill Morgan, the fact that are over a 1000 books published that support conspiracy, doesn’t make it true. The problem with conspiracy theories is this: They never ever produce verifiable evidence, distort the truth or conveniently leave out facts that disagree with their theory.
The fact the mr Shermer doesn’t mention the “overwhelming evidence”, is because there is none.
Please give me 1 example with verifiable evidence.
November 19th, 2014 at 12:53 pm
Dear “Bill Morgan”
Neither Vincent Bugliosi nor Gerald Posner worked for the CIA.
If all you have is character assassination and “there are over 1,000 books outlining one or more conspiracies”….that means there are more then 1,000 conspiracy theories BY PEOPLE TRYING TO MAKE MONEY.
November 20th, 2014 at 8:59 am
What about the democratic USA & it’s penchant for war? Ah, but wait: Its’ not a true democracy anymore – congress is more like an oligarchy purchased by special interest billionaires!
November 20th, 2014 at 1:27 pm
Michael Shermer, why don’t you review this book that just came out on the JFK Conspiracy?
When Richard Charnin saw the film Executive Action in 1973, he was astounded when the narrator disclosed that an actuary engaged by the London Sunday Times calculated a one in 100,000 trillion probability of eighteen material JFK-related witness deaths in the three years following the assassination. As a quantitative analyst with three degrees in applied mathematics, Charnin recognized that the calculation was mathematical proof of a conspiracy. After all, a professional actuary who has passed difficult mathematical exams would be expected to come up with a good estimate of the odds; that is what he does for a living.
But in 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) dismissed the actuary’s odds, stating they were invalid and that the universe of witnesses was “unknowable”. The HSCA never showed the actuary’s methodology.
In 1989 Jim Marrs published Crossfire in which he listed 103 convenient JFK-related deaths. Along with Jim Garrison’s On the Trail of the Assassins, Crossfire was the basis for Oliver Stone’s JFK. In 2003, using Marrs’ list, Charnin calculated the probability of at least 15 unnatural witness deaths in the first year, essentially confirming the actuary’s calculation.
The HSCA did not consider unnatural deaths which comprised the majority of suspicious deaths; it noted just 21 deaths when there were at least 122 by 1978.
Reclaiming Science: The JFK Conspiracy is based on a statistical analysis of unnatural JFK-related deaths, Dealey Plaza eyewitness observations, medical, acoustic and photographic evidence. Warren Commission defenders and the Corporate Media avoid the evidence and continue to promote the bogus Single Bullet Theory and look like fools doing it. They claim that Oswald was the lone shooter, despite overwhelming evidence that he was not on the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository but rather in front on the first floor watching the motorcade.
As a result, the mainstream media has lost all credibility and must be considered complicit in the ongoing 50 year cover-up. Reclaiming Science: The JFK Conspiracy is a challenge to the media to let real scientific experts present the facts. Let the experts debate the Warren Commission apologists in full public view. It will be no contest.
November 20th, 2014 at 1:46 pm
On Conspiracy Theories, I would be interested in your rebuttal of the mathematics:
Conspiracy Theories and Mathematical Probabilities
http://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/conspiracy-theories-and-mathematical-probabilities/
t’s an interesting exercise to calculate mathematical probabilities of so-called “conspiracy theories”. The mainstream media and their cadre of online gatekeepers use the term “Conspiracy Theorist” (CT) as a derogatory label for those who seek the truth. According to the media, there are never conspiracies. But they avoid factual discussions based on the scientific evidence.
These myths are promoted non-stop in the mainstream media.
– Oswald acted alone in 1963 – with a magic bullet and defective rifle.
– Bush won Florida in 2000 and had a 3 million “mandate” in 2004.
– Nineteen Muslims armed with box cutters who could not fly a Cessna, hijacked four airliners and outfoxed the entire U.S. defense establishment – while Bin Laden was on dialysis, near death and hiding in caves.
But the media can’t refute the mathematics that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that there is a massive conspiracy to hide the truth of these events from the public.
Scientific notation is necessary to express the extremely low probabilities of the following events. For example, the probability P that at least 23 material witnesses would die unnaturally in the year following the JFK assassination is 7.3E-40 in scientific notation (less than 1 in a trillion trillion trillion).
To put the numbers in context: There are an estimated 300 billion trillion (3E23) stars in the universe. That’s 3 followed by 23 zeros: 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. There are an estimated 700 thousand trillion (7E17) grains of sand on earth or 7 followed by 17 zeros: 700,000,000,000,000,000.
The probability calculations are based on the Normal, Binomial and Poisson distribution functions.
more…
November 20th, 2014 at 1:48 pm
Michael, will you try to rebut the math?
http://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/conspiracy-theories-and-mathematical-probabilities/
It’s an interesting exercise to calculate mathematical probabilities of so-called “conspiracy theories”. The mainstream media and their cadre of online gatekeepers use the term “Conspiracy Theorist” (CT) as a derogatory label for those who seek the truth. According to the media, there are never conspiracies. But they avoid factual discussions based on the scientific evidence.
These myths are promoted non-stop in the mainstream media.
– Oswald acted alone in 1963 – with a magic bullet and defective rifle.
– Bush won Florida in 2000 and had a 3 million “mandate” in 2004.
– Nineteen Muslims armed with box cutters who could not fly a Cessna, hijacked four airliners and outfoxed the entire U.S. defense establishment – while Bin Laden was on dialysis, near death and hiding in caves.
But the media can’t refute the mathematics that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that there is a massive conspiracy to hide the truth of these events from the public.
Scientific notation is necessary to express the extremely low probabilities of the following events. For example, the probability P that at least 23 material witnesses would die unnaturally in the year following the JFK assassination is 7.3E-40 in scientific notation (less than 1 in a trillion trillion trillion).
To put the numbers in context: There are an estimated 300 billion trillion (3E23) stars in the universe. That’s 3 followed by 23 zeros: 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. There are an estimated 700 thousand trillion (7E17) grains of sand on earth or 7 followed by 17 zeros: 700,000,000,000,000,000.
The probability calculations are based on the Normal, Binomial and Poisson distribution functions.
More… at the link
November 20th, 2014 at 8:00 pm
Nice article Dr. Shermer. However, I’m a little disturbed by one line – …particularly the theocratic autocracies desirous of thermonuclear weapons and bent on bringing about Armageddon…
I’d love to see the data behind that characterization. That is how the US has portrayed certain governments in order to foment fear, and distrust, and to then enable themselves to implement horrendous policies, such as the sanctions against Iran, which have killed over a million people.
November 21st, 2014 at 4:15 am
Richard Charnin, Thanks for your post. Interesting information. Don’t think MS will read your book. I would hope you have figured it out by now that MS probably has connections to the Intelligent Agencies. That’s the most plausible explanation why he goes into bull dog attack mode at anyone who suggest a government conspiracy of any kind. He tries to paint people who believe in government conspiracies as “tin foil hat” people. He ignores all the evidence of conspiracy. MS apparently believes you can trust the government. I don’t.
November 24th, 2014 at 1:39 pm
Bill said:
“Neither the Office of the President or the leaders in the House and Senate Intelligence Oversight Committees have control of the Intelligence Agencies. They are a law unto themselves.”
…and your credibility is gone. The CIA is run by the President, directly. Nothing they do happens without executive authorization. So if you want to flog the dead horse of a JFK conspiracy, pick a more plausible bad guy. Unless you want to argue that Kennedy hired Oswald through the CIA’s aegis…
Richard,
Why do speak of yourself in the third person? Are you a sock puppet for Bob Dole? And no, an actuary is NOT the expert you go to so at best he’s out of his area of expertise. Of course you could always hire a ballistics expert to do your taxes, but I don’t think it would work.
Actually if the government wanted to discredit the JFK conspiracists, it couldn’t have hired anyone better for the role than you two.