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ELIMINATING DEMOCIDE AND WAR THROUGH AN ALLIANCE OF DEMOCRACIES*
This article, by one of the world's foremost scholars on the relationship of democracy and war, argues that an alliance of democratic states (of which there are now about 120) would be the most effective method of elimnating democide (genocide and mass murder) and war.
Although the author is a supporter of the United Nations, he does not believe it is capable of eliminating democide and war because many of its member
states are authoritarian and are involved in democide themselves. Therefore an alliance should organize separately, like NATO, only larger and containing many post-colonial democratic states throughout the world. This alliance could become acctractive enough to lure non-democratic states to transform.
Democratization is the most practical and empirically proven solution to war and democide.
-www.hawaii.edu/powerkills
There is a feeling among many that since democide (genocide and mass murder) and war have always been with us, they always will be; that such violence is in our bones, part of the human condition. After all, year after year, as far back as one looks in history, some part of the world has suffered war or genocide. And, even today, this is going on in many countries and regions, such as in the Sudan, Burma, China, North Korea, and the Middle East. By democide alone, during the last century about 174 million people were murdered by government, over four times the some 38 million combat dead in all the century's domestic and foreign wars.
Nonetheless, there is much hope to eradicate war and democide. Consider that from the perspective of the eighteenth century, slavery also looked to the humanist as democide and war do to us today: an evil that has always been part of human society. Now slavery is virtually ended, and eventually the same may be true of war and democide. Why this is true and how to foster this end to democide and war is the subject of this essay.
There are many complex considerations and theoretical issues to the problem of war and democide. There are the questions of general and immediate causation, and of aggravating and inhibiting conditions. There are the practical questions of how to gather timely intelligence about them...