User talk:Salix alba/History of conflict between democracies

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Just noting that "**Weart in his book Never at War instead argues that Athens was a borderline democracy but that the opposing states did not fulfill the criteria above or that the conflicts caused no or very few battle deaths." Thus, he does not argue that all conflicts caused no or very few battle deaths. Ultramarine 11:51, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

A table may be preferable, but the references should still be included. Ultramarine 12:11, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, references should be included. I can't really comment of the data itself, as I know little on the subject, edit at will. Possibly at the end of the table we should summarise various authors interpretations. --Salix alba (talk) 12:23, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

The division into "status as democracy" and "interpretation" does not work very well for most modern wars. The interpretation in most cases will be "Weart/Ray do not consider this a war between democracies" or something similar. How about instead having "arguments for being a war between democracies" and "arguments against being a war between democracies"? Ultramarine 15:32, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I propose removing the following sentence from the WW1 entry:

"Also, if the United Kingdom was not a liberal democracy at this time, then this is another reason for WWI not being a war between democracies."

This is irrelevant, because there were other liberal democracies in the allied side (e.g. the United States, France, Italy) and also because noone disputes Britain being a liberal democracy at the time; in my opinion it's also a bit disturbing because it gives the false impression that rebuttals may be based on coup de theatre or rethoric artifices.

Massimamanno

Good idea.Ultramarine 07:32, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Google gives 250 results for "Nawaz Sharif regime" (998 without given name) and 22.600 results for "Nawaz Sharif government" (34.300 without given name), so I would be inclined for the second choice, although it could be argued that there were two Sharif governments and the second only was a "regime", but I don't find this argument convincing anyway given the numbers. Also, the text seemed to suggest that Sharif took on perpetual power, which is not (and should now be clearer).

I also would like to point out, just as a comment, that Sharif's amendments to the pakistan constitution (the parliament being basically unable to depose the president before the end of his term, and deputies being not allowed to vote in disagreement to the leaders of their parties) are extremely similar to amendments to the Italian constitution proposed by Berlusconi in his last tern and recently rejected by popular referendum. These amendments were of course heavily criticized for leading towards an authoritarian style democracy, but it was not claimed that they would lead towards an outright dictatorship. Massimamanno

But if combined with the other actions taken, like the repression of political opponents, the press, and the judiciary, there were problems with liberal democracy in Pakistan. A liberal democracy is not just elections, but also rights and liberties, and restrictions on the authority of the government. For example Freedom House did not consider Paksitan to be a liberal democracy at the time.Ultramarine 14:59, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

"Excluding democratically elected governments which restrict civil rights and freedom of press during or immediately before a war seems to weaken the theory. Indeed the war made the situation worse for human rights, as it can be seen comparing the severity of reports for 1998 (before the war) [25] and 1999 (the year of the war)[26] ."

First, restrictions or improvements that happens after the war has started do not really count. What is important is the democratic status when war starts. For example, there were a democratic revolution in Imperial Germany during WWI that in the end created the democratic Weimer republic. This is hardly evidence that WWI was a war between democracies. Second, what is the source for stating that restrictions increased immediately before the war? Ultramarine 21:14, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

If you do not mind, I would like to change this to "Excluding democratically elected governments which restrict civil rights and freedom of press before the war starts seems to weaken the theory."Ultramarine 21:37, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

It does not mean anything that way. What I mean is that it is normal that civil rights, for example, get restricted somewhat, to an extent or another, immediately before or after starting a war. It's almost always happened, even in the United States. Excluding governments for that reason seems to weaken the theory. Massimamanno

I would say that if they get restricted very much before the war, then the state is not a democracy anymore. Do you mind if I change to "Excluding democratically elected governments which restrict civil rights and freedom of press before the war starts seems to weaken the theory."? What happens after the start of the war is not really important for if democratic states have started a war with one another.Ultramarine 22:03, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

What I believe the following: No state, democratic or not, can wage war to another, declaring it or otherwise start the war, without committing any of the following: Serious misinformation, civil and/or human rights restrictions, restrictions of the liberty of press or talk, or association, banning of some political group, prohibition or repression of certain demonstrations, intimidation of journalists, etc.

So, if none of the above are are to be tolerated in a perfect liberal democracy, I bet I can prove the theory that no perfect liberal democracy can ever start a war. But I don't think this theory would be of any use, and I think one should restrict to real world democracies, so i'm inclined to think that restrictions introduced precisely because the country is, or is going into, war, should have a minor weight. Say, those happening during the war or up to three-four months before, although giving a precise time would be stupid. What's exactly wrong with the sentence as it is now? It does not assert that all the violations happened shortly before or after the start of the war, it just says that some did. Otherwise, just remove it, I'll look for some other way to express the concept, in my opinion the sentence "Excluding democratically elected governments which restrict civil rights and freedom of press before the war starts seems to weaken the theory." is false, so I wouldn't write it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Massimamanno (talk • contribs).

Well, you have not shown that Pakistan restricted democracy as a preparation for going to war or that restrictions happened 3-4 months or even a year before the war. If you do that, then you have a case. Freedom House, for example, consider Pakistan to not have been a liberal democracy for the whole decade.Ultramarine 22:19, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Regarding Freedom house, of course you can add it to the rebuttal column, although I consider the source to be a bit restrictive, there are other authors on democracy also. As for the rest, leave me an hour to rethink the whole paragraph, I will either submit a rewritten one or delete it entirely. Massimamanno

The new version is better, but I am still doubtful that you can compare the 1998 and 1999 reports. I think that the 1999 report is worse because of the military dictatorship, not because rights were restricted as a preparation for the war.Ultramarine 23:37, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

That's another reason why I would like to cite the 1998 report also, not the 1999 only. Possibly that could not be the best way to cite it but what I see is that the 1999 report talks about an extremely tragic situation, which is due in part (how much it's very difficult to tell) not to the Sharif government itself but to the war and the following Musharraf military coup and dictatorship. So I think the 1998 report, which tells about a negative, but not hopeless, situation, could better represent the state of civil rights at the beginning of the Kargil war, or at the very least one should take into account both reports. Massimamanno

For UK re Iraq war - Serious misinformation (check), civil and/or human rights restrictions (check), restrictions of the liberty of press or talk (check), or association, banning of some political group (check), prohibition or repression of certain demonstrations (check), intimidation of journalists, etc. (check). Leeds me to wonder if such a liberal democracy has every existed. --Salix alba (talk) 01:47, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, Freedom House do not consider these problems to be very serious. They certainly classify the UK as a liberal democracy. And I think most these restrictions happened after the start of the war. But you are certainly correct that democracies do often make some restrictions during a war.

Some examples from 1998: "In April a Christian man, Ayub Masih, was sentenced to death for speaking favorably of author Salman Rushdie during a dispute with a Muslim villager. During Masih’s hearing, one of the complainants, Mohammad Akram, shot and wounded Masih in the courtroom; despite eyewitness testimony by family members, the police refused to register their complaint against Akram. Based solely on the statements of the complainants, the court handed down a death sentence against Masih on April 27." "The killing of twenty-two Sunnis in Mominpura graveyard in Lahore in January set the stage for the continuing hostilities between the two factions and began a chain of attacks and counterattacks that left 300 dead by the end of May. No one was arrested for any of the killings""Police torture continued and, with rare exceptions, few official steps were taken to curb it.""n Punjab, the summary execution of a suspect in an alleged “encounter” with police came to light after a local doctor refused to take the victims’ bodies into the morgue, in part because the doctor doubted the officers’story. Shortly after the facts became known, the fourteen officers were promoted by the Punjab chief minister." So Pakistan had serious problems in 1998.Ultramarine 03:13, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

"The federal government responded by amending the 1997 Anti-Terrorism Act so as to give anti-terrorism courts jurisdiction over the same categories of offenses as the military courts. In the amended act, the definition of terrorism was extended to include "acts of civil commotion," a term that included the "commencement or continuation of illegal strikes" as well as "distributing, publishing or pasting of a handbill or making graffiti or wall-chalking intended to create unrest or fear.""Two other journalists who had cooperated with the BBC team were also subjected to official harassment and intimidation. In April, M.A.K Lodhi, a journalist with the News International was briefly arrested and questioned about the nature and extent of his collaboration with the BBC team. On May 4, Hussain Haqqani, an opposition leader and columnist for The Friday Times and the Urdu-language daily Jang , was arrested by Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency under a two-year old corruption charge on which he had already been exonerated. However, his detention was also suspected to have been related to interviews he gave to the BBC. He was finally released on July 25, after allegedly being brutally tortured and interrogated.""During late 1998 and early 1999, the government persistently tried to prevent the Jang group of newspapers from publishing. The Karachi-based group includes Jang , Pakistan's largest circulation Urdu newspaper, and the News International , the country's second-largest English-language newspaper. The Federal Investigation Agency raided Jang 's Rawalpindi bureau in mid-December 1998, the day after Jang published a story on a financial scandal involving the Ittefaq group of companies owned by Prime Minister Sharif's family. Prior to the December raid, the government had frozen the Jang group's bank accounts, placed deadlines upon it to pay large taxes, ceased government advertising, and withheld supplies of government-regulated newsprint. The government's harassment of Jang continued into early February.""The Punjab provincial government shut down nearly 2,000 NGOs, imposed restrictions on the registration of new groups, and began drafting a law that would facilitate its ability to regulate the province's remaining NGOs. A similar crackdown on NGO activities, albeit on a smaller scale, was underway in Sindh. Although local NGO activists noted that many of the banned organizations existed in name only, they said the move also targeted groups that had done critical reporting on human rights issues."All these things happened before the war.Ultramarine 03:24, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Here are some reports by Amnesty, well before the war: [1][2]Ultramarine 03:52, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

You quoted the summary. The full entry says:

"On May 10, the department revoked the registration of 1,941 NGOs, shutting down nearly one third of the 5,967 NGOs registered in the province" Which means that this action started exactly at the same time that Pakistan occupied Kargil. Coincidence? Maybe. However, I think you agree that at least the NGO shutdown surely did not happen "well before the war"Massimamanno

You are right. Regardless, that is only one of many serious problems menioned above, many of them existing in 1998.Ultramarine 04:04, 18 July 2006

(UTC)

Also, if the UK started shutting down its NGOs on this scale, war or not, I would certainly question the democracy.Ultramarine 04:05, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

VERY important "In a recent disclosure made by Nawaz Sharif, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, he states that he was unaware of the preparation of the intrusion, and it was an urgent phone call from Atal Bihari Vajpayee, his counterpart in India, that informed him about the situation."[3] If correct, then the Pakistani military invaded without even informing the Pakistani government.Ultramarine 04:15, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Some of the problems above are a matter of historical perspective. Death penalty for blasphemy, for example, is horrific and absurd, but did you know that deat penalty for sodomy was abolished in arkansas in 1873, when the US had already a perfect +10 on the polity scale?? Also, reading human rights and amnesty reports can make you shiver in many other cases (torture in guantanamo?). Finally, as I mentioned in the article, during McCarthysm organizations that would today be called NGOs were indeed closed (e.g. the movement for civil rights). As I suggested, you should compare 1999 Pakistan to a 50-to-100 years ago western democracy. At east, that's my thinking. Latest news you got: if the source is reliable, you could mention that in the rebuttal.

Now I need some sleep... O, and hi to the most honorable page owner, I was busy and forgot to greet him ... Massimamanno

Women, blacks, and homosexuals were repressed in the first states described as liberal democracies. Today universal suffrage is minimum requirement. Regardless of what one thinks of McCarthysm or Guantanamo, relatively few individuals and organisations were affected and they were/are not murdrered. One has always been allowed to read Das Kapital or Mein Kampf in the US.Ultramarine 05:13, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

All the conflicts mentioned here involve at best dubious democracies. There is not any evidence that the more liberal democratic states have had any bloodshed between one another. Europe's history is an endless litany of bloody wars and feuds between states. Now there is peace, even between "classic" enemies like France-Germany, England-France, Denmark-Sweden, and so on. Look at the Cod War. The UK "lost" the conflict, despite the importance of the fishing and possible oil, and despite that any ship in the Royal Navy could have sunk every boat that Iceland had. That would have been unthinkable in the age of Kings.Ultramarine 05:13, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

you are mistaking my stance, I do not want to disprove this theory, at times I am forced to take this attitude because you clearly seem to be wanting to prove it and may (counsciously or subcounsciously) forget some arguments to the contrary. As you can see, if I find references proving it, i do quote them. Massimamanno

Ok. I have tried to present both sides fairly but I may of course have missed things, as you state. If you are interested in the subject, I recommend reading Weart's Never at War.Ultramarine 16:45, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I may, though I think I by now have read enough of his papers and writings to have a fair idea of what the man thinks. Also, The theory exists independently, I do not have to read Einstein to understand relativity (although it may help). Furthermore, the clearest counterexample in this table (Kargil War) is posterior to the book, I would certainly be intersted in knowing what he thinks.

There is an inconsistency, I believe, in the fact that in the header of the page you mention a requirement for liberal democracy to be 2/3 adult vote, but in the table you use FH classification of a country as "free", which means "democratic AND with a wide range of civil liberties", which is much more restrictive. Pakistan's classification of "partly free", by FH own's addmission, could indicate "a democracy with a less then complete transition to liberal democracy". I think something should be said about this issue.Massimamanno

Here is Rummel's definition: "By democracy is meant liberal democracy, where those who hold power are elected in competitive elections with a secret ballot and wide franchise (loosely understood as including at least 2/3rds of adult males); where there is freedom of speech, religion, and organization; and a constitutional framework of law to which the government is subordinate and that guarantees equal rights."Ultramarine 20:25, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Re: polish-lithuanian war. To be honest, I doubt that there was even a war declaration of lithuania on poland in 1919. From what I currently understand of this rather obscure war, poland and lithuania were previously allied; then when the russians retreated, lithuanians wanted to occupy Vilnius, but the Polish forces did not allow them to do so, occupying it first. So Lithuania started growing hostility towards Poland, and secretly talking with the soviets, and finally ended in partecipating to the war on the opposite side in 1920. At least, this is from the scarce documents I can find... Massimamanno

After reading the chronology in these two pages [4][5], I think the above view is correct and I would revert the text to the first version. This also means that I believe the text in wikipedia Polish-Lithuanian War to be a bit misleading, but after all Wikipedia is no gospel. Massimamanno

I restored earlier version. Ultramarine 05:04, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

feel free to elaborate, expand or correct on Syria not being democratic. I do not believe it to have been a genuine electoral democracy, leave alone a liberal democracy, but I do believe being a better argument than Lebanon, and since it was mentioned, I added Syria.

previously misquoted events in lebanon for events in syria. however, I still subscribe the above... sorry Massimamanno

Seems fine.Ultramarine 02:11, 22 July 2006 (UTC)