> This. Amartya Sen has claimed that two actual democracies have never been at war between each other. At least I find hard to find significant counterexamples in history.
Off the top of my head -- a war of 1812 between Great Britain and United States. Both countries were democracies at that time.
> country’s behavior at the international level is another dimension, not much related to its internal system of governance, at least in principle
I don’t believe this is true, diplomatically or in warfare. Democracies don’t tend to go to war against each other, for example [1]. They also fight harder, and with more technological sophistication, when they wage war.
> That’s nice when you and your counterparty are part of the same democracy, or potentially allied ones. But how do you enforce contracts when your government and their government are at war?
You should look into actual historical examples here!
>This is a bold claim on a very much debatable subject, where it would come down to what "war" is, if it is the same with armed conflict/incident (like opposing force against a robbery), and so on.
No. It's not debatable. Show me an example of an extended peace between nations outside of the borders of an empire. This is almost a tautology to say that you need a central authority to have a monopoly of force. Otherwise you're in the 'tragedy of commons' scenario.
>There are many countries, even neighboring ones (like Serbia and Romania), that say that have never been in a war against each other.
Certainly they don't want to, but that's immaterial, they aren't allowed to. They are within the sphere of American order.
>As to the commendation of living within an empire, that is just helplessness against empire's overpowering forces, which is far from the general idea of "peace" as in Wikipedia-defined "societal friendship and harmony in the absence of hostility and violence".
> As opposed to the constant and just as deadly porxy wars fought in placed like Georgia, India, Hong Kong, Syria, Yemen, Somlaia, Tunsia, Libya, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan... That seems like a World War situation to me in that it spans 2 or more continents and some conflicts/occupations have lasted longer than the World wars combined.
England and France famously fought a "Hundred Years' War" in the 14th and 15th centuries over the claim of the English king to the French throne. From that time onwards, neither country ever experienced a Hundred Years' Peace even on their own soil. The longest stretch of peace for either country started in 1945 and extends to the present day.
> The existence of a collation and the presence of the US doesn't invalidate my statement
Your statement was:
"Somali pirates were hi-jacking oil tankers and the US didn't intervene, it took the European companies and military to put an end to that entirely by themselves without the need of US involvement"
In other words, you made the very strong statement that European powers addressed the issue of Somali piracy "entirely by themselves" and that "the US didn't intervene". In reality, the US did intervene and the European intervention was not entirely by themselves--countries including Pakistan and Japan even helped!
> But here are a list of hijackings and see how many of them bein released were a result of US involvement, its not as many you are making out to be
It's more than zero, which is what you made it out to be.
> You base your (flawed) argument on the basis that Humanity cannot conduct itself without abject violence and wanton barbarism
Yes, and I think it takes a completely willful or perhaps tendentious ignorance of history to claim otherwise.
> when in reality those predictable outcomes are a direct byproduct of Imperial decree: importing slaves from Africa and generational disfranchisement, isolating conquered aboriginal People into small, remotely located and undeserved areas of the US (reservations)...
That's beside the point. Every part of the world had centuries of war before Americans ever did these things. Those slaves were exported by West African slavers. Indians also practiced slavery and warfare.
It also applies across cultures. If you look at the history of China, there are periods where China is a unified empire and then there are periods where China is divided into multiple warring states (one of which is literally called the "Warring States Period"). European history between the fall of the Roman Empire and the end of WWII can be seen as a single long Western warring states period.
> Its not like this notion is anything new, it was just limited to the rich and powerful: Venice, London, Vatican, Monaco, Gibraltar, Macau etc...
The Venetians sacked Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade. London was the seat of a global empire won through centuries of warfare and more of an example of my model than of yours. The Vatican's relative inability to maintain the loyalty of continental Europe was a direct contributing factor to the Thirty Years' War, which is one of the most brutal and bloody conflicts in history.
It's worth noting that most of the wiki article is basically a list of counter-examples that proved that statement false. There have been a half-dozen wars between McDonald's-havers.
Off the top of my head -- a war of 1812 between Great Britain and United States. Both countries were democracies at that time.
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