Democracy and Deterrence: Foundations for an Enduring World Peace
Abstract
War is a pernicious plague with a ubiquitous presence throughout human history. Many popular theories contribute to our understanding of the causes of war, but none have demonstrated any powerful correlation with the occurrence or nonoccurrence of war. However, philosophers and political scientists have reasoned for centuries and used large-scale statistical analyses to prove that democracies are a method of nonviolence. Historians have concluded that war is caused during a competition for power by a failure of states to take appropriate actions to preserve the peace, that is, a failure of deterrence. After studying war and the causes of war for decades, the distinguished jurist Prof. John Norton Moore has now postulated that the cause of major international armed conflict is the deadly synergy between the existence of a potentially aggressive nondemocratic regime and the absence of effective system-wide deterrence. This postulate on the cause of war is the foundation for Moore's incentive theory of war avoidance -- that war is caused by a decision of human leadership and can be prevented by the totality of positive and negative incentives that effectively discourage leaders of nation-states at the individual, state, and international levels from committing aggression. Deterrence is Moore's predominant theme. Democracies are deterred from aggressive action by internal checks and balances. Nondemocracies without internal checks and balances must be deterred from aggressive action by external deterrence incentives that target and affect the leaders of nation-states because they make the decision to commit aggression. This study validates both Moore's postulate on the cause of war and his incentive theory of war avoidance through a detailed examination of the democratic peace principle and deterrence and the creation of a mathematical formula that can be used to determine the probability of peace as well as to index or quantify deterrence factors.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 2008
- Accession Number
- ADA493031
Entities
People
- Walter G. Sharp Sr.
Organizations
- Air University