Question: Has a democratic nation ever declared war on another democratic nation?

[InvisibleChurch]

I'd heard somewhere that a country that has a democratically elected govt has never attacked another country with a democratically elected govt. Is this so? Or does this all depend on what the meaning of "democratically elected" is?

[Cheburashka]

Not sure what Argentina's political condition was during the Falklands War, but that one comes to mind.
---
Argentina was a military dictatorship at the time.

[RightWhale]

No kidding. They sometimes qualify their declamation by saying modern, but there hasn't been a declared war lately anyway. Maybe GB v. Argentina, although that probably wasn't declared either.

[chudogg]

It is debatable. We could say it about North: "The North did not appeal to legality because they would have lost. They appealed to the sword, and WON."

The North didn't attack Fort Sumpter.

[chudogg]

Mexico spilt the first blood though.

[Cheburashka]

Same was with Germany and Austro-Hungary. At the start of WWI the only republics in Europe were France, Switzerland and San Marino.
---
Portugal was a republic since 1910.

[ThePythonicCow]

What I think is the case is that two independent democratic countries have never gone to war with each other, where I define "democratic" as meaning that the leaders have a genuine risk of being voted out of office. The majority of people won't vote repeatedly to initiate and substain a war of aggression.

The American Revolution doesn't count as an exception, because the King of England was at no risk of being "voted" out of his leadership of the colonies. Indeed, if that had been a practical possibility, the American colonies would I am sure gladly have voted the King out of his job as ruler of the colonies, rather than gone to war over the disputes.

The American Civil War doesn't count as an exception, because the Northern states conclusively demonstrated that they were not willing to be voted out of their dominant role in the Union of states. Had they been willing to be voted out, the South would gladly have seceded and gone their merry way, as they thought was their right to do all along.

Certainly Sadam Hussein doesn't count, because he was at no risk of being voted out.

Russia was perhaps venturing close to a democratic nation, along about the time of Yeltsin. But it surely seems not to be such now. The threats to Putin's power don't seem to be in the voting booth.

One strong indicator of a democracy as I define it is the presence of at least two strong political parties. These parties might not seem to be much different depending on how one measures such things, but if a politician is normally stuck in one or the other parties with cross party moves rare and dramatic, then that counts as separate parties for these purposes. If over the decades, both parties sometimes gain the upper hand of power, then that is strong enough for these purposes.

[ThePythonicCow]

Good post.

[Zeroisanumber]

How about the American Civil War? Were those not two democracies?

I believe that the rebellion was crushed before they had any time to actually hold a real election. Form 1864-on there wasn't really much of a governemnt to speak of at all; everyone was just kind of looking out for their own.

[Reily]

Though the power of the Austro-Hungarian & Imperial German parliaments were consideriably limited when compared to the UK parliament.
And the pre-WWI Russian Duma isn't really worth talking about.

[A. Pole]

Portugal was a republic since 1910.

Thank you, I have missed it. So we had France, Switzerland, Portugal and San Marino. Only French and Swiss shared the border.

[A. Pole]

Though the power of the Austro-Hungarian & Imperial German parliaments were considerably limited when compared to the UK parliament.

If compared, yes. Was the upper chamber of their parliament hereditary also?

[Oztrich Boy]

The last king that believed Britain was a monarchy had the government disagree with him to the point where he lost his head over the issue.

Actually it was another king 40 years later, and he just left the country after the government brought William of Orange over to replace him.

[Oztrich Boy]

Republics are a modern variant of classical democracy.

"classical democracy" = "rule of the mob"

[krb]

Hitler was democratically elected, and declared war on many countries (including ours).

[Reily]

All this is from a fuzzy memory of a modern European history class I took in college.

I don't think either parliament had a upper chamber
I believe in the Austro-Hungarian case there was an advisory council to the Emperor and it was pointed. I also believe this council had a very short life-span, it was something set up by Franz Josef to placate the non-Hungarian minorities.

I can not remember if there was a upper chamber or advisory council for Imperial Germany.

[Zack Nguyen]

You heard correctly. It is called "democratic peace theory." No democracy has ever fought a war against another democracy. It is a major area of study in international affairs. The important question is why democracies haven't fought wars.

[Dante3]

You are right.

I have no connection to Serbia, but I was horrified when this country attacked the Serbs, killing more than three thousand of them, mostly women and children. The Serbs had never posed a threat to us.

[A. Pole]

The important question is why democracies haven't fought wars.

Because democracies were so rare that they rarely shared common borders. Greater number of them appeared only after WWII, and many of them recently.

I think that this claim is just pure PC BS, which idolized democracy and ascribes everything good to it.

I think that when democracies were tested by ancient Greek city states and city states in medieval Italy, they DID fight the wars among themselves.

[Zack Nguyen]

Let's invade France.

[RightWhale]

Not necessarily. There are gradations of democracy, and they blend into oligarchy, some of this, some of that; polity is somewhere in the mix, republic is nowhere. What was the title of Plato's 'Republic' originally, not in translation but the original language?