Ferdinand has been on a tear (for example). In a couple posts, he’s said: "proximity + diversity = war"
I think this is close but wrong. The real equation is: proximity + diversity + democracy = war.
It’s easy to think of counterexamples to his equation, e.g. Singapore or the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
It’s only when diverse peoples have the opportunity to band together to steal the wealth of other peoples, i.e. when they have a democratic political system, that war ensues.
Hmmm…
Didn’t the democracy-war anti-war position drop only in the last 5 years? Between 1900 and 2005???? there had not been a war between two democracies?
Also…seems like pre-1900, Ferdinand’s position is substantially stronger than yours. 100 years war, 30 years war…..
I didn’t say that there aren’t other reasons countries go to war. Can you come up with a diversity populace, living in close proximity and under a democratic government that hasn’t gone to war? I think not.
I’m pretty sure the US Civil War was a war between two democracies. You could also argue that Germany in WWII was democratic. Hitler may have interfered in an election, but it’s not like that hasn’t happened in the US. Plus, FDR was President for life at that point anyway.
The wars you mention – in times gone by – were fought on a totally different scale. Democracies invented total war.
It depends how you define democracy. I define democracy as, “mass elections that matter”. It’s the elections, and the resulting polarization that elections cause, that poison the polity and result in war. By the time the war happens, the system may have collapsed from democracy outright tyranny. Thus I blame democracy for Hitler and World War II, even if Germany was not democratic at the time it went to war. Elections are the poison, tyranny and war are the disease.
I also hold democracy as a major contributing factor to World War I. Germany, England, and France all had mass suffrage elections that mattered. In the decades leading up to the war, politicians outdid each other to win elections by appealing to jingoism. This created the climate that resulted in such a horrific war.
When you realize the role that democracy/elections played in the French Revolution wars, the Civil War, World War I, and World War II, you realize that not only does democracy not prevent war, it has been a strong contributor to the most horrific wars in U.S. history.
Citizen armies allowed Republican Rome to be the most comprehensive aggressor in classical times. They practiced something akin to total war against the Carthaginians. What happened to Carthage is not a whole lot different than what hit Dresden, even if the means were different. Imperial Rome was, on the whole, a lot less expansionistic.
singapore is 75% chinese and racially conscious/nationalist
proximity + diversity + democracy*(lack nationalism if there is an ethnic majority) = war
another thing is that high IQ populations can turn into a kind of (incidentally) ethnic meritocracy when low skilled and/or low IQ immigrants are important in the economy (as in singapore) (this is why I find the idea of the Zionists taking the offer for an african homeland so fascinating)
dubai is a different example where the local population is not very high IQ or conscientiousness. They are, however, few enough to form a real aristocracy paid off for staying out of the way while a free market economy with skilled and unskilled workers from all over the world takes care of wealth creation.
(oil plays a part to, of course)
[...] Foseti – “The Result of the Civil Rights Act“, “The Equation for War” [...]
The difference is those democracies people talk about as not generally going to war with each other were ethnically homogeneous. They had no reason to. Even Hitler used “all Germans in one Germany” as a justification for starting fights.
So the equation is correct.
The corollary is that everything the modern West – and the USA in particular – has done to itself over the past 50 years has the effect of maximizing the eventual violence of the outcome.
Ferdinand borrowed that simple equation from Roissy and it is absolutely correct.
War maybe too strong a word in some cases. Tension may be the more appropriate word on a small scale. Sometimes that tension becomes violent, sometimes not. Sometimes that tension is only on a small scale, such as within one city of a country where the various sub groups form gangs based on race and religion and fight with each other.
The equation though works for international warfare too. Diversity between two nations, plus some form of proximity, leads to war.
Even in a rigidly controlled state diversity will lead to tension even if it never escalates.
As long as people feel themselves to be a distinct group from their neighbours there will be tension. The only two remedies is the thorough assimilation of immigrants or having some other, bigger thing that brings diverse people together in their hatred.
By the way, I meant to add “brings diverse people together in their hatred, fear or opposition.”