The notion espoused by R.J. Rummel, noted below, that democracy will somehow put an end to war is a very old and very discredited idea. As Ludwig von Mises wrote in Human Action (Scholar’s Edition, p. 818), this theory was popular in Europe in the late eighteenth century. The theory, as Mises described it, is this: “For the people wars do not pay. The only cause of armed conflict is the greed of autocrats. The substitution of representative government for royal despotism will abolish war altogether. Democracies are peaceful.” Of course, substituting representative govenment for autocracy requires war itself, as … Continue reading Rummel, Mises, War and Democracy