Wars between democracies

Often we hear the trope, "No democracy has ever gone to war against any other democracy." As someone with an interest in both the truth and in history, I thought this merited just a little investigation.

A minute of Googling later, I found an intriguing list of candidate conflicts here:
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/demowar.htm


There is even some analysis and arguments for and against whether any of these conflicts counted for various reasons. It may not be a complete list, but we only need to find ONE example that satisfies us to make the statement false.

For me, the most convincing example of a war between democracies that is well known was the US civil war. The Confederate States of America had a constitution that was very close to that of the United
States. You can argue that the CSA was not a democracy due to it's support of slavery, but you would have to say the same thing about the USA of the period (beginning of the war) as well. While no democracy is purer than the Iroquois Confederacy, where women and all children above the age of 7 had an equal vote with men, I think the USA and CSA both qualify as pretty decent examples of democracies, or rather Democratic Republics.

If you define Democracies carefully enough, then there has been only one in all of history, the Iroquois Confederacy (and they may not count since they did vote in a standing counsel of women who made some  day to day decisions). Since they never had a civil war, and they obviously didn't go to war with ancient Greece, perhaps the second best example of a true democracy (but only for male citizens), then you can state that no democracy has ever gone to war with any other democracy, but you have to use the true definition of democracy. Calling the US a democracy is not technically accurate, as it is a democratic republic... but if we are just a bit sloppy about what we call a democracy, then let's go forward...

Of the wars mentioned, the war between the United States and the Iroquois confederation is probably the war between the two purest "democracies" that has ever been waged. With this example alone, I think we can put this down once and for all.

What I can say with utmost certainty is that no two libertarian countries have ever gone to war with each other (setting aside the fact that there never has been a libertarian country). Also, no two communist countries have ever gone to war with each other (again, what country ever was truly communist?). No two Mormon Theocratic countries have ever gone to war with each other (unless you count a particular volley ball game where some Tongan and Samoan Mormons sent each other to the hospital). No two Shinto  countries have ever gone to war with each other to my knowledge. Probably no two Jane countries have ever gone to war. And I'm sure I could come up with a dozen other such examples... but do they have any real meaning?

So, just for fun, and in the interest of the truth, can we put this particular trope to bed? Permanently. Thanks.

The form of this sort of argument that I favor is "No two countries, both of which have a McDonald's, have ever gone to war with each other since acquiring said McDonald's." Which was brought up by Thomas L. Friedman in The World Is Flat (First edition p.420)... Now, I can't say what's happened since the book was written (2005), but I think it's still true. So mutual assured mercantile destruction (freeish capitalistic trade) is arguably the greatest force for peace in the early 21st century by Friedman's argument, not "democracy", per se.


I can't say whether any particular argument is supported by the assertion that no two democracies have ever gone to war, but I think now I can say that the assertion itself is false.