Noah SmithJune
The democracy vs autocracy in war-fighting debate is heating up as world teeters toward a major conflict. Image: Wikimedia
“They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too.” — William T. Sherman
I am not a military analyst or expert. Usually, I look at the world through the lens of economics, which I actually have some training in. But if you want to get a good holistic picture of the world, you need to understand at least a little bit about war and conflict.
I think most pundits intuitively understand this, which is why you see them weighing in on things like the usefulness of military aid to Ukraine, or the cost-effectiveness of the F-35, or the need to establish military deterrence against China. And so I do the same, while being careful to remember that I’m not any kind of expert in the field.
One of the most persistent and annoying tropes I see, in discussions about war, is the idea that autocracies are inherently tough and martial, and that democracies — especially Western democracies — are irresolute, decadent, flaccid, and generally not very good at fighting.
You see this when rightists praise Russian military ads where soldiers do a bunch of push-ups, and decry the state of America’s “they/them army” in comparison. You can see it when leftists declare that America loses every war it fights (which is obviously false).
The idea is ingrained in our deep history — Thucydides lamented that “a democracy is incapable of empire”, and plenty of modern people will cite autocratic Sparta’s victory over democratic Athens in the Peloponnesian War.1
In fact, if you just looked at the results of the last two decades, you might be forgiven for buying the authoritarian hype. America was pushed out of Afghanistan, and its proxies quickly collapsed under the Taliban assault. Most people also say the US lost the Iraq War.2
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