Why Are Democratic Alliances so Sluggish? (And a Proposed Solution)

“The democratic form of government is persistently incompetent at preparing for its own defense, despite fair warnings.”

It is taking an exceptionally long time to organize democracies for cooperation after two years of war in Ukraine, and in the deterrence of China from attacking Taiwan, both of which depend on demonstrated military capabilities. President Joe Biden, currently at the G-7 summit in Italy, announced that the world is at an “inflection point.” However, it is unclear if the major democracies will take this opportunity to begin serious rearmament or whether they will collude in adopting only cautious half-measures. This is because Western leaders and constituents are unsure whether the Russian war in Ukraine, the Chinese harassment sorties around Taiwan, and the Iranian volleys against Israel are independent crises provoked by anachronistic and declining elites in Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran, or whether we are looking at the opening stages of the next world war. Most worrying, as Geoffrey Blainey, Australia’s eminent historian of war, has observed, states isolating their people and inuring them to warlike confrontation is often an indicator of coming conflict.

This democratic pathology of delayed reaction to foreign policy crises can be attributed in part to the origins of the politicians, predominantly business types and their lawyers, whose experience in negotiating with unions and shareholders does not translate well into the ruthless world of diplomacy. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain came from a family whose business at its peak supplied two-thirds of metal screws made in England. Major power conflict was often unthinkable in the commercial age between 1815 and 1914 (though European powers still fought each other on scales smaller than the First World War) because war was thought irrationally costly and bad for business. Business lawyers often deceive themselves about the ease of making a deal when it comes to indivisibles like identity and national aspirations. Elected politicians often do not know their own history.

The advantage of a prompt and early defense is that it avoids a major war that is exceptionally expensive. Winners typically lose five to seven years of economic growth, whereas losers suffer developmental delays of between twenty-one and twenty-five years, according to calculations by A.F.K. Organski and Jacek Kugler. Small losing states that remain economically isolated after a major war, like East Germany, never recover. Rarely do wars unlock untapped economic and human potential. According to Robert Higgs, the reduction in American unemployment resulting from rearmament in the United States in anticipation of the Second World War matched the number of citizens put into uniform: Who would trade the unemployment line for the horrors of assaulting a beach? On rare occasions, such as the Second Boer War (1899-1902), war is profitable for a narrow group of speculators and investors.