One of the most serious side-effects of the nightmarish Trump Clown Show, in addition to the obvious lack of a rational national response to Covid-19, is the lack of attention to a potentially catastrophic breakdown in the liberal international order constructed by the United States and the Western Alliance since the Second World War and the lack of any American strategy for containment of the growing threats from both Russia and China. For those few Americans who have more intelligence and attention span than the cultish MAGAgers, and who care about what really makes a “great power” great, this work could not be more timely.
This work is based on the best of current scholarship in international relations, but is written for the intelligent laity with a minimum of jargon or esoteric theory. It is nicely concise, only 224 pages of text, but well-documented. If I were still teaching international relations at a university, I could easily build a course around this book. But being a fellow academic in this area, I’ll note some minor quibbles.
First, and most important to note for those who may consider buying this book for some serious summer reading while waiting out the plague, you should know that the main title is a bit misleading. The subtitle really sums up the book more accurately. It’s a nice review of the history of “democracies” at war from the Peloponnesian War to the present. All the better for that. It combines important theory in the study of war with the most relevant historical cases. That’s one reason it’s such a good read.
Second, just to avoid confusion, it’s not really about “democracies” versus autocracies. As Kroenig himself warns the reader (page 18), he only uses the term “democracy” as a common label for what are really relatively liberal and open oligarchies, or what political scientists technically call “polyarchy,” after Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (1971), another book that I heartily recommend to any intelligent laity. The legalistic term “republic,” which encompasses both the Roman Republic and the American Republic might also be more apt. So there’s some of that jargon which Kroenig himself avoids. But I introduce that jargon here because it’s necessary to sort out some of the theory which Kroenig has trouble applying to cases at some points in the historical narrative.
In the case of the Punic Wars, for example, Kroenig admits of some difficulty categorizing Rome as any more “democratic” than Carthage. Clearly, they were both oligarchies dominated by ruling classes. But Rome was indeed far more “polyarchic,” as Dahl defines it, because it was far more open in extending citizenship and participation to subjects than was Carthage. And this was in fact the critical source of Roman strength and resiliency during the long travail of the Punic Wars. It was the fact that Rome’s allies generally stood by them, supplying the nautical expertise that Romans lacked, and not defecting when Hannibal was marching through the Latin Peninsula, which made the difference. In other words, it was Rome’s socii navales, not the overrated corvus, which allowed Rome to become a sea power. For an excellent new book on that subject, see Marc G. de Santis, Rome Seizes the Trident: The Defeat of Carthaginian Seapower and the Forging of the Roman Empire (2016).
But, putting aside those quibbles, Kroenig provides an excellent explanation of what is called “Democratic Peace Theory” in the academic literature. That, as he well realizes, is another misleading label. It would better be called “Polyarchic War Theory” in my opinion. But here’s how Kroenig correctly presents the theory:
1. “Democracies” generally do not fight wars with other “democracies,” although they do fight many wars with autocracies.
2. Contrary to common assumptions about the supposed war-fighting talents of autocratic regimes, “democracies” usually win their big wars against autocracies. This is Kroenig’s main contribution ~ an important contribution ~ to the common understanding of the mislabeled “Democratic Peace Theory.”
I would add a third point, which Kroenig might have written about if he were doing a much longer book. This is that “democracies” usually do very badly in their big wars against autocracies at the beginning. That is to say, they are usually unprepared for war. But over the course of a big war, they have a better learning curve than do autocracies. This helps explain the common misperception that “democracies” are bad at fighting wars.
So that’s the bad news, as well as the good news, about the problem we currently face with “the return of great power rivalry” and the growing conflicts with Russia and China. History and theory tell us that we are likely to win in the long run. But in the long run, as John Maynard Keynes remarked, we will all be dead. Or many of us, at any rate. In other words, our natural advantages as a “democracy” are not a good reason to be complacent about our current unpreparedness. On that, see Christian Brose, The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare (2020).
And that’s why Kroenig’s book could not be more timely.
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