The Democratic-Peace Thesis and U.S. Relations with Colombia and Venezuela

Abstract

The democratic-peace thesis is the argument that democracies do not fight wars against each other because of shared norms, economic trade relationships, and/or institutional and societal checks upon the power of executives. The effect of public opinion upon political behavior or the requirement of legislative approval for executive action or even the belief that disputes should be resolved through cooperative mechanisms is viewed as conducive to the cooperative resolution of conflicts between democracies. Though substantial evidence exists that democracies have rarely fought large-scale wars' with each other, it has been shown that they have intervened militarily intervened and engaged in covert actions against other democracies to achieve their goals (Kegley and Hermann, 1995: 3; Forsythe, 1992). Advocates of the democratic-peace thesis consider this explainable in terms of differences in the level of democracy. They argue that these interventions and covert actions have been employed against democratic states that are weakly consolidated or have been directed at promoting or safeguarding democracy rather than undermining it. An analysis of U.S. responses to political crises in Colombia and Venezuela reveals that, despite the long history of competitive democratic institutions in these countries, U.S. policy worked to weaken or oust their democratically elected leaders to achieve its national-security objectives and establish an inviting business environment for transnational corporations. The objective of U.S. policy was not to preserve democracy but to undermine it. Furthermore, the predicted cooperative resolution of conflicts between democracies was weak to nonexistent. Cultural and institutional restrictions upon state leaders and economic relations between states have often been cited as reasons that democracies do not engage in wars or militarized disputes2 with each other (Doyle, 1986; Morgan and Campbell, 1991). The externalization of democratic norms (i.e., the importance of dialogue and negotiation), trade relations, and similar