Democracy

A: One necessary and sufficient set of characteristics involves the electoral system through which people choose their representatives and leaders, and thus give their consent to be governed and communicate their interests. They comprise regular elections for high office, a secret ballot, a franchise including nearly the whole adult population, and competitive elections. Real competition in the elections is a key requirement. A government with these characteristics is called an electoral democracy. If the government also recognizes freedom or religion, speech, transparency (in particularly knowing how one's representatives voted and debated), and the right to organize around special interests (even political groups representing a small radical minority), then it is called a liberal democracy. I elaborate on these characteristics in Chapter 3 of my book, Saving Lives (link here). My references to democracy in this Q&A are to both kinds, unless otherwise noted. Note that the “standard” definition of democracy in political science is: a political system characterized by mass participation and contested elections, and the protection of rights by laws. My definition of democracy is congruent with this “standard” definition.

A: I define a totalitarian state as one with a system of government that:

-- is not held responsible to the public by periodic secret and competitive elections;

Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was thus totalitarian, as was Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Hitler's Germany, and U Ne Win's Burma. Presently, North Korea is a prime example. Totalitarianism is an ideology for which a totalitarian government is the agency for realizing its ends. Thus, totalitarianism characterizes such ideologies as state socialism (as in Burma), Marxism-Leninism as in the former Soviet Union, and Nazism (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei -- National Socialist German Workers' Party; although racist and nationalist doctrines dominated, economically all become subverted to the party, as under communism; as Hitler said: "We are socialists"), and Italian fascism. Other versions dot the modern world, such as the socialist Baathist Party that ruled Iraq under Hussein and still rules Syria. Not all totalitarianism is socialist. Theological totalitarianism, for example, characterized the Taliban, does so for revolutionary Islamic Iran since the overthrow of the Shah in 1978-79 and Saudi Arabia. Here totalitarianism is married to Islamic fundamentalism. In short, totalitarianism is the ideology of absolute power.

A: This is an 17th-18th century understanding, when democracy was much feared by classical liberals. Both the terms liberal and democracy have undergone a change in definition since then. Liberal no longer means what it did then; now it is what we call a conservative or libertarian (depending on which 18th Century liberal one reads). And democracy that was then limited to the meaning you use, has now evolved to mean both parliamentary (the closest to traditional democratic institutions) and republic. In present political science writing, democracy means any government, whether a parliamentary democracy, majority rule democracy, or a republic, that has open, fair, and periodic elections for the highest offices, near universal franchise, and secret ballot. A liberal democracy would be one with not only such elections, but also civil rights, like freedom of religion and speech. What can be said about violence and democratic freedom applies to all forms of democracy, and best to liberal democracy.

A: I do not say that democracy is an indicator of freedom? It is a system of governance through which (if one is talking about liberal democracy) civil and political rights are guaranteed.

A: Hardly. Such ties were a function of the Cold War. American foreign policy was focused on containing the Soviet Union and communism. As part of this attempt to prevent the spread of communism, the U.S. allied itself with many unsavory anticommunist regimes. There has been much criticism of this, but strangely, there has been no similar criticism of the American alliance with Stalin to defeat Hitler. Yet, of all regimes, Stalin's was worse than any military or authoritarian regime we supported after the war, and on par with Hitler's. Why the unhappiness with our support of, say, Chile (after the coup) during the Cold War, and not of the Soviet Union in World War II?

A: American wars have not been waged on women and children. As in Iraq and Afghanistan, the wars were fought against bloody dictators to free the people of these countries and promote democracy in them. It was the Taliban and Hussein that waged war on their own women and children. So far as we have been able to determine, Hussein murdered about 800,000 of his people. Just recently, a new burial site was uncovered in Iraq in which 400 women and children were found with bullets in the back of their head.

A: The answer is no to each of these questions. Out of 192 nations in 2004, 119 were democratic – 62 percent of the world’s countries. This number of democracies is a sharp increase from the sixty-nine that existed in 1985, and well shows that the world is becoming increasingly democratic. Democracy is now the world's dominant form of government, and with the death of fascism through World War II, and of communism with the end of the Cold War, democracy has no real competitors for hearts and minds. Were you born today, the odds of you being born in a democracy are greater than 50 percent. Democracies are now spread all over the world, and manifest different cultures, different religions, different languages, and different levels of economic development.

A: I understand this and the danger is real. However, rather than making democracy a matter of faith and gut belief, it can be made a moral and utilitarian choice. That is, democracy is consistent with the core of human rights -- freedom -- that is now enshrined in international law and international conventions, is an engine of human welfare and development, and is a solution to war, democide, and famine. I wrote a book on this, Saving Lives . . . ., which is on my website at: www.hawaii.edu—WF.COVER.HTM

Q: How do you define freedom?

Q: What color is freedom to you? Why?

Q: Limited-Government is an outright contradiction of concepts. Haven’t both logic and history already clearly demonstrated that government cannot be limited?

Q: Does national freedom always grow stronger, or does it suffer when free countries fight ones that are more repressive?

Alternative Types of Governments

A: In this type of government, somebody has to decide and make policy about social problems, national issues, protests, and political demands that arise in a society. In a democracy, it is elected leaders subject to recall that do this -- they are responsible to the people for their actions, and lose power if they step on too many toes, are corrupt or incompetent. In an authoritarian system, the leaders are not so beholden to the people. With such leaders (really, rulers) free to exercise their power over the people, what then will happen to human rights? Well, we have a very long history of authoritarian systems of all kinds against which to answer this question. And the answer is uniformly simple: people lose their freedom.

A: This was a distinction made in the 16th and 17th centuries. Democracy meant then direct voting on issues by the people. Political philosophers then distinguished this from a republic (a government without a monarch), or representational democracy. In the 20th century, this distinction collapsed, since direct democracy (pure democracy) was not feasible and really did not exist anywhere. Now the term democracy stands for a republic or parliamentary political system.

A: The Manifesto says, “ . . . the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.” Of course, since democracy has become in our era a good word, many ideologies claim to be trying to achieve it. But there should be no doubt what I mean by it, which is a wide franchise, secret ballot, periodic elections for the highest office, competitive political parties, and for liberal democracies, civil and political rights, and liberties.

A: The simplest and most obvious answer is that the entire world lives in anarchy – which best characterizes the international system. Since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the major European nations, and gradually all nations, have been at the highest level of political architecture, interacting in a global anarchy. In the international relations of nation-states, groups and organizations, and individuals, there has been no law with force, and no government with a monopoly of force, or any global force at all. This is the definition of anarchy. Strange to say, that this has been missed by most everyone who has actually lived under this anarchy for all their lives.

Now, has there been a sub-international anarchy, as in states themselves? Yes, at two levels. One has been at the level of the nation-state, in what are often called failed states. Somalia and the Congo are contemporary examples. One can point to China from the fall of the Manchu Dynasty in 1912 to well after 1928 -- the Warlord Period. Also, the Soviet Union from the Bolshevik coup in 1917 to the final victory of the communists over the White Armies in the later 1920s. None of these have collapsed into mob rule, but have been stabilized in one way or another by quasi-sub-government rule by armed groups or warlords, comparable to what took place in international relations with the formation of nation-states, or by the victory of a national government.

Stability

A: Little theoretical/empirical research has been done on this, but we do know enough about democracies historically to suggest the following. Aside from the effects of foreign invasions and occupation (as of France by Germany in 1940), the stability of democracies seems to depend on (1) their age (democracies are most unstable in the first years of their life), (2) on the degree of the people's civil rights and political liberties (the more free, the more stable), and (3) the degree of economic development. Russia today falls down on all three factors, and it is hardly surprising, therefore, that it displays the current instability and authoritarianism. I don’t believe there is a case (aside from war and invasion) of a well-established liberal democracy turning authoritarian or totalitarian. The democratic Germany that Hitler corrupted and overthrown was not liberal in terms of the civil and political rights the people had.

A: Studies have been done on the stability of democratic governments, and they have been found empirically to be the most stable, compared to communist, fascist, and other dictatorships. Of course, in history, specific father- to- son monarchies have lasted longer, but there are very few of these, while the era of democracies is just beginning. Even then, just considered the durability of the American and British democracies, and those in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and so forth.

A: We have never had a nation-level pure democracy anywhere in recent centuries. But we have had republics like the U.S. and the parliamentary democracies, as in Europe, and in each of these, the people’s votes are restrained and circumscribed in one way or another. This having been said, it is true that the layers of insulation between what people want and government policy and action have been breaking down, and many democratic governments have been becoming overly centralized and powerful. Still, as long as there are civil and political rights and liberties, a secret ballot, true competition for office, regular elections, etc., then even an enlarged, more powerful democracy would still adhere to the democratic peace.

Q: Frequently you mention Iran as being nondemocratic. How can you say this, since they have elections and a legislature?

Q: What would it take for you to change your classification of the U.S. as a democracy?

Q: Could you enlighten me as to whether there exists, or ever existed any multi-party democracy in the Arab and, or Islamic world?

There is (or have been) a number of democracies among Islamic countries (50% or more Moslem), including Albania (1991-), Algeria (1995-2000), Bangladesh (1981, 1991-), Burkina Faso (1978-1979), Chad (1960-1961), Gambia (1965-), Guinea (1995-1999), Indonesia (1955-1958, 1999), Lebanon (1946-1989), Malaysia (1959-), Niger (1993-), Nigeria (1960-1965, 1979-1982, 1999-), Pakistan (1973-1976, 1988-1996), Senegal (1993-), Sierra Leone (1962-1996), Somalia (1960-1968), Sudan (1968), Syria (1954-1957), and Turkey (1950-). All were electoral democracies, except for (classification beginning in 1972) Bangladesh (1991-1993), Burkina Faso (1978-1980), Gambia (1972-1981, 1989-1994), Lebanon (1972-1975), Malaysia (1972-1974), Nigeria (1979-1984), and Turkey (1974-1980). While democracy, even liberal democracy, has been tried in a number of Moslem, and some Arab countries, as one can see, it is generally unstable and has only lasted for a few years.

Q: The amount of political arbitrariness (unfreedom) a population puts up with from its government is directly proportional to its threat perception. If you were to put the American populace between Europe, the Arab Crescent and China; give the Russians borders of Atlantic, Pacific, Mexico and Canada, wouldn’t your work then be praising Russian "freedoms.”

Q: What makes your concept of libertarianism any different than the concept of democracy and freedom that thinkers such as Montesquieu, Rousseau, Jefferson and others have already proclaimed?

I disagree with Rousseau's attacks on private property (he is one of forebears of socialism, which is antithetical to libertarianism), and his belief in a Common Will of the people that government must follow, despite the majority will, and which justifies government dictating to the majority. It's understandable that he was the godfather of the bloody dictatorship following the French Revolution. No matter how misconceived in detail, however, I agree with his emphasis on his two principles that government and morality must go together, and that government is meant to preserve freedom.

Q: Do you believe that theocracies are a positive or negative way of ruling a population? Why?

Q: Do you feel that countries with a secular government generally have a better way of life compared to countries ruled by religion?

Q: What do you see as the trends worldwide - toward greater or less democracy?

Q: Isn’t your 15,000,000 killed in World War II way off? According to some sources, such as the National Institute on War Documentation (NIOD, Netherlands), all of World War II showed a sum of about 50,000,000 people killed in all theaters. The Russians alone claimed about 20,000,000.

A: You are confused on this, as are your sources, by the way war dead are often counted. Take World War II for example. The most authoritative sources, widely relied in the field of war studies, are the statistical books of J. David Singer (search under COW Project). His figure for World War II war dead is 15,000,000. Now, you may think he is in error, since that often given for the U.S.S.R. alone is about 20,000,000, and 50,000,000 to 60,000,000 is the total for the war often cited. What has caused these massive disparities is the confusion between those killed in combat and its crossfire, and those murdered by governments during the war (democide). Aside from battle or military engagements, during the war the Nazis murdered around 20,000,000 civilians and prisoners of war, the Japanese 5,890,000, the Chinese Nationalists 5,907,000, the Chinese communists 250,000, the Nazi satellite Croatians 655,000, the Tito Partisans 600,000, and Stalin 13,053,000 (above the 20,000,000 war-dead and democide by the Nazis of Soviet Jews and Slavs). I also should mention the indiscriminate democidal bombing of civilians by the Allies that murdered hundreds of thousands, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most of these dead are usually included among the war-dead. But those killed in battle versus in democide form distinct conceptual and theoretical categories and should not be confused. That they have been consistently confounded helps raise the toll during World War II to some 60,000,000 people, way above the estimated 15,000,000 killed in battle and military action. And that the almost universally accepted count of genocide during this period also is no more than "6,000,000" Jews, around 13 percent of the total wartime democide, has further muddled research and thought.

Q: How are the Iraqi and Afghani wars related?

Q: Aren’t we engaged in the Middle East in a struggle between our Western values and those wanting to maintain Islamic culture and traditions?

Q: Can war bring peace?

Q: Is war ever justified, in your opinion, or not?

Q: Is the war in Iraq a just war?

No War Between Democracies

A: They fall into four groups. First, and the largest number of adherents, are those who argue from historical examples that allegedly disprove DP. Favorites are the Civil War, Hitler being democratically elected, and World War II, the various French-British crises, democratic Finland being allied with Germany in World War II, and certain democratic American Indian tribes on which the U.S. made war. Also, there is the finger pointing at all the wars that the U.S. and U.K. fought.

The third group argue from balance of power or power superiority theories, a la Hans Morgenthau, and assert that DP is Wilsonian idealism, i.e., unrealistic and wishful thinking.

Q: Are you saying that democracies do not engage in aggression against their neighbors or intentionally disturb the peace of the world?

Q: If all you say about democratic freedom as a solution to war and democide is true, aren’t you afraid of turning democracy into a secular religion that will become intolerant of other views? Look what happened to Marxism.

Yes, look at what happened to Marxism, especially as practiced in the Soviet Union and Mao’s China. Yes, the Soviet Union and PRC did turn it into a secular religion. But, a true democracy acts in a democratic manner to decide value issues and conflicts, and by votes of the people's representatives. This always involves some people having values they don't agree with being imposed on them. Such as polygamy being made illegal, or drugs, or gambling, etc. But, in a democracy people can speak out, and fight against this to overthrow the law or win the next election. And, this can only be done in a democracy. In nondemocracies, the value whims of a small elite or one thug is applied to all, and the people better not protest.

A: No, the U.S. is a democracy, and in a variety of historical cases it has been restrained from foreign violence by public opinion. But, this explanation is incomplete, since democratic publics also have been a force for war. So, because of this, one has to dig deeper for an explanation of the democratic peace, which I do in terms of cross-pressures, a democratic culture, the restraint of a belief in liberalism, and the common spontaneous society of democracies.

To the statement that on the average democracy has the least foreign violence, think not only of the U.S., but also of Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Denmark, New Zealand, Japan, etc.

A: Yes. Research on this has been done among indigenous tribes, and this is the finding.

Q: Are not your findings a matter of definition?

Now, consider this from the opposite side. Undoubted nondemocracies, such as the PRC, U.S.S.R., Nazi Germany, militarist Japan, Nationalist China, Vietnam, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, Iraq, Iran, and so on, have made war on each other. In other words, at the poles of democracy and non-democracy the empirical proposition that democracies don't make war on each other and that non-democracies will make war on each finds its clearest manifestation.

There is still another way of looking at this. If you push political scientists for a definition of liberal democracy, most will agree on several essentials, but they will also differ in detail and emphasis. It is important to note, then, that even though those who have done research on the relationship between democracy and violence, including war, have defined liberal democracy in different ways at the margins, almost all have agreed in their empirical findings that democracies do not (or rarely) make war on each other.

Possible Exceptions

Q: Democratic countries go to war. How can you deny that in the face of the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Q: You say that, “Free, democratic nations do not make war on each other and, overall, have the least foreign violence." But, the United States has engaged in an enormous amount of foreign violence over the last 40 years. It is currently occupying Iraq, a country that never attacked us. Does this mean that the U.S. is not truly democratic?

Q: During the Cold War, did not the U.S. intervene in many countries, some democracies such as Chile, Guatemala, and El Salvador, support death squads murdering rebels, and help behind the scenes mass murder, such as in Indonesia?

Q: wouldn't the U.S. intervention against the democratically elected Allende count as a war between two democracies?

A: No one who has studied the question of Chile and other possible interventions in Central and South America, such as Guatemala, and looked for exceptions to the rule that democracies do not make war on each other has categorized any of them as a war. Also, your assumption is incorrect. The U.S. did not intervene against Allende. The coup against him was an internally generated matter. The U.S. did favor it, however. You should keep in mind that Allende was a communist, aided by Castro and the Soviet Union, was attempting to convert Chile to a dictatorship, like that of his model, Castro. Allende had destroyed virtually all his pubic support, including the unions, business, the church, and, of course, the military.

Q: Isn’t the Civil War, America's bloodiest war, fought between a democratic north and democratic south, a contra-example of democracies making war on each other?

Q: What about the War of 1812 between Britain and the U.S.?

A: At the time of the War of 1812, Great Britain was not a democracy, regardless of the existence of a parliamentary government. Voting was not secret, the franchise was highly restricted to a small minority, many new cities (such as Birmingham and Manchester) had no representation in the House of Commons while many small villages might send two or three members, and in any case, only less than one-third of the Commons was properly elected. The greater majority of seats were appointed or selected (such as by guilds), or bought or rented. Moreover, the House of Lords, an appointed body, had considerable power and could veto any general legislation the Commons passed. Democracy did not come to Great Britain until the franchise was extended to the middle class by the Reform Act of 1832, to industrial workers by the Reform act of 1867, and to agricultural laborers by the Reform Act of 1884.

Q: As for the U.S. having "never made war on another democracy," what about the American invasion of the Iroquois tribal nation, with an established a government, and the Cherokee tribal nation?

Q: The North American Indian nations considered themselves true nations. Their governments were closer to true democracies than anything the U.S. has ever experienced. However, war between the U.S. and these nations took place. How can you say, “No War between democracies?”

Now, while Indian tribes were truly independent, they were not part of an international legal system that recognized that independence, and, in fact, were seen as tribes of savages. This was the major reason for their treatment by Britain, France, Spain, and first the American colonists, and then the sovereign United States. There is also a major issue as to whether the term democracy would apply to their internal governance. Perhaps the closest to this was the Cherokee nation of Georgia, which did have elections. However, their democracy broke down over the issue of their accepting the demands to leave Georgia, when a faction seized control and then harassed, beat up, and in some cases murdered, those among them who wished to accept the conditions for their removal.

Germany, World War I, and Hitler

A: Germany was not a democracy at the time it carried out its genocide and mass murder, and aggression. Nor was Hitler elected. Before then, he turned Germany into a dictatorship. He lost badly the two national elections in which he ran. He was appointed. In the 1932 presidential election, Hindenburg got over 18,700,000 votes to Hitler’s 11,300,000, but Hindenburg missed having an absolute majority of the votes as required by law. In a second election held a month later, Hindenburg then got over 19,400,000 votes to Hitler’s 13,400.000. With much behind the scenes maneuvering, especially by Franz von Papen who had just resigned as chancellor, Hitler was appointed the chancellor as head of a coalition in which the Nazis held only 3 of 11 seats. However, Hitler got the coalition to agree to new elections to the Reichstag. During this election campaign the Nazis used violence and threats to discourage voting for opposition candidates, and probably rigged the burning down of the Reichstag building, alleging it was part of a communist plot. Still, the elections did not give the Nazis a majority in the Reichstag. But with a voting coalition involving the Nationalists, the Nazis were able to get a bare majority of the votes. This enabled Hitler to have the Reichstag pass his enabling act, which gave him the power to rule by decree. The rest is bloody history.

Q: To the argument that democracies never make war on one another, I see one big exception, World War I. Were not both France and Germany democracies in 1914?

Other

A: Egypt was not a democracy during these wars. It had and still has an authoritarian government.

A: Regarding the 1946-1986 test, it may be true that the Cold War accounted for the particular lack of war between democracies, but what about other periods? I did several other tests for much longer periods, including 1816-1974, and found the same positive results. Also, ignore the statistics and consider Europe, the historical cauldron of war, and what has happened since the end of the Cold War. Unity has continued to grow, rather then hostility. And, incredibly, those old enemies, France and Germany, have even considered forming a common army. Moreover, once the former enemies became democratic, they have tried into a larger economic and political Europe.

A: Yes, if I had my way I would wave a wand and extirpate from political science all concepts that have political (as in social justice) connotations. I would rename the idea of justice "alpha," freedom "beta," and democracy "xocracy." If I then argued that xocracies (that is political systems with certain characteristics) do not make war on each other and here is the data, the empirical results, and the theory, there would be much less of a problem with people accepting and understanding this. This would be, of course, because few would have any prior meaning or allegiance to attach to this type of political system.

Q: Your validations are not in fact valid tests. For example, your use of the binomial theorem to test the chance that no democracies have made war on each other is silly. This is because many of the democracies would not make war on each other by virtue of their size, economics, and/or proximity to far more powerful neighbors. They are not in a position to attack anybody, no matter what kind of government they have. Response?

A: Two things. One is that many of us doing research on this question have used multiple regression (linear and polynomial) and analysis of variance to assess the impact (or hold constant) those factors the question mentions, among others. I have, for example, analyzed through these methods the effect of size, economic development, number of borders (many democracies have none or one), religion, culture, geographic location in the world, and so on. None of these factors have any meaningful impact on the finding that democracies do not make war on each other -- the results remain statistically significant, regardless.

A: Yes, according to theory and with regard to the empirical tests of other possible explanations, e.g., distance, common borders, power, culture, religion, technology, education, and so on for dozens of variables. Only democracy explains this greater peacefulness.

A: Yes. Consider the clearest sponsors: Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya, Sudan, and North Korea.

A: Two countries being democracies is a sufficient, but not a necessary condition for peace. Peace can also obtain for other reasons, but then we get into probabilities. Given any two countries such that one or both are nondemocracies, then the likelihood of war between them is increased by how totalitarian their governments are, whether they share a common border, the imbalance of power between them, their historic grievances, and whether one is allied with the enemy of the other.

A: Religion was a major cause of war was in Europe and the Islamic Empire during the Middle Ages. But even then, wars were being fought elsewhere in the world for other reasons, such as in Asia. In recent centuries, religion has been simply one minor cause among others for some minor wars. Major causes of major wars have been conflict over territory, ethnic grievances, honor, greed, and power. There was no religious component to World Wars I and II, nor the Korean and Vietnam Wars. However, the current war on terror has a fundamentalist Islamic aspect to it, but it is not one religion pitted against another, but fundamentalist Islam against the freedom and values of democratic countries.

Q: You say that democracies have the least severe foreign violence. What do you mean by “severe”?

Q: Can you compare pre-World War I Germany with the United States under Bill Clinton and George Bush? In both cases, a single person has committed the government and nation to war.

Q: When plotting the degree to which a nation is democratic (x-axis) against its internal violence (y-axis), isn’t the resulting curve U-shaped? Don’t democracies have low violence on the average, while authoritarianism produces much violence, totalitarianism, with all its controls and suppression of dissent, has much less violence?

Q: Has much research been done on the domestic aspect of the democratic peace, that is that domestically democracies have the least violence?

Q: Even within a democracy, there can be a high level of violence -- although not to the degree caused directly by the worst of governments. What comes first to my mind is organized crime. For example, when alcohol was prohibited a large illegal industry grew to meet the demand. Similar industries arose to meet the demand for prostitutes or gambling. These industries have been characterized by violence. Of course, there are many other kinds of violence within a nation. Has your approach of research and analysis been used to identify what may cause overall violence within a nation to decrease?

Q: Do you think that the existence of religious minorities in a country increases the potential for future violence?

Definition and Use

A: I do not restrict democide to just directly killing people, as by shooting them. I use the civil definition of murder, where someone can be guilty of murder if they are responsible in a reckless and wanton way for the loss of life, as in incarcerating people in camps where the may soon die of malnutrition, unattended disease, and forced labor, or deporting them into wastelands where they may die rapidly from exposure and disease.

A: One can never be certain of all the judgments that need to be made on one democide/genocide after another. What I tried to do was to be explicit as possible about definitions and the differences between democide and genocide. On democide versus genocide, see: www.hawaii.edu—GENOCIDE.HTM

A: Murder involves the intention to kill, or the killing of a person as though it was intended, as by imprisoning them under lethal conditions. Manslaughter is being responsible for someone’s death due to negligence, as deaths due to drunk driving, killing a person without malice, or causing a persons death by hitting out of sudden anger. To include manslaughter by government in my data collection, which already took eight years, would have been too much. I hope others, however, will do this. On my definition of democide, see www2.hawaii.edu—DBG.CHAP2.HTM

A: My first public use of the term was in Lethal Politics (http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM). It was a central concept, e.g., “The Soviets committed democide by . . . and their total democide was . . . .“ From its publication (in 1990) on, whenever I wrote about genocide and mass murder I used the concept.

A: True. War and democide involve intent as part of their definition. What makes democide much more horrible than the plague, say, is that humans are intentionally murdering humans. Thus, a moral dimension is added, and in large-scale democide, this is sufficient to call it an evil. The plague wasn't evil -- the death toll under communism was, and that is why I focus on it. But note this: even though democide is an evil, with the exception of the Holocaust there is more published on the plague and famines and disease than there is on democide.

A: I do. This is “democide.” Democide is one concept, one term, which covers all the other ways of committing murder, such as massacre and genocide. It is actionable, describable, and empirical. perhaps all the levels and clauses involved in its definition are confusing. but, the attempt of the definition is to make clear to what the term is applicable. This is necessary if one is to collect data, and for others to evaluate what is included and excluded. Without such, the concept is entirely subjective. While this is the way journalists and politicians work, the scientists must be exact if others are to replicate their work. In general, however, simply treat democide as murder by government.

A: Yes, if knowingly deadly, as of the British embargo against Germany after World War I. This was democide, and I so counted it.

A: This is the central question of all my work on democide. For this reason I devoted a chapter to this in my Death By Government. It’s at: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel/DBG.CHAP2.HTM. In brief, for deaths to be democide requires: (1) that the death be intended, or the result of a wanton disregard of a high risk of death (as murder is defined in civil law), as in incarcerating people in a prison environment in which life expectancy is three to six months due to disease, malnutrition, exposure, and overwork; and (2) that this be done by an agent of the government according to its policy, rules, high level orders, or high level acceptance (as in turning the other cheek). Silence, lack of punishment, or apparent lack of concern over such murdered is evidence of high government involvement and thus democide. Executions after a fair and open trial for crimes internationally considered the subject of severe punishment, as for murder, treason, brutal rape, etc., are excluded.

Q: Some people measure chemicals in the hair of Napoleon and come to the conclusion that the British murdered him slowly with arsenic. What would you call this method of killing somebody ?

Q: On the direct orders of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1988, 30,000 "political opponents,” some children, were hanged within a few weeks. The murders were done rapidly in number of locations, with forklifts raising the condemned to nooses hung from cranes, about a half hour per batch. The source is Khomeini's second in command at the time and apparent successor. What do you call this undeniably intentional mass murder by the ruler of Iran?

Note the abysmal public morals regarding this democide. Had the president of a well known corporation contracted with a gang of assassins to murder 100 of his competitors, as confessed by his vice president, this would be sizzling news all over the airways and other media. Every major network would immediately interrupt its programming to bring you this news -- it would surpass in coverage every previous public scandal. It would be a 100 point bold headline in the newspapers. Day after day, every little detail of this monstrous crime would be divulged, included whether in his youth this murderer had thrown spit-balls. But let the dictator of a nation-state murder in cold blood 30,000 -- THIRTY-THOUSAND – human beings, and that is a small news item, probably ignored by most media.

A: It usually is not democide unless somebody has been murdered. Just forcibly removing people or manipulating the environment or events to get them removed is not automatically democide. However, if the repression in a country is so bad as to make the people risk likely death to escape, then their deaths constitute democide. For example, the deaths of the Boat People that fled Vietnam’s communist subjugation and repression by the hundreds of thousands in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s is democide.

A: It refers to any murder by any government at any place at any time.

A: Capital punishment with a fair and public trial for crimes ordinarily considered among the worst, such as violent rape, murder, and treason, is not democide. Any summary executions, or executions after mock trials, are democide.

A: Yes, if done with the approval or connivance of the government.

A: Scholars and historians have developed a number of specific terms to denote massacre, genocide, mass murder, terrorism, extra-judicial executions, assassinations, politicide, and atrocities. Strangely, however, there was no term to cover all of this killing, to refer to murder by government as we refer to a private individual killing another by shooting, strangulating, knifing, beating, poisoning, and so on, as murder. I invented the concept democide to fill this void. No need to worry about it being too general, and therefore weak, since we have all the subcategories. e.g., genocide, to use as types of democide.

A: By definition, the one committing "democide," is restricted to any group that controls a geographical territory and the people in it. This involves a generic meaning of "government," such as the leadership (government) of a social group, of a terrorist organization, of an international organization like the UN, or of the mafia. Thus, "democide" is not limited to state governments, and even quasi-state governments. As long as a group controls territory and people within the territory, it is a government within the definition of democide.

A: The term democide covers only the murder of people individually, people as members of some group, people as members of some collectivity. Is it not discrimination to treat the murder of a person because he accidentally sat on a picture of Stalin versus the murder of some person because he was an Armenian, Jew, or Tutsi, as fundamentally different, one to be conceptually ignored, the other to be the focus of research, scholarship, and teaching? I believe it is and believe that we must not ignore what happens to individuals. Second, the definition explicitly excludes combat deaths or those of civilians that die as a result of combat. "Democide" does include, however, the killing of unarmed civilians or prisoners of war. The defining document for this is the Geneva Accords.

A: The Nuremberg Charter defines crimes against humanity as murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against civilian populations, before or during a war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated. True, "democide" only deals with murder. This is its research focus. If others want to do research on "crimes against humanity," as so broadly defined, fine. But I have to say. if we eliminate from humanity just murder by government, we will have gone a long way to a safer and more socially just world society.

A: I come at this question as a social scientist, and not a legal scholar or philosopher. This means that if I identify x as having defining characteristics u, v, and w, then wherever in space and time I find these characteristics, I have x. Thus, I researched a large number of general and specific historical sources to define the nature and amount of democide back to ancient times and regardless of civilization (among the many observations I have about historians as a result of this research is that they love to write about war and hate to write about democide). Thus, I included infanticide, sacrifices, forced labor deaths, slavery, and so on, as well as such episodes as the slaughter by the Mongols, Russian Czars, Christian Crusaders, French revolutionaries, German witch hunters, Spanish inquisitors, and New World and African colonizers.

A: All genocides that include murder are democides, but not all democides are genocides. (1) The legal definition of genocide is of an intentional attempt to eliminate a religious/linguistic/ethnic group in whole or in part (not even deaths need to occur).? But, many scholars apply a broader definition, such as (2) a government intentionally murdering people by virtue of their membership in a religious/linguistic/ethnic group, or simply (3) the intentional mass murder of people, including for example, the government approved or allowed murder of women by soldiers after they were raped.? Regardless of how defined, democide includes all three definitions, and is identical to the third. Democide is murder by government, where murder is understood to have the same meaning as murder in the civil law of most democracies. See my article: "Democide vs. Genocide. Which is What?" at: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/GENOCIDE.HTM

A: If terrorism – the intentional killing of civilians as a political or religious act -- is carried out in coordination with or by agents of some kind of government (as of a terrorist organization that controls some territory and people), it is genocide. But if terrorism is done by individuals where a government plays a minor or no role, this is civil murder of foreigners and under our laws murder and a possibly a hate crime.

I will discuss the two possibilities separately. First, assume that the terrorists were acting with the support and direction of some government. As action by a sovereign state's government, it was democide.

Here is the second possibility. What if it were done by terrorists acting independently, or with limited aid and advice of some government? This is a difficult one, because our concepts in this field are usually restricted to actions by government. Now, if the terrorists have control over some territory that they in effect govern (like some guerrilla groups do in some states, or the PLO does), then they are pseudo states and what was said above applies to them. But, the terrorists belonged to the Al Queda terrorist group, which has no such independent control over territory. But, rather it is a diffuse network within states, although they may be allowed training camps. Then, the attack on the U.S. was not democide

Q: According to your definition, democide has to happen intentionally. Are there possible cases where this intention is not clearly recognizable? Can there be democide out of thoughtlessness, e.g. by a policy that does not plan democide but that also does not care about possible victims?

Q: Isn’t abortion democide?

Q: How do you count the democide in their colonies by the democracies, such as Belgium, France, and Great Britain?

Q: Is there such a thing as unintentional democide, such as that by poverty or class structures?

Q: What is institutionalized democide?

There is one kind of democide, however, that is virtually ignored, and that is institutionalized democide. That is democide that neither suddenly happens, nor is part of a special policy, but is built into the very structure of the political system. North Korea is an example of this. Christians caught with a bible or practicing their faith are executed or sent to a forced labor camp where their life expectancy is short. Those trying to organize other religions, speak out against government policy, organize groups, such as labor unions, and so on and on, risk their lives if caught. Such murders are built into the North Korean political system and in this sense, are nothing special. Yet, day after day, ten or a hundred lives here, more lives there, and over the years the total democide of a government can exceed that of episodic democide elsewhere. Other examples, but hardly a complete list, of where such institutionalized democide exist are China, Vietnam, Burma, Sudan, Angola, Zaire, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, and Cuba.

Q: Is there a lower limit on the number murdered before it can be democide?

Q: Would you count U.S. support of regimes that commit democide, such as those of Guatemala or Indonesia, as U.S. democide?

Q: Consider an imagined case: democratic politicians make an economic or health policy that mainly is aimed to satisfy lobby groups. Then it turns out that by another policy more people would have survived, e.g. through lower medical costs and a better health supply, or through a lower rate of drug crimes due to a legalization of drugs, through more joy of life by less incapacitation and more freedom. Can one in such cases make responsible politicians for the death of people and would we have to do with a democide here?

And Genocide

No legal or scholarly definition on genocide sets a lower bound. This comes from the Preparatory Commission for the International Criminal Court (www.un.org—prepfra.htm), which laid out the particulars for the application of the crime of genocide, among other acts over which the ICC has jurisdiction. While it always, as much as I could find, used the plural "individuals," it did not set a lower limit.

A: No, this is not murder. It is genocide. A good criterion to use is whether such action by individuals would be defined as murder in any civil legal system. The intention to destroy a group does not murder make, unless group members are actually murdered.

A: I see this as a scientific question: how do we theoretically and empirically explain democide? Of course, in our hearts, the idea of democide is reprehensible. But in research, I use the concept descriptively, as in medical research we seek a cure for cancer. Thus, as in research on cancer, when the concept was invented is irrelevant. What is important is when what we describe as cancer or democide occurred and in correlation with what. I want an explanation that will cure it, and this requires analyzing all, or most, or a comprehensive sample of events or episodes that match the definition of democide.

A: I would not call this suicide bombing, but genocide bombing, which answers your question. It is strange to me that I have yet to read or hear that the suicide attacks on Jewish civilians in Israel is genocide. Even among genocide scholars, I don't remember any reference to this as genocide. But if one accepts either the legal definition (trying to wipe out Jews as a group [nation] in whole or in part) or the more expansive definition (to murder by virtue of a person's religion), then this is genocide.

A: It is the attempt to eliminate a racial/ethnic/national/ethnic group that defines genocide according to international law. Murder may not be involved. But, by usage among students and some scholars, genocide had come to mean murder and only the murder by government of people due to their racial/ethnic/national/ethnic group membership. A third meaning is that genocide is any murder by government (what I call democide). A foremost proponent of this definition is Israel Charny, Editor in Chief of the Encyclopedia of Genocide. Moreover, genocide may involve the murder of one or more people. So, numbers don’t define genocide, but the intent to eliminate a group, kill people by virtue of group membership, or simply to murder them.

A: The legal definition of genocide (that is actionable under international law) is "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

Statistics

A: The lower total is for 1900-1987. After my statistics were published, I did a less than systematic estimate of the democide for the rest of the century, and roughly estimated that about 4,000,000 people were murdered, 1988-1999. See http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/POSTWorld War II.HTM

A: For a list of 20th Century democides, 1900-1987, go to http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel/SOD.TAB16A.1.GIF. For those before the 20th C., see the tables in www2.hawaii.edu—DBG.CHAP3.HTM.

A: I do not take deaths due to criminal activity like family murders, murder in the course of a burglary, rape, etc., into account. I have to be careful here, for in many totalitarian countries people have been executed by regimes for what is labeled criminal activity (such as criticizing the government), so by criminal I mean that usually considered a crime among liberal (and thus largely economically free) democracies. I exclude this because the theory that power kills, that freedom promotes non-political violence, does not extend to criminal activity. Indeed, one might argue that under the most repressive regimes, where fear is the basic ordering principle of the society, such crime is reduced in comparison to free societies.

A: Yes, this is my statistical finding. For the much longer period 1900 to 1987, which includes the two world wars and the Korean and Vietnam Wars, over four times more have been murdered in democide than died in combat in all the foreign and internal wars during those years.

A. While all government murder is immoral, we can nonetheless say that as an intentional act of government, some murders are worse than others. For example, the Holocaust in numbers murdered is worse than government- supported, death squad murders in Argentina, or the democide of France in Algeria. Moreover, as numbers get larger at some level (like increasingly heated water turning into steam) they convert from quantities to qualities. Consider, for example, that in the last century governments murdered, roughly, about 174,000,000 people. The resulting corpses lined up head to toe would circle the earth about four times. This number in itself carries a ton of meaning and significance, and changes the qualitative and ethical idea of government.

A: I some cases I do so. But, the problem is this. If I gave an order of magnitude estimate of over 10,000,000, or a more specific 40,000,000, and one or the other gets quoted widely, but my estimates/calculations/sources table shows 42,672,000, people may be confused. To keep consistency between text and calculations in the tables, I often try to use the same totals. Where I rounded off my figures, I used "about" or "near" or "almost,” as in about 43,000,000.

A: Even orders of magnitude give us a scientific tool to analyze causes and conditions. If we wish to find an x such that the more or less of x (or its existence or nonexistence), the more or less a government murders its people, then even magnitudes can be the base data for this search or for testing related theories. For example, we now can say that based on such research the less democratic freedom in a country, the more of its citizens a government is inclined to murder. This finding, backed up by theory, enables us to say that we can reduce democide by increasing the democratic freedom of a population. Moreover, even if we can only rank nations on their estimated amount of democide, this is enough for the most complex statistical and mathematical analyses. Even such is possible if we can divide demociders into three groups: those with much domestic democide like Hitler or Stalin, those about average like Iraq or Iran, or those with little of none like France or Britain.

Q: Who were the ten bloodiest dictators for the millennium?

1. Stalin. 43,000,000 (1929-53)

3. Hitler. 21,000,000 (1933-45)

5. Manchu Dynasty. 12,000,000 (during 1859-64 Tai Ping Rebellion)

7. Jinghiz Khan. 4,000,000 (1215-1233)

9. Tojo Hideki. 4,000,000 (1941-45)

Q: Some of your pre-20th century figures for how many were murdered in the sacking of a city seem very high. Do your figures include estimates of refugees who might have fled before the hordes, etc.?

Q: How can you justify quibbling over whether 2,000,000, 3,000,000, or 10,000,000 people were murdered.

Q: On your website, you estimate the number of people murdered by democide between 1988 and 1999 to be around 4,000,000 people -- far less than the 19,000,000 we would expect based on rates of killing from earlier decades. Do you stand by this estimate?

Q: How does the number of victims of democide compare to the number murdered by ordinary criminals ?

Q: I haven’t seen any statistics comparing death by democide to other causes (disease, crimes by other citizens, etc). Do you know if that information is available somewhere?

Q: Your research has revealed that the number of people murdered by absolutist governments in the 20th century far exceeds the combat dead for all wars. Is this unique for the 20th century?

By comparison to the pre-20th C democide, the international war-related pre-20th C dead amount to about 40,457,000, a few millions more than were killed in combat in all 20th C. wars. See Chapter 2 of Statistics of Democide at: www.hawaii.edu—NOTE5.HTM

Q: Have you considered genocides or democides that are not internal to the state or society?

Q: What would you say is the firing of a missile by remote control from pilotless CIA drone aircraft at a tall man wearing Arab clothes?

Q: Do you have any documentation of democide or genocides during an anarchy?

Criticisms

A: Simply not true. As a study of my many tables would show, I give both highs and lows and then a conservative estimate. Usually this estimate is closer to the low than the high. Overall the democide in this century, my range is 76,543,000 to 359,348,000 murdered, with my much quoted prudent estimate being 169,187,000. Note how much closer to the low than the high this is. Now, as to playing down the “butcher bill” of democratic democide versus totalitarian regimes, your accusation is too general. What specific estimates are too low or too high?

A: Governments are not licensed to kill. By international law, genocide and virtually all democide are illegal. The Nazi government, for example, was not licensed to kill Jews. Indeed, there was not even a domestic legal basis by government decree or law that said that if one is a Jew, the government is authorized to kill him. Keep in mind that we executed German and Japanese war criminals for killing in violation of international law, although they were government leaders.

What comes closest to the granting a license to kill is the constitutional and legislative law in a democracy approved by the people, who through their representatives define when the government may carry out judicial executions or go to war. In nondemocracies, the government arrogates to itself when it will kill or not, and what it does is often simply illegal by international law.

Q: Isn’t “democide” an unhelpful combination of Greek and Latin roots, given the differences between Greek deomocratia and Roman res publica?

Q: Does you concept of “democide” really accomplish anything more than done in a clearer, more focused way by the concept "crimes against humanity”?

Q: But are not these numbers ridiculously unreliable? Who knows really how many died in a particular democide?

Q: You mistakenly focus on “people,” rather than groups or populations.

Q: Don’t you realize that soldiers as agents of governments could regard even a defensive war against invasion as an instance of democide, since warfare necessarily involves the murder of persons?

Q: Your concept of democide is too restricted in its focus on governments as agents, rather than on the widespread, systematic, premeditated character of attacks that may be initiated by state or non-state actors. Response?

Q: “Democide” as a concept is a too narrow focus on murder, rather than the range of acts specified under crimes against humanity. How do you answer this?

Above all, democide is an empirical concept. Data can be collected on it for all countries, and it can be used to determine the conditions and causes of democide. Indeed, the need for an empirical concept is why so many scholars have reduced the legal definition of genocide (which includes besides murder, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group) to an easily operational definition dependent on murder alone.

Specific Democides -- Regimes

Q: Is it true that about 50,000,000-100,000,000 African’s lost their lives in the slave trade?

Q: Is there a difference between processes of destruction in German Africa (e.g., the mass murder of the Hereros) in contrast to say Belgian Congo? And if there is a difference what is its significance?

I suspect there are two reasons for the emphasis on the Herero. One is that it is manifestly genocide as defined by the Genocide Convention. Second, the Germans did it, which then play into all kinds of theories about national character, precursors of the Holocaust, the Kaiser, and the causes of World War I.

Q: How do different regions, such as Africa, compare as to their democide?

Australia

A: I knew about it and tried to get as much information on it as possible before compiling my democide data. See www2.hawaii.edu—DBG.CHAP3.HTM and use your find command to search Tasmania. Also, for the sources and estimates, see www2.hawaii.edu—SOD.TAB2.1.GIF and line 214 following.

A: I took Australia into account. I get a democide of 35,000 for Australia and New Zealand, possibly even as high as 250,000, in the 18th and 19 centuries. See line 214 and following on the pre-20th century table at www2.hawaii.edu—SOD.TAB2.1.GIF.

Q: Isn’t your low figure of 25,000 Congolese murdered by King Leopold II and Belgium ridiculous? Leopold alone murdered millions.

And the massive killing did not stop when Belgium took it over. But amazingly, although the death toll is in the many millions, far exceeding what Germany did to the Hereros (I get a toll of 55,000), the incredible terror, slavery, and death imposed on the Congo natives by one man has been virtually ignored in books on genocide. For example, there is nothing on it in Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn's The History and Sociology of Genocide (1990), Leo Kuper's Genocide (1982), and Israel Charny's two-volume Encyclopedia of Genocide (1999). There is one paragraph without estimates of the toll in Samuel Totten, Williiam S. Parsons, and Israel Charny's Century of Genocide (1997). Moreover, no work on genocide mentions that the French in their Congo taken over in 1900 (now the Republic of the Congo) copied Leopold's system of rule and exploitation and thus may have murdered several million Africans as well.

Q: King Leopold II of Belgium murdered millions in the Congo in the last years of the 18th and early years of the 20th centuries. Does this change your evaluation of the relationship between power and democide, freedom and nondemocide?

Q: What about when the Congo Free State was transferred to Belgium in 1908? Didn’t mass murder continued there. Also, didn’t the French democracy carry out mass murder in the French Congo? Doesn’t this change your view that democracy commits little democide?

We have here the problem in democracies, especially regarding foreign affairs, whether war, security threats, or colonialism. Although the democracy itself may be open, with freedom of speech and the diffusion of power, centers of near absolute power may be set up that operate internally and over their mandate as though a dictatorial system. The intelligence services (e.g., CIA and Indonesia), the military in time of war (e.g., Hiroshima), or the colonial administration (e.g., France).

Q: Some are calling what the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia genocide. Was it?

Q: Did the massive bombing of Cambodia by the U.S. in the early 1970's fuel support for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge?

Q: Is there any evidence that Mao's famine inspired Pol Pot, head of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge?

China

A: There is no doubt that the famine occurred and was the largest in history by far. It resulted from Mao's 1950s collectivization of agriculture into factory- like communes, and his late 1950s Great Leap Forward attempt to rapidly industrialize China. In my chapter on this famine in China's Bloody Century, I give the most probable toll as 27,000,000, although I noted it could reach 40,000,000 dead.

Q: I've seen figures quoting that in China, up to 180,000,000 people have been murdered or died by famine under Mao -- is this correct?

Q: Regarding China’s world record famine in the late 1950s and early 60s, did Mao know the results of his policies early on still continue on this deadly path?

Q: Did you count state-enforced abortion in your democide figures for China?

Q: In China's Bloody Century, your high-end estimates are inflated, which throws off your calculations. You failed to obtain a reasonable margin of error for your low and high-end estimates -- you simply put them together and took the average, without considering the individual authenticity of each estimate. Do you have a response?

Q: How would you classify the deaths of those Chinese who spent a great deal of their lives in the Laogai network -- actually got passed on from one division to the next under the auspices of reeducation -- and then were sent home, when they are old or ailing, to die?

Q: Was Mao mass death (in camps) comparable to the Holocaust.

Q: I read that the Chinese communist regime has ordered a county to do 20,000 abortions and sterilizations before year-end. This is the treatment of women as numbers. Has democide been carried out in this way?

To be murdered because of a group attribute, and not one's individuality, is dehumanizing enough. But then to be murdered at random, not because of an attribute, group or otherwise, but because one happens to be a random number, is demeaning of all humanity. To my knowledge, the three regimes that murdered by the number were the Soviet Union under Stalin, China under Mao, and Vietnam under Ho and his successors. I suspect Tito and Kim Il Sung's regimes did the same, but I don't have direct evidence. The Nazis also had a quota system, but not as a purification or decontamination campaign, but as a technique of deterrence. In some occupied countries, the murder of a German soldier or civilian, or sabotage by partisans, would call for (as it threatened) the murder of 50 or 100 nationals picked at random.

Christians

A: I don't have an overall estimate. There is the case of the Christian Armenian and Greek genocides in 1915-1923 in which the Moslem Turks murdered over 2,000,000 of them, but that is the only major Christian specific genocide I can point to. There are many minor ones, such as the Moslem attacks and murder of Christians in Indonesia and the Middle East. But, the estimate of 27,000,000 seems way too high. I came up with 38,000,000 for all genocide against racial, religious, national, and ethnic groups. I doubt very much that Christians made up even 25 percent of this total. Of course, if one counts the genocidal killing of, say Christian Tutsis of Rwanda, as creating "Christian martyrs," then the figure might be close to that you mention. But this is misleading, since for this genocide and many others like it, being Christian was incidental.

Q: Weren’t the conditions in the French Congo not much different from the Congo Free State Okay, thus killing millions of natives?

We have here the problem of secrecy in democracies, especially regarding foreign affairs, whether war, security threats, or colonialism. Although the democracy itself may be open, with freedom of speech and the diffusion of power, centers of near absolute power may be set up that operate internally and apart from their mandate, as though a dictatorial system. We see this, for example, with intelligence services (e.g., CIA), the military in time of war (e.g., Hiroshima), or the colonial administration (e.g., France).

Q: I hear that a Russian submarine sank a ship filled with German refugees fleeing from the East around 1944-45. It is said that many more lives were lost than in any ship sinking before or since. Is this true?

Q: After the German army was defeated or fled from one Eastern European country after another in 1944-45, what happened to the ethnic Germans that remained behind?

Q: You have counted about 1,800,000 German genocide victims during the ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe after World War II. Overall, 15,000,000 Germans were expelled. In Germany, these crimes are mainly seen and even legitimized as the inevitable consequence of Nazi crimes. Do you agree?

Q: How many ethnic Germans were murdered in Eastern Europe after World War II -- especially in Yugoslavia?

Germany/Holocaust (Nazi Genocide Of The Jews)

A: No. The Turkish government's genocide of the Armenians in 1915-1918 was planned at the highest political level. We have the minutes of a secret meeting among the Turk rulers in which they discussed, voted on, and unanimously passed a resolution to exterminate the Armenians, provided not a single one should be left alive. There were many other genocides in the 20th Century that were planned and carried out. Just to mention three more. Pakistan's genocide of Bengalis and Hindus in what is now Bangladesh in 1971 was planned at the top, preparations made, and carried out. Every Hindu caught was automatically murdered, and so was every Bengali of note who could be tracked down (maps and lists of names were prepared). Bengalis and Hindus murdered: about 1,000,000.

Stalin's planned and executed starvation of the Ukrainians in 1931-32 in order to destroy Ukrainian nationalism and their opposition to collectivization. The technique was to blockade the Ukraine against any food being taken in, to take by force what food the Ukrainians had, and to kill all their livestock, pets, and even birds that might be eaten. Murdered by starvation: about 5,000,000.

A: We must go beyond a singular focus on it. By studying all genocides and mass murders by government, one soon begins to see that this potential to murder others is truly general. And one soon finds that such killing has little correlation with national character, religion, geographic region, culture, population size, economic development, education, language, ethnic diversity, and so on.

Examples of nongenocidal (by the definition given above) governmental mass murder, massacres, terrorism, politicide, death camps/prisons, lethal forced labor, deadly deportations, intentional mass starvation, and the like, include the Soviet purge of about 1,000,000 communists in the Great Terror and the purposive famine in the Ukraine; the Rape of Nanking and mass murders/massacres by Japan throughout China, 1937-45; the massacre of unarmed communists and sympathizers by the Chinese Nationalist government; the mass murder of non-Jewish Poles (especially actual and potential leaders) by the Nazis; the post-WWII murder of ethnic Germans in newly occupied East German territory by the Poles, and of ethnic Germans through Eastern Europe; the Cambodian "Holocaust"; the extra-judicial executions throughout Vietnam after 1945 and during and after the Vietnam War by the communist government and those carried out by South Vietnam; the massacres and mass murders by North Korea. And so on, ad neuseum.

A: I get an absolute low of about 15 million, an absolute high of 31,600,000, and a prudent estimate of near 21,000,000 murdered. This includes all victims, even the Nazis themselves that were murdered by the party. See: www.hawaii.edu—NOTE3.HTM

A: Raul Hilberg, The Destruction Of The European Jews. Very close in usefulness as histories are (I can't choose between them) Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War Against The Jews1933-1945; and Yehuda Bauer, A History Of The Holocaust. Also, be sure to look through the Encyclopedia Of The Holocaust.

A: Mainly indiscriminate bombing of British cities. In international law, this is a crime against humanity and is no less in cold blood (maybe even colder, when you consider with what little passion the bombs are dropped) than shooting people at the edge of a ditch. These figures focus on the Nazi's. I count elsewhere the toll for the American and British indiscriminate bombing of German and Japanese cities. All my figures refer to what would be categorized as murder by the state according to international law or UN conventions. The figure also includes 7,310 British POWs murdered.

A: From hundreds of sources for each specific ethnicity, nationality, or democide. I compared and contrasted estimates, compiled, and totaled them. So far as I know the literature, I am the only one to have done this complete accounting. I can only hope that it will encourage others to improve on the estimates.

At their best, my figures are only approximations. But this is true of Holocaust totals as well. Experts who have painfully sifted through the Nazi archives, extensively interviewed survivors, and taken detailed depositions of witnesses, have been unable to agree among themselves on the final total of Jews murdered. In his thoroughly documented and comprehensive work, Raul Hilberg concluded that 5,100,000 Jews died; based on her detailed country-by-country analysis Lucy Dawidowicz arrived at a figure of 5,933,900 annihilated. Gerald Reitlinger calculated the toll at 4,204,400 to 4,575,400 Jews. Taking all such studies into account and making his own calculations for his Atlas of the Holocaust, Martin Gilbert arrived at a total of just over 5,750,000 deaths. In later work, in the appendix to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Israel Gutman and Robert Rozett estimated total losses at from 5,596,029 to 5,860,129. Just among these five thorough studies of the available evidence and statistics, the variation from the lowest to the highest figure is 41 percent.

Q: You focus on German indiscriminate bombing, but ignore that of Germany by the Allies. How come?

Q: Doesn’t the comparison of the Holocaust to other genocides/democides demean it.

Q: Is the complaint that there is so little on the Holocaust in textbooks correct?

Q: Is the Holocaust unique?

Q: It is presumptuous on the part of any human being to claim a "empirical" understanding of the Holocaust. How can statistics, stretched as they may be, convey the immeasurable depth of this human tragedy.

Q: What is your estimate of the Jewish dead during the Holocaust? I have seen estimates from 500,000 to 6,000,000 .

Q: There's a statistic I'm having trouble finding on your web site: what is the percentage of the population of Europe murdered by Nazi Germany during World War II?

Q: How many non-Jews did the Nazis murder?

Q: I have been taught that Hitler murdered approximately 9,000,000 people in concentration camps, about 6,000,000 of them Jews. Is this correct?

Q: Regarding victims, the Soviet Gulag state has got the high score in the last century. The Nazi genocide state is on the third place. In Germany, the current view is that the Nazi tyranny is a singular piece of history concerning evil. Is it possible to rate tyranny in terms of victim scores only, or is there also something like a democidal quality, based on the contemplation of human life, which would make Hitler a more evil murderer than Stalin?

I don't think in these terms however. When you get up to millions murdered by a regime, it is so manifestly evil and inhumane, that nothing more need be said. It is like asking which is worse, killing a child with a hammer or a knife? Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and several others were absolute evil unto themselves.

A: There was starvation to be sure, but much of this was due to the war and some to Soviet policy. Overall, my toll for the Nazi genocide in the U.S.S.R. is 12,250,000.

Q: How can you explain Greece? Greece is, and started out as a democracy, but it had been known to "force" democracy via what you could prove as democide. They had nearly all the checks and balances we have today, but they still committed democide, per your model.

Gun Control

A: I don't know. This is not something that I systematically noted. I can say that some nations, such as Turkey, did require Armenians turn in all weapons before slaughtering them. But then there were countries in which weapons were widely available before the killing started, as in Mexico during the Revolution, or Russia during its Red Terror and Civil War after the Bolshevik coup.

A: Not specifically on this question, but it was clear in the process of my research that some regimes did this seizure of guns systematically, as did the Turks in 1915 before beginning their genocide of their Armenians.

Q: Why you have not included the most comprehensively successful examples of genocide, the destruction of indigenous cultures by European invaders in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the U.S.A.?

Iran

A: Iran does have a competitive election among licensed political parties, but this makes Iran no more a democracy than did elections in the Soviet Union make it a democracy. After all, in Iran the political parties allowed to present candidates are limited to those that are theologically acceptable. Second, the county is in reality ruled by the unelected Assembly of (Islamic) Experts, which appoints the leader of the Islamic Revolution for life, who is then the Chief of State. He is presently Ayatollah Ali Hoseini-Khamenei. I should note that in 1988 the previous Chief of State, Ayatollah Khomeini, directly ordered 30,000 people murdered (all hanged from cranes) as "political opponents,” some of them children. If I were to rank countries in their freedom, Iran would be among the least free.

Q: How many did Saddam Hussein murder?

Israel

Yes. There has been a systematic campaign of genocide against Israel, really the Jews in Israel, and often elsewhere as well (for example, there is good reason to believe that the journalist Daniel Pearl was murdered because he was a Jew). This genocide is being carried out with the support of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority (groups connected to the Authority have admitted responsibility for some of the bombing)

A: To be genocide, there must be an intent to kill Jews because they are Jews. Now, Palestinian terrorist organizations, such as Hamas, have often claimed responsibility for one bombing or another, and display this by honoring the bombers, and celebrating the deaths of the Jews so murdered (to keep this in context, they glory in the murder of Jewish civilians going about their daily lives). And the Charter of Hamas (The Charter Of Allah: The Platform Of The Islamic Resistance Movement) says, among other things: "[O]ur struggle against the Jews . . . . The time will not come until Moslems will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Moslem! there is a Jew hiding behind me . . . . The Nazism of the Jews does not skip women and children, it scares everyone. They make war against people's livelihood, plunder their moneys and threaten their honor [How reminiscent of the Nazi's rational for the Holocaust] . . . . Within the circle of the conflict with world Zionism, the Hamas regards itself the spearhead and the avant-garde. It joins its efforts to all those who are active on the Palestinian scene, but more steps need to be taken by the Arab and Islamic peoples and Islamic associations throughout the Arab and Islamic world in order to make possible the next round with the Jews, the merchants of war.”

Then there are statements such as these: "Kill so many Jews that they will eventually abandon Palestine." (Ibrahim Sarbal, Leader of Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine -- Al-Aqsa Brigades); "Six million descendants of monkeys [i.e., Jews] now rule in all the nations of the world, but their day, too, will come. Allah! Kill them all, do not leave even one!" (Imam Sheik Ahmad Ibrahim, Hamas leader, in a sermon at the Palestine Mosque in Gaza).

A: There is nothing in the Genocide Convention or the International Criminal Court articles, or the preliminary discussion of them, which mitigates genocide. Genocide is genocide, pure and simple. If x commits actions against y that fall under the definition of genocide in the Convention or ICC's definition, it doesn't matter whether y eats little children for breakfast. It is still genocide.

A: I strongly am for a sovereign Palestinian state on coequal terms with Israel, as long as it is democratic and accepts by treaty the coexistence of Israel.

A: No. What is necessary for genocide to be possible, not that it would necessarily carry it out, is that Israel’s government be non-democratic. The more nondemocratic, the more likely such genocide. While there are human rights problems in Israel, it is a well functioning democracy, as witnessed by the recent elections.

Q: Are the 3,949,000 victims of the Japanese that you have on the list of democide instances/periods for China's Bloody Century separate from the 5,964,000 victims during World War II, or are they a part of the 5,964,000?

Q: Published figures on the Rape of Nanking in 1937 by the Japanese Army vary considerably, but none is over 60,000; one is as low as 20,000. What is your figure?

Q: Why does the Rape of Nanking get so much attention, while the killing of millions of Chinese during the Japanese invasion and occupation elsewhere in China receive to little?

A: No. There is a near total neglect of what the Japanese military did elsewhere in China. The Rape of Nanking was not unusual -- it was exemplary of the rape and murder done in many cities and towns, and the countryside. The reason it got so much attention at the time, which then feeds into the current singular treatment of it, is that in 1937 Nanking was Chiang Kai-shek’s capital and location of embassies, and major base of foreign journalists and missionaries. So, foreigners were able to see the massacres and rapes first hand, record them in diaries and monographs, and take photographs. Thus, many articles and a book or so was written on what happened. Such information was not easily available for the rest of China. This Rape of Nanking thus became famous. Now, Iris Chang has published a book in 1997, The Rape of Nanking, on it, and it has become well known. The only book that to my knowledge focuses on the Japanese democide throughout China is my China’s Bloody Century, but it is hardly known. See www.hawaii.edu—NOTE2.HTM.

Q: I did not see the death count for the country of Laos. Do you know how many people have died in Laos since the Vietnam War?

Mongols

A: There were cities containing over 1,000,000 population, largely due to refugees, I believe. For documentation of this, see on my web site Chapter 3 of my Death By Government (and use your find command to locate Mongols) http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel/DBG.CHAP3.HTM. I was also surprised by this and investigated a number of sources, but could find no disagreement.

Q: Why do you think that the genocide 1971 in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) is so little reported among genocide scholars?"

Poland

A: In the immediate aftermath of the Germany’s defeat in Poland, when most of the democide occurred, the local and national Polish governments were a mixture of communists and noncommunists. True, security was in the hands of the communists; true, the police were overall directed by the communists. But still, Polish officials made many of the local decisions, especially those affecting the treatment of ethnic Germans, and particularly in the newly occupied eastern territories. One example is the feeding and treatment of ethnic German refugees, which many local communities allowed to starve to death or die of exposure. Moreover, the manner in which the expulsion of German's was carried out, even if the expulsion order was Moscow directed, was usually in the hands of Polish officials. One must also take account of the murder of Germans that was done by Poles acting in one capacity or another (such as prison guards) and that went purposely unpunished at the time or was treated by officials with a wink and a nod. It was not until 1947 that the government was totally taken over by Moscow- directed communists, which was well after the democide I recorded. The present democratic government of Poland recognizes this itself, and has tried a 78-year-old Pole accused of killing thousands of German civilians in the aftermath of the Second World War.

No. I have received many more emails about these statistics than about any other. To respond to all these, I wrote an addenda to my statistics to clarify their nature and basis. It is at: www.hawaii.edu—SOD.CHAP7.ADDENDA.HTM.

Q: Did not the Romans use a democidal quota system? They used execution of a tenth of a military cohort (decimation) as an incentive to better performance or discipline.

Rwanda

A: For a number of practical reasons I had to cut off the episode-by-episode-collection of democide data and analyses at 1987. Thus, Rwanda 1994 is not covered in my statistics. From my reading, however, I guess the toll was about 350,000 to 1,000,000, conservatively 700,000. I would not put a fine point on this number, however, if at least the range is correct.

Q: Has the case of the Tamils in Sri Lanka ever been cited by yourself or others as a case of genocide. Research on the human rights situation there is leading me increasingly to conclude that this situation is also one of genocide.

Terrorism

If the terrorists were agents of a government, yes. If they were part of a terrorist organization that controlled territory and its people, then yes, since a quasi-government ran it. If they were members of no such territorially based organization, and the planning was their own, even although they did receive aid and comfort from a state, what they did was not democide, but plain murder.

Q: Did the Turkish government commit genocide against its Armenian minority during World War I and after?

A: No doubt that the Turkish governments committed this genocide. But, successive Turkish governments since then have done everything in their power to suppress knowledge about the genocide and to deny it to this day. This is reminiscent of the French colonial office concealing information about the genocide in French Congo.

A: These are the result of an extensive and intensive research on the question of Turkish genocide and mass murder -- not only of Armenians, but also Greeks and other Christians. It is a chapter in my book, Death By Government. The chapter is not on my web site, but the summary overview of the material in the book is at: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel/NOTE1.HTML. I have put on my site, however, all the estimates, calculations, and sources for my figures on Turkish democide. These are in my book Statistics of Democide, which is entirely on my site, and the chapter on Turkey is at: www2.hawaii.edu—SOD.CHAP5.HTM

A: Too many scholars stop their analysis at the end of the Young Turk Regime. But genocide also occurred after that, even involving the Turkish invasion of the new, postwar Armenian state. See my statistical analysis at: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP5.HTM

A: Greeks and Armenians did also commit genocide. As best I could determine, the Greek Army murdered at least 15,000 Moslem Turks (see line 422f of www.hawaii.edu—SOD.TAB5.1A.GIF), and Armenians themselves murdered some 80,000 Moslem Turks and Azerbaijanis (lines 100f of www.hawaii.edu—SOD.TAB15.1A.GIF). This genocide is itself to be condemned.

Q: Are you troubled by the increasing centralization of power in the American federal government?

Q: For U.S. democide, do you include the invasion of Panama, the invasion of Iraq, deaths by U.S. sponsored contras in Nicaragua, the "disappeared" in S. America who were murdered by U.S. supported and trained personnel, the CIA sponsored wars/ atrocities in Chile, Angola, Vietnam, Guatemala, El Salvador, Afghanistan, etc, or would you consider those third party and attribute the deaths to the governments of the respective countries?

Q: What about the extermination of native Americans? Was not the U.S. a democracy during this?

Q: What about what the United States did to the Native Americans : -- wasn't that genocide?

Q: Your democide body count of American Indians who were murdered by government or settlers or because of deportation is a maximum of 25,000 between 1789 and 1900. In Europe, the number of 60,000,000 often is believed to be the number of Indian victims of the U.S. A alone.

But, the unintentional toll from disease is often confused with the number of Indians murdered. That latter number is surprisingly low, compared to those murdered in the European colonies, such as the Congo Free State of the King of Belgium (5,000,000 to 10,000,000). One reason for the misunderstanding is the large number of cases (frequency) but relatively low number of deaths (severity) in which Indians were massacred by Federal troops. Based on European history, one might think of massacres as being in the thousands, and in some cases hundreds of thousands. But in reality, they amounted to 150 here, 200 there, or 74 in another place. True, these add up, but to the low thousands and not hundreds of thousands.

A: Not unless the slaves were (1) murdered in order to destroy the group of slaves (genocide), (2) intentionally murdered by government for whatever reason (democide).

A: Yes, and the A-bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and firebombing of Tokyo/Yokohama and other cities should be considered together. One bomb each on Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have murdered together some 150,000 Japanese, but the firebombing of Tokyo alone murdered about 100,000 within a day or so. These bombings intentionally murdered women and children, old and helpless, and all unarmed. This was a war crime, and if Japan had won the war they could have legitimately, by international law, tried as war criminals President Truman and the top military responsible for the bombing. By the Geneva Conventions it is a crime against humanity to bomb unarmed civilians. The targets were cities as such, not military targets.

But, in the case of the atomic bombs, the supporters of their use argued they may have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of American servicemen, and even more Japanese, since partially armed civilians would have been thrown into the battles against invading forces. However, this is all hypothetical. The war may have ended before an invasion was necessary. True, American lives might have (note, might have) been saved. Really. Is a Japanese life less precious than an American life? In any case, it would have been armed American and Japanese lives lost in battle, which moralists recognize as ethically different from armed soldiers purposely killing unarmed, helpless civilians.

Q: Wasn’t the indiscriminate bombing of German cities democide.

Q: The atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the bombing of German towns like Dresden were democidal acts, because the responsible governments knew that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians would be the result. Does the fact that the allies were not the first aggressor in that war, soften the quality of this democide? Or are the responsible persons war criminals like the aggressors of the other side?

Q: Regarding what you call U.S. democide, aren’t you applying back in history, when such was not recognized as wrong or immoral, a modern view of indiscriminate bombing.?

Q: How can you think that President George Bush, who started a war with the sovereign nation of Iraq, can be on the side of democracy?

Second, the man had murdered hundreds of thousands of his people, launched a war that killed about 1,000,000 Iraqi and Iranians, and totally repressed his people. Women were raped at will, and fathers or brothers that complained were murdered. Plus, he had invaded and tried to take over completely the neighboring country of Kuwait. Then there is Afghanistan, which was, especially for women, under the Taliban a hellhole. Now, because of Bush, it is a democracy. The president’s policies in the Middle East, Iraq, and Afghanistan are consistent with Bush’s rhetoric. His basic policy is to foster democracy, and that is what he has been doing.

A: I don't see how this claim can be made except by ignoring most of the world, especially what had gone on in communist countries, which were hardly allied with the U.S. Consider where most of the domestic political violence has occurred since World War II: U.S.S.R., communist China, North Korea, Vietnam, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, communist Hungary, communist and post- communist Afghanistan, just to mention a few. Then there were/are the noncommunist dictatorships, such as Burma, Iraq, Syria, post-revolutionary Iran, Algeria, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi.

A: I have. See, for example, http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel/SOD.CHAP13.HTM

A: Yes, I did considerable reading on Operation Keelhaul and included what estimates I could find and make in my Lethal Politics on the Soviet Union and Statistics Of Democide. All told, the incredible "repatriation" of actual and former Soviet citizens to the U.S.S.R. after the war amounted to about 5,500,000 people, more than half of which died or were murdered as a result (see Lethal Politics, p. 165). Both the British and Americans bear considerable responsibility for this.

A: No. Even were I to agree with what you included under democide, which I don’t, the totals would proportionally remain the same for free societies. This is because, according to your way of counting, you would have to include all the government caused famines in socialist states (which for China alone could be near 40,000,000), those that died from malnutrition, forced labor, fleeing from the country, and the like.

Q: I think there's an unconscious ideological bias in the way you define deaths that can be blamed on governments. I think one should count deaths due to economic policies. My impression is that you do this for Communist countries -- from glancing at your Soviet statistics I assume you are using the famine statistics of the 30's to arrive at some of those huge numbers. Well, aren’t noncommunist economic policies in the Third World also to blame for huge excess death rates?

I did not count the Chinese famine of the 60s, although clearly caused by the Great Leap Forward and commune system.

Q: Do I read your website correctly as estimating the Ukraine famine deaths were 5,000,000? I’ve read elsewhere they were 7,000,000-8,000,000.

A: The best estimate of the Stalin made Ukrainian famine is 5,000,000. However, outside Ukraine, especially in the Caucasus, another 2,000,000-3,000,000 died unintentionally, but nonetheless because of collectivization.

A: Yes. It was the Soviet prison ship, Indigirka, carrying 2,500 former Kolyma forced labor camps prisoners from Magadan to Vladivostok. It struck a rock. Officials refused to unlock the holds so that the prisoners could escape. Only thirty survived. Source: Vladimir Petrov, Soviet Gold (1949, pp. 403-6).

A: See my Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder at

Q: I keep seeing the figure of 20,000,000 for those murdered in the U.S.S.R., but your figure is 62,000,000. This is a huge difference. How come?

Q: Did Stalin repress the Christian religion, or just those Christians he saw as a threat to the state.?

Q: I read that Stalin's economic radicalism and terror claimed approximately 10,000,000 souls 1929-39. Is that what you find?

Q: Why are your estimates of killing in the Soviet Union far higher than those cited by recent sources (since 1989) from the former U.S.S.R.?

Q: I'm interested in the "disappearance" of members of the Japanese Kwantung Army who surrendered in 1945 in Manchuria and was being marched into Russian POW camps when they disappeared. About 1,000,000 of them. Do you know anything of this?

Vietnam

A: The 1945-1987 annual rate of murder for Vietnam (Hanoi) is .1 percent, or 1 per 1,000. The Nazi German rate 1933-45 is .09 percent, or less than 1 per thousand (9 per 10,000). Go to table 1.2 of Death By Government at: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.TAB1.2.GIF. Thus, the communist Vietnam regime was more deadly than the Nazis. Interesting, isn't it, which government gets the most attention for mass murder.

A: The regime conducted a variety of murderous campaigns, including land reform. There was the elimination of Vietnamese noncommunist nationalists, the purging of the Communist Party, the atrocities and massacres in the south during the Vietnam War, the mass executions in the South after victory in 1975 (forget the numbers -- no one disagrees that it occurred), the ethnic cleansing of Chinese-Vietnamese in the late 70s-early 80s (causing the massive Boat People exodus), and the Gulag- like prisons, re-education camps, and forced laborers. All these involved government murder. Which is genocide? By the legal meaning, only the ethnic cleansing of Chinese-Vietnamese was genocide. By the common meaning as the killing of people because of group membership, this also is the only genocide. By the generalized meaning of any government murder, all was genocide. However defined, from 1945 to 1987 the Communist Party of Vietnam, before, during, and after the Vietnam War, murdered 1,669,000 people. See Statistics of Democide: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP6.HTM

A: There were at least two major applications of a murder quota by Ho Chi Minh, head of the Vietnamese Communist Party and President of Vietnam (1945-69). One was in his land reform of the early and mid-50s, and the other was during the Vietnam War in the South.

Then, during the Vietnam War, the North conducted a terror campaign against South Vietnamese villages that used a murder by quota system. As an example, consider a secret 1969 Viet Cong directive (keep in mind that the Viet Cong were secret, fully controlled, operational units of the North) for the Can Duoc District Unit Subregion, which specified for the month of June the following quotas for the units it covered: "kill at least one chief or assistant chief in each of the following: Public Security Service, District National Police Service, Open Air Service, Information Service, Pacification Teams," and a "District Chief or an Assistant District Chief;" and "exterminate three wicked tyrants living in district seats or wards." As to village units, they "must kill three enemy." Sometimes the quotas were even given in the aggregate for whole areas. Just for the coast in the Viet Cong's Sub-Region 5, higher authority instructed them to "kill 1,400 persons (including 150 tyrants [South Vietnam government officials])) . . . and annihilate . . . four pacification groups."

Critics of my work have often pointed out my use of "right wing" sources, while they ignore those from the "left," or communists. This has been a misunderstanding of my methods. I have tried to use communist, left wing, and right wing sources, to bracket not only the low and high for the democide, but to also make sure I understood the several interpretations of events. Of course, I also tried to consult the major "objective" academic/research sources. Finally, my research on Vietnam ended about 1990/ or 91 and thus may be dated as far as interpreting events is concerned, but I have seen no attempt by genocide scholars to update or correct my democide totals since.

Q: Who were the Viet Cong at the height of the Vietnam war?

Other

A: True, it has been ignored. Open any political science textbook and look in the index for murder, genocide (aside from the Holocaust), massacre, atrocity, or even death. Usually, nothing aside from possibly the Holocaust, will be written involving these terms. Indeed, I went through the Ph.D. and my first years teaching political science and international relations without knowing that any extensive democide other than the Holocaust had been committed (of course, there were bits and pieces about Stalin and Mao, death squads, political assassinations, but not enough to see the overall picture or get any idea of the magnitudes involved). It is for this lack of attention to the evil potential of government that I have called political scientists the clergy of government. Their fundamental faith in government to solve social and economic problems helps explain why there is so little about government murder in the professional literature

A: The have occurred all over. There is very little correlation with geographic region.

A: That the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, and communist Vietnam, at least, would order their cadre to kill a certain number of people. They were given a quota of murders they had to reach.

A: Because 1) humanitarian issues, such as genocide and human security have become international issues; 2) the question of humanitarian intervention is in its very nature an international issue; and 3) much of the democide has been against foreigners, as in war, for example. The murder of foreigners is ipso facto an international issue.

A: Population sets an upper limit. Some small countries have experienced incredible democide. For Cambodia, it was about one-fourth to one-third of the population. If they had triple the size population, I suspect that the number murdered would be tripled also. As to technology, it sets no limit historically. The Mongols, for example, with the most primitive technology would kill virtually all of a city that resisted them. In some cases, when the city was crowded with refugees, they slaughtered over 1,000,000. The technique was to apportion those to be murdered among each of the soldiers, who was then held responsible for their death, proof of which was given by cutting off a dead person’s ear. Moreover, often the way large numbers of people were murdered was by depriving them of food, or driving them into a desert -- no technology involved here. In this way, in 1904 the Germans slaughtered about 55,000 Herero in what is now Namibia.

A: Wrong. I count as democide Hiroshima, Nagasaki, firebombing over Tokyo/Yokohama and German cities, British concentration camps during the Boar war, murdering of Germans during and after World War II, U.S. democide in the Philippines and Vietnam, and so on.

A: This is true of not only modern war, but also wars throughout history. There is a very strong correlation between war (international or civil) and democide in general and genocide in particular. It provides the excuse, the means, or the cover for the elimination of "threatening" parties, "undesirables," political opponents; and ethnic, racial, national, and religious groups. I have a chapter that deals with the relationship between democide and war at: www2.hawaii.edu—SOD.CHAP21.HTM

A: No, with two exceptions. I have pulled out (1) those that were murdered because of their indelible group membership (ethnic, racial, religious, nationality) -- i.e., genocide; (2) those that were killed as part of military action -- i.e., war dead. If you subtract my genocide figures from my democide ones, you then get those murdered for other reasons than group membership. In some of my tables, I do specify in either topic headings or the notes to an estimate details that may indicate other reasons for the specific democide, as of Vietnamese nationalists murdered by the communists 1945-47.

A: Virtually none before my research.

A: Yes, quite possible as long as there is dictatorships, and the more absolute the dictatorship, the more likely it will commit genocide -- another Rwanda. How to make sure this will not happen again? Democratization. Modern democracies, what we call liberal democracies, do not commit genocide against their people. All other regimes, no matter the type of dictatorship, do. Witness Afghanistan and Iraq; or North Korea and Cuba; or Congo and Sudan.

A. While all government murder is immoral, we can nonetheless say that as an intentional act of government, some murders are worse than others. For example, the Holocaust in numbers murdered is worse than government supported, death squad murders in Argentina, or the democide of France in Algeria. Moreover, as numbers get larger at some level (like increasingly heated water turning into steam) they convert from quantities to qualities. Consider, for example, that in the last century governments murdered, roughly, about 174,000,000 people. The resulting corpses lined up head to toe would circle the earth about four times. This number in itself carries a ton of meaning and significance, and changes the whole idea of government.

A: In part because of the very reduction of wars -- otherwise wars would be the focus. In addition, there has been a growth of democracies and a reduction in totalitarian systems. Democratic peoples are naturally concerned about such cleansing, as well as other forms of genocide. This concern is an attribute of democracy that helps to virtually eliminate domestic democide by democracies.

CAUSES AND CONDITIONS OF DEMOCIDE

Q: Succinctly, why democide?

A: Part of this is due to there being many more people to kill. The 10th century had about 265,000,000 people, the 19th century about 1,200,000,000. Our century now has over 6,000,000,000. But population aside, this century has also been one of totalitarianism -- communism and fascism. Communism alone has been responsible for the murder of about 110,000,000 people (over three-times the combat killed in all 20th century domestic and foreign wars). And fascism in China (Chiang), Germany (Hitler), and Japan (Tojo), and as well as elsewhere is responsible for at least another 36,000,000 murdered.

A: Dictatorship, war, and revolution.

Q: Is it possible to find common links between genocides?

Q: How do you account for the foreign democide democracies have committed?

Q: Aren’t you too readily dismissing as unimportant the social and the psychological factors in democide.

Race, Religion, or Culture

A: Race and religion are variables that researches have included in a number of statistical analyses of democide (genocide and mass murder by governments) across all nations. They have very little relationship to democide. The only variables that are highly related to democide among the very many that have been tested, are war/revolution and the type of political system (e.g., whether a democracy or not). Freedom and democracy are not just abstract ideas: they are empirically measurable on both “either/or” and “more/less” dimensions.

A: This is an empirical question, and I've done research on it. For some of the related work and technical stuff, see Part III of my Statistics of Democide (www.hawaii.edu—NOTE5.HTM). In essence, for the democide of all nations 1900-1987, compared to nations without democide, there is no meaningful correlation between democide, religion, culture, technology, economic development, geographic region, education, literacy, geographic size, population size, and density. Only two major variables correlate with democide, and they are involvement in war and dictatorial power. Since war itself is dependent on dictatorial power, this power (or lack of democracy) comes out as the primary empirical predictor of democide. Correlation must be understood generically. In the above empirical analyses, I used multiple and curvilinear regression, factor analysis, analysis of variance, and canonical analysis.

A: Most contemporary democide, far greater than any historical cases, has been by free thinkers, i.e., those who believe that the established religions are superstitions, and one should be scientific, objective, rational, etc. Communism is a case in point, where out of the 174,000,000 murder 1900 to 1999, about 110,000,000 were by communists, who are professed atheists. Democide is largely a matter of power, not religion. Note that when a particular religion has the power, it murders as well. Contemporary Iran is a case in point. Religion is not necessarily a protection from, or guarantee of democide.

A: No. I find that religion or its lack -- atheism -- have hardly anything to do in general with wide-scale democide. The most important factor is totalitarian power. Whether a church, atheists, or agnostics have that power is incidental -- it is having the power that is a condition of democide. Incidentally, some ideologies, such as communism, function psychologically and sociologically as though a religion. The only distinction is whether the subject is a god or a man, such as Marx, Lenin, Hirohito, Hitler, Mohammed, Kim Ill sung, Mao, etc.

A: It happens when a political crises escalates to overt military violence by a dictatorial regime.

Q: What is the relationship between war and democide?

Q: Doesn’t anarchy kill more people than totalitarianism?

Q: How does your term democide apply to left vs. right wing dictatorships?

Q: What are the warning signals for genocide?

Q: How can neighbors become the murderers of people they have lived with for decades?

Q: Do genocides occur most often in a state where there is rapid transition, or where the government promotes an extreme ideology? Why?

Q: Which genocides can be attributed to colonialism, long after the colonizers have left the area?

Democracy in General

A: It is. As I collected my democide data it became clear that democide for democracies took place almost entirely in time of war and almost always against the "enemy.

A: True, and this is why the nonviolent effects of democracy may not be immediate. It takes time for a democratic culture to develop sufficiently to lessen a potential for violence. How long this should be is a question. Current research has settled on three-years and this seems to work.

A: Genocide is the murder of people because of their ethnicity, race, language, or religion. Let me use a more general term than genocide, which is democide -- the outright murder of people, which besides genocide includes the murder of people for political reasons, as well as massacres, the killing of POWs, atrocities, and so on. The question is then what ties the democide of the Soviets, Nazis, and Rwanda together. It is that the three were nondemocratic regimes ruled by dictators. And this is the major condition for such democide to occur. Indeed, research has well shown that there is a scale here. The more centralized and absolute the power of a regime, the more people it is likely to murder. Marxist regimes, the most totalitarian of all, murdered in the 20th Century about 110,000,000 people out of a total world democide of 174,000,000. This is an incredible toll, since it is several times greater than all those killed in combat in all the domestic and foreign wars during the century, including World Wars I and II.

Liberal Democracies

A: Consider the nature of democracy. It is a system of overlapping and diverse group memberships, multiple pyramids of power, and manifold cross pressures; it is a system of laws that are above governments, and a culture of negotiation, compromise, and tolerance. Above all, the people can vote their leaders out of office. Quite simply, people do not want to be murdered or see loved ones or others like them murdered, and by their voting power they act as a brake on any tendency to use murder as an instrument of policy. Moreover, a democratic culture of negotiation, compromise, tolerance of differences develops, and overlapping group memberships and cross pressures tend to localize conflict between groups and tends to limit whatever violence occurs.

Q: You argue that a highly centralized power is the greatest threat to precipitate a genocide. If so, then, historically, didn't it take a centralized power to destroy the State apparatus that had sanctioned the genocide, as of the Allies in World War II?

Possible Exceptions

A: Modern liberal democracies commit virtually no domestic (and that is the key qualifier) democide. But they do commit democidal murder in foreign wars, as in the Atomic bombs, indiscriminate fire bombing of urban areas, and outright democide, as in the Vietnam War. But globalizing democracy would also eliminate war, and thus virtually eliminate war related foreign democide as well.

Q: Didn’t the democracies commit considerable foreign democide during their wars against nondemocracies?

Q: Regarding your claim that democracies commit virtually no democide, what about the U.S. in the Vietnam war?

Q: How do you explain that democracies murdered 149,000 of their own people?

Q: How do you account for the colonial democide committed by the democracies, such as Belgium and France?

Q: Democracies may not usually attack democracies, but democracies are perfectly capable of contributing to the deaths of large numbers of innocent people in other countries, sometimes in an indirect manner. For instance, didn’t the United States quietly support the Indonesians while they were wiping out 200,000 (approximately) Timorese in the 1970's.

Q: If one ethnic/racial group is a minority, it wants to become a majority, right? We have seen that many ethnic conflicts occur in the world, and it's all about numbers, about who has more numbers than the other. Everyone keeps track of how many there are by not just counting heads, but also counting what ethnic group that head belongs to. How do you reconcile this dilemma with the idea of lasting peace just because everyone becomes democratic at some point?

Q: Some of your conclusions have been criticized for not considering the number of deaths due to anarchy and the lack of government, through mechanisms such as civil conflict, the breakdown of society, and foreign invasion. What would you say to such criticism? If we, for argument's sake, accept this criticism, does it change anything of the "big picture" you have helped create when it comes to democide?

Q: You claim that there has not yet been any democide between democracies. Is this due to the character of democracy or is it still too early to exclude democratic democide in future?

Q: Is there a possible kind of society that is less susceptible for democide than our modern Western democracy?

Evidence

A: I recorded all cases of famine in this century and find that it is a product of state ownership, massive regulation of agriculture, military/government corruption, or purposely man-made. Note that the worst famine in history occurred in communist China in the late 50s and early 60s (perhaps upward of 40,000,000 died). There were massive famines in the U.S.S.R. and Ethiopia had its worst famine ever with the communist takeover. Consider North Korea today, where millions have died from hunger and malnutrition. And so it is with socialist Somalia and the Sudan. No democracy, however, has had a famine.

Q: Doesn’t the claim that democracies have had (are the cause of) no famines ignore what political systems cannot control? If a nation experiences a major crop failure, and is too poor to afford substantial food imports, and the rest of the world chooses not to show it charity, it matters not what proportion of its citizens are enfranchised, or whether they choose to be ruled by elected representatives, or whether they divide into parties? To peddle democracy as a cure for forces beyond its control, is to peddle a snake-oil remedy."

And India

A: Over 86,000,000 people died in famines in the 20th century. Not one of them was in a democracy, or in India while it was a democracy. Consider the work of Amartya Sen, for example, the 1998 Nobel Prize winner in economics from India. He became the youngest chairman of the Department of Economics, Jadavpur University, at the age of 23. He has been the President of the Econometric Society (1984), the International Economic Association (1986-89), the Indian Economic Association (1989), and the American Economic Association (1994). He is now Master of Trinity College Cambridge. So, he should know something about India. Sen says as well that no democracy has had a famine, and as far as India is concerned, its last famine was the 1943 Bengal famine (Development as Freedom, p. 180) when India was a colony of Britain.

A: I've put some time into studying the scholarly works on the Bengal famine, including that by Indians. The highest estimate of the famine toll I could find is 4,500,000 dead; the lowest at 1,500,000. After going through these works, I settled on a range of 1,500,000 to 4,500,000 dead, most likely about 3,000,000. I did not mark this famine down as British democide. True, they are partly responsible for it, since it was aggravated by the British taking food supplies for their Burma campaign and to stock up for a possible Japanese invasion. However, the famine was not by intent and once it happened the British took steps to deal with it. This is the same argument I used for not counting the Chinese communist famine of 1959-63 as democide. If the Bengal famine is to be defined as British democide, then the Chinese famine must also so be counted, which would add at least 27,000,000 or more to the communist total.

MISC.

A: In politics, power is the name of the game, and were we not to have a checks and balance system, I fear that whoever has the power would aggrandize it and, in all probability, use it to commit democide. It is not left or right that is the essential danger, but anyone with absolute power. If your interest is to secure freedom, a danger to that freedom is to be fixated instead on left or right. Fix your eyes on whoever is gaining power, even if apparently a nice person saying the good things about what you believe. Then, their power must be challenged, balanced, and limited, even if by people whose policies you detest.

A: Actually, they were closer than that. Nazism was socialist, as was communism. Their differences lie in their rationality, which for communism was Marxism, and for Nazism it was eugenics, nationalism, and state socialism.

A: First, people interact on multiple issues, dimensions, interests, etc, so that they may be involved in conflict on one thing while cooperating on other things. Secondly, even when involved in violence, there may be cooperation within the violence itself, as in tacit or explicit agreement as to the limits of the violence or its nature, or discussions as to how to resolve it. Keep in mind. There is the empirical world, where we know through our data that in fact cooperative and conflict behavior generally (this does not mean that there are no conceptual or psychological linkages) have little correlation, and the theoretical world where we try to explain this. Our theories may be right or wrong, but the facts still exist.

A: It depends on the Islamic terrorists. For some it is their hatred of Jews and Israel, of which they see us as the major supporter. For some it is the hatred of Western culture and ways, of which they see us as the leader. For some it is a matter of their religion that they interpret as saying "Kill the unbelievers."

A: I sometimes included a religion variable in my analysis. For example, see: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel/SOD.CHAP19.HTM. I recently included a majority Christian and majority Moslem variables in a prediction of violence from the level of freedom. I found that Moslem countries had significantly higher violence than expected, given their level of freedom; Christian countries had significantly less for their level of freedom. Nonetheless, freedom was by far the best predictor of domestic violence, with religious variables being only secondary -- what I call helper variables.

A: Nothing. There was no capitalism, no free market, no competition, and no free trade. The companies that operated were given special dispensation and military protection to be monopolies over a specific region or trade. In the case of the Congo Free State, for example, Leopold only allowed most concessions into the Congo if he had control of at least 50 percent of their stocks. This was industrial socialism at its worst.

A: I do think that the government is too large, with too much power at the center. Government regulations, I fear, have cut too deeply into our freedoms, and we are overtaxed. But, and this is a big but, we are at war, and certain intrusions into American lives and that of foreigners living here are necessary. Even then, we are still a democracy with extensive civil and political rights. And all this must be seen comparatively. That is, although I think our government has become too big, compared to the lack of freedom in such places as North Korea, China, Russia, Syria, Iran, and so on -- places where people have no, or partial freedom -- we live in a very free country.

A: After World War II, the U.S. was by far the most powerful nation. It could have taken over the world. It didn't. It surely could have taken over Western Europe, including the UK, and Asia. It didn't. Instead, it provided billions in aid to help these nations reconstruct and feed themselves. German and Japan were prostrate under American military occupation (in Germany the UK and France were also occupying authorities, but they had no power -- it was the U.S. that made the important decisions. Russia was supposed to be an occupying power of East Germany, but instead of eventually giving it independence, it imposed a communist system on it ruled from Moscow). What did the U.S. do with these former bloody enemies? It gave them aid and support and created the conditions for democracy, oversaw development, and then, hard to believe in the history of international relations, it gave them complete independence. Germany and Japan are now well functioning democracies with solid human rights.

Even during the Cold War, the U.S. gave the Philippines its independence, and did the same for many Island nations of the Pacific that it controlled (e.g., Micronesia). To the people of its other territories it gave their peoples the option of becoming states or independence. Hawaii and Alaska thus became part of the U.S., and Puerto Rico has voted on this twice (if I recall correctly).

None of this is consistent with the U.S. being imperialistic.

DEMOCRACY AND NONVIOLENCE

A: Both reasons help explain the relative nonviolence of democracies. More to the point, a democratic society (1) fosters a spontaneous society in which there are multiple pyramids of power and attendant cross-pressures that moderate and isolate the social conflicts that occur; (2) develops cultural norms of negotiation, tolerance, and compromise (or conflict resolution, in your terms); and (3) is sewn together by a liberal belief system -- expectations -- emphasizing civil and political rights and freedoms (which includes, of course, the moral reverence of the individual). I believe that (1) is the most important, with (2) and (3) being equally but of lesser importance. That is, the structure of society sets the foundation for the democratic peace and the ground for the operation of (2) and (3).

A: Dictatorship.

A: While in practice you could have an anarchy at one level of society (as at the international level today), at some level you will always have a few monopolizing force over a many. The question is whether this will be a few ruling democratically by majorities, by a republican constitution limiting power, by inheritance, or by the gun. To try to eliminate what now protects our lives and welfare at the national level, our constitutional liberal government, would be dangerous in the extreme. Eliminating the state and national governments would bring out the guns, and whatever new rulers gain power locally or nationally, you can bet that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, would lose their lives before a stable government is achieved. And most likely, in the short run, it would not be democratic or republican, but rule purely enforced by the gun.

A: Violence is very much a part of human interaction, as is cooperation and love. That, however, must be distinguished from large-scale group and collective violence. Democratic freedom will not eliminate interpersonal violence. What democratic freedom does is to isolate, encapsulate, and cross pressure violence such that it does not arise to the society as a whole or infect relations between nations. For example, while there has certainly been violence in democracies, it has not for modern liberal democracies risen to mass genocide or democide by democratic governments, or to war or violence between them.

A: Its not apathy that causes the democratic peace, but the structure and culture of a free society – in short, a spontaneous society.

THEORY AND PHILOSOPHY

Q: Do you believe that political theory can help understand political phenomenon like democide and war?

And Democratic Peace

A: I disagree, although I do think that many have too narrowly conceived it. We really have a miracle of freedom here, where not only do democracies not make war on each other, but they also minimize other forms of violence, particularly the democide that is by far the most costly in lives. And there is solid theory for this in terms of cross-pressures, exchange culture, in-group perception, and above all, the dynamics of a spontaneous society.

A: They are very close. The idea of a free market is part of that of a spontaneous society, which is a condition for peace. See Part II of Power Kills: www.hawaii.edu—NOTE6.HTM

A: Start with the answer of the philosopher Immanual Kant to why universalizing republics (democracy was a bad word for Classical Liberals in his time) would create a peaceful world. People would not support and vote for wars in which they and their loved ones could die and lose their property. But this is only partly correct, for the people can get aroused against nondemocracies and push their leaders toward war, as in the Spanish-American War. A deeper explanation is that where people are free, they create an exchange society of overlapping groups and multiple and crosschecking centers of power. In such a society a culture of negotiation, tolerance, and splitting differences develops. Moreover, free people develop an in-group orientation toward other such societies, a feeling of shared norms and ideals that militates against violence toward other free societies.

A: Look at the evidence, both historical and scientific, much of which is referenced or given on my website. For example, it is empirically true that no democracy has ever had a famine, that democratically free countries have the least, if any, genocide and mass murder, and that democracies do not make war on each other. On this last point, see the book Never At War by the historian Spencer Weart (summarized at http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/WEART.CHAP.HTM) and see my statistics on this in Power Kills (at www.hawaii.edu—NOTE6.HTM).

A: Regardless of the philosophies, religions, or ideologies of the people, freedom creates a social structure that balances and checks their tendencies to violence and mass murder. Emphasizing what people should believe (as in a philosophy of compassion) has not worked historically to keep the peace; what has worked is placing people in a social structure that acculturates them into peaceful behavior. Such is the structure of democratic freedom (liberal democracy). Such freedom does not come from liberal democracy, nor does liberal democracy come from such freedom. They are a unity, integrally the same, and inseparable.

A: Because freedom creates a spontaneous society that not only creates wealth and happiness (a la Hayek and Mises), but also creates a culture and structure that prevents violence or bleeds it off when minor points of violence occur.

A: the stages theories go through are: “No way!” “Maybe, but . . .,” “Yes,” “Obvious,” and “I knew it all the time.” The democratic peace is moving from the “Maybe, but . . .,” to the “Yes.”

A: The worst idea of the century was Marxist-Leninism (communism) which was responsible for wrecking the economies of one communist country after another, destroying public health and welfare (the worst famines of all time have occurred in communist countries in this century), and murdering millions of people. Communist governments have murdered about 110,000,000 people, many times the number of combat killed in all this century's wars and revolutions.

And Statistics

A: Yes, I often made this point to my students -- there must be theory. But not necessarily a rigorously mathematical one, although I lean in that direction. I call my own theory "social field theory,” which to a certain extent leans on the mathematics of Catastrophe and Quantum Theories. For the Catastrophe Theory aspect of this, see my article at www.hawaii.edu—CAT.ART.HTM.

Q: Isn’t your conflict helix -- the process of conflict -- a catastrophe theory like process?

Q: Marxism-Leninism postulates not a smooth process of historical change, but one that takes place in big, discontinuous jumps. It has been called a "punctuated equilibrium" model. Your theory is similar, isn’t it?

Philosophy

A: Truth is of four kinds. There is the absolute truth of analytic systems like mathematics and logic; the synthetic truth of statements that may be empirically true or false, the moral truth of ethnical statements, and the emotive truth of emotional statements (like ugh). Understanding this then, is there such a thing as empirical truth. Yes. Hawaii is in the Pacific is a empirically true statement. So is the statement that Mercury is closer to the sun than is Earth, and democracies don’t make war on each other.

A: I believe man is what he is, neither inherently sinful or good, but free (as in free will) to shape his own destiny and choose his own actions. I have written much on this question and direct you to my book, the Dynamic Psychological Field at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel/NOTE10.HTM.

METHODS/RESEARCH PHILOSOPHY

Q: Could you put your findings and research methods in laymen’s terms?.

As to the methods, they involve (1) testing my theory by (1a) calculating precise correlations between different kinds of violence and the degree to which a nation is a democratically free, while holding constant things like common borders, economic development, aspects of culture, etc, that might also explain a nation's violence; and (1b) seeking negative instances that would falsify the theory; and (2) testing calculating how likely it is that the results, positive or negative, could have happened by chance. This theory is essential, for as everyone knows who has taken statistics 101, correlation does not mean causation.

A: Yes, and I've done the qualitative side. Look at my books on Soviet democide (Lethal Politics) and Chinese democide (China's Bloody Century. They are mainly historical (qualitative). See: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM and http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE2.HTM. My web site is mainly made up of qualitative studies

A: After a point, the numbers murdered reflect qualitative factors, as in the tens of millions murdered by Stalin, Mao, or Hitler, or in the Rwandan and Cambodian democides. However, I do not ignore qualitative factors, but have written about them as the social and historical context within which democide takes place. Anyway, this is not an either or choice in methods or approaches. Both quantitative and qualitative must be used. At every step of an analysis, scholarship informs and interprets the quantitative analysis of democide. Conversely, such analysis tests the intuitive and speculative assumptions and conclusions of scholarship and can point to the need for more scholarly work. There is a symbiotic relationship between the two.

A: Such factors can be quantified. For example, consider the question (often now heard) whether Christian nations are less inclined to democide than, say, and Moslem nations? Data on the proportion or Christians or Moslems in a nation are available, and researchers can use them to measure a Christian or Moslem variable, which they then can use to assess its correlation with the magnitude of a nation's democide. The answer would be that whether one religion or another does not make much of a difference (e.g., at the time of their megademocide, Nazis were Christians, Turks were Moslems, and Russians were atheists). At the lowest level of measurement, researchers can treat a condition like being a former colony as a dichotomous variable (former colony = 1, no = 0) and correlate it with democide. The results would be also that it makes not much of a difference. Once we have a good quantitative measure of democide, such as the magnitude of those murdered, a world of scientific analysis opens up.

A: When I started my work on war I had no idea that democracy would play the role it does in the results and in fact had initially dismissed democracy as having any relationship at all. That different researchers with different sets of data and methods and presumably different agendas have so far replicated the results speaks to the veracity of the findings.

A: In some of the quantitative analyses of the relationship between democracy and various kinds of violence, I first did a factor analysis of a variety of different scales of democracy. I then developed from this an ordinal scale running from the most democratic at one end to the most totalitarian at the other. I discuss such a scale in the Journal of Conflict Resolution (see www.hawaii.edu—JCR.ART.HTM).

As a result of all this, I have treated democracy as an independent variable in two ways. As factor scores or their equivalent based on the above factor analysis, or as in the ranking of Freedom House, where I equated democracy to an overall rating of free. In both cases, the results are the same about war, violence, and democide.

A: True, statistics can be misused and have been, but this is true of any scientific method. Virtually all the medical drugs one takes today are based on statistical tests, not unlike those used to test whether democracies do not make war on each other is a chance occurrence. If one is going to be cynical about statistics, then one should also be very wary of taking any modern drugs for an illness or disease. This issue is really not statistics but how well they have been applied and whether the data meet the assumptions of the statistical model used.

Q: I am working on some approaches to looking at war and conflict. In your statistical work, don’t you assume that the observations are independent and exchangeable?

Regarding Estimates of Democide

A: I don't believe any of my estimates of democide tell the true death toll. Nor do I believe anyone will ever know the precise number of people murdered in any democide, including the Holocaust (estimates in this best of all studied genocides and with the best archival and other records still differ by over 40%). Then what is the purpose of estimating democide? Two reasons dominate: moral assessment, and related scientifically based policy. Democide is a crime against humanity, one of the worst crimes the rulers or leaders of a government can commit. But there are levels of democide, and I see a moral difference between rulers that murder at different orders of magnitude (powers of ten). That is, I find the evil of a Stalin who most probably murdered over 10,000,000 people (and this seems to encompass 99.9 percent of all estimates) greater than rulers who murdered 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, or even 1,000,000. More specifically, my moral gauge clicks in at orders of magnitude. (There are other moral gauges, of course, such as the proportion of a population murdered; how people were murdered, such as randomly or by ethnicity or race; whether the intent was genocide or revenge, etc.) The moral question for me is then whether an estimate captures the order of magnitude. While I don't think we can ever get a true estimate, I do think we can bracket the range of estimates within which the true value must be found, either absolutely or probabilistically.

Q: No matter how we twist and turn the figures it becomes clear that the totalitarian regimes -- Hitler’s, Stalin’s, Mao’s -- have committed the biggest and the worst mass murders in the history of the world. Does juggling of numbers for their democides really matter?

Q: Of those that commit mass democide, shouldn’t one micro study their culture through the centuries by means of every discipline currently available? Surely, only then will you be able to understand the specific origins of their degenerative behavior and ultimately destructive organizations.

Q: You are trying to construct a causal model of democide, and seem to be claiming that the size of the population is not a relevant predictor of the absolute number of people murdered in a region. Wouldn’t that make Fiji’s regime worse than Hitler’s if it murdered a larger percentage of its population?

Q: So, you got all these unreliable, rough guesses at democide totals. Outside of horrifying people with them, so what?

Moreover, even if we can only rank nations on their estimated amount of democide, this is enough for the most complex statistical and mathematical analyses; even if we can only say that there was much domestic democide like Hitler or Stalin, about average like Iraq or Iran, or little like France or Britain.

A: I don't believe there is an absolute answer to this. It depends on what one is trying to understand about democide and to do with this understanding. In my quantitative research, I have tried to determine the causes and conditions of democide anywhere such that we would have the best ability to generally explain why it occurred and predict where it might happen in the future. For this purpose, I could have simply treated a regime as having committed a democide or not. But this would have equated, say, the democide of Stalin with the dozen or so murders of some Latin American dictator. Surely, for prediction and explanation we would want some kind of scale of democide that would discriminate between the Stalins, Hitlers, and the ordinary dictator. I have found two measures of degree most effective for explaining and predicting democide. These are the number murdered, and the annual rate of such killing calculated over the life of a regime. The result is that these two measures are highly correlated and are similarly predicted the degree (yes, another degree) to which the people of a nation have democratic freedom.

A: This is not an either or choice in methods or approaches. Both must be used. At every step of an analysis, scholarship informs and interprets the quantitative analysis of democide. Conversely, such analysis tests the intuitive and speculative assumptions and conclusions of scholarship and points to the need for more scholarly work. There is a symbiotic relationship between the two.

A. Wrong. For example, consider the question (often now heard) whether Christian nations are less inclined to democide than, say, Moslem nations? Data on the proportion or Christians or Moslems in a nation are available, and researchers can use them to measure a Christian or Moslem variable, which they then can use to assess its correlation with the magnitude of a nation’s democide. The answer would be that whether one religion or another does not make much of a difference. At the lowest level of measurement, researchers can treat a condition like being a former colony as a dichotomous variable (former colony = 1, no = 0) and correlate it with democide. The results would be also that it makes not much of a difference. Once we have a good quantitative measure of democide, such as the magnitude of those murdered, a whole world of scientific analysis opens up.

On Bias

A: Simply not true. As a study of my many tables would show, I give both highs and lows and then a conservative estimate. Usually this estimate is closer to the low than the high. Overall the democide in this century my range is roughly 76,500,000 to 359,000,000 murdered, with my much-quoted prudent estimate being 170,000,000. Note how much closer to the low than the high this is.

A: First, many others have done research on this, and have used slightly different definitions and criteria for what are democracies, as well as different methods and tests. So, my definitions are not the only ones that underlay the proposition. Second, if I collected my data in the way the question puts it, I would be a poor scientist, indeed. Although one might disagree with my definition of democracy, it was explicit, empirical, and all states in my analysis had to conform to it.

A: This is a good and important point. It would be telling were it not that my work is based on a well articulated and developed theory that explains why democracies should not have war, be least violent, and commit the least democide. Theory trumps reification, especially since what the theory predicts is found in the empirical data. I have published this theory, which I call a social field theory, in a number of places, but it is best seen in my book Power Kills (www.hawaii.edu—NOTE6.HTM).

A: After a point, the numbers murdered reflect these qualitative factors, as in the tens of millions murdered by Stalin, Mao, or Hitler, or in the Rwandan and Cambodian democides.

A: when I started my work on violence I had no idea that democracy would play the role it does in the results and in fact had initially dismissed democracy as having any relationship to violence. That the results have so far been replicated by different researchers with different sets of data and methods and presumably different agendas speaks to the veracity of the findings. All the research in the field by others is discussed and evaluated in my book Power Kills (www.hawaii.edu—NOTE6.HTM)

Q: Besides the number of people living in democracies you might consider also the quality of democracy they live in - the easiest but not quite valid method might be to average the indices of the Freedom House ranking for democratic countries only.

Q: Can you really apply the contemporary definition of democracy to previous centuries?

On Democracy and Democide

A: I calculated an annual rate of democide (democide to population per regime year) and did factor, regression, and canonical analysis of 1900-1987 on it along with absolute democide. The results were largely the same -- power predicts the rate as well as the level of democide. To see the sequence of analyses, begin with chapter 16 of my Statistics of Democide at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel/SOD.CHAP16.HTM and follow through to Chapter 22.

A: Look at the democide statistics. For 1900-1987, totalitarian governments murdered over 110,000,000 citizens, authoritarian governments about 23,000,000, and democracies 149,000 (two orders of magnitude less). Now, of these 149,000, near 100,000 are due to the far left Spanish Republican government during its 1936-39 civil war, 10,000 to Peru's (1980-87) fight with communist guerrillas, 25,000 to India, 4,000 to Colombia, 2,000 to the U.S.A. (largely because of lynching in the early years of the century), and lesser numbers to a smattering of others. Among these democracies, none were liberal democracies at the time of their democide (when American domestic democide occurred women could not vote and minorities were systematically and legally segregated, harassed, and denied the vote in many states), and one might argue that some were not democracies at all.

Q: Given we have a negative correlation between democracy and war, how can we establish that this is causal from the first to the second?

A second answer is empirical. Variables reflecting other explanations of the findings (such as number of borders, geographic distance or location, economic development, culture, religion, military power, and even chance) were included in the analyses and held constant (if you are not into statistics, this is similar to using control groups in medical research). The results invariably showed that democracy was inversely related to war, regardless of what other variables were introduced.

Q: How can you go from, for example, the inverse correlation between democracy and war to causation? Correlation, you know, doesn’t imply causation.

Q: What methods have you used to check that your factor analyses have uncovered causal relationships, rather than correlations?

It is especially important to note that this was not a purely empirical operation. A theory about what I should find in the data was always there. My field theory and associated conflict helix guided all the analyses, which were really empirical tests.

On Samples

This question assumes that I am the only one who has done research on the relationship between democracy and violence. There now is a large literature of replications and historical analyses , including the wars among the classical Greek city-states, among primitive tribal units, among the Swiss forest democracies of the Middle Ages, among all democracies since the 17th century, and so on, that support my conclusions.

A: Whether the definition of democracy is broad or narrow, we have statistical way to calculate whether the number of democracies is in fact significant (the same kind of statistics medical researchers use to test the significance of drugs or symptoms). That there have been no wars between democracies since, say, 1816, is statistically significant. That is, given the historical number of democracies, the probability of the hypothesis that democracies have never made war on each other being wrong is very low (given the consistency of findings across diverse studies, the odds must be surely millions to one).

Q: Would describe your methodology as culturalist or structuralist?

Q: How did you determine the number of people who were victims of democide during the 20 the century ?

On Statistics

A: All statistical tests on humans suffer from the inability to truly meet the assumption of randomness (equal likelihood of each case, event, and sample point) basic to the model. In medical tests, whether double blind or not, the sample is usually constrained to Americans, students, nurses, etc., and thus may introduce unknown masking factors. Even ignoring this, any statistical tests are only giving results in terms of probabilities, and for that one test, the improbable may in fact have occurred. This is why no researcher should accept any one or two tests as definitive. Only if a range of tests is consistent over many kinds of data, researchers, and methods can one have confidence in the results. This is true for statin drugs reducing cholesterol; it is true for the proposition that democracies do not make war on each other

Although a political scientists by career, I also have a formal mathematical background. That said, there is great confusion among political scientists over the use of statistical inference. They often think they are using it when in fact they are dealing with a population and not a sample, or at least not a sample in any proper statistical inference sense. I generally don't use statistical inference because I'm dealing with either the universe or near universe of events or cases. My approach is generally mathematical, as in curve fitting or determining the components (eigenvectors/eigenvalues) of a matrix, as in factor analysis. On this, see my piece at: www.hawaii.edu—UFA.HTM. If I use combinatorial probabilities (not statistical inference) to assess the fit of my mathematical curves (coefficients), it usually is only as a benchmark.

A: Choice and interpretation are always involved. I'm not a hard numbers man and believe research must involve not only hard science, but also intuition, imagination, and a solid knowledge of the field. So, while not being sufficient in themselves, scientific tests are necessary to balance off the subjective biases we all have.

Philosophy of Science

A: Heavens, no. Only questions about causes, conditions, solutions, predictions, and such. But there is a multitude of moral, philosophical, conceptual, and legal questions that require quite different kind of analysis. For example, is there a Just Democide doctrine conceivable that is the counterpart of the Just War doctrine? Are there imaginable circumstances when the moral consequences of not committing democide are worse than committing democide, or is democide absolutely to be avoided despite all circumstances? This is a question of ethics, not science.

A: When they are large enough. Just take the number murdered by communist governments, which is about 110,000,000. That number alone speaks volumes. Add to it that this is more three times the number combat killed in all international and domestic wars, and the “three” is an incredible historic number. It adds more highly significant volumes still to our historical knowledge. I would add the visualizations of the numbers to this. See, for example, http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/RM1.RINGS.OF.TEARS.HTM.

A: I don't understand this claim. I cover all cases of war back to the beginning of the 19th Century; all 20th century cases of genocide and mass murder, all political systems, whether democratic or not, and all famines. Moreover, these data are presented and well defined, and explicit systematic statistical and mathematical methods are applied to them, all so that others can replicate my results, as they have been. (That democracies don't or virtually never make war on each other is now the most replicated finding in international relations).

A: This is demonstrably false. We have been able to establish several major social laws about real societies. For example, when human societies are formed into states, their type of government predicts to their foreign and internal violence. Specifically, democracies don't make war on each other and the more democratic two governments, the less foreign violence between them; the more democratic a government, the less its foreign and domestic violence; and the more democratic a government, the less its democide/genocide and mass murder. Now, are these not grand laws of history? Other examples: democracies do not have famines; and democracy is an engine of economic development.

A: True. I should have added "As far as my data show." But I did survey all the historical sources -- thousands -- I could find that might have anything on mass murder. The 61,000,000 murdered by one regime -- the Soviets -- does far surpass anything I could find, or other countries in history. Also, keep in mind the population differences. The further one goes back in history, the fewer the people to kill.

A. Even the most qualified analysts can misuse and misinterpret statistics. The solution to this is the three R’s: replication, replication, and replication. Only as different researchers, with different points of view, and different sets of data, end up with the same or similar results can we have confidence in the conclusions of such studies. But this is the way both science and scholarship work. Unlike what the popular media does regarding the results of medical research, no student of democide should consider a single statistical study anything more than interesting and suggestive.

The most obvious claims for garbage are apparently precise statements like, for example, Stalin murdered 40,000,000 (or 30,000,000, or 20,000,000) people. But we can use methods that essentially discard the aura of guess work around such figures and still pull out the valuable information they contain, particularly if the analysis is comparative, as in the assessment of estimates of deaths for many democides. Then we are back to orders of magnitude already mentioned.

A: No one can be certain. There is always the possibility that one can be wrong in fact and theory. But I am confident enough that democracies do not make war on each other to believe that it is the best solution to war. I started research on war and peace in 1956 and have spent a professional research career in political science on it since. The whole character of this lifetime of research supports the proposition. But others have done their own research and come to the same conclusion. And like others, I have gone from unbelieving (it is too simple and simplistic) to a maybe-but, to full acceptance as the number of positive research studies and theoretical elaborations have accumulated.

POLICY (WHAT TO DO?)

How and Feasibility?

A: Wrongly conceived. We do not export democracy. We unchain the human rights of other people. Exporting democracy is really freeing people to enjoy the rights that are theirs by virtue of being human. Can we do this? Yes, we did it in post-WWII Japan and Germany, and in Afghanistan, and it was done in South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Botswana, and so on.

A: Hardly. I am opposed to invading a country to democratize it. But, fostering freedom can be done in many ways, one of which is as I am doing through my research and writing. But also, through aid to democratic groups, aid in the process of democratization, spreading the word about the power of freedom, education, and, of course, the methods you use through your website in fostering libertarianism and the antiwar cause.

A: No. Democracy IS a method! It is the method whereby conflicts are resolved by the tools of bargaining, negotiating, and compromise. Democracy is most fundamentally about resolving differences with ballots rather than bullets. Separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, constitutionalism are all structures people have developed -- some brilliantly -- to limit power by "making" people use certain institutions that require maximum amounts of participation and contestation. None of this is new, and political scientists have been writing about all this stuff since Aristotle. Simply: democracy is a method of nonviolence.

Q: Is there a realistic formula to spread democracy? If so, what would be involved?

Justification

A: Yes, but the virtue of democracy is that it balances and checks the different groups, ideologies, and competitors. Democracy is a method of nonviolence, where in spite of these human instincts, they are balanced in a structural/cultural system of tolerance and compromise.

A: Not culture or democracy, but human rights. Civil rights, political liberties (yes, democracy) are people's rights by international law and conventions.

A: This simply is saying that we cannot be certain about any route to peace. All we can do is move incrementally and carefully along any prescribed route, always ready to change direction if new theory and evidence show that we are mistaken. I can say here only that theory and empirical results agree, on balance, that democracy offers a way of reducing collective violence. This may be wrong and it might be wiser to wait until much more study has been done before drawing any policy implications. But I must ask: Do any of the current policy proposals for creating a more peaceful world have such accumulated empirical research and theory supporting them?

A: The logical error here is assuming that countries or nations decide anything. They don’t. The key question is what you mean by “them” and “they.” It is people who decide, and in democracies, it is the leaders elected by the people and who can be thrown out of office for what they decide. In authoritarian countries it is a small elite who decide and can like chess players, move people here and there around the board without fear of the consequences for their rule. I argue that if people vote through democratic procedures, such as an open and free referendum, to be unfree, that is their business. But if a people are ruled by those who murder tens and hundreds of thousands of their people, and make war arbitrarily, such as Saddam Hussein of Iraq, then it is our business.

A: First, one does not “impose democracy.” One unchains a people’s human rights. That understood, I do not argue this should be done by force. It is something that must come from the people themselves, and with the aid and support of the democracies. However, what we find in one authoritarian country after another is that the people want freedom -- they want their human rights -- but a small and powerful elite stand in their way. Moreover, in many countries, such as Iran or North Korea, it is a small group of murdering thugs that prevent any movement towards democracy.

A: The best engine of human development, equality, and economic development is democratic freedom. Just as one example, no democratic country has ever had a famine. Although in the last century some 80,000,000 people died in famines, none occurred in democracies. Another example: the richest, most developed countries in the world are virtually all democracies, the exceptions being the oil rich Middle Eastern countries. For the evidence on this and the systematic analysis, see the appendix to my Saving Lives, Enriching Life at: www.hawaii.edu—WF.APPENDIX.HTM

This question wrongly conceived what was involved in the Iraq and Afghan wars. The United States and its coalition were not imposing democracy. They were actually freeing the people from a dictator so that they could determine their own government, not one imposed on them as did Saddam Hussein and the Taliban.

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COMM.11.14.04.HTM

A: Because it will take the investment of much resources by the United States and other democracies to help nations democratize. Russian alone needs tens of billions in aid to further democratization. Such aid will be more forthcoming and more broadly supported if there is a wider understanding among the democracies that by providing human and financial resources to democratize we are not only promoting the freedom and prosperity of other countries but also peace and nonviolence. Such aid is cheap compared to the likely human and material cost of future wars.

Maintaining Democratic Stability

A: No, I have not empirically investigated this and there is very little work of this kind in the literature, although there is much speculation and millions of dollars are being spent presumably to help nations become or remain democracies. As best I can tell without having done the systematic research, economic development promotes democracy, and the more developed a democracy, the more stable it becomes. Indeed, there seems to be a reciprocal causation here: economic development promotes democracy, but democracy also seems to promote economic development.

By Using Violence?

A: Nowhere have I written that fostering global freedom should mean invading or intervening in all nondemocracies. I oppose this. I do favor fostering freedom generally by nonviolent means, such as broadcasting into nondemocratic counties radio and TV programs providing the truth about the virtues of democracy and what the ruling thugs are trying to hide from their own people.

I am not for spreading it by the sword. In general, I'm antiwar. But, as with World War II against Hitler, certain wars are a necessity. Is it right for me to pick up a club and batter a man trying to rape my wife. You betcha. Would I shoot him to stop him if he was bigger than me. You betcha. Was it necessary to protect the United States against the likes of Saddam Hussein. You betcha. The 9/11 attack made this clear.

A: We are unchaining them. We are giving them the freedom they have by their right as human beings. The same also applies to our war against the Afghanistan Taliban.

The important term is "dormant." This means, I assume, that they are not murdering their people en masse, and they are not developing weapons of mass destruction that have the potential for attacking the United States. However, they can be dormant and have weapons of mass destruction that can hit the United States. In this case, preemption applies. We cannot wait until attacked to respond. And a dormant dictator can always change his mind this afternoon, and secretly prepare to attack. Or, his dormancy may only be a ruse. Or he may be overthrown by someone out to attack the United States with existing weapons.

Q: Would I be wrong in suggesting that a component should be added to the foreign policy of U.S., European, and other democratic peace loving regimes? That component would be the forceful (if necessary) imposition of democratic political systems upon any adversaries that might otherwise arise?

There are really two questions here. One is the empirical one -- will freedom bring and assure peace. The answer is yes, so far as our research shows. The second question is more complex -- what is the moral thing to do? That is, what is socially just? Let us say that we discovered that not freedom, but totalitarianism ended all war and democide. Would we still want to give up our freedom to what we would consider an immoral political system? I've tried to deal with this whole issue of social justice, freedom, and the knowledge we have about freedom's power to end war, in my The Just Peace (at: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE14.HTM). I argue there that people should be free to decide to be unfree. And this should be a decision of people as a whole and not their elite.

Q: When, if ever, it is justified for one nation to intervene in the internal affairs of another? Would prima facie evidence of democide being carried out as state policy, for example, be one such sufficient basis?

Q: How can any international action not authorized by the UN (or taken without even consulting its bodies) be legal?

Q: If "democracies" set a precedent for intervening in other nations, don’t we create significantly more problems than the ones we are trying to solve?

By Fostering Democratic Freedom?

Q: How do we prevent democide? Prevention must be our aim.

Q: What lessons has your research taught you about human nature and how human society should be "constructed" to ensure a safer future?

Q: We are at a magical historic cusp because we possess, for the first time in history, the means to consolidate political power in the hands of peace activists planet-wide, as well as the means, motive and opportunity to exterminate the human species at the hands of international militarists planet wide. The Manichean elements of this stark polarization are ours to choose, with no prevarication, compromise, or indefinite fence straddling survivable for any serious length of time. Yes?

Q: Ending war isn't enough. We also need to demilitarize the world. How can that happen?

Q: How can the promotion of democracy and freedom to achieve world peace be compatible with the quite often-intervening foreign policy of governments considered free and democratic?

Not Possible or Applicable?

A: Democide can be stopped. We should recognize two facts and one practical necessity that cut through the feeling of hopelessness. One fact is that democracies by far have had the least domestic democide, and now with their extensive liberalization, have virtually none. Therefore, democratization (not just electoral democracies, but liberal democratization in terms of civil and political rights and liberties) provides the long run hope for the elimination of democide. That the world is progressively becoming more democratic, moving from 22 democracies in 1950 to something like 121 democracies today (about 89 of them liberal democracies), which gives substance to this hope. The second fact is that democratization is central to the national interest of all these democracies. A fundamental national interest of a democracy is peace -- the avoidance of war -- and international trade and prosperity. This brings us to the one practical necessity. What is the best way overall to avoid war and promote prosperity in the long run? Through the promotion of democratization. Democracies don't make war on each other, and the more democratic a regime the less its foreign and domestic violence. And democracy is an engine of wealth and prosperity. Moreover, this is now the core idea in American foreign policy.

A: The main reason for the failure of the Convention (which only in recent years is beginning to be applied) was the Cold War. To try to apply it to government leaders during the Cold War would in many cases have led to war, which ultimately could have escalated to involve the U.S. and U.S.S.R. and nuclear weapons. Second, a number of countries carrying out genocide were close allies of the U.S. in the American attempt to contain and deter communist aggression (e.g., Pakistan). For the democracies to forcefully apply the Convention to these countries could have meant destabilizing them and making either a communist takeover likely or bringing about a new government that would abrogate its defense treaties with the U.S. (e.g., Indonesia). The paramount fact of international relations from 1948 to about 1990 was the Cold War; all else, including the Convention, was secondary. In this light, I should also note that much of the world was either authoritarian or totalitarian, and these were the nations that were committing genocide, as defined in the Convention. They had the majority of votes in the UN and on the human rights commissions. These countries were not about to let the Convention be applied to them, and for the democracies to try to do this by force (as in Kosovo) would, as I noted, meant war that well could have escalated.

A: The term "study" is very broad, in that it encompasses a variety of writers, scholars, and researchers. Among this large group, I am in a minority in my belief that wars can be ended with what we know now. If you limit the term "study" to those who do quantitative (scientific) analyses of war, then I'm among a majority. However, this is not a matter of optimism or its opposite anymore than whether there are rings around Saturn is such a matter. It is what the empirical data say upon scientific analysis. I believe what they say is undeniable (indeed, some who now agree with me did their initial analyses to prove me wrong.) And that is that democracies do not make war on each other. There is not a clear case in history of such a war. Moreover, nondemocracies that made war on each other stopped doing so when they became democracies, and started doing so again when one or both democracies fell.

Q: My impression is that many popular historians, such as Robert Kagan, Donald Keegan, Samuel Huntington, Victor Davis Hanson, et al, are pessimists, who believe that war and militarism are inevitable. Even lefties such as Michael Walzer and the journalist Chris Hedges lean toward that view. My impression talking to friends and acquaintances is that they are largely pessimistic too. Would you agree?

Q: I'd say that there isn't much relevance of the democratic peace to foreign policy. The analyses of the realist school supersede the relationship between the absence of war and relations between democracies. Comment?

I disagree with the universal application of this view. What the evidence about the lack of war between democracies argues is that democracies are a zone of peace, that power and power balancing does not work the same among democracies, that democracies do not have to worry about a security dilemma among themselves. This is a profound thrust into the heart of realism. International relations is divided into two spheres, one in which peaceful and cooperative relations can proceed as though within municipal society; and the other sphere in which there is turmoil and power must play its realist role to keep peace, in which war is a normal expectation.

Q: Even if the proposition that democracies do not make war on each other is true, how can you generalize to the future? Because something never happened in the past, you cannot say it will not in the future.

All public policies are based on perceptions of historical patterns. Indeed, all scientific predictions are based on established theoretical/empirical patterns. No prediction of the future is thus certain; all are based on the past. The question is how good the established patterns are that underlie the predictions. Are they reliable, well verified, and theoretically understood? The historical pattern that there is no war between democracies meets all these requirements. Even those who have been very skeptical when starting their research on this have become convinced. One has said that this is now the best established law of international relations.

On an Alliance of Democracies

Q: Are there new preventative methods that can be tried to prevent war and democide?

Q. Is not independent military action against a UN member illegal? Conversely, would intervention by the Alliance be legitimate?

Moreover, how we conceptualize the demociders is crucial to the idea of legitimacy. The relevant simile is that the government usually carrying out the democide is like a gang of thugs that have descended on a group of hikers, stealing their possessions, raping some, and killing others. If there is no international law allowing these thugs to be stopped, captured, and tried before an international court, then Natural Law provides the justification.

Q: Regarding your proposal for an Alliance of Democracies to eventually eliminate democide and war, isn’t there already a movement in this direction.

Q: There is now a Special Representative for Genocide Prevention located at U.N. Headquarters who will coordinate U.N. assessment of early warnings of genocides, and will inform the U.N. Security Council, U.N. General Assembly, U.N. agencies, member states, and international organizations. Do you think this is a step forward?

Q: Why ignore the UN and form this Alliance in its place?

I must point out that I'm a strong supporter of the UN for many reasons, and there are many common interests between all nations, whether ruled by thugs or not, that must be worked out in the UN. Disaster relief is just one such. But not high among these common interests is fostering global democracy and effectively eliminating democide and aggression.

A. Consider the Brahimi Report of the United Nations. In 2000, the Secretary General of the UN convened a panel of experts to review the UN's peace and security efforts. Lakhder Brahimi, the former minister of foreign affairs of Algeria, led it. The resulting Brahimi Report was a very negative critique of UN peacekeeping operations and military interventions and characterized them as repeated failures. I believe that one of the main reasons for this failure is that the membership of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations is made up of many authoritarian states and military dictatorships. I believe an Alliance of Democracies can do much better.

For Fostering Democracy

A: democracy is not installed, rather the people are freed of their chains. That understood, this is the number one question, and part of the reason I suggest an Alliance of Democracies. This is to use the combined diplomatic and economic power of over 100 democracies to foster democratization. How? Though aid and support to democratic movements, activists, human rights advocates and petitioners, and nascent democratic parties in these nondemocracies.

Q: How can turning a spotlight on a gross violation of humanitarian law affect the outcome?

For Humanitarian Intervention

A: The role of democracies is to form a democratic alliance of nations to promote democracy and intervene to prevent such mass murder. Largely ruled by nondemocracies (note that China, Cuba, and Sudan, are members of the UN Human Rights Commission), the UN is unwilling to do anything serious about it.

A. This would involve five things: preparation, diplomacy, shows of strength, public relations, and seizing opportunities.

Concerning diplomacy, this would involve the usual thing -- emergency conferences, dispatch of diplomats to the offending government, warnings, threats, and so on.

Potential Problems?

A: First, there must be some kind of international organization to deal with the multiple needs of a world of nation-states, including dealing with international disputes, conflict, and war when it does and should occur, not to mention the anti-human rights and democide of the thug regimes. There must be an international political organization for this, and the only question is what kind. The UN -- thug haven -- has failed, and its decisions are morally undesirable.

Q: Since your Death By Government points out that political power itself, irrespective of ideology, is the engine of democide, would not an Alliance of Democracies degenerate into a power-centered, democide-fostering, world government? One that is empowered to (in your words) "advance not only democracy, but also human rights, peace and human security" would also, in principle, have the power to imperil individual rights and individual security.

Q: Why are western governments all too ready to turn their backs on genocides, until it's too late?

Q: Who is to choose what is a democracy for purposes of membership in the Alliance of Democracies?

Criticism

A: There is a tendency among critics of an Alliance of Democracies to focus on the U.S. and its supposed sins. But such an Alliance would comprise over 100 nations, a good number of whom, such as France, Germany, and Canada, are not easily dominated by the U.S. It is strange that when an Alliance of Democracies is discussed, supposed American sins are used to argue against it, but when the UN and its possible actions are considered, the sins of such members as the Sudan, Somalia, Libya, China, Zaire, Rwanda, Burma, Vietnam, etc., are ignored.

A: Who are these other nations that would be added to the democracies to create "collective international will"? Somalia, Sierra Leone, North Korea, Sudan, Burma, Iraq, Iran, Zaire, Rwanda, Burundi, and so, including that paragon of human rights, communist China. The only group of nations that meets the international criteria for human rights and reflects the will of their people is the democracies. They are the only systems that institutionalize social justice. So, they are partisan. That partisanship is to the good, as is the partisanship of the police in stopping gang murder.

A: Democracies do have the moral high ground. They are the only political system incorporating human rights at their core, don't make war on each other, and the liberal democracies among them -- a majority -- have virtually no domestic democide. Surely, freedom to vote leaders out of power is more moral than a dictatorship; freedom of religion is more moral than its suppression; freedom of speech more moral than its denial; freedom to organize unions more moral than its prevention; and so on for political parties, private schools, etc. Liberal democracy is the only political system that gives its people all these freedoms and thus does have the moral high ground. But look at the point in a different way. If you want to be inclusive, which gangs of thugs ("governments") do you want to include? Again, Sudan, Iraq, Burma, and so on?

Q: How can you support Bush going to war against Iraq and/or Afghanistan?

Then don't forget Afghanistan, which was, under the Taliban, especially for women, a hell-state. Now, because of Bush, Afghanistan held its first democratic elections and elected its first president and legislature.

A: No. His policies in the Middle East, Iraq, and Afghanistan are consistent with his rhetoric. His basic policy is to foster democracy, and that is what he has been doing.

There are two sources of law for this. One is that of humanitarian intervention to protect a people from genocide and mass murder. This has been the basis of intervention, for example, in Rwanda, Kosovo, and currently, the Ivory Coast by, of all nations, France.

And you are sadly misinformed about our murdering Iraqis.

MORAL/ETHICAL QUESTIONS

To discuss evil in any depth requires either a theological discussion of evil, or a philosophical safari into ethics. I wish to leave theology aside, and as far as ethics is concerned, simply express my view of evil. First, I do not accept some prevailing ethics, such as that ethics are simply a personal emotive expression of something one hates (like ugh!), a situational expression about some gross immorality, or an objective fact that exists outside of us. In my view, ethical statements are prescriptive, state what ought to be morally, and are universal. That is, they state what everyone would agree to for their moral governance, were they to have to live under them without advanced knowledge as to their socio-economic status, race, religion, sex, etc. Evil for me is then something all would agree is not only morally reprehensible, but also fundamentally reprehensible to what it means to be human and civilized. In this sense, any murder is evil. We lock up people for life or execute them for this reason. But we also have to recognize that there are different levels of reprehensibility, as to whether a person murders one other, or 10,000 others in one pen stroke, as have some political leaders like Stalin.

A: I believe that there are different levels of evil roughly corresponding to the different magnitudes of murder, as in democide. Now, I know this is subject to reductio ad absurdum. There can be no difference in evil between 9 and 10 murders, 999, and 1,000. But this idea of relative evil should be applied sensibly, that is with the recognition that we are talking about real differences in magnitude as well as levels: the murder of 5,400,000 Jews (by my calculations) is to me more evil than Indonesia's murder of about 700,000 people (1965-87), but in the same ballpark of moral reprehensibility as the Chinese Nationalist's regime murder of about 10,000,000 (1928-1949), leaving other moral consideration aside. Similarly, the Albanian regime (1944-87) that murdered about 100,000 people is less evil in this sense than Hitler's that murdered about 21,000,000. But I'm not willing to extend this moral differentiation to similar magnitudes. To me, Hitler's 21,000,000 murdered is as evil as Stalin's 40,000,000 (the often quoted 20,000,000 is only for the 1930s).

A: Immoral, yes. Evil, yes. All the more reason to bring science as well as scholarship to bear. The quantitative analysis of democide is like medical research into the causes and cure of heat disease and cancer. To focus on quantification and analysis does not mean that a medical researcher is ignoring the horror in lives, pain, and suffering of these diseases, but rather it is because of all this that the doctor has devoted his life to this line of research.

A: Yes, the proof is in the statistical analysis of all democides and regimes during this century. The less democratic, the more democide; the more democratic the less democide. This is a very high and very significant correlation. And it holds up when we hold constant many variables that are believed to account for democide, such as education, economic development, religion, ethnicity or race, geography, and so on (the techniques used are analysis of variance, multiple regression, factor analysis, and canonical analysis). However, this is still only correlation. There is also theory as to why democratic freedom inhibits democide, which has to do with the nature of a spontaneous society, multiple balances and checks on power, cross-pressures, culture of tolerance, and so on. This theory predicts what in fact has been found empirically.

A: Yes. I am not a moral relativist. I do believe that some governments are better than others; that the current German government is morally superior to Hitler's, contemporary Russia's to Stalin's, and Japan's to its militarist government of World War II. Indeed, I believe that the government that best promotes the development of its people in terms of their own interests and capabilities, while minimizing internal and foreign violence and democide, as does democracy, is better than those that don't. This is my prejudice and sense of social justice.

A: In my view, the democracies have a moral responsibility to intervene and stop massive democide. I would go further, since it is the absolute dictators of the world that are the major source of war and democide, I would rule dictatorship itself a crime against humanity.

A: They are the only political system incorporating human rights at their core, don't make war on each other, and the majority liberal democracies among them, have virtually no domestic democide. Is not freedom of religion more moral than its suppression? Is not freedom of speech more moral than its denial? Is not freedom to organize unions, political parties, private schools, etc., more moral than their repression? Is not the freedom to vote leaders out of power more moral than a dictatorship? Liberal democracy is the only political system that gives its people all these freedoms and thus does have the moral high ground.

PERSONAL

A: Yes, I think my ideology is quite relevant. I'm a principled pacifist (sometimes war is the lesser evil, as against a Hitler), and thus neither left or right. This is my paramount value. Because of my research, I have changed my politics from democratic socialist to libertarian, and now to libertarian on domestic policy and while on foreign policy I am a strong supporter of fostering freedom internationally. To complete this ideological unveiling, I'm opposed to democide of any kind.

A: It is one that is a libertarian in domestic policy. My emphasis is on the freedom of the individual consistent with the freedom of others. This is not to deny that government has certain functions, such as guaranteeing these freedoms and protecting them, adjudicating claims, national defense, public health, the environment, etc. The question always is where the dividing line is between freedom and government. This is a matter of individual values, perceptions, and interests, and the best, socially just, arena in which these can be determined authoritatively for a society is in a democracy. However, unlike some libertarians, I favor an active foreign policy, one fostering freedom abroad. I think President George Bush has it right with his democratic peace foreign policy he calls ‘A Forward Strategy of Freedom.”

A: Being pro-peace is not contradictory to being for the use of violence to prevent those who would murder, rape, and loot others from doing so. Is it inconsistent with being pro-peace to favor a police force and their use of violence when necessary to subdue or capture murderers or rapists? No, it is not. And the same holds for international relations. Was it inconsistent with being pro-peace to have fought Hitler? No, because had the democracies not done so, his world would have been a world of murderers and slaves -- hardly a peaceful world, as we use that term. But remember, as a result of fighting and defeating Hitler and Tojo, both Germany and Japan were turned into peaceful democracies. Had the democracies not done anything, I leave it to your imagination as to what the world would be like with the Nazis occupying all of Europe and half of Russia and the Japanese military in occupation of all of Asia, including India, and the pacific west of Hawaii.

A: I'm retired and get nothing out my books (so far my current royalties would not cover my car repairs) and my web site except the psychic satisfaction from following through on a great sense of moral obligation. Let me put it this way. If one knows there is a cure for cancer of which the general public and most of the medical community is unaware, then there is a deep obligation to inform. Well, as a research social scientist I've come to know that there is a practical and in itself desirable solution to famine, mass poverty, political violence, genocide/mass murder, and war. And I'm now trying to communicate all this, and the underlying mass of research that supports it.

A: None of it was done under commission. However, some of it was done under grants from the National Science Foundation (1962-1966), Department of Defense (1967-1974), and the U.S. Institute of Peace (1988-1992).

A: Yes. I did the theory and empirical work first in my Vol. 4 of Understanding Conflict and War, 1979. The democratic peace was one of the propositions (the Freedom Proposition) I tested and accepted. The book is on my web site at: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel/NOTE13.HTM. Because these results were so important, I replicated the empirical work in my 1983 Journal of Conflict Resolution article at: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel/DP83.HTM. Of note, the first modern researcher to explicitly argue and show evidence that democracies don’t fight each other was Dean Babst, who published an article on the subject in 1964.

A: It made me far less tolerant of Marxists and the far left, which is responsible for most of the killing. Marxist governments alone have murdered about 110,000,000 people out of a total of about 170,000,000 for the whole world. It changed me from a mild pacifist to an interventionist -- it made me come to accept humanitarian intervention, forcefully if need be, to prevent massive democide. The cost of such intervention in human lives is always much less than the day after day murder of people by a democidal government.

A: I have spent much of my career in the study of war in order to understand how to stop this massive killing, I was increasingly surprised to come across references to those murdered in China, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere. I began to wonder if governments murdered more than died in war. Secondly, it became clear in my research that democratic freedom was a solution to war. The natural question was then: Is this also true of democide?

A: Sometime in the dim history. As far as my books are concerned, I first used it in my 1990 book Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder (see http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM). Otherwise, I think I first used it in my 1988 grant proposal to the United States Institute of Peace, but I no longer have a copy of that to verify it. I suppose the easiest response is that I invented it sometime in the late 1980s.

A: I am a scientist and let the chips fall where they may, even if it leads to the negation of my pet beliefs. My web site has many examples of the methods I use to verify and test my hypotheses. See, for example, the appendix to my Saving Lives, which is at: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/WF.APPENDIX.HTM. However, many a value and agenda is hidden in the claim of objective science. Although I have done my best to be objective, there still may be "traces" of political correctness in my work. This is why the best science is that involving many people with different beliefs testing the same theory and hypotheses. Although I did create a website detailing the results so that others could test the democratic peace as well, as they have done with similar results, there still might be traces imbedded in my work or the field itself.

A: Generally, the reception has been good. But there is also a minority that thinks I'm a right-winger, that my figures are biased, or highly inflated against the former communist nations, especially for Cambodia, China, and the U.S.S.R.. Some don’t like my findings on the democide committed by the Chinese Nationalists; others are angry that I described what Turkey did to Armenians, or Poland to Germans (immediately after World War II) as democide. Mostly I find that those who criticize my results have not read my books, for what they say I should do, I have done, or what they say I should not have done I did not. Some are very critical that I included a source published in Taiwan, or by an anti-communist league, or by a communist refugee, not understanding that I tried to include sources from all sides so that I could get a low and high for each estimate.

A: A reception on my Power Kills was held in the Congressional Building when it first came out. There were some Congressman and Senators there and I gave a speech on the book. And there have been some contacts with or words from others among the Washington power elite. But I have not been in contact with any senior policy makers in either the Clinton or Bush II administrations about my work.