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| Issue 03, October 2006 |
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| homepage > Interview
with Bruce Russett |
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Bruce
Russett
INTERVIEW
with Leda Bouzali |
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Democracy and Peace |
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Are democratic
states peaceful? Or are they peaceful only
towards each other? What relevant information
do we collect from examples of modern states
and of city-states at Thucydides time? Does
Democracy determine decisions about war or
peace?
Μr Bruce Russett, professor of International Political Studies at Yale University
and Dean Acheson Professor of International Relations, is seeking answers to
such questions. The books Grasping the Democratic Peace, 1993, Triangulating
Peace:Democracy, Interdependence and International Organizations, 2001 and Purpose
and Policy in the Global Community, 2006 are among the 25 books and 225
articles he has written.
Professor Russett spent a month in Athens with an honorary grant from the Onassis
Foundation and June 8th gave a lecture on “Thucydides and Democratic Peace Theory”. |
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| ΑΩ: Which is the topic of your research in Athens with the Onassis grant? |
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| B.R.: I’m very
interested in democratic peace both in ancient history
and contemporary history and I hope to exchange ideas
with scholars and practitioners about contemporary
history and contemporary international relations.
And also to deepen my own understanding of what democracy
meant for foreign policy in ancient Greece of the
Peloponnesian wars. |
| ΑΩ: How useful is the study of ancient history for the modern historical studies? |
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B.R.:
Anything that gives more information about somewhat
similar systems in other eras is really very helpful,
because it can help us understand the present.
The effect of domestic politics on foreign policy
choices (in all kinds of political systems: democracy,
dictatorship, tyranny, oligarchy) surely makes
a difference in how decision makers behave and
who they are responsible to, if they are to stay
in power. Even a dictator, even a tyrant has to
satisfy e small group of people around. A democratic
leader certainly has to satisfy a much larger population,
but each of them has this necessity.
Fifteen years ago, I began to work on the so called
“democratic peace”. I started out looking at the
modern international system and found essentially
what I hoped to find: democracies very rarely fight
each other in the 19th and 20th centuries. So the evidence of this is very strong, but the question
is why. If you don’t understand why it happens then
you obviously don’t understand why it might not happen
at some other time. So I tried then to look at how
democratic or at least participatory systems of government
behaved in different circumstances. One of the chapters
in my 1993 book was about small societies in the
ethnographic and anthropological record, contemporary
groups, in Central and South America, Indians, some
African groups, Somalis, a lot of information on
about 45 societies. My question was: Are the egalitarian
ones politically less likely to fight each other?
Yes they were. So the other part of trying to get
out of the modern world, contemporary international
relations, was to look at Greece and the Peloponnesian
wars. And there the evidence was not so good. There
was not much evidence that Athens and other democracies
where especially peaceful toward each other. So it
remains that question. Why not? |
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| Α.Ω.: Why not? Do you have the answer? |
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| G.Z.: This was
a completely different project. In Alexandria, more
careful maintenance and restoration were carried
out, as would befit a building of monumental character.
In Nafplio, the intervention was fundamental. The
building was a landmark and in very bad condition
and our basic obligation was to restore the outer
facing to its original form. The entire interior
was renovated and its use altered |
| Α.Ω.: How
serious were the structural problems? |
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B.R.: I think
so now. But that’s one of the reasons I’ m here.
It’s to find out if it makes sense to people who
know a lot about their own country’s history. I’m
not here to tell you why the ancient Greeks did fight,
but to have you help me to understand if my ideas
are right or not.
I think it can be explained by the very direct
and immediate kind of participatory democracy that
was practiced in most of the democratic states,
but most clearly in Athens. All the citizens, the
free males, come together in the assembly and make
decisions very quickly. There are no checks and
balances in the system. There’s no permanent bureaucracy.
Effectively it’s a system that can act quickly,
can act rashly, make mistakes, and does not have
the kind of bureaucratic and political restraints
where other institutions can question, check, delay,
as there is in a modern bureaucratized government,
whether democratic or not. So I’m inclined to think
that’s the reason. With the examples that come
down to us from Thucydides and Herodotus. |
| ΑΩ: You mentioned in your lecture that it is hazardous to compare ancient and modern forms of government. Why is that? |
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B.R.: Because
they are so different, the cultures in which they
act are so different. When I began to work on this
project I knew there where great differences between
Athenian democracy and Swedish, American, British
or contemporary Greek democracy. The question is
who makes the decisions: is it the few in the oligarchy
or the demos or a tyrant? I think that the behavior
of governments in any era differ primarily because
of this.
Another difference between ancient and modern forms
of government lies in their size. No ancient government
was nearly as big as a modern one. It’s a matter
of size, of greater wealth, though certainly Athens
was a very wealthy place at its timeSo, when we
say modern Greece is a democracy, and ancient Athens
was a democracy, we understand certain common features
that do make sense, but we just can’t push it too
far. |
| ΑΩ: It seems to me that most of the questions you raise apply to the modern situation of the international role of the US, and to the relations between Greece and Turkey… |
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B.R.:
Let me tell you a story. On the day the United
States began bombing Iraq, in March 2003, a journalist
called me up on the phone and asked me what I thought
about it. And I said it me reminds me all too much
of the day the Athenian assembly decided to send
the expedition to Syracuse, because I know what
happened from that awful decision! I think we’ve
done the same thing: in both cases preemptive war.
Both of the powers took action publicly for the
sake of avoiding greater danger later and in fact
both of them impelled also by a wish for expansion.
Political decisions are never really that simple.
So I thought that looked very familiar. I thought
of so many analogies between the two decisions:
they were taken quickly without checks and balances,
a demagogue in Athens and a “popular” leader in
the U.S.. And the whole set of taking on a task
not well understood, against an enemy not well
understood, in both cases expecting to be greeted
as a liberator.
It struck me again that there really were similarities
between these two systems. Although Athens knew
that Syracuse was a democracy, they attacked it
anyway. The U.S. has not actually invaded, gone
to war with another democracy, but none the less
both Athens and the U.S., as great powers in their
system, found themselves at war very often.
Also Great Britain, France, imperial Japan, Germany,
I won’t say they behaved the same, but all of them
had very widespread interests and some combination
of defense and expansion. I had read about the
Athenian democracy and the military strength of
the state being dependent on the motivation of
free men. I had also read about the Athenian culture
and education, which encouraged independence and
individual initiative, and the character of the
Athenian navy: paid free men sailing, very different
from galley slaves. One of the strengths of the
Athenian democracy was its ability to put out a
very efficient, highly motivated, intelligent and
well equipped army. As a rich empire, they could
afford to pay those sailors. So here are both the
strength and weakness of the Athenian state. Its
ability to act rashly, both because it didn’t have
the checks and balances and because it did have
such an impressive and effective fighting force
that still could overreach. Those made me look
again at the American political system and think
of the degrees to which it may not be surprising
to see a democratic power sometimes behave badly. |
| Α.Ω.: Is there any interest in ancient Greek history in the U.S.? |
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| B.R.: I certainly
find it in the students, in my colleagues. To the
degree there still is a classical education in the
best universities in the U.S. and the people who
graduate from them. There is a core of important
literature that a lot of people have read. They may
not have read Thucydides, but at least they’ve read
some things about Greek history and they are not
totally ignorant. |
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