ABSTRACT
The idea that democracies never fight wars against each other has become an axiom for many scholars. It is, as one scholar puts it, “as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations.” 1 President Bill Clinton invoked this law to explain why promoting democracy abroad was a pillar of his foreign policy. A premise of President George W. Bush’s strategic doctrine is that US security may even require preventive wars to unseat dangerous despots so as to build the “infrastructure of democracy” abroad and create a “balance of power that favors freedom.” 2 Declaring that US security from terrorism depends on the success of democracy in Iraq and its neighbors, Bush argued that “sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe—because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.” 3
