ABSTRACT
Nuclear deterrence seems to threaten democracy, and democracy seems to threaten deterrence. If there is a causal link between deterrence and democracy, it has surely operated in a different way than postulated by the purveyors of the “national security state". The Weimar experiment in democracy was born in national catastrophe, but economic disaster lent a special edge to defeat and humiliation. From the Enlightenment onward, liberal theory—from Condorcet to Comte—has claimed that democracy is the essential condition of peace. In the post-war West European case, however, the causal relationship between democracy and peace might well have operated in reverse fashion—with peace having acted as the essential condition of democracy. Germany is one of the youngest democracies, it looks back at a troubled past, and its national identity and pride are shallow at best. The democratic mechanism functions superbly, but the system lacks the support of emotional, let alone historical, identification.
