Search the archive.

The Disability Benefits Law (Article 9 of the WCL) provides weekly cash benefits to replace, in part, wages lost due to injuries or illnesses that do not arise out of or in the course of employment (WCL §204). Medical care is the responsibility of the employee. 

Social Security and Medicare are both federal programs that help retired and disabled Americans. Together, these programs allow those no longer in the workforce to reap similar benefits to when they were employed. These benefits include a monthly income and healthcare coverage. 

There are similarities and differences between the two programs. Social Security provides income, whereas Medicare is health insurance. While they are two different programs, Medicare and Social Security work together. In this article, we answer your biggest questions, including who qualifies for each of these benefits. 

Social Security pays retirement, disability, family and survivors benefits. Medicare, a separate program run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, helps pay for inpatient hospital care, nursing care, doctors' fees, drugs, and other medical services and supplies to people age 65 and older, as well as to people who have been receiving Social Security disability benefits for two years or more. Your Social Security covered earnings qualify you for both programs. Medicare does not pay for long-term care, so you may want to consider options for private insurance. For more information about Medicare, visit the  or call 1-800-633-4227 (TTY 1-877-486-2048 if you are deaf or hard of hearing). 

The democratic peace — the idea that democracies rarely fight one another — has been called “the closest thing we have to an empirical law in the study of international relations.” Yet, some contend that this relationship is spurious and suggest alternative explanations. Unfortunately, in the absence of randomized experiments, we can never rule out the possible existence of such confounding biases. Rather than commonly used regression-based approaches, we apply a nonparametric sensitivity analysis. We show that overturning the positive association between democracy and peace would require a confounder that is 47 times more prevalent in democratic dyads than in other dyads. To put this number in context, the relationship between democracy and peace is at least five times as robust as that between smoking and lung cancer. To explain away the democratic peace, therefore, scholars must find far more powerful confounders than already those identified in the literature. 

However, reducing the United States’ emphasis on a values-driven foreign policy is wrong, and contrary to the strategic interests of the United States. Democracy promotion in particular serves a key role in safeguarding U.S. interests and promoting global, long-term growth in ways fundamentally compatible with U.S. strategic interests. After all, democracies protect private property in important ways, invest in public goods, are more politically stable, make for more dependable allies, and empirically do not go to war with one another. Ultimately, a world full of democratic governments is safer, more prosperous, and more stable — all states of being that the United States has an interest in promoting.

Democracy guarantees that the public has a stake in its own institutions and government, which leads to investor confidence and growth. Since elected politicians are accountable to property owners and are held in check by an independent judiciary, democracies tend to have  for  than their autocratic counterparts. This makes democracies a particularly attractive type of country for investors — both public and private — because checks and balances make it difficult for the state to nationalize industries. Further, private property rights protected by the legal system encourage entrepreneurship and small business development, both of which are key to a growing and modernizing economy. As a result, democracies  and more economically stable than their autocratic counterparts. This is fundamentally in the interest of the United States in that both private and public investors have an interest in seeing returns on their investments, thereby potentially making countries  if that would require severing economic ties. Democratic institutions ensure that citizens with both economic and political power are heard.

The core elements of populism are not antidemocratic. On the contrary, when a large group has designated itself “the people” and has come to see itself in a moral battle against “the elites,” the members of that group have often had significant interests and values that political elites have neglected or even denigrated. At these moments, populism is democracy’s way of saying, “Listen harder.” Although ordinary citizens are not policy experts, they are in a position to judge how their lives are going, and when they have long-standing grievances that powerful elites have not effectively addressed, organizing in protest is a rationally and emotionally appropriate democratic response. Because citizens are frequently ignorant about and lack interest in the details of public policy, democracies need political elites to attend to growing grievances, listen to what citizens are 27Frank (2017) analyzes the intellectual and educational orientation of the US Populists, quoting Garvin & Daws (1887, p. 87) that the Farmers’ Alliance “was initially organized for the purpose of studying and investigating questions having direct reference to economic legislation”; Mitchell (1987, p. 93; also pp. 3–23) that the party had a goal of creating “dauntless, intelligent citizens”; and Goodwyn (1976, p. 33) that the Alliance wanted to “more speedily educate ourselves in the science of free government.” “Knowledge is Power” was an Alliance slogan, and contemporaries often called it the “reading party” and the “writing and talking party” (Frank 2017, p. 9). The Populists had a “vast lecturing network, hundreds of daily and weekly newspapers, inexpensive books and pamphlets, lending libraries, book clubs [with many]… articles on tax policy, commercial regulation, the financial and monetary system, but also on American history and political theory, cooking tips, and home economics” (p. 11). 28See Müller (2016, p. 8), Mouffe (2018, p. 81), and Urbinati (2014) on this differential usage. 70 Mansbridge • Macedo Annu. Rev. Law. Soc. Sci. 2019.15:59-77. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org Access provided by Princeton University Library on 02/25/20. For personal use only. saying, and respond with policies tailored to their real needs. Populism arises when elites do not listen.29 Democracy particularly needs the populist impulse at certain historical moments. Elites often develop interests and values that diverge from those of the less affluent, less educated, and less privileged who live far from centers of political, economic, social, and cultural power. They often talk primarily with one another and reinforce one another. Power tends to beget more power. When groups with more power neglect the values and interests of the less powerful for too long, populism is what we want from democracy—the capacity to let the needs and values of the less powerful break through and thrust themselves on the increasingly insulated political, economic, social, and cultural ruling classes. Laclau (2005, p. 177, emphasis in original), for example, has argued that “populism presents itself both as subversive of the existing state of things and as the starting point for a more or less radical reconstruction of a new order whenever the previous one has been shaken.” It “proceeds by articulating fragmented and dislocated demands around a new core.…[Thus] some degree of crisis in the old structure is a necessary precondition of populism.” This analysis leads Laclau to endorse “the notion that populism is the democratic element in contemporary representative systems” (p. 176). Economic loss often produces the required crisis. For economic loss, inequality, or social dislocation to trigger populism, however, the losers have to consider either the causes of these losses or the government response to these losses unfair. The perception of injustice is central to the moral component of populism. It arises most easily when the government is already perceived as corrupt.30 It also arises when policies give too little attention to the policy preferences of the average citizen.31 As Rodrik, a distinguished economist, writes, “Part of today’s populist backlash is rooted in the belief, not entirely unjustified, that…multinational corporations and investors have increasingly shaped the agenda of international trade negotiations, resulting in global regimes that disproportionately benefit capital at the expense of labor.” He gives stringent patent rules, international investor tribunals, and independent central banks as examples, adding that in the European Union, “where economic rules and regulations are designed at a considerable remove from democratic deliberation,” in almost every member state the “political gap…has given rise to populist…parties” (Rodrik 2018a). Even in the highly consultative parts of the EU administration, the committees consult and negotiate almost exclusively with high-level stakeholders, such 29On grievances, we note below that many observers, including economists (Autor et al. 2016; Rodrik 2018a,b,c), empirical political scientists (Gilens & Page 2014), and political theorists (Galston 2018), have concluded that in the economic realm elites have paid less than democratically appropriate attention to the interests of some groups, many of whose members now support populist parties. On citizens’ lack of information, see Schumpeter (1942), Converse (1964), and Achen & Bartels (2016), all with problems in their analyses but also tapping important realities. On the ideal of greater “recursive,” or mutually responsive, communication between representatives and constituents, see Mansbridge (2019). 30In the United States, a long-standing belief in government corruption has intensified along with rising inequality, leading more than 70% of Americans since 2010 to report believing that “corruption is widespread throughout the government in this country” (Galston 2018, p. 99). The meaning of “corruption” in such surveys is unclear. Although direct bribery has very probably decreased in Congress over the past century, the importance of money in politics (“institutional” corruption, as per Lessig 2011) has increased, to a point at which 64% of Americans had concluded by 2012 that “the rich buy elections” (compared to 17% in Germany in 2013; see ANES 2012, Norris 2015, World Values Survey 2013). 31Gilens & Page (2014) show that in the United States from 1981 to 2002, controlling for the political preferences of the top 10% and the interest groups, the preferences of the “average citizen” (preferences at the fiftieth income percentile) had a “near-zero” effect on the policies enacted.

[Pawel, “NATO and the Long War on the Third World,” The Monthly Review, January 1st 2023, , Accessed 6/20/23, JCP – PL]

NATO and the Counterrevolution

[Van, “Trapped By Empire,” Dissent, February 8th 2023, , Accessed 6/20/23, JCP – PL]

U.S. law designates Guam as “foreign in a domestic sense” and “domestic in a foreign sense.” That is, while Guam is geopolitically important enough to make U.S. influence there worthwhile, U.S. legislators have neither permitted self-governance in the territory nor extended to the Chamorro full democratic enfranchisement as part of the U.S. federal system. In American history, white supremacy has been both an excuse to colonize new lands and a reason not to expand the frontier of American federalism. Guam’s situation is an enduring legacy of that duality. Unlike Hawai’i, with its large U.S. settler colonial population and entrenched U.S. corporate interests, Guam was not granted statehood.

[Van, “Trapped By Empire,” Dissent, February 8th 2023, , Accessed 6/20/23, JCP – PL]

The specter of geopolitical violence looms anytime Washington turns its attention to the Pacific.

[Van, “Trapped By Empire,” Dissent, February 8th 2023, , Accessed 6/20/23, JCP – PL]

The most morbid value that Guam has in U.S. strategy makers’ fever dreams is its role as a shock absorber during war. If U.S. officials once sought to make Japan America’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier”—a phrase attributed to Japan’s Prime Minister Nakasone in 1983—they are now making Guam its human shield: a priority target because of its strategic value to the United States.

Military expenditure may not tell the whole story, but it remains the best single measure of power projection. The United States in recent decades has been able to destroy armies and devastate countries with negligible casualties. Instead, the problems begin during the occupation phase, when guerrilla warfare takes its toll. Whatever the limitation of military spending as an indicator of pacification and long-term control on unruly subjects, it does tell us a lot about motivation, intention, and the political dynamics of the U.S. state.

Geography has given the United States an incredible, unmatched natural defense, with wide oceans to east and west and smaller, subordinate (if sometimes annoyingly disobedient) states to north and south. This natural defense allowed the United States for much of its history up to the mid-twentieth century to have very small military budget and a standing army “modest by international standards.”39 This was labelled “isolationism,” although George Friedman argues that:

I. Political Hegemony -- Throwing Its Weight Around The United States has long been attempting to mold other countries and the world order with its own values and political system in the name of promoting democracy and human rights. ◆ Instances of U.S. interference in other countries' internal affairs abound. In the name of "promoting democracy," the United States practiced a "Neo-Monroe Doctrine" in Latin America, instigated "color revolutions" in Eurasia, and orchestrated the "Arab Spring" in West Asia and North Africa, bringing chaos and disaster to many countries. In 1823, the United States announced the Monroe Doctrine. While touting an "America for the Americans," what it truly wanted was an "America for the United States." Since then, the policies of successive U.S. governments toward Latin America and the Caribbean Region have been riddled with political interference, military intervention and regime subversion. From its 61-year hostility toward and blockade of Cuba to its overthrow of the Allende government of Chile, U.S. policy on this region has been built on one maxim-those who submit will prosper; those who resist shall perish. The year 2003 marked the beginning of a succession of "color revolutions" -- the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia, the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine and the "Tulip Revolution" in Kyrgyzstan. The U.S. Department of State openly admitted playing a "central role" in these "regime changes." The United States also interfered in the internal affairs of the Philippines, ousting President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in 1986 and President Joseph Estrada in 2001 through the so-called "People Power Revolutions." In January 2023, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released his new book Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love. He revealed in it that the United States had plotted to intervene in Venezuela. The plan was to force the Maduro government to reach an agreement with the opposition, deprive Venezuela of its ability to sell oil and gold for foreign exchange, exert high pressure on its economy, and influence the 2018 presidential election. ◆ The U.S. exercises double standards on international rules. Placing its self-interest first, the United States has walked away from international treaties and organizations, and put its domestic law above international law. In April 2017, the Trump administration announced that it would cut off all U.S. funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) with the excuse that the organization "supports, or participates in the management of a programme of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization." The United States quit UNESCO twice in 1984 and 2017. In 2017, it announced leaving the Paris Agreement on climate change. In 2018, it announced its exit from the UN Human Rights Council, citing the organization's "bias" against Israel and failure to protect human rights effectively. In 2019, the United States announced its withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to seek unfettered development of advanced weapons. In 2020, it announced pulling out of the Treaty on Open Skies. The United States has also been a stumbling block to biological arms control by opposing negotiations on a verification protocol for the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and impeding international verification of countries' activities relating to biological weapons. As the only country in possession of a chemical weapons stockpile, the United States has repeatedly delayed the destruction of chemical weapons and remained reluctant in fulfilling its obligations. It has become the biggest obstacle to realizing "a world free of chemical weapons." ◆ The United States is piecing together small blocs through its alliance system. It has been forcing an "Indo-Pacific Strategy" onto the Asia-Pacific region, assembling exclusive clubs like the Five Eyes, the Quad and AUKUS, and forcing regional countries to take sides. Such practices are essentially meant to create division in the region, stoke confrontation and undermine peace. ◆ The U.S. arbitrarily passes judgment on democracy in other countries, and fabricates a false narrative of "democracy versus authoritarianism" to incite estrangement, division, rivalry and confrontation. In December 2021, the United States hosted the first "Summit for Democracy," which drew criticism and opposition from many countries for making a mockery of the spirit of democracy and dividing the world. In March 2023, the United States will host another "Summit for Democracy," which remains unwelcome and will again find no support. II. Military Hegemony -- Wanton Use of Force The history of the United States is characterized by violence and expansion. Since it gained independence in 1776, the United States has constantly sought expansion by force: it slaughtered Indians, invaded Canada, waged a war against Mexico, instigated the American-Spanish War, and annexed Hawaii. After World War II, the wars either provoked or launched by the United States included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan War and the Syrian War, abusing its military hegemony to pave the way for expansionist objectives. In recent years, the U.S. average annual military budget has exceeded 700 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 40 percent of the world's total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined. The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries. According to the book America Invades: How We've Invaded or been Militarily Involved with almost Every Country on Earth, the United States has fought or been militarily involved with almost all the 190-odd countries recognized by the United Nations with only three exceptions. The three countries were "spared" because the United States did not find them on the map. ◆ As former U.S. President Jimmy Carter put it, the United States is undoubtedly the most warlike nation in the history of the world. According to a Tufts University report, "Introducing the Military Intervention Project: A new Dataset on U.S. Military Interventions, 1776-2019," the United States undertook nearly 400 military interventions globally between those years, 34 percent of which were in Latin America and the Caribbean, 23 percent in East Asia and the Pacific, 14 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, and 13 percent in Europe. Currently, its military intervention in the Middle East and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa is on the rise. Alex Lo, a South China Morning Post columnist, pointed out that the United States has rarely distinguished between diplomacy and war since its founding. It overthrew democratically elected governments in many developing countries in the 20th century and immediately replaced them with pro-American puppet regimes. Today, in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan and Yemen, the United States is repeating its old tactics of waging proxy, low-intensity, and drone wars. ◆ U.S. military hegemony has caused humanitarian tragedies. Since 2001, the wars and military operations launched by the United States in the name of fighting terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000 of them civilians, injured millions and displaced tens of millions. The 2003 Iraq War resulted in some 200,000 to 250,000 civilian deaths, including over 16,000 directly killed by the U.S. military, and left more than a million homeless. The United States has created 37 million refugees around the world. Since 2012, the number of Syrian refugees alone has increased tenfold. Between 2016 and 2019, 33,584 civilian deaths were documented in the Syrian fightings, including 3,833 killed by U.S.-led coalition bombings, half of them women and children. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) reported on 9 November 2018 that the air strikes launched by U.S. forces on Raqqa alone killed 1,600 Syrian civilians. The two-decades-long war in Afghanistan devastated the country. A total of 47,000 Afghan civilians and 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers unrelated to the September 11 attacks were killed in U.S. military operations, and more than 10 million people were displaced. The war in Afghanistan destroyed the foundation of economic development there and plunged the Afghan people into destitution. After the "Kabul debacle" in 2021, the United States announced that it would freeze some 9.5 billion dollars in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank, a move considered as "pure looting." In September 2022, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu commented at a rally that the United States has waged a proxy war in Syria, turned Afghanistan into an opium field and heroin factory, thrown Pakistan into turmoil, and left Libya in incessant civil unrest. The United States does whatever it takes to rob and enslave the people of any country with underground resources. The United States has also adopted appalling methods in war. During the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War, the United States used massive quantities of chemical and biological weapons as well as cluster bombs, fuel-air bombs, graphite bombs and depleted uranium bombs, causing enormous damage on civilian facilities, countless civilian casualties and lasting environmental pollution. III. Economic Hegemony -- Looting and Exploitation After World War II, the United States led efforts to set up the Bretton Woods System, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which, together with the Marshall Plan, formed the international monetary system centered around the U.S. dollar. In addition, the United States has also established institutional hegemony in the international economic and financial sector by manipulating the weighted voting systems, rules and arrangements of international organizations including "approval by 85 percent majority," and its domestic trade laws and regulations. By taking advantage of the dollar's status as the major international reserve currency, the United States is basically collecting "seigniorage" from around the world; and using its control over international organizations, it coerces other countries into serving America's political and economic strategy. ◆ The United States exploits the world's wealth with the help of "seigniorage." It costs only about 17 cents to produce a 100 dollar bill, but other countries had to pony up 100 dollar of actual goods in order to obtain one. It was pointed out more than half a century ago, that the United States enjoyed exorbitant privilege and deficit without tears created by its dollar, and used the worthless paper note to plunder the resources and factories of other nations. ◆ The hegemony of U.S. dollar is the main source of instability and uncertainty in the world economy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States abused its global financial hegemony and injected trillions of dollars into the global market, leaving other countries, especially emerging economies, to pay the price. In 2022, the Fed ended its ultra-easy monetary policy and turned to aggressive interest rate hike, causing turmoil in the international financial market and substantial depreciation of other currencies such as the Euro, many of which dropped to a 20-year low. As a result, a large number of developing countries were challenged by high inflation, currency depreciation and capital outflows. This was exactly what Nixon's secretary of the treasury John Connally once remarked, with self-satisfaction yet sharp precision, that "the dollar is our currency, but it is your problem." ◆ With its control over international economic and financial organizations, the United States imposes additional conditions to their assistance to other countries. In order to reduce obstacles to U.S. capital inflow and speculation, the recipient countries are required to advance financial liberalization and open up financial markets so that their economic policies would fall in line with America's strategy. According to the Review of International Political Economy, along with the 1,550 debt relief programs extended by the IMF to its 131 member countries from 1985 to 2014, as many as 55,465 additional political conditions had been attached. ◆ The United States willfully suppresses its opponents with economic coercion. In the 1980s, to eliminate the economic threat posed by Japan, and to control and use the latter in service of America's strategic goal of confronting the Soviet Union and dominating the world, the United States leveraged its hegemonic financial power against Japan, and concluded the Plaza Accord. As a result, Yen was pushed up, and Japan was pressed to open up its financial market and reform its financial system. The Plaza Accord dealt a heavy blow to the growth momentum of the Japanese economy, leaving Japan to what was later called "three lost decades." ◆ America's economic and financial hegemony has become a geopolitical weapon. Doubling down on unilateral sanctions and "long-arm jurisdiction," the United States has enacted such domestic laws as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, and the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, and introduced a series of executive orders to sanction specific countries, organizations or individuals. Statistics show that U.S. sanctions against foreign entities increased by 933 percent from 2000 to 2021. The Trump administration alone has imposed more than 3,900 sanctions, which means three sanctions per day. So far, the United States had or has imposed economic sanctions on nearly 40 countries across the world, including Cuba, China, Russia, the DPRK, Iran and Venezuela, affecting nearly half of the world's population. "The United States of America" has turned itself into "the United States of Sanctions." And "long-arm jurisdiction" has been reduced to nothing but a tool for the United States to use its means of state power to suppress economic competitors and interfere in normal international business. This is a serious departure from the principles of liberal market economy that the United States has long boasted. IV. Technological Hegemony -- Monopoly and Suppression The United States seeks to deter other countries' scientific, technological and economic development by wielding monopoly power, suppression measures and technology restrictions in high-tech fields. ◆ The United States monopolizes intellectual property in the name of protection. Taking advantage of the weak position of other countries, especially developing ones, on intellectual property rights and the institutional vacancy in relevant fields, the United States reaps excessive profits through monopoly. In 1994, the United States pushed forward the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), forcing the Americanized process and standards in intellectual property protection in an attempt to solidify its monopoly on technology. In the 1980s, to contain the development of Japan's semiconductor industry, the United States launched the "301" investigation, built bargaining power in bilateral negotiations through multilateral agreements, threatened to label Japan as conducting unfair trade, and imposed retaliatory tariffs, forcing Japan to sign the U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Agreement. As a result, Japanese semiconductor enterprises were almost completely driven out of global competition, and their market share dropped from 50 percent to 10 percent. Meanwhile, with the support of the U.S. government, a large number of U.S. semiconductor enterprises took the opportunity and grabbed larger market share. ◆ The United States politicizes, weaponizes technological issues and uses them as ideological tools. Overstretching the concept of national security, the United States mobilized state power to suppress and sanction Chinese company Huawei, restricted the entry of Huawei products into the U.S. market, cut off its supply of chips and operating systems, and coerced other countries to ban Huawei from undertaking local 5G network construction. It even talked Canada into unwarrantedly detaining Huawei's CFO Meng Wanzhou for nearly three years. The United States has fabricated a slew of excuses to clamp down on China's high-tech enterprises with global competitiveness, and has put more than 1,000 Chinese enterprises on sanction lists. In addition, the United States has also imposed controls on biotechnology, artificial intelligence and other high-end technologies, reinforced export restrictions, tightened investment screening, suppressed Chinese social media apps such as TikTok and WeChat, and lobbied the Netherlands and Japan to restrict exports of chips and related equipment or technology to China. The United States has also practiced double standards in its policy on China-related technological professionals. To sideline and suppress Chinese researchers, since June 2018, visa validity has been shortened for Chinese students majoring in certain high-tech-related disciplines, repeated cases have occurred where Chinese scholars and students going to the United States for exchange programs and study were unjustifiably denied and harassed, and large-scale investigation on Chinese scholars working in the United States was carried out. ◆ The United States solidifies its technological monopoly in the name of protecting democracy. By building small blocs on technology such as the "chips alliance" and "clean network," the United States has put "democracy" and "human rights" labels on high-technology, and turned technological issues into political and ideological issues, so as to fabricate excuses for its technological blockade against other countries. In May 2019, the United States enlisted 32 countries to the Prague 5G Security Conference in the Czech Republic and issued the Prague Proposal in an attempt to exclude China's 5G products. In April 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the "5G clean path," a plan designed to build technological alliance in the 5G field with partners bonded by their shared ideology on democracy and the need to protect "cyber security." The measures, in essence, are the U.S. attempts to maintain its technological hegemony through technological alliances. ◆ The United States abuses its technological hegemony by carrying out cyber attacks and eavesdropping. The United States has long been notorious as an "empire of hackers," blamed for its rampant acts of cyber theft around the world. It has all kinds of means to enforce pervasive cyber attacks and surveillance, including using analog base station signals to access mobile phones for data theft, manipulating mobile apps, infiltrating cloud servers, and stealing through undersea cables. The list goes on. U.S. surveillance is indiscriminate. All can be targets of its surveillance, be they rivals or allies, even leaders of allied countries such as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and several French Presidents. Cyber surveillance and attacks launched by the United States such as "Prism," "Dirtbox," "Irritant Horn" and "Telescreen Operation" are all proof that the United States is closely monitoring its allies and partners. Such eavesdropping on allies and partners has already caused worldwide outrage. Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, a website that has exposed U.S. surveillance programs, said that "do not expect a global surveillance superpower to act with honor or respect. There is only one rule: there are no rules." V. Cultural Hegemony -- Spreading False Narratives The global expansion of American culture is an important part of its external strategy. The United States has often used cultural tools to strengthen and maintain its hegemony in the world. ◆ The United States embeds American values in its products such as movies. American values and lifestyle are a tied product to its movies and TV shows, publications, media content, and programs by the government-funded non-profit cultural institutions. It thus shapes a cultural and public opinion space in which American culture reigns and maintains cultural hegemony. In his article The Americanization of the World, John Yemma, an American scholar, exposed the real weapons in U.S. cultural expansion: the Hollywood, the image design factories on Madison Avenue and the production lines of Mattel Company and Coca-Cola. There are various vehicles the United States uses to keep its cultural hegemony. American movies are the most used; they now occupy more than 70 percent of the world's market share. The United States skilfully exploits its cultural diversity to appeal to various ethnicities. When Hollywood movies descend on the world, they scream the American values tied to them. ◆ American cultural hegemony not only shows itself in "direct intervention," but also in "media infiltration" and as "a trumpet for the world." U.S.-dominated Western media has a particularly important role in shaping global public opinion in favor of U.S. meddling in the internal affairs of other countries. The U.S. government strictly censors all social media companies and demands their obedience. Twitter CEO Elon Musk admitted on 27 December 2022 that all social media platforms work with the U.S. government to censor content, reported Fox Business Network. Public opinion in the United States is subject to government intervention to restrict all unfavorable remarks. Google often makes pages disappear. U.S. Department of Defense manipulates social media. In December 2022, The Intercept, an independent U.S. investigative website, revealed that in July 2017, U.S. Central Command official Nathaniel Kahler instructed Twitter's public policy team to augment the presence of 52 Arabic-language accounts on a list he sent, six of which were to be given priority. One of the six was dedicated to justifying U.S. drone attacks in Yemen, such as by claiming that the attacks were precise and killed only terrorists, not civilians. Following Kahler's directive, Twitter put those Arabic-language accounts on a "white list" to amplify certain messages. ◆The United States practices double standards on the freedom of the press. It brutally suppresses and silences media of other countries by various means. The United States and Europe bar mainstream Russian media such as Russia Today and the Sputnik from their countries. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube openly restrict official accounts of Russia. Netflix, Apple and Google have removed Russian channels and applications from their services and app stores. Unprecedented draconian censorship is imposed on Russia-related contents. ◆The United States abuses its cultural hegemony to instigate "peaceful evolution" in socialist countries. It sets up news media and cultural outfits targeting socialist countries. It pours staggering amounts of public funds into radio and TV networks to support their ideological infiltration, and these mouthpieces bombard socialist countries in dozens of languages with inflammatory propaganda day and night. The United States uses misinformation as a spear to attack other countries, and has built an industrial chain around it: there are groups and individuals making up stories, and peddling them worldwide to mislead public opinion with the support of nearly limitless financial resources. Conclusion While a just cause wins its champion wide support, an unjust one condemns its pursuer to be an outcast. The hegemonic, domineering, and bullying practices of using strength to intimidate the weak, taking from others by force and subterfuge, and playing zero-sum games are exerting grave harm. The historical trends of peace, development, cooperation, and mutual benefit are unstoppable. The United States has been overriding truth with its power and trampling justice to serve self-interest. These unilateral, egoistic and regressive hegemonic practices have drawn growing, intense criticism and opposition from the international community. Countries need to respect each other and treat each other as equals. Big countries should behave in a manner befitting their status and take the lead in pursuing a new model of state-to-state relations featuring dialogue and partnership, not confrontation or alliance. China opposes all forms of hegemonism and power politics, and rejects interference in other countries' internal affairs. The United States must conduct serious soul-searching. It must critically examine what it has done, let go of its arrogance and prejudice, and quit its hegemonic, domineering and bullying practices.

Both champions and critics of U.S. grand strategy after the Cold War have christened the project “liberal hegemony.” But American objectives and methods were always more hegemonic than liberal. Despite diverging over whether and how to promote liberalism, U.S. policymakers have for nearly three decades converged around the premise that Pentagon planners set forth in 1992: the United States should maintain a military superiority so overwhelming that it would dissuade allies and rivals alike from challenging Washington’s authority. That superiority quickly became an end unto itself. By seeking dominance instead of merely defense, the strategy of primacy plunged the United States into a downward spiral: American actions generated antagonists and enemies, who in turn made primacy more dangerous to pursue.

For most of the 1990s, the costs of this strategy remained somewhat hidden. With Russia flattened and China poor, the United States could simultaneously reduce its defense spending and expand NATO, launch military interventions in the former Yugoslavia and for the first time station tens of thousands of troops in the Middle East. Yet by the end of the decade, U.S. dominance had begun to generate blowback. Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist group declared war on the United States in 1996, citing the U.S. military’s presence in Saudi Arabia as their top grievance; two years later, al Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people. U.S. policymakers, for their part, were already exaggerating the threat posed by weak “rogue states” and gearing up for ambitious military interventions to promote democracy and human rights. These pathologies shaped Washington’s overly militarized reaction to the 9/11 attacks, as the United States entered into successive conflicts in which its capabilities and interests did not exceed those of local actors. The result was endless war.

(A. Trevor, “The Failure of American Leadership”, Cato Institute, July 1, 2017, , accessed July 8, 2019, GDI-JRam)  

Advocates for robust American global leadership are having a bad decade. Donald Trump’s election was clearly a wake-up call to the foreign policy establishment in Washington. In contrast to decades of bipartisan consensus that the United States was the “indispensable nation,” Trump appears to be monumentally indifferent to America’s role in the world. His tense relations with longstanding allies and his decisions to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris climate treaty have moved critics like former national security adviser Susan Rice to argue that Trump is “undoing American leadership on the international stage.” Fears about Trump, however, simply echo concerns voiced throughout the Obama administration. Critics point to Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq, his failure to intervene in the Syrian civil war, and his failure to check Russia over Crimea and Ukraine as evidence of unhealthy retrenchment resulting in “the desperation of our allies and the glee of our enemies.” The real issue, however, is not America’s failure to lead; it is the failure of American leadership. Since the end of the Cold War the United States has flexed its muscles repeatedly. The problem is that this has too often produced resentment, conflict and instability, precisely the opposite of what its proponents have promised. The fundamental reason for this failure is that American officials have too much faith in their power to dictate outcomes around the world, especially through the use of military force. The past 15 years provide ample evidence of the perils of leadership. After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration launched a war on terrorism based on a strategy combining military intervention, regime change and nation building. The goal was to kill terrorists in the short run, destroy their organizations in the medium run, and over the long run to reshape the politics of nations to prevent terrorism from sprouting up in the first place. The Obama administration mostly followed suit, scaling back in Iraq but pursuing regime change in Libya, surging in Afghanistan and expanding the drone war against terrorists in seven countries. Today the Trump administration has begun to escalate the fight against the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, empowering the Pentagon and the military to determine troop levels and make swifter battlefield decisions. The problem in the Middle East hasn’t been the lack of leadership; the problem has been the failure to recognize that the American strategy has been a failure. Political leaders exaggerated the terrorist threat to the United States and then applied the wrong tools to the problem. Military intervention turned out to be great for getting rid of governments, but completely ineffectual at defeating terrorist organizations. Since 2001 the number of terrorist groups and jihadist fighters has skyrocketed, al-Qaeda franchises continue to operate, and the invasion of Iraq inadvertently caused the chaos that helped the Islamic State take root. Everywhere the United States has intervened — whether by drone or by invasion — since 2001, in fact, is less stable and more violent today than it was before. Nor has the nation-building game gone any better. The United States has spent billions of dollars on nation-building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan rebuilding infrastructure, training the police and military troops, and providing internal defense against terrorists. The hard truth, however, is that neither country is a functioning democracy, neither is stable, and neither would last long without outside support. Meanwhile, the failure of the war on terror has come with astronomical costs, both for the United States and for the Middle East. The United States has already spent trillions of dollars and seen 7,000 Americans killed in the fighting, while according to NGOs somewhere between 1.3 million and 2 million Iraqis, Afghans and Pakistanis have died. This doesn’t count those in Libya, Yemen, Syria or elsewhere whose deaths are a result of U.S. intervention and its consequences.  

For all its talk of great power competition, the US military—and the Army in particular—remains poorly structured to help the United States maintain a decisive advantage in contemporary strategic competition. This is largely because it still subscribes to a now outdated understanding of warfare. Losing to a materially inferior nonstate adversary like the Taliban is one thing, but the Army, as the joint force’s premier capability for strategic competition on land and in the human domain, is not able to help the United States “win without fighting,” as Sun Tzu put it, against the likes of Russia and China.

To contend with the unique challenges of strategic competition, the Army needs to think beyond doctrinal updates, techno-centric silver bullets, and operational quick fixes—it must fundamentally change its strategic and organizational culture. Rather than emphasizing geographic key terrain, the Army needs to recognize that traditional centers of gravity have shifted from the power of states and militaries to the perceptions of populations; it has to focus on what Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales  nearly two decades ago as “capturing the psycho-cultural rather than the geographical high ground.” As the war in Ukraine is reaffirming, war, which is as much about people as politics, is above all a contest of wills.

Conflict and Hegemony by Region Even the most ardent supporters of the hegemonic-stability explanation do not contend that US influence extends equally to all corners of the globe. The United States has concentrated its policing in what George Kennan used to call “strong points,” or the most important parts of the world: Western Europe, the Pacific Rim, and Persian Gulf.64 By doing so, Washington may well have contributed more to great power peace than the overall global decline in warfare. If the former phenomenon contributed to the latter, by essentially providing a behavioral model for weaker states to emulate, then perhaps this lends some support to the hegemonic-stability case.65 During the Cold War, the United States played referee to a few intra-West squabbles, especially between Greece and Turkey, and provided Hobbesian reassurance to Germany’s nervous neighbors. Other, equally plausible explanations exist for stability in the first world, including the presence of a common enemy, democracy, economic interdependence, general war aversion, etc. The looming presence of the leviathan is certainly among these plausible explanations, but only inside the US sphere of influence. Bipolarity was bad for the nonaligned world, where Soviet and Western intervention routinely exacerbated local conflicts. Unipolarity has generally been much better, but whether or not this was due to US action is again unclear. Overall US interest in the affairs of the Global South has dropped markedly since the end of the Cold War, as has the level of violence in almost all regions. There is less US intervention in the political and military affairs of Latin America compared to any time in the twentieth century, for instance, and also less conflict. Warfare in Africa is at an all-time low, as is relative US interest outside of counterterrorism and security assistance.66 Regional peace and stability exist where there is US active intervention, as well as where there is not. No direct relationship seems to exist across regions. If intervention can be considered a function of direct and indirect activity, of both political and military action, a regional picture might look like what is outlined in Table 1. These assessments of conflict are by necessity relative, because there has not been a “high” level of conflict in any region outside the Middle East during the period of the New Peace. Putting aside for the moment that important caveat, some points become clear. The great powers of the world are clustered in the upper right quadrant, where US intervention has been high, but conflict levels low. US intervention is imperfectly correlated with stability, however. Indeed, it is conceivable that the relatively high level of US interest and activity has made the security situation in the Persian Gulf and broader Middle East worse. In recent years, substantial hard power investments (Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq), moderate intervention (Libya), and reliance on diplomacy (Syria) have been equally ineffective in stabilizing states torn by conflict. While it is possible that the region is essentially unpacifiable and no amount of police work would bring peace to its people, it remains hard to make the case that the US presence has improved matters. In this “strong point,” at least, US hegemony has failed to bring peace. In much of the rest of the world, the United States has not been especially eager to enforce any particular rules. Even rather incontrovertible evidence of genocide has not been enough to inspire action. Washington’s intervention choices have at best been erratic; Libya and Kosovo brought about action, but much more blood flowed uninterrupted in Rwanda, Darfur, Congo, Sri Lanka, and Syria. The US record of peacemaking is not exactly a long uninterrupted string of successes. During the turn-of-the-century conventional war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, a highlevel US delegation containing former and future National Security Advisors (Anthony Lake and Susan Rice) made a half-dozen trips to the region, but was unable to prevent either the outbreak or recurrence of the conflict. Lake and his team shuttled back and forth between the capitals with some frequency, and President Clinton made repeated phone calls to the leaders of the respective countries, offering to hold peace talks in the United States, all to no avail.67 The war ended in late 2000 when Ethiopia essentially won, and it controls the disputed territory to this day. The Horn of Africa is hardly the only region where states are free to fight one another today without fear of serious US involvement. Since they are choosing not to do so with increasing frequency, something else is probably affecting their calculations. Stability exists even in those places where the potential for intervention by the sheriff is minimal. Hegemonic stability can only take credit for influencing those decisions that would have ended in war without the presence, whether physical or psychological, of the United States. It seems hard to make the case that the relative peace that has descended on so many regions is primarily due to the kind of heavy hand of the neoconservative leviathan, or its lighter, more liberal cousin. Something else appears to be at work. 

The narrative of Chinese success and US failure has led to concern that COVID-19 represents bad news about the value, and future, of democratic governance (Diamond 2020). Initial studies have already been conducted showing a correlation between democracy and worse outbreaks as well as less effective policy responses (Cepaluni, Dorsch, and Branyiczki 2020). Pandemic response is different from much of population health—with effective responses requiring the ability to act quickly, implement effectively, and gain public compliance. With the exception of HIV (see Lieberman 2009), disease outbreaks and political institutions have been understudied in comparative politics—with much of the literature focused on infant mortality or life expectancy, long-running trends that have far different mechanisms from a pandemic. Here, the accountability mechanisms that help democracies perform better may not be as beneficial. Political leaders with short time horizons may have relatively weak incentives to invest in pandemic preparedness and response (Dionne 2010; Healy and Malhotra 2009). And some of the benefits of associational networks and civil society can be shut down in the face of an emergency—facing, for example, stay-at-home orders. Democracies also have the added challenge of managing competing political factions and institutions, some of whom may have political incentives to undermine response. Once the outbreak broke into the public and Beijing was moved to act, China was able to quickly shut down the Wuhan market, shut down the movement of tens of millions of people, screen and isolate the sick, and even build two hospitals in a matter of days. Singapore is another autocracy that has gained praise for its quick response. The United States, on the other hand, has struggled to respond. The Trump administration focused on travel bans to keep the “foreign” virus out rather than on mobilizing public health capacities to detect and respond—a message that aligns with the Trump administration’s election-year anti-immigrant and anti-China political frame. The president’s incentive structure has been clear, as his administration has tried to label COVID-19 the “Wuhan Virus,” continuing a trade war with China, the largest producer of medical goods needed by the United States. Perhaps these incentives were clearest in early March when Trump resisted allowing a cruise ship with COVID-19 cases to dock because “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship” (White House 2020). 

The democratic peace—the observation that democracies are less likely to fight each other than are other pairings of states—is one of the most widely acknowledged empirical regularities in international relations. Prominent scholars have even characterized the relationship as an empirical law (Levy 1988; Gleditsch 1992). The discovery of a special peace in liberal dyads stimulated enormous scholarly debate and led to, or reinforced, a number of policy initiatives by various governments and international organizations. Although a broad consensus has emerged among researchers regarding the empirical correlation between joint democracy and peace, disagreement remains as to its logical foundations. Numerous theories have been proposed to account for how democracy produces peace, if only dyadically (e.g., Russett 1993; Rummel 1996; Doyle 1997; Schultz 2001). 

At the same time, peace appears likely to foster or maintain democracy (Thompson 1996; James, Solberg, andWolfson 1999). A vast swath of research in political science and economics proposes explanations for the origins of liberal government involving variables such as economic development (Lipset 1959; Burkhart and Lewis-Beck 1994; Przeworski et al. 2000; Acemoglu and Robinson 2006; Epstein et al. 2006) and inequality (Boix 2003), political interests (Downs 1957; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003), power hierarchies (Moore 1966; Lake 2009), third party inducements (Pevehouse 2005) or impositions (Peceny 1995; Meernik 1996), geography (Gleditsch 2002b), and natural resource endowments (Ross 2001), to list just a few examples. Each of these putative causes of democracy is also associated with various explanations for international conflict. Indeed, some as yet poorly defined set of canonical factors may contribute both to democracy and to peace, making it look as if the two variables are directly related, even if possibly they are not. 

(Harald, Democracy, Peace, and Security, Lexington Books pp. 44-49) 

My own proposal for solving the problem. developed together with my colleague Jonas Wolff (Müllcr 2004. Muller/Wolff 2006). turns the issue upside down: We do not start with explaining mutual democratic peacefulness, but its opposite. the proven capability of democracies to act aggressively against non-democracies. We note that—apart from self-defense where there is no difference between democracies and non-democracies——democratic states go to war—in contrast to non-democracies—to uphold international law (or their own interpretation thereof), to prevent anarchy through state failure, to “save strangers” when dictatorships massacre their own people, and to promote democracy. None of these acts is likely to find its target in a democracy. Since the use of force by democracies is hardly possible without public justification, even the rhetorical use of the said reasons will not stand public scrutiny when uttered against a democracy—people will not believe it, War other than for self-defense thus can only be fought by democracies against non-democracies because against a fellow democracy justification would fail. Because whether this is the case or not to a degree that justifies war as the ‘ultimate means” must rely on practical judgments. and practical judgments can differ among even reasonable people. democracies might disagree whether or not the judgment applies in specific cases. Democracies also show variance in that regard due (o a systematic. political-culturally rooted different propensity to judge situations as justifing war or not, and to participate in such wars (Gels et al, 2013). It should also be noted that, given the continuum between autocracy, anocracy and democracy, whether a given state is a democracy or not can be subject to interpretation. and this interpretation may even change over time (Oren 1995, Hayes 2013). The fact is that there are a couple of fairly warlike democracies, and that the democracies participating most frequently in military disputes (apart from the special case of Israel) are, by and large. major powers such as the United States, the United Kingdom. France. or India. This pattern is important to keep in mind when the question of the utility of democratic peace for today ‘s world problems is to be answered. Transnational terrorism, failed states, civil wars and the like dominate the international agenda on war and peace. At the classical level of international relations, in the relationships among major powers. developments arc undcr way which potentially pose an even greater threat than this diverse collection of non-interstate problems presently does. We are living in an era of rather rapid and disturbing power change (Tammcn et al. 2000). The United States are still the leading power of the world with unprecedented militany and economic poer. But others are coming closer: China. India. Braiil and Indonesia, China is at the top of this cohort, All major power changes chal lenge existing structures and thus contain the potential for great disturbance. The leading power may start to fear for its dominant position and take measures to ensure its position at the lop. These actions may frustrate emerging powers and even lead to the perception that their security is endangered. which would motivate counter-measures that further propel a political escala tion spiral. An increasingly focused competition in which a true power change appears increasingly possible. that is. a change of position at the top of the international hierarchy, has an even greater risk potential. If the inherent dangers are not contained—which remains always a possibility major power war may ensue defying all propositions that major war has become obsolete or that nuclear deterrence will prevent this calamity once and for all. Of course, states can grow peacefully into roles of higher responsibility. status and influence on the world stage. There arc no natural laws saving that changes in the world’s power structure must end in war, despite all distur bances and ensuing risks (Rauch 2014). The less conflict an emerging power experiences with established ones, and with peer challengers that emerge simultaneously, the better the chances that the rise will travel a peaceful trajectory. Looking through this lens. thc relations of only one emerging power with the present hegemon appear to be partially conflict-pronc. and seriously so: it concerns the pair China/United States. The Iwo great powers are rivals for preponderance in East and South East Asia and eventually for being the number one at the global level. There is also Chinese resentment stemming from the US role in China’s past as a victim of Western imperialism. On the other hand. China’s authoritarian system of rule and ensuing violations of human and political rights trigger the liberal resentment discussed in the first part of this chapter. which is rooted particularly strongly in US political culture. The Chinese—US relationship is thus thc key to a peaceful. tense or even violent future at the world stage. A small group of major powers. Including the United States and China, is interconnected today by a complex conflict system. China has territorial claims against Japan, South Korea, Vietnam. the Philippines. Brunci. and India which it pursues by a variety of means, not shying away from the limited, small scale usc of militan force in some cases, notably against obviously weaker counterparts (Ellcman ci al. 2012). China’s relation (o wards Japan is the one most burdened by China’s past as a victim of Japanese oppression and related cruelties, and the propcnsit of the conservative part of Japan’s elite to display cavalier attitudes towards this past or even sort of celebrate it (as through visits to the notorious Yasukuni shrine hosting the remnants of war criminals) only adds to anti-Japanese feelings in China (Russia. another great power. also openly pursues a revisionist agenda. as vividly shown in the recent Crimean move, but these territorial ambitions are not part of the most virulent conflict complex in Asia). Territorial claims are always emotionalized and dangerous. Territorial claims by a major power bear particular risks, because threatened countries look for protective allies which are, by necessity, major powers with the capability to project power into the region of concern. The great power claimant and the great power protector then position themselves on the opposite sides of the conflict. A classical constellation of great power conflict results that looks far more traditional than all the talk about post-modern global relations in which state power struggles fade into oblivion would suggest. In the Asian conflict complex that structures the shape of the US—Chinese contest (Foot/Walter 201 1). Japan. South Korea and the Philippines arc for mall allied ith the United Slates. India and Vietnam today entertain rda (ions ith the United States that can be depicted as cordial entente, already include military cooperation, and might move further towards an alliance. depending on deelopmens in Asia. The United States is also a protector of Taiwan. officially a Chinese province, factualh an independent political entity. and the main object of Chinese interest because of the unfinished agenda of national re-unification. Given the enormous asymmetries between China and Taiwan. the latter’s independence depends fully and unambiguously on the US guarantee. Russia and China have a fairly ambivalent relation with each other that is officially called a strategic partnership. Ambiguous as this relationship is, it is predictable that the more the West and Russia are at loggerheads, the closer the Russian—Chinese relations might become. On the other hand. Chi na is the stronger partner and harbors not completely friendly feelings to wards Moscow. as Russia took part in China’s humiliation during the imperi alist period no less than the United States did. Russian fears concerning covert immigration into Eastern Siberia and demographic repercussions and political consequences that might result therefrom add to the uneasiness. China and India arc natural rivals for regional preponderance in Asia (Gilbov/Hcginbotham 2012). Both arc developing rapidly. with China still ahead. Territorial disputes. India’s liospitalit Lo TibeLan exiles including the Dalai Lama. China’s close relation to Pakistan and a growing naval rivalry spanning the Indian Ocean from the Strait of Malacca to Iranian shores (Garofano/Dew 2013) run parallel to rapidly growing economic relations and ostensible efforts lo present the relationship if not as amiable then at least as partner-like. The United States, China, Russia and India even today conduct a multi- pronged nuclear arms race (Fingar 2011: Gangul /Thompson 2011: O’Neill 2013. Müllcr 2014). In this race, conventional components like missile de fense. Intercontinental strike options, space-based assets and the specter of cbcr war play their role, as does the issue of extended dcterrcncc The general US militar’ superiority induces Russia and China to improve their nuclear arsenals, while India tries not to be left too far behind the Chinese in terms of nuclear capability. Pakistan and North Korea ork as potential spoilers at the fringe of this arms race. They are not powerful but thc arc capable of stirring up trouble, whenever they move. In tems of the military constellation, the most disquieting development is the drafting of pre-emptive strategies of a first (most likely conventional) strike by the United States and China, on either side motivated by the per ceived need to keep the upper hand early in a potential clash close to Chinese shores (such as in the context of a Taiwan conflict). China is building up middle-range ballistic capabilities to pre-empt US aircraft carrier groups from coming into striking distance and to desiroy US Air Force assets in Okinawa. while the United States is developing means to neutralize exactly these Chinese capabilities. They are steering towards a hair-trigger security dilemma in which the mutual postures cry out for being used first before the enemy might destroy them (Goldstein 2013: Le Miôre 2012). It cannot be excluded that this whole conflict system might collapse into two opposing blocks one da the spark for a major violent cataclysm could even be lighted by uncontrolled non-state actors inside some of the powers. or—in analogy to the role of Serbia in 1914— a ‘spoiler” state with a particularly idios ncralic agenda. Pakistan. North Korea or Tai an arc con ceivable in this role. Even Japan might be considered, if nationalism in Nippon grows further and seeks confrontation with the old rival China. If anything. this constellation does not look much better than the one which drove Europe into World War I a century ago. and it contains a nuclear component. To trust in the infallibility of nuclear deterrence in this mufti- pronged constellation needs quite a lot of optimism Can democratic peace be helpful in this constellation? Our conflict system includes democracies—the United States, India, Japan. Indonesia and non- democracies such as China. Russia, and Vietnam, but not necessarily on the same side. Should the European theater become connected to the Asian one through continuous US—Russian disputes and a Russian—Chinese entente. defective democracies like Ukraine and Georgia may feature rather importantly as potential triggers for a worsening of relationships. While democracy is useful in excluding certain conflict dyads in the whole complex, such as India and the United States. Japan and the United States. Japan and India. from the risk that they might escalate into a violent conflict, and as democratic peace is pacifying parts of the world. such as South America or Europe. it helps little in disputes between democracies and non-democracies. To the contrary: as discussed above, democracies have a more or less moral-emotional inclination to demonize non-democracies once they dis agree, and to feel a missionary drive to turn them democratic. This might exacerbate the existing, more interest-based conflicts between democracies and non-democracies, and it creates fears in the hearts of autocratic leaders that they might be up for democratization sooner or later. The close inter- democratic relations which democratic peace tends to produce, in turn, only exacerbate these fears as democracies tend to be rich, well organized, and powerful and dispose together of much more potent military capabilities than their potential non-dcnwcratic counterparts. Rather than helping with peace. the inter-democratic consequences of the democratic peace tend to exacerbate the security dilemma which exists between democracies and non-democracics an way. This non-peaceful dark side of democratic peace has escaped the attention of most academic writings on this subject and certainly all political utterances about democratic peace in our political systems. But democratic militancy is the Siamese twin of democratic peace as the Bush Administration unambiguously taught us (Gels et al. 2013: Müllcr 2014b). 

The death of democracy in Venezuela is an extreme example. But the weakening that various democracies in Europe and the Americas are suffering is evident, with the growth of populist parties both of the extreme right and the left. The democracies of Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Sweden are threatened by populist parties that are growing every day. Hungary, the Phillipines, Turkey, Russia and the United States have leaders in power with clear populist overtones and some even have authoritarian features. In all of these the retreat of democracy began at the polls.

We look upon what’s occurring in Venezuela with dismay. According to the UN, since 2015 around four million people have fled that country. According to the statistics of Maduro’s own government, 5,287 people were killed in police actions in 2018 for “resistance to authority”, and between January 1st and May 19th of that year there were 1,569 deaths. The “United Nations Human Rights Office Report On Venezuela” indicates that as of May 31st of this year around 800 people were arbitrarily deprived of their liberty and 22 members of the National Assembly, including the president of that body, have been stripped of their parliamentary immunity. To this political repression has been added the economic and social crisis of the country. The scarcity of foodstuffs, medicine, energy and medical specialists has brought Venezuela to a humanitarian crisis. In 2018, 3.7 million people were suffering malnutrition (United Nations Fund for Nutrition and Agriculture) and this number continues to grow. The health services work in impossible conditions. In the March 2019 blackout alone, 40 patients died in hospitals, and between November 2018 and February 2019 1,557 people died due to a shortage of medical supplies. Could anyone have foreseen this scenario in 1998, when Chávez won the presidential election for the first time? It seemed impossible.