The Myth of Democratic Peace: Why Democracy Cannot Deliver Peace in the 21st Century by James Ostrowski: "Spencer R. Weart alleges that democracies rarely if ever go to war with each other. Even if this is true, it distorts reality and makes people far too sanguine about democracy’s ability to deliver the world’s greatest need today – peace. In reality, the main threat to world peace today is not war between two nation-states, but (1) nuclear arms proliferation; (2) terrorism; and (3) ethnic and religious conflict within states. As this paper was being written, India, the world’s largest democracy, appeared to be itching to start a war with Pakistan, bringing the world closer to nuclear war than it has been for many years. The United States, the world’s leading democracy, is waging war in Afghanistan, which war relates to the second and third threats noted above – terrorism and ethnic/religious conflict. If the terrorists are to be believed – and why would they lie?─they struck at the United States on September 11th because of its democratically-induced interventions into ethnic/religious disputes in their parts of the world."

(Via Lew Rockwell.)