Democracy, War, and Covert Action

Abstract

It is well established that stable industrialized democracies do not use overt force against each other. But do democracies ever use covert force against other elected governments? This article confirms the US threat or use of forcible covert action against a series of elected non-European governments during the Cold War: Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Indonesia (1955), Brazil (1960s), Chile (1973), Nicaragua (1980s). There are other examples of US covert non-forcible action against elected governments. Three types of analysis are offered for this pattern. On the most obvious level, the US acted on the basis of an expansive conception of its perceived security interests, fearing future developments that would work to the advantage of the USSR, even though the US was not faced with clear and present dangers to its territorial integrity and political independence. A deeper unique explanation is that, as Michael Hunt has argued, the US was encouraged in these covert actions by an informal ideology entailing beliefs in US greatness, fears of social revolution, and racism. A deeper theoretical explanation is that the targeted regimes did not qualify as mature liberal regimes showing the characteristics of neo-Kantian liberalism: representative and specialized democracy, democratic alliance, and extensive private commerce. Moreover, the neo-Kantian reliance on representative decision-making to avoid major war did not affect secret decisions involving probabilty of few US deaths.