The Israeli elections of 2015 made abundantly clear that peace in the Middle East is being thwarted by internal political strife within Israel: war wins votes. Playing up "Us versus Them" encourages people to vote, and in particular, to vote conservative, the party which ended up winning.
Interestingly, this mirrors accusations that the timing of Hamas's attacks against Israel are also due to politicking within their (secretive) leadership.
It would be naive to assume that this isn't also happening in the United States. Of the many casualties on both sides of the many wars we engage in, who among the dead were mere pawns sacrificed in furtherance of a struggle for internal power within this country? Needless deaths.
Does this represent a fundamental flaw in democracy? Can we implement safeguards to prevent it? It bears a similarity to an economic externality, where a decision affects more than those who participate in the social choice function making it.
Curiously, it seems very difficult to spot this happening from the inside. From the inside of a democracy, a majority might actually believe -- falsely -- that a given war is justified. Only when observed from the outside, when we see it going on in another country, do the machinations become easily visible.
No comments :
Post a Comment