Andrew Sullivan attempts to ding Daniel Larison for an overly dogmatic realist critique of democratization.

Larison first:

Egypt and Jordan can remain at peace with Israel despite the profound unpopularity of this arrangement because the governments are unaccountable and authoritarian. Surely the elections in Gaza should tell us that democratization allows people with deep grievances to vent them by empowering the most extreme and radical elements. This has proved to be ruinous for people in Gaza and far from what Israel wants. Democratization and regional stability are incompatible. If you desire one, you cannot have the other.

Sullivan writes, “I don’t buy the argument that in the long run, autocracies are more stable than democracies, even in the Middle East,” and goes on to cite Iran as proof of the instability of the autocratic model when it comes to succession.

He’s missing the point, though. I’m not sure even steely Larison would go so far as to argue that autocratic succession is any kind of ideal. Autocracies by their very nature change leaders amidst a tension that can at any time spill over into war. Indeed, the greatest achievement of democracy has been that power transfers have been institutionalized to the point of violence being a nearly unthinkable outcome.

What Daniel is correctly railing against, however, is the by far most questionable aspect of Democratic Peace theory: namely that democracies do not go to war against each other. Democratic Peace theorists like the claim, with some sleights of hand, that history bears out this claim. But Daniel’s counter-example is a powerful one. Is there much doubt that the Arab Street, if given access to the reins of power, would demand anything but the annihilation of Israel?

If you’ve ever wondered what it looks like seconds before you’re destroyed by an air-to-air missile, check out today’s New York Times. The article summarizes a recent UN report which authoritatively declares that the plane photographed above firing at a Georgian spy drone was Russian, thus calling into questions Russia’s self-asserted neutrality in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict. The UN report goes on to chastise the Russians for shooting down the drone while at the same time upbraiding the Georgians for stoking tensions by flying drones over Abkhazia in the first place.

This throws into sharp relief the near-absurd role the UN creates for itself in these kinds of conflicts. There are many UN staffers who think that an important part of the UN’s mandate is war-prevention, and who view a report such as the one described as the proper stance for the UN to take. “Both of you warring factions are culpable,” the thinking goes, “so please separate and let us guarantee the peace between you until you regain your senses and come to a peaceful settlement.” Unfortunately, such a position does anything but guarantee peace. One only need to consider the Georgian perspective in order to see why that is the case.

Georgians, like the much-aggrieved Serbs viz-a-vis Kosovo, don’t see Abkhazia’s independence as at all legitimate, and absent Russian military presence in the region would re-conquer the territory and put down the rebel leadership with traditionally excessive Caucasian violence. There is little reason to think Saakashvili would seek compromise with the rebels if Russia was not backing them to the hilt—indeed, one can easily see Georgia acting swiftly to retake what it feels is rightly its own territory as soon as the Russian military is removed from the region.

This is not to say that Russia’s role in the conflict has been at all honorable or praiseworthy, or that it is acting on anything more than selfish geo-strategic impulses. But it is important for UN types to recognize that the negotiated settlement they envision themselves able to broker can only come about if Abkhazia’s current territorial integrity is guaranteed by force of arms. Since the UN is not going to want to field a force which could very well get in a shooting war with the Georgian army, they ought to be working on ways to resolve the conflict with Russia constructively engaged on behalf of the Abkhaz. Any other strategy is folly and is more likely to lead to war rather than peace.