Thank you LeBFG I have just done a quick google. I will do some reading. But my first thoughts are:
*Democratic leaders are forced to accept culpability for war losses to a voting public;
Has Tony been tried as a war criminal yet.
*Publicly accountable statesmen are more inclined to establish diplomatic institutions for resolving international tensions;
Well I guess the WTO, The FED, IMF, world bank are orgainisations, but all of these institutions further capitalist hegemony, set up trade barriers and indebt third world nations. They offer loans and aid but only on the basis that countries neo-liberalise their economies, ie allow corporations, overwhelmingly American to exploit for profit, make all public services private etc,
*Democracies are less inclined to view countries with adjacent policy and governing doctrine as hostile;
This is true but I don't think this is to do with politics as much as it is to do with economics. During the cold war Maggie wasn't protecting us from the soviet menace, she was trying to further and protect the interest of capital.
*Democracies tend to possess greater public wealth than other states, and therefore eschew war to preserve infrastructure and resources;
Yes.....but if you look at history you see that those countries in the West developed first, they became capitalist countries, they created empires to exploit the natural wealth of other countries. Although we don't have colonies we are still acting on behalf of capital to exploit and demand access to resources. We are wealthy because they are not, our wealth being built on this inequality.
Chile was a democracy with a democratically elected leader but he was a socialist, so the Americans stirred up a coup and supported a dictator who went on to kill millions of his own people in order to neo-liberalise the Chilean economy. We all know what a nasty man Pinochet was but Maggie had her reasons for liking him!
Cuba is interesting, America has tried everything and still they hold out. They have one of the best health care systems in the world, an excellent education system and a longer life expectancy than us, they are also contrary to popular belief a democracy.
Iraq is interesting, we sponsored Saddam, we gave aid to his dictatorship when he was gassing Kurds but when it became clear he wouldn't privatise the oil and let in uncle sam, we waged an economic war. It could be argued that we killed more Iraqis before the war than during the war because of the sanctions.
Similar situation in Korea, we use carrot and stick and they won't budge. Capitalism needs to expand, it needs to seek new areas of investment and exploitation. It will not tolerate socialist countries or even countries that won't privatise every last thing. Its what people on the left refer to as imperialism.
The theory of Peaceful democracy I would think is right wing subterfuge, its ideology that those who benefit from the system want you to believe and endorse. I will do some more reading but I am a bit cynical moi 