Power Kills: Democracy as a Method of Nonviolence

by R.J. Rummel

This volume, newly published in paperback, is part of a comprehensive effort by R. J. Rummel to understand and place in historical perspective the entire subject of genocide and mass murder, or what he calls democide. It is the fifth in a series of volumes in which he offers a detailed analysis of the 120,000,000 people killed as a result of government action or direct intervention. In Power Kills , Rummel offers a realistic and practical solution to war, democide, and other collective violence. As he states it, "The solution...is to foster democratic freedom and to democratize coercive power and force. That is, mass killing and mass murder carried out by government is a result of indiscriminate, irresponsible Power at the center." Rummel observes that well-established democracies do not make war on and rarely commit lesser violence against each other. The more democratic two nations are, the less likely is war or smaller-scale violence between them. The more democratic a nation is, the less severe its overall foreign violence, the less likely it will have domestic collective violence, and the less its democide. Rummel argues that the evidence supports overwhelmingly the most important fact of our democracy is a method of nonviolence.

Genres: Politics

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[John Waldrip · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty interesting book, though it is dated with a 1997 copyright. The disagreement that I would have with the author is related to the Muslim world, particularly the Arab Middle East and North Africa where the Arab Spring advanced by President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to overthrow dictators such as Mubarak in Egypt and Qadafi in Libya in favor of democracies, and the current state of war in Syria after an abortive attempt to unseat the Assad regime had the opposite effect than is advanced by Rummel's book. Democracy in those nations fostered great bloodshed, for the following reasons. Mubarak, Qadafi, and the Assad regime demanded a monopoly of force in their nations, which consisted of various Muslim sects and ethnicities and a minority Christian population. Once democracies were in place the majority Muslim population then began a program of eliminating Muslim minority sects and Christians. Thus, Rummel's view of democracy as a method of nonviolence seems to work well in the West and in those parts of the far East influenced by the West, such as Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, he needs to take a close look at the Middle East and the influence of Islam, in my opinion.

[Craig Bolton]

Power Kills: Democracy as a Method of Nonviolence by R. Rummel (2002)