Consider WW1, in which most of the major belligerants, except for Tsarist Russia, have a plausible case for being called democratic. You might try to exclude one country or another, to save the Democratic Peace. But then you've got to be very careful about that: you can very easily add enough conditions until virtually no states until the 1970s were democratic, which gives you a small sample that coincides with an era when all states, democratic or not, have been relatively peaceful.
It also doesn't have a strong causal explanation for why it'd be the case. Democracies certainly aren't less violent in general: they don't have any issues fighting with autocracies. There's even evidence that weak or developing democracies, like Meiji Japan in the 1890s or the United States in the 2000s, actually are more violent than comparable states.
Most Democratic Peace theorists don't really offer anything more powerful than "the US/UK axis and its allies don't go to war with each other." Which is true, but uninteresting.
The Austro-Hungarian empire was also ruled by a hereditary monarch who was in charge of war and foreign policy.
I admit it's all a bit hand-wavy, but wasn't there a huge difference in nature between the likes of UK and France vs Germany, Austia-Hungary, and the Ottomans?
I wouldn't want this to become a tit for tat about who was the real democracy in the war: I'm perfectly happy to say that every participant fell far short of democracy. But the democratic peace folks are making a seemingly predictive, scientific claim using a really fuzzy and emotionally laden term like democracy that's easy to bend to mean whatever you like.
If there's something that's meant beyond my "US/UK and their allies don't fight each other" idea, I'm all for hearing it out. What are some of the countries considered democracies by the democratic peace proponents that aren't in that alliance and seem not to have been in a war with that alliance due to the fact that they're democratic and not autocratic?
I do concede that there it isn't inherently an error to say one country is more democratic than another, and that the Ottomans and Austria Hungary clearly end up on the losing side of that comparison.
You wouldn't imagine a civil war amongst a homogenous culture. I wonder if the Parliamentarians/Royalists or the Unionists/Confederates were more culturally different than the Anglosphere cultures are today.
Germany had tiered suffrage until the 1918 revolution.
"This distribution meant that a first-class vote had 17.5 times the value of a third-class vote." and "... one result of which was that the industrialist Alfred Krupp was the only person able to vote for the electors in the first class in Essen."
A U.S.-China conflict would shoot decades of progress in the head.
Logistical value perhaps, for example by denying the U.S. the bases they currently have there, but certainly not for resources?
Japan's utility is not only as a strategic launchpad. It also represented, in 2012, $216 billion in trade [1]. That is a $5.5 trillion asset when discounted at the U.S. 30-year rate.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_par...
Now to the story. I can see the parallels to the run up to WW1 however there is one large difference. In WW1 there was no real dominate military power (i.e. has complete unmatched and overwhelming force). The fact is that the US military so overmatches everyone else that it would be a very short war. Blood and a mess but still very short.
You may wish to read up on attitudes immediately prior to WWI. And there were three dominate military powers at the start of WWI, Germany the land empire able to call up 5M men in days, Russia with infinite manpower but so logistically messed up they never get to use them, and the British Navy dominated the waves, which was a pretty big deal as this was toward the end of the colonial era (although Germany didn't get to play colonialism which was arguably part of the problem)
Seriously, the franco prussian war was only a couple months adn the protoGermans won decisively. They really did expect to be done, one way or another, by winter time.
WW3 will probably be something like NK implodes and tries to blow up SK and .jp along with it (australia?), and China and "the west" argue very forcibly about who will dominate the area in a post-NK, perhaps post-SK and post-.jp world. At least if I was writing an Alt Hist type novel thats where I'd generally go.
I certainly wouldn't want to live in Seoul if (when?) that comes to pass but wouldn't be too worried even in Japan - it's a good 1000km, and I don't think NK has the tech to get much precision at those distances. Certainly they don't have stealth missiles which would be able to evade JP's considerable number of aegis equipped vessels. They could likely do some damage but I doubt it would be catastrophic.
As for Australia, I wouldn't be worried at all - that's well into ICBM territory, a whole different technological level and NK have never demonstrated anything even close. Not to mention Hawaii is actually closer to Pyongyang than Sydney - if they really can lob missiles ~8000km, why not go for the Great Satan himself?
http://www.amazon.com/The-Sleepwalkers-Europe-Went-1914/dp/0...
My comments on the effects of military power come from first hand experience.
that is the current post-colonial (post-WWI) framework of "independent sovereign nations". This framework starts to show its limitations in dealing with a host of transnational/transcontinental/global issues. Global warming in particular comes to mind. As usually, either framework will get adapted or it will rupture into a new WW, and the new framework will result after it, like it happened after previous WWs.
With regard of mutually assured destruction - this would assure that the war will be fought outside of populated areas, i.e. nobody is going to nuke each others cities (Walmart will still be importing and selling Chinese manufactured goods as sinking the container ships isn't a necessary part of fighting of the modern war for either side :). WWI was new kind of war - trenches. WWII - motorized. WWIII - precision and automated weapons, drones fighting drones.
how about stealth supersonic self-landing on aircraft carrier satellite networked drones? Not that i doubt Chinese military or economical might, especially those of tomorrow, it is just they still have some distance to go.
An all out war against a powerful nation that could hit back would be far less restrained.
Modern (21st century) war in a semi-modern (early 20th century or earlier) vein would be hard to predict for a great many reasons. But thinking that the equation would work out the same seems pretty dicey to me.
Aside from the obvious diplomatic ally stuff. Our other diplomatic allies would make sure we don't leave Japan hang.
One minor problem is that stretch of water between Japan and China, of course. At this point in their military development, an invasion of Taiwan would be ridiculous much less the Japanese home islands. In a couple decades Taiwan might be toast, but its still another order or two of magnitude to invade Japan.
I guess the biggest potential problem would be China, but do they really have any allies for their side that would cause a "world war"? Seems to me like if they started anything, then it would be them against the entire west, and as long as we don't feel compelled to invade them, they don't have a lot of power eh can project.