Is it true that two democratic countries never gone in war with each other?

Answer 1

Yes Virginia, democracies do fight each other.

In 1982, Great Britain fought the Falkland War with Argentina, which has been a presidential representative democratic republic since 1816.

Tony Blair may want to argue the fact with you semantically, since there was no declaration of war, however, the hundreds of dead, thousands of wounded and tens of thousands of POW's provides evidence to the contrary.

-APMc

Sadly, although Argentina may have become a presidential representative democratic republic in 1816, at the time of the Falklands War it was nothing of the sort. The government of the time was a dictatorship, and had been since 1976 when a military coup had overthrown the government of Isabel Martinez de Peron. She had herself suceeded her husband, Juan Domingo Peron, as president on his death in 1974, due to her position as vice-president in his legally elected regime.

Whether you think the Falklands War was right or wrong, it certainly was not a war between two legally elected democracies.

Yalson

The United Kingdom declared war on Finland on December 6, 1941. Finland was loosely allied with Germany in its war effort against the Soviet Union, but never was anything but a true Democracy with freely elected Parliament and other democratic institutions from its independence in 1917, through the years of World War II, and since.

Alfsand

You could also include in these answers the war between Pakistan and India in the early 1970s, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the Soccer war between El Salvador and Nicaragua, the war between Ecuador and Peru in the early 80s. Even go as far as to include the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the war between Poland and Lithuania after WW1.

Where democratic war theory does hold some water is in its proposal of wars between democratic nations ending far quicker and more resolutely but as for them not occurring is a fallacy, probably cooked up in Tony Blair's mind to justify the invasion of Iraq and force the country into a western form of democracy that would seem acceptable to the U.S and U.K.

Charlie