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The neutrality of this article is disputed because: Unabashed praise of Rummel. Criticisms of and controversial statements by Rummel are systematically suppressed (for example), and this has become a tendentious effort to prove Rummel was right all along, often without clear statement of what he actually holds. (Note that the "example" above links to a proposal on the talk page. The text has not been removed from the article)

For details and discussion of this dispute, see the talk page.

Rudolph Joseph Rummel (born October 21, 1932) is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii. He has assembled data on wars, conflicts, and governmental murder. The term democide was created by him. He was one of the first to do research on the democratic peace theory. His main finding is: "To eliminate war, to restrain violence, to nurture universal peace and justice, is to foster freedom (liberal democracy)."

Career

Rudolph Joseph Rummel, b, 1932, BA and MA from the University of Hawaii (1959, 1961); Ph.D. in Political Science (Northwestern University, 1963); Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Omicron Delta Kappa. Taught at Indiana University (1963), Yale (1964-66), University of Hawaii (1966-1995); now Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Hawaii. Received numerous grants from NSF, ARPA, and the United States Peace Research Institute. Frequently nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace . Received the Susan Strange Award of the International Studies Association for having intellectually most challenged the field in 1999. Received the Lifetime Achievement Award 2003 from the Conflict Processes Section, American Political Science Association. He has written about two-dozen books and over 100 professional articles. Curriculum Vitae:

Democratic peace

Rummel was one of the earliest to do research on the democratic peace theory. According to his research, no wars have been waged between well-established liberal democracies. War is defined as a conflict causing at least 1000 battle deaths.

By democracy is meant liberal democracy, where those who hold power are elected in competitive elections with a secret ballot and wide franchise (loosely understood as including at least 2/3rds of adult males); where there is freedom of speech, religion, and organization; and a constitutional framework of law to which the government is subordinate and that guarantees equal rights.

Well established means that a regime had been democratic long enough for it to be stable and democratic practices to become established. In practice, this means that the democracy should be older than three to five years.

Rummel's research shows that in the 1816-2005 period there were 205 wars between nondemocracies, 166 wars between nondemocracies and democracies, and 0 wars between democracies. Note that this finding regarding wars is different from the research arguing that there have also been comparatively few lesser conflicts (Militarized Interstate Disputes) between democracies.

Democide

Rummel is the creator of the term democide: "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder". He has further stated: "I use the civil definition of murder, where someone can be guilty of murder if they are responsible in a reckless and wanton way for the loss of life, as in incarcerating people in camps where the may soon die of malnutrition, unattended disease, and forced labor, or deporting them into wastelands where they may die rapidly from exposure and disease."

As an example, Rummel until recently did not classify the Great Leap Forward as democide. He believed that Mao's policies were largely responsible for the famine, but he was misled about it, and finally when he found out, he stopped it and changed his policies. Thus not an intentional famine and thus not a democide. New information from Mao: the Unknown Story states that Mao knew about the famine from the beginning and didn't care. Eventually he had to be stopped by a meeting of 7,000 top Communist Party members. Thus the famine was intentional and a democide.

Rummel's sources include scholarly works, refugee reports, memoirs, biographies, historical analyses, actual exhumed body counts, records kept by the murderers themselves, and so on. In short his data are all estimates available in English for all nations over a period of a century, and available in the libraries he worked in, including the Library of Congress.

He provides a most probably death toll and and a low and a high that are meant to be the most unlikely low and high, and thus to bracket the probable true count. It is to determine these lows and highs that he includes what some others might consider absurd estimates. His published books do not include new research and new sources available after the publication date.

His research shows that the death toll from democide is far greater than the death toll from war. After studying over 8,000 reports of government caused deaths, Rummel estimates that there have been 262 million victims of democide in the last century. According to his figures, six times as many people have died from the inflictions of people working for governments than have died in battle.

He argues that there is a relation between political power and democide. Political mass murder grows increasingly common as political power becomes unconstrained. At the other end of the scale, where power is diffuse, checked, and balanced, political violence is a rarity. According to Rummel, "The more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom." Rummel concludes: "Concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth."

Rummel argues that the continuing increase in democracy worldwide will soon lead to an end to wars and democide, possibly around or even before the middle of this century. He has an extensive FAQ on his webpage, answering many questions and objections regarding the democratic peace and democide. He has also published book, Saving Lives, Enriching Life on his website. This book aims at popularizing his findings and is available as a free download.

Famine and Happiness

Rummel does not include famine in democide unless it is deliberate, like the Holodomor. However, he argues that there have been no famines in democracies, deliberate or not. As another argument for democracy, he points to research showing that average happiness in a nation increases with more democracy.

Political views

Rummel is a strong supporter of spreading liberal democracy and a former libertarian. He is also an outspoken critic of communism, although he also severely criticises right-wing dictatorships and the democides that occurred under colonialism. He strongly supports the current War on Terror and the Iraq War, which he sees as involving defending and spreading democracy. Another controversial opinion is his view that there is leftist bias in much of the press and certain parts of the academic world that selectively focus on problems in nations with high political and economic freedom and ignores much worse problems in other nations.

He also argues for an intergovernmental organization of all democracies outside of the United Nations to deal with issues about which the UN cannot or will not act, but particularly to further the promotion of peace, human security, human rights, and democracy -- an Alliance of Democracies.

Criticisms

Some critics argue that there have been exceptions to the democratic peace. Rummel discusses some claimed exceptions in his FAQ and he has referred to the book Never at War which also discusses possible exceptions. There are also various other criticisms as discussed in the democratic peace theory article.

Rummel's counts 43 million deaths due to democide during Stalin's regime inside and outside the Soviet Union. This is much higher than an often quoted figure of 20 million. Rummel has responded that this is based on a figure from Robert Conquest's book The Great Terror from 1968 and that Conquest's qualifier "almost certainly too low" is usually forgotten. Conquest's calculations excluded camp deaths after 1950, and before 1936; executions 1939-53; the vast deportation of the people of captive nations into the camps, and their deaths 1939-1953; the massive deportation within the Soviet Union of minorities 1941-1944; and their deaths; and those the Soviet Red Army and secret police executed throughout Eastern Europe after their conquest during 1944-1945. Moreover, the Holodomor that killed 5 million in 1932-1934 is not included.

Rummel follow those scholars who argue that the Great Leap Forward was intentional and could have been avoided completely. Some argue that the adverse weather contributed to bad harvests during the Great Leap Forward. Plus localised famine was not a rare occurrence in China. Thus some part of the death toll may have been unavoidable and therefore not a democide. More generally, most estimates of democide are uncertain and scholars often give widely different estimates.

Military intervention in order to spread democracy is not an automatic corollary of the democratic peace theory. Other researchers argue that many military interventions in order to spread democracy have eventually failed. They argue that it is generally better to spread democracy by diplomacy and by slowly promoting internal political change.

Blog post

Rummel wrote a blog post titled "Censor the Media", in which he stated

"This is war. If the media has its way and we withdraw immediately from Iraq, or even begin staged withdrawals now with a timetable, the terrorists win. With the support of Syria, this is assured. Then, the resulting democide by the victorious terrorists may well come close to that in South Vietnam after we withdrew. And, so heartened by our lack of will, the terrorists throughout the world could only get more state support, including even possible help on nukes from North Korea or China (somehow, it has been forgotten that China is still ruled by its Communist Party, and our enemy)."

He further stated

"In both World Wars I and II, the media reports on the war were strictly controlled. They must be again. Just in lives alone that might be saved thereby, it is necessary. How far should this go? I would use the censorship of World War II as criteria. This would mean, for example, that news reports of secret commando operations in Iran, or the employment of a secret weapon, or ... well, you get the idea."

This caused some controversy and Rummel in his next blog post stated that he only argued for censorship of military secrets.

Selective list of books

• Death by Government
• Power Kills: Democracy As a Method of Nonviolence
• Reset: Never Again
• War & Democide: Never Happen (Never Again)
• China's Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900

External links

• Power Kills main site
• Democratic Peace - Rummel's blog
• Freedom's Nest - summary

• NPOV disputes
• 1932 births
• Living people
• American writers
• Political writers
• American professors
• Democratic peace theory