Rudolph Rummel: Quotes about war

“Communists, when in control of a nation, have murdered more than 3.6 times the number of people killed in combat in all wars, including the two world wars.”

Rudolph Rummel

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 99

War , People , World , Time

“Our century is noted for its bloody wars. WW1 saw 9 million people killed in battle, an incredible record that was surpassed within a few decades by the 15 million battle deaths of WW2. Even the numbers killed in 20th century revolutions and civil wars have set historical records. In total, about 35,654,000 people have died in this century’s international and domestic wars, revolutions, and violent conflicts. Yet, even more unbelievable than these vast numbers killed in war is a shocking fact. The number of people killed by totalitarian or extreme authoritarian governments already exceeds that for all wars, civil and international. Indeed, this number already approximates the number that might be killed in a nuclear war.”

Rudolph Rummel

“War Isn’t This Century’s Biggest Killer, The Wall Street Journal (July 7, 1986)

Death , War , People

“By contrast, as Hayek explained in The Road to Serfdom—in his famous chapter ‘Why’ the worst get on top—centralized government power attracts aggressive, domineering personalities. They are the most likely to gain power. And the more power they have, naturally the less subject they are to restraint. The greater the likelihood such a country will pursue aggressive policies. The highest risks of war occur when two dictators face each other. There’s likely to be a struggle for supremacy.”

Rudolph Rummel

War , Nature , Personality , Country

“In my ‘Understanding Conflict and War’ I concluded that the more freedom a state accords its citizens, the less likely it is to be involved in foreign violence; and the more freedom within two states, the less likely there will be violence between them. Moreover, war between free-libertarian-states will not occur, and other violence between them is very improbable… This conclusion about the violence-reducing effect of freedom also extends to conflict within states: ‘the more libertarian a state, the less intense its violence can and tends to become.”

Rudolph Rummel

“Libertarianism, Violence within States, and the Polarity Principle,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Jul., 1984), pp. 443-462. Published by Comparative Politics, Ph.D. Programs in Political Science, City University of New York. https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DP84.HTM

War , Understanding , Freedom

“Possibly 20,000,000 were killed in the war against the Nazis and from Nazi occupation, but many more millions were killed in Stalin’s simultaneous war on his own people.”

Rudolph Rummel book Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917

Source: Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917 (1990), p. 152

War , People

“The theory is that democratic systems provide a path to peace, and universalizing them would eliminate war and minimize global, political violence”

Rudolph Rummel book Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917

Source: Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917 (1990), p. xi

War , Peace , Universe

“It should be underlined that while the democratic or state socialist believes that socialist governments will be peaceloving and nonviolent, the Marxist-Leninist believes this true of only the final, communist stage of stateless anarchy. The socialist transition period may well involve war with capitalist states, but while this inter-state war is to be avoided if at all possible in this age of nuclear weapons, the world-wide struggle against capitalism must be pursued by all means short of inter-state war. This would involve not only the arts of deception, disinformation, subversion, and demoralization, against capitalist states, but also terrorism and domestic wars through ‘national liberation fronts’. For the Marxist-Leninist, then, it is the communist system that is inherently peaceful, not the socialist intermediary state. This socialist stage means the purposeful, aggressive use of force and violence to pursue the final, global stage of communist peace and freedom.”

Rudolph Rummel

“Political Systems, Violence, and War,” chap. 14 in "Approaches to Peace: An Intellectual Map", edit, W. Scott Thompson and Kenneth M. Jensen, Washington, D.C., United States Institute of Peace, 1991, pp. 347-370; and “The Politics of Cold Blood,” Society, Vol. 27 (November/December, 1989) pp. 32-40

War , Age , World , Peace

“In total, communist (Marxist-Leninist) regimes murdered nearly 148 million people from 1917 to 1987. For a perspective on this incredible toll, note that all domestic and foreign wars during the twentieth century killed in combat around 41 million.”

Rudolph Rummel

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 99

War , People

“In sum, theoretical and empirical research establishes that democratic civil liberties and political rights promote nonviolence and is a path to a warless world. The clearest evidence of this is that there has never been a war between well-established democracies, while numerous wars have occurred between all other political systems;…”

Rudolph Rummel

Source: Power Kills: Democracy as a Method of Nonviolence(1997), p. 114

War , World , Democracy

“We have a solution for war. It is to expand the sphere of liberty.”

Rudolph Rummel

War

“It is sad that hundreds of thousands of people can be killed by governments with hardly an international murmur, while a war killing several thousand people can cause an immediate world outcry and global reaction.”

Rudolph Rummel

“War Isn’t This Century’s Biggest Killer, The Wall Street Journal (July 7, 1986)

War , People , World , Sadness

“Since advancing freedom of the press furthers democracy, spreading freedom of the press promotes world peace. And the reverse logic is also true. Without democracies, there will be war; without freedom of the press, democracies cannot exist.”

Rudolph Rummel

“Freedom of the press—a way to peace,” ASNE Bulletin (February 1989), p. 27. ASNE stands for the American Association of Newspaper Editors

War , World , Peace , Democracy

“The evidence on this question is persuasive: the best way of eliminating war between nations, of minimizing domestic political violence, and of virtually making genocide and mass murder a horror of the past, is by fostering political freedom. Politically free nations do not make war on each other, have minimum domestic political violence, and virtually no genocide and mass murder. I call this the miracle that is freedom.”

Rudolph Rummel

“Democide: Rudy Rummel Interviewed” by Alberto Mingardi, The Laissez Faire City Times, August-September 1998 https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/INTERVIEW.ITALY.HTM

War , Way , Question , Freedom

“Democratic freedom is a method of nonviolence and an antidote to war.”

Rudolph Rummel

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p.16

War , Freedom

“Most of the world's people have been robbed of their freedom by tyrants… In the last century alone, 272,000,000 were shot, burned, stabbed, tortured, beaten, starved to death, blasted to death, buried alive, or whatever other ways of murdering their slaves these thugs could imagine. This horrific and evil toll of bodies could head-to-toe circle the earth more than ten times. It is as though a catastrophic nuclear war had happened, but its mountain of deaths spread over each day of the last century”

Rudolph Rummel

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 11

Death , War , People , World

“Power kills, absolute Power kills absolutely. This new Power Principle is the message emerging from my previous work on the causes of war and this book on genocide and government mass murder—what I call democide—in this century. The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects.”

Rudolph Rummel

Source: Death by Government (1994), pp. 1-2

War , Books

“Increasing freedom in the world decreases the death toll of its wars. Surely, whatever reduces and then finally ends the scourge of war in our history, without causing a greater evil, must be the greatest moral good. And this is freedom.”

Rudolph Rummel

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 15

Death , War , World , History

“What is the democratic peace? In the literature on or referring to the democratic peace, this means the idea or fact that democracies do not (or virtually never) make war on each other.”

Rudolph Rummel

“What Is The Democratic Peace?” https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DP.IS_WHAT.HTM

War , Peace , Democracy , Literature

“Libertarian states are by theory not only less violence prone, but when foreign relations includes the perception of other libertarian states, this inhibition becomes a mutual barrier to violence. Their mutual domestic diversity and pluralism, their free and competitive press, their people-to-people and elite-to-elite bonds and relationships, and their mutual identification and sympathy will foreclose on any expectation or occurrence of war between them; violence may occur only in the most extraordinary and unusual circumstances, or at the margins of what it means to be libertarian.”

Rudolph Rummel

“Libertarianism and International Violence”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 27, Sage Publications, March 1, 1983, p. 27-71

War , People

“Well-established democracies do not make war on each other.”

Rudolph Rummel

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 106

War , Democracy