Democratic‑Peace as Fragile Identity

The widely cited 'democratic peace' is not merely an empirical regularity but a fragile, shared identity that requires continual mutual belief and ritual reinforcement among liberal states. A single prominent violation—especially a democratic state using force against a small allied democracy—could break the shared belief, producing a long‑lasting collapse of the normative constraint that underpins alliance cohesion. — If true, this reframes deterrence and alliance policy: preserving collective identity (norms, rituals, public narratives) is as essential as military parity and economics for alliance durability.