How accurate is Russell on liberalism versus fanaticism in war?

You could make a counter-claim that the Napoleonic Wars do not fit his rules, and it certainly is in the time frame and is important. Having England mixed in with the half dozen Monarchies that had to pile on to knock out Napoleon doesn't increase the 'democratic average' much. And the French Government of the post revolution had elective parts like England did to some extent. Certainly there was less class consciousness in the Empire than before it.

In the early part of those wars, Napoleon was just a general, then "First Consul".

I beg to differ with the answers above.

If we look at the spirit of Russel's argument two things must be taken into account:

• One side must be liberal, the other fanatical. This is important - it's not "dictatorship vs liberal", it must be "fanatical vs liberal" (for instance, Central Powers in WW1 were not liberal, but they were not fanatical either).

• The war must be important. As in "lots of people should feel threatened by the fanatics". Then they would care enough to intervene (as opposed to some minor war in some God-forsaken third world hellhole that nobody cares about).

None of the counter-examples presented fit the conditions above. So I would guess the statement is correct?

Its an interesting thesis. The problem is that "important" out he left himself essentially makes it a No true Scottsman argument. In other words, it isn't really a falsifiable statement. Any counter-argument I could possibly make can be dismissed as "not really an important war" (or failing that, you could try to argue against the liberality/fanacisim of the participants. That's kind of fuzzy too).

So all a person can really do is list some actions that would cause the most work to dismiss. To my mind that would be The Spanish Civil War (which would have been quite fresh in the mind in 1947, so he must have dismissed it as "unimportant"), and the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.

Now admittedly it started as a war between The Prussians and their allies and The French Empire. On paper not a lot of Liberalism there. In reality, the Prussians were generally acknowledged as the least liberal state in Europe, while Napoleon III was leading a popular Monarchy (in fact, he'd been elected President initially by popular vote). However, by the end it had become a war between the new German Empire and the Third French Republic, which ought to make things a bit more clear. The liberal French got crushed.

As a thesis its interesting, and makes you think. Certainly I think any side in a war that has the fully-committed backing of its citizenry has a big advantage over a side that doesn't. This has probably been true since the era of Conscription started.

Counterexamples:

1. Spanish Civil War: one can argue that republicans were more liberal
2. Chinese Civil War: one can argue that kuomitang was more liberal
3. Russian Civil War: some anti-bolshevik factions were fighting under the slogan of support of the Russian Constituent Assembly - more liberal
4. WW2: one can easily argue that USSR was less liberal than the 3rd Reich.

In short, Russell's statement is a typical example of "if you misspell milk 4 times, you may get beer"; if he is allowed to define important, liberal, victory &c, then yes, he is certainly right.

Has its accuracy changed since?

• North Vietnam won over South Vietnam.
• Taliban won over Northern Alliance prior to US getting involved in 2001
• Hezbollah effectively won against everyone (forced Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, and squeezed 'liberals' out of Lebanese politics).
• Depending on your definition of liberal, theocrats won in Iran in 1979.
• Palestinian terrorists won both the strategic fight AND the world opinion war against Israel (using human shields in violation of Geneva convention and aiming rockets at civilians and attacking school buses gets ignored... responses to those acts get condemned).