The electorate would have the opportunity to vote on the military action, and refuse it. Or worse, if the democratic process takes several days, the government would have to turn the tanks around halfway through the invasion.
You would need to be fairly sure your invasion is justifiable (at least to your own subjects) before you start it.
It’s just one of the more minor ways that democracy would improve the world.
cough Iraq War cough
Also, Western style democracies are very much “vote every X years and then do fuck all about the reps all the other times.” So the actual entity in control the vast majority of the time is still a small council same as a dictatorship. If enough of them want war, it will happen and it will be pushed through legislature extremely quickly (which, I can’t imagine the critical mass needed to declare war right the frick now being over 100 politicians in any Western style democracy).
Also, you’re putting a lot of stock in troops moving out before a vote happens. I doubt this happens ever, except in the case of a rogue military. But if the military is rogue, then the democratic government has already fallen.
This is a complete misunderstanding!
I’m not talking about “western style” democracy AKA “representative” democracy. Those are not true democracies.
We can debate the definition of the word but in truth there are several meanings of “democracy”, and we are using different ones.
I should have been clearer. I’m talking about real democracy, like in Switzerland or Berlin (but not Federal Germany) and like the many variants which exist only in textbooks.
As a “democracy” forum maybe we should first have a discussion just about that. What kind of “democracy” are we actually talking about?!