You're downvoted, but it has been postulated that no democracy has ever waged war against another democracy, and that this is a consequence of democratic governance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory
As far as I can tell, the observation is historically true. The few possible exceptions are pre-modern, very minor, or are debatable whether the societies involved were in fact democratic -- the first war in the Balkans, 19th century border skirmishes in South America, the Western Allies against Finland in WW II, and Iceland's conflict with the UK over fishing, are some of the stronger counter-examples.
The effect seems real enough, but I'm not sure if it actually means anything deeper, given the cultural similarity and degree of trade among most democracies.
Iceland vs. the UK over fishing - how many shots were fired in that? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it might have been a skirmish, but it wasn't a war...
Mostly just coast guard and fishing ships ramming each other, with a decent bit of the British navy tossed in the fray at one point too. The Icelanders did manage to damage multiple British frigates in the last round of conflict.
Probably doesn't count as a war. But it is still one of the more notable examples of direct conflict between democratic states.
Wars are strategic but motivated by emotional propaganda. In this case, American news is full of discussion about genocide in China. China will use it's incredibly effective propaganda machine to promote theories about heinous American acts (about Covid, Taiwan, anything).
(Just to clarify I am not saying there aren't heinous acts going on anywhere. But what I will say is that there are actually horrific circumstances in many parts of the world (such as for example, where wars were already "successfully" initiated). It just so happens that the press and the moral outrage coincidentally tend to be extremely ramped up when and where they are needed to motivate war.)
It's not possible for military or economic planners to say "look, we need to go to war or else we will no longer be able to get computers" or "our money will disintegrate" or "we need to access this area to maintain strategic dominance" or whatever it is. So whatever type of moral story is necessary to justify mass killing is propagated. Not because those people are evil liars, but because without the stories there would be no war, and the strategic objectives would fail and have very real consequences.
And it's not hard for a human to rationalize anything really. People are happy to have a moral reason to defend their ability to procure the next gadget or whatever threat there may be to their standard of living. Which often those are actually very real threats and not just about trivial things like gadgets.
