Promoting global Democracy and economic liberalization is a good American strategy for eventually achieving a better, freer, more prosperous, world. If it is approached as a goal to which policy makers have maximum flexibility to prioritize the resources and timing of our tactical moves over decades then it George W. Bush will probably stand alongside Truman, FDR, Lincoln, Marshall and Kennan in history’s eye someday. If global democracy becomes a prescription to simultaneously treat all countries exactly alike with preemption being a hammer and all problems looking like nails then it won’t make it as a policy until 2008.
America has varied, intersecting, interests around the world and as the preeminent power, it has another level of interest – the function of the global system and the Rule-Set by which it operates. Bush critics like John Mearsheimer and those further left fault the Bush administration for ” breaking the rules” by not going along with Kyoto, withdrawing from the ABM treaty, subverting the ICC via bilateral treaties, not granting al Qaida terrorists POW status etc. The specifics of the criticism vary and they are all related to particular policies but they share one commonality – an unwillingness to admit that the old pre-Globalization, Postwar, Cold War Rule-Set needs to be replaced with a Rule-Set anchored in 2005, not 1945.
Democracy is not part of the old Rule-Set which is centered on the Equality of Sovereign States where Sudan and North Korea are legally the equivalent of Sweden and Canada. But democracy can and should become the cornerstone of the new international order where genocidal regimes find their writ of sovereignty has expired and consent of the governed is he yardstick of legitimacy. It will take time measured in decades rather than years but it is possible within most of our lifetimes for the bulk of humanity to move much closer to liberty.
Societies and not just states must be able to step forward to accept democratic governance, something that America realistically will be able to bring to only very few places with the Marine Corps. Ben Franklin’s warning that the Convention had given the American people ” A Republic – if you can keep it” holds just as true to day for the rest of the world. There will have to be a cognitive movement from passivity to action and from being a subject to a citizen for Democracy to take root in arid terrain.
But we should begin by planting the seeds.
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collounsbury:
June 23rd, 2005 at 5:06 pm
Hmmm, this means you must be forgiving me for my active support of the Cuban economy and seducing US diplos into the same.
I feel better (I do like the turn of phrase by the way, However, it takes a certain amount of stupidity not to realize that the maniacal rigidity and self-defeating execution of the embargo has helped keep that bearded bastard in power for 46 years; I might have written that myself if with a bit more oomph as it were.).
mark:
June 23rd, 2005 at 11:53 pm
“I might have written that myself if with a bit more oomph as it were”
I take that as a compliment Col. Even though it took me many years to tamp down my innate tendency to engage in sarcastic outbursts, in the interest of being more persuasive, it feels good to let it out once in a while.
And re: the embargo – it has become weird fetishistic totem unrelated to the objective for which it was originally put into place.
We’re so far past the point of diminishing returns that we’re on to pointlessly irritating parties three steps removed from the problem into becoming Castro supporters just to spite us.