Stable democracies do not suddenly appear.
People really have no idea how much the Democracies in the world are based on the fact that the English speaking elites of the country involved were very familiar with, and involved in, the Philosophy of the Enlightenment. That first point of the author I quoted, Douglas Macgregor, that the seven oldest Democracies contained five English speaking countries, points that out. (The intro was written by Kagan, which tells you a bit.)
This made me think about South America again. We have been watching countries that are run by the Spanish educated elites, or "Prole" dictatorships. When the elites run things, there is no cultural BG among them that will naturally lead to a stable Democracy. So they steal the country blind while oppressing the masses. That leads to a revolution. The Prole Dictatorship takes over, allows no Democracy, and can't raise things above a starvation level.
Freidman used Yugoslavia as an example of what we might run into in Iraq, but I think the example of Lebanon in '82 is probably closer to the mark. A bunch of warring tribes that spend their time fighting with each other and sucking up to, or fighting, the conqueror. |
