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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (14958)	12/28/2001 8:45:29 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Maurice Winn; Re: "Democracy seems to be the essential problem. Voting to take other people's money is NOT the road to human happiness though it's held up as the highest ideal these days." To a certain extent I agree with this. That the US was somewhat successful in preserving some freedom is due to a combination of things (i.e. luck). (1) The US had the example of out of control democracies in ancient Greece. That made them divide up the powers in such a way that it took longer to pervert all the rules. (2) The US was so underpopulated that it wasn't realistic to govern the whole thing tightly. (3) All that Indian blood tended to make the US more freedom loving and violent than the human average (and by "blood" I mean both genetic and sanguinary). Re: "Democracy or something else for Afghanistan?" I don't think that this is for the US to decide. All that the US can do is promise to be back with more bombers if a situation where anti-US terrorism returns and the government in Afghanistan refuses to deal with it. The US maybe can provide a little help, but I really don't see how the US (or anyone else) has the expertise necessary to fix this. What the US decided was that they would treat acts of terrorism by citizens in foreign nations as acts of war by those nations, if it is the case that the US doesn't think that the foreign nation did enough to fight terrorism. This doesn't mean that the US is going to invade France because they let an obvious whacko with explosives onto an American Airlines plane in Paris, but instead that the US reserves the right to topple governments that do too little (in the US' view) on diminishing terrorism on their soil. In my view, that's all that the US can do. It isn't possible for her to solve the world's problems (particularly with advice, money and bombs). Breaking things is a hell of a lot easier than building them back up. I get tired of the people who would point out the fact that this is a self-serving foreign policy. Every other nation has an entirely self-serving foreign policy, and if they had the ability to topple governments from 10000 miles away they'd be out there doing it too. Re: "How will the increasingly globally dominant USA ..." I disagree with the premise. The US had a very much higher percentage of world production in 1946 than it does now. The US proportion of world power has been steadily eroding since then. What has changed is not that the US has become "globally dominant", what has changed is that the globe has changed in such a way that it now recognizes the (diminished) US for its leadership. What's changed is not that the US has become dominant, so much as Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia, and most of the 3rd world has become democratic. The democracies have a long history of not fighting each other as much as non democracies. The demise of Communism left only one superpower standing, but the US' power does not come from its economic or even its military strength. US military strength, as a percentage of total world military strength (as measured in dollars spent per year, ratio to total world military spending), is probably at a 50-year low. What has changed is that the US' traditional enemy, Communism, (and before that Fascism and Monarchy) collapsed. Most of the world has accepted democracy as the only legitimate permanent self government. Even military dictators come into power while issuing promises of free elections. This is not what the situation was like in 1933 or 1966. Given that Democracy is the only accepted legitimate permanent government, the leadership of the US is natural, in that it is the most powerful of the democracies. Fukuyama says that Democracy has no internal contradictions. In that I am in disagreement, (and in agreement with you, I suppose). One of the worst internal contradictions of Democracy is the ability of factions to vote themselves power and wealth at the expense of others. Maybe this contradiction will be resolved in another form of government, but if it does it's not likely to be a form that will be what we expect. During the age of Monarchy, the concept of Democracy eventually controlling the world would have seemed absolutely corrupt in the worst way. If I had to make a guess for the next system of government, the one that resolves the internal contradictions of Democracy, I would guess that it will have something to do with (international) corporations. (God forbid.) Re: " Will aliens have rights or simply be disposed of by 60% military tribunal?" There is no realistic threat of this becoming a problem. It makes a great subject to make empty political arguments over, but the fact is that, as a practical matter, our government will only be able to make military tribunals work in cases where the citizenry is already 90% in favor of simply executing the bastards. Under that circumstance, letting the military do the trials is probably a kindness to the accused. Already statistics have been published showing that US military courts have a lower conviction rate than civilian courts. Becoming a US citizen (and avoiding the military stuff) is pretty simple. You memorize a few fun facts that are probably already well known in the better read parts of the world, hold your hand up and take an oath. Then you get various dubious privileges, such as that of paying taxes to the IRS no matter where you move, etc. -- Carl