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

To: JohnM who wrote (19898)	2/24/2002 10:29:07 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Robert Kaplan's topic, whether democracy is always the right cure in something called "failed states." Certainly there's a logic behind Kaplan's arguments against involving undeveloped countries to quickly with the mechanisms of democratic government... But what's more important is that the power brokers in the country must be willing to come together to form the foundation upon which the future of the country will be based, such as a national constitution and the structure of the governmental checks and balances between various elements within that government. Offering the current leaders, no matter how bombastic and nasty they actually are, a place in history as a founder of their reconstituted nation (in exchange for abiding by what is created), is very important to creating the basis for government. And those who don't want to willingly participate, have to be either neutralized, or accomodated in other ways. And in the case of Afghanistan, where they aren't necessarily living on a frontier, or expanding their territory as the US did in its early history, forced disarmament of tribal militias is probably required to some extent, or converting soldiers into some semblance of a police force (with national supervision). But there's no doubt about it, it will take a long time, especially when one tribe may feel they are more "afghani" than their rival tribes. And it's why establishing peace and democracy in the nation will require a heavy committment in peace keeping forces. Hawk

To: JohnM who wrote (19898)	2/24/2002 11:03:56 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

Last semester for a graduate level history class on Depression era films my term paper topic was images of fascism in American Depression era films. Did quite a bit of research on fascism, especially American fascism, and came across a great argument that fascism never arose in countries which were not democratic. It was always voted in. Which is true. Why? My take on it is that American fascism is an extremist outgrowth of populism, and a natural development of extending the voting franchise to non-elite white men in the 19th century. As our Ray never tires of pointing out, globalization (read immigration for the 19th-early 20th century) benefits the elites more than those at the bottom of the ladder, who are forced to compete (then) with recent immigrants who may not have been 100% Amurricans but were better educated and/or better trained and/or willing to work for less, and (now) forced to compete with the same people overseas. Given the vote, isn't it natural that they would try to make "America for Americans" and "Germany for Germans"?