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

To: JohnM who wrote (20066)	2/26/2002 1:07:06 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 281500

Best I can guess that argument will hinge on a benevolent dictatorship. No such beast ever existed. By definition a dictator must dictate their beliefs over those of others, which at the very least is intellectual oppression, but generally results in dissidents, political prisoners, censorship, and midnight "disappearances". Such is the way of the world when power is established and maintained through the barrel of a gun, or the state security apparatus. Some folks call Pinochet a "benevolent dictator", and in some ways that could be counted as a truthful statement since he, by his own admission, never claimed he would rule for the rest of his life, but only to restore social and economic order in Chile and to prevent what the Chilean military perceived as a communist plot to sieze control (rightly or wrongly). I'll offer no real opinion on Pinochet, other than to say that Chile came out of Pinochet's rule stronger than it went in, and more stable politically and economically. But he was a dictator, no doubt about it, and at times particularly brutal in maintaining that order. And contrary to popular belief, he was not one created by the US directly, but one who created himself while the US gave a "wink, wink, nudge, nudge", and didn't interfere (at least publicly). But back to the concept of limited democracy for newly established governments, I think it is implicit in the argument that there is a constant conflict between freedom and order. Freedom and democracy is what everyone wants to see established in developing nations, but there has to be a semblance of order and respect for the rights of each other, and understanding that compromise and tolerance is all important to making a society work. Thus, when social order breaks down, everyone thinks about their own rights as being more important than anyone else, and no one wants to compromise for the good of social stability. In these kinds of situations, sometimes a temporary dictatorship is all that stands between social disorder and complete social collapse. Hawk