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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (20136)	6/1/2006 3:50:23 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541299

Just because a thing is already there, doesn't mean releasing it is a good idea either. The thesis is that democracy can make the world a more dangerous place. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Depends what kind of world you want. I'd prefer not to have ethnic hatreds released, at least not by our own hands. If people free themselves, and release their own ethnic hatreds, and civil wars, fine and dandy- their choice. But it's not in the US best interest to go around doing that, nor is it necessarily in the interest of the societies we practice on- as the mounting death toll in Iraq should tell us. Had the Iraqis chosen to export freedom to themselves, and then start killing each other, that's their call. For us to do it- stupid. The book isn't saying democracy is a bad thing- it's much more complicated than that.

To: Ilaine who wrote (20136)	6/1/2006 4:48:02 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541299

Interesting comment, CB. It's been sometime since I read that book so I may misstate parts of the thesis. I don't recall she argues that either free markets or democracy (somewhat different things) should not be introduced in countries. But rather that they are not unalloyed goods. Their introduction produces unancticipated consequences, one of which is releasing previously suppressed ethnic conflicts. And since ethnic angers always exist in a stratified way, frequently along class lines, that conflict runs its away along the fault lines of wealth as well. I read it more as an attempt to do two things. First, to make certain the histories of the rise of free markets and democracy don't suppress the actual history of the violence and ethnic conflict which it includes. And, second, to puncture the balloons of pollyannish policy makers who don't keep the whole picture in mind.