Quote:
Originally posted by j8ear
Isreal. South Korea. Japan. Great Britian for goodness sakes. All of them have been effected by the US brand of democracy. Russia is coming along. Slowly but surely. Most of the Eastern Bloc of Europe is well along the way. There is progress still to be realized, but make no mistake, progress has been made. Democracies are emerging ALL OVER THE WORLD as a direct result of US involvement.
I am very serious though about bringing it (them, us, the world) past oil. Everyone must realize this. As our dependancy on it increases, its abundance decreases. Doesn't anyone else see this as dangerous? Those we (the US) interact with must also realize this and move themselves beyond OIL as a profitable source of domestic product.
I'm not sure what creating a democracy for the sake of creating a democracy means. Nor frankly do I understand the comment about real politik? (is that some veiled allusion to a communist state)
To me Sparhawk (or is that Superbelt?) is up in arms because the US gets in bed (again ~sigh~) with despotic regimes in the hopes of oil. Rightfully so. I'm kind of up in arms myself. But what the fuzuck...it happens. It will happen. This is because of the US first, world second mentality that exists from the US. Hopefully EVERY country has their own version of this exact same foriegn policy. Use your might, if you have any, to do good things. I think, by and large, the US, GWB included are doing good things. Improving the world.
GWB has his own demons elsewhere. Domestically. He is busting the treasury big time, and eroding the very liberties he swears to expose the world to. This will ultimately prove his achilles heel.
over,
bear
|
Here's my concern with what you're proposing.
Basically, real politik is the practical implementation of realism. It's how states who subscribe to realist principles practice politics. You're obviously a believer because your comments on "US first, World second" is exactly what realism is all about. A state's interests are of paramount importance, and whatever means is necessary to meet those interests is justified.
With this in mind, you can see how I'm skeptical about the good deeds the US touts it's doing. This is because there's no room for allocating resources to something that isn't going to further their interests. That's what I mean "democracy for the sake of democracy". The US couldn't care less about nations being democratic, as long as the current government (whatever it is) stays in line with US interests. Saddam stayed in line for a long time, and as soon as he stepped too far he was eliminated. Now, he could have been taken out after the first Gulf War, when his own people were rising up, but the US left them to be slaughtered. Why? Because, as I said earlier, the US couldn't control a bottom-up reformatting of the Iraqi political system. It wasn't in its interests.
Realism is pretty much the rule of the day at this point. Democracies are created by accident as the side-effect of something else, or because they'd be more compliant than what is currently in power.
SLM3