{"id":3380,"date":"2014-05-27T22:37:37","date_gmt":"2014-05-27T19:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/?p=3380"},"modified":"2017-11-14T21:28:11","modified_gmt":"2017-11-14T19:28:11","slug":"democracy-aint-always-a-good-export-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/democracy-aint-always-a-good-export-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Democracy ain\u2019t always a good export"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"China now exports money.\u00a0 Russia exports gas and oil.\u00a0 The Netherlands sends millions of flowers abroad every day.\u00a0 And, more than occasionally, America tries to export democracy.\u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
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The tension over sending democracy abroad has been measured in terms of George Washington\u2019s pragmatism versus Woodrow Wilson\u2019s idealism, the latter elevated to grander status by Jack Kennedy\u2019s solemn commitment to \u201cpay any price and bear any burden\u201d to defend freedom and liberty. All modern American presidents have paid at least lip service to defending freedom and democracy and more than a few have threatened or gone to war to uphold those principles.\u00a0 A searing question is with what effect?<\/span><\/div>\n
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For the first five or six decades of its existence, Americans went west not to spread democracy to the Indians but to settle and colonize the continent.\u00a0 Missionaries preached the gospel as far as China but not Jeffersonian democracy.\u00a0 The Spanish-American War of 1898 left the U.S. with colonies politely called \u201cpossessions\u201d in the Pacific and Caribbean that took years to mature beyond fledgling outposts for creating democracy.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Woodrow Wilson\u2019s aspiration to make the world safe for democracy was overwhelmed by two world wars and a cold one.\u00a0 Fortunately, Franklin Roosevelt and then Harry Truman were determined not to repeat the folly of the allies in pauperizing the Kaiser\u2019s Germany after World War I.\u00a0 With the Marshall Plan and benign occupations, Nazi Germany and Fascist Japan and Italy became functioning democracies—it took South Korea two decades longer.\u00a0 But at what cost?<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Hundreds of millions perished or suffered in that war.\u00a0 Countless treasure was spent.\u00a0 Germany and Japan were physically destroyed—and lay helpless and hopeless subject to the victors\u2019 whim.\u00a0 These were one off conditions unlikely ever to be repeated.\u00a0 However, the successes in winning the war and the peace probably convinced many in America\u2019s so-called \u201cgreatest generation\u201d that spreading democracy was noble, viable and practical.\u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Yet, the reality of containing the Soviet Union tempered the thirst for setting democracy among the highest foreign policy priorities.\u00a0 The U.S. willingly embraced and supported despots and dictators who were prepared to stand with Washington against Moscow.\u00a0 That preference still exists particularly in the Middle East and Persian Gulf where Islamic radicalism has replaced communism as a key danger.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Dwight Eisenhower knew better than to challenge Soviet armed intervention into Hungary and Poland in 1956 that repressed the attempted revolutions, relying instead on toppling governments unfriendly to America in Latin America and Iran.\u00a0 It took Ike\u2019s successor, JFK, to cast the jungles, highlands and rice paddies of Vietnam as the battleground for freedom and democracy.\u00a0 Unfortunately, transitioning from colonial rule to the ballot box as the basis for political power proved far more difficult than anticipated especially when North Vietnam had a vote and, as it turned out, the<\/b> vote.\u00a0 58,000 dead Americans and countless Vietnamese casualties later, American intervention turned into a disastrous lost crusade.<\/span><\/div>\n
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The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was a singular triumph, miraculously achieved short of a third world war.\u00a0 The former Eastern bloc of Iron Curtain states would become part of George H.W. Bush\u2019s vision of a Europe \u201cwhole and free.\u201d\u00a0 Of course, each of these former Soviet satellites had long experience with democratic traditions and the rule of law.\u00a0 This transition was not achieved by American export of democracy.\u00a0 Rather, each country was the engine and mechanism for the self-imposition of democracy.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
The ill-advised and ill-fated interventions into Afghanistan and Iraq remain testimonies to the folly of trying to impose democracies on cultures and conditions where that simply could never work.\u00a0 When Vladimir Putin seized Crimea, the U.S. predictably reacted with shock, surprise and outrage.\u00a0 However, and despite elections, Ukraine is not and probably never will be a real democracy in the American image.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Will future (and current) American politicians learn these realities?\u00a0 Of course it is essential to support human rights and the rule of law.\u00a0 Of course it is important to stand for liberty and freedom.\u00a0 However, exporting democracy as America has tried through several colossally failed military interventions into regions and cultures that reject such efforts will not work—unless the Nazi Germany and Fascist Japan model is used.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
George Washington got it right.\u00a0 While Wilson\u2019s idealism might apply in a near perfect world, that world is light years away.\u00a0 Beethoven who was deaf predicted that he would \u201chear in heaven.\u201d\u00a0 Democracy is the strength and salvation of many countries.\u00a0 But until we all \u201chear in heaven,\u201d we best be clever, careful and cautious in trying too hard to export it.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

China now exports money.\u00a0 Russia exports gas and oil.\u00a0 The Netherlands sends millions of flowers abroad every day.\u00a0 And, more than occasionally, America tries to export democracy.\u00a0 \u00a0 The tension over sending democracy abroad has been measured in terms of George Washington\u2019s pragmatism versus Woodrow Wilson\u2019s idealism, the latter elevated to grander status by Jack Kennedy\u2019s solemn commitment to \u201cpay any price and bear any burden\u201d to defend freedom and liberty. All modern American presidents have paid at least lip service to defending freedom and democracy and more than a few have threatened or gone to war to uphold those principles.\u00a0 A searing question is with what effect? \u00a0 For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,65,81,76,102,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-americas","category-blog-en","category-democracy-human-rights","category-harlan-ullman-en","category-issues","category-regions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3381,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3380\/revisions\/3381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}