Both right?
This opinion peice in TimesOnline is worth reading in full, but I want to talk a bit about the final conclusion:
That, then, is the neocon case. There can only be peace between peaceable democracies. Name me a war between two democracies. Name me a truly peace-loving dictatorship.To all this the critics have a ready response. The West, they say, cannot force a country to be a democracy. We can’t simply march in with guns and tell other countries how to live their lives. Even if this was moral, it wouldn’t work. How many Iraq debacles do you neocons need to have, before you understand? We have to negotiate, say these critics, with the forces that are there.
This poses as a refutation of neocon thinking, but really it isn’t. For there is this frightening possibility – we neocons argue that only democracies make peace, and our critics respond that we can’t easily create democracies. What if we’re both right?
I have certainly worried about this for a while. As of yet I am not convinced that force can’t be used to allow (not force) democratic development. Obviously this is a difficult thing to accomplish and it is equally obvious that we don’t know very well how to do it. For me that is a reason to stay in Iraq, rather then a reason to leave.
There is on bit that I add into the ‘both right’ analysis above. Technological advancement is making greater destruction availible with less rescources. This is the ugly downside of globalization and productivity increases. As it continues to accellerate, those who are periferal to the conflicts between totalitarian states will be in greater and greater danger. If we can’t effectively promote democracy, we will eventually be forced to choose between destruction and commiting genocide. Since those options are obviously unpalatable, any hope to aviod them seems good to me.
