Bush Pushing Global Democratic Revolution

[WMS]

Interesting discussion. I'll just say a few things:

If you follow those maps thefactor posted for the entire century, there's usually a cyclical pattern - the 1930-1945 period was bad, as was the 1970s, but each was in turn succeeded by more democratic swings. In each case there were some countries that survived the counter-swing, and slowly expanded the secure democratic sphere.

Any of you who genuinely want world peace should be supporting this idea, since - and political scientists have shown this - democratic countries are much more peaceful.
Summary of that:
Demos vs. Demos: extremely rare wars between then
Undemos vs Undemos: very common wars between them
Undemos vs Demos: very common wars between them

And Bush might be backing such a policy to some extent because letting states fester only breeds extremists who inevitably cause problems for us. People who aren't being oppressed don't tend to become terrorists, after all. There is a pragmatic side to this as well.

And as for what Frodo and Demo Hawk said: yes, the Democrats really need some new foreign policy ideas other that being against anything the Reps propose. I'm not sure the Dems even have a coherent foreign policy these days.

[WMS]

And as for what Frodo and Demo Hawk said: yes, the Democrats really need some new foreign policy ideas other that being against anything the Reps propose. I'm not sure the Dems even have a coherent foreign policy these days.

The Republicans have no clear plan, why should the Democrats have one?

I think Jake gave a good answer above. The Republicans have something of a plan (an interesting hybrid of traditional conservative realism and Wilsonian neoconservatism (Not a Typo)) which did provide a target for the Dems to attack last year - you knew what Bush was about, pretty much, like it or hate it (or both). It's a bit fuzzy in places. The Democrats seemed to me to be split between, well, Democratic Hawk said it first: the Trumanites and the McGovernites. They need to figure out what their party's foreign policy platform is going to be, one or the other...

[WMS]

The only problem with Bush's plan is it's a ridiculous head in the clouds fantasy, basically just like communism, it sounds good but it won't work.

All the proof we need there is no "spread of democracy" effect: Togo. It's still a horrendously authoritarian dictatorship and has been forever, yet it's right between Ghana and Benin, two of of the freest and most democratic countries in Africa.

and yet somehow Iraq is going to spread democracy to the Middle East. Give me a break.

Could be, but it's better than pure coddle-the-dictators realism (check out Nixon-Kissinger policy in the 1971 India-Pakistan War for an example of that *shudders*). It's a longshot, but so was containment. And I'm not sure what else the U.S. can really do.

Yeah, Togo is a mess. I wish the African Union had been more aggressive in policing the last election there.

And on a tangent, Iran will democratize once the masses rise up against the hard-line clerical regime...once they feel they have the power to do it, since the clerics control all the guns.