Was Paul Wolfowitz right about democracy in the Middle East?
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  Was Paul Wolfowitz right about democracy in the Middle East?
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Author Topic: Was Paul Wolfowitz right about democracy in the Middle East?  (Read 452 times)
All Along The Watchtower
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« on: January 25, 2022, 04:04:59 AM »

Yes. Iraqis have a robust, if deeply messy and at times violent democratic political culture, in spite of everything. The strongman apologists were proven wrong, and that was even more obvious during the Arab Spring.

It has taken deliberate, organized, and ongoing anti-democratic actions by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, Iran, Russia, among others along with the rise of jihadist groups in certain power vacuums and sectarianized conflicts (encouraged by anti-democratic state actors of course) to snuff out much of the democratic aspirations and even progress made in the Middle East within the past two decades. But saying the Arab Spring or Iraqi democracy “failed” is like saying Reconstruction in the American South failed—no it did not fail, it was ruthlessly snuffed out by political actors who had everything to lose.
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Blue3
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« Reply #1 on: January 25, 2022, 05:25:57 AM »

Wolfowitz obviously thought that it would be strong enough to overcome being “snuffed out” to use your words. So he was wrong.

Also, unfortunately, the Arab Spring 10 years on is pretty much a bloody failure everywhere except Tunisia.
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Person Man
Angry_Weasel
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« Reply #2 on: January 27, 2022, 11:58:50 AM »

He will eventually be right. I have no idea how that region survives without developing beyond their natural resource economy and then how they even develop without allowing for some rule of law. Maybe it can only happen organically and in the course of 100 years instead of purely violently over the course of 10.
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Blue3
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« Reply #3 on: January 29, 2022, 06:57:30 PM »

He will eventually be right. I have no idea how that region survives without developing beyond their natural resource economy and then how they even develop without allowing for some rule of law. Maybe it can only happen organically and in the course of 100 years instead of purely violently over the course of 10.
...Then he is wrong...
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PSOL
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« Reply #4 on: February 01, 2022, 02:41:09 PM »

The proxy government established in Iraq was not a democracy, and a true democratic system in the mold of a liberal one requires for the opposing elite structures to view that engaging in such a system is worth it than mass fighting to be put into place.
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