"Installing democracies may not work without prior ..." Topic

…cultural shifts

"When the United States invaded Iraq in the early 2000s, President George W. Bush pledged to turn the autocratic nation into a democracy. "Iraqi democracy will succeed, and that success will send forth the news from Damascus to Tehran that freedom can be the future of every nation," Bush said in a speech in November 2003.

The idea that installing a democracy in a country causes a populace to embrace democratic values, such as respecting the rights and freedoms of all people, has often influenced the foreign policy decisions of the United States and other countries. Yet a recent study of the attitudes of almost 500,000 individuals worldwide suggests that Bush and others have that equation backwards. Such interventions will likely fail unless a country's citizens have already adopted values that accompany democracy, researchers report December 2 in Nature Human Behaviour…"
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Amicalement
Armand

No kidding.

Never works,,

Apr 2003, Basrah Military Hospital, a Sandhurst and Shrivenham ex Iraqi Colonel asked me "What is this democracy you are bringing us?" – It was a question I could not answer,

Tally Ho!

Duh…

I believe the opposite is true. In order to instill democracy in a country it has to be occupied, run, and made safe for a generation. We did it in Japan, Germany, and South Korea. The problem this time was that we tried to do it too fast and on the cheap. Anyone with a knowledge of history could have predicted this.

Really??????????

I agree with Dn Jackson. We turned over control in the ME waaaay, waaaaaaay, to early, though they may still have been lost causes anyway, due to the more tribal nature of those societies compared to the others we successfully aided after WWII.

To Dn Jackson's "occupied, run, and made safe for a generation", I would add:

a population that

accepts that their own actions got them into the situation

And

that will let their children be educated to want a democratic social contract

Which we more or less had in Dn Jackson's examples

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

… but "inside every Iraqi there is an American trying to get out"! Democracy is universal and inevitable. You just gotta have faith.

Dn Jackson, there was actually a democratic revolution in South Korea in 1987! The country was a dictatorship up to then and Uncle Sam supported it.

Democracy was introduced in Japan in 1948 and first post occupation elections in 1952.

In West Germany the first elections were held in 1949.

So much for occupying the country for a generation.

And then Iraq and Afghanistan:

Afghanistan: conquered 2001, first elections 2004, current status: government losing control of country

Iraq: conquered 2003, first elections 2005. current status: country torn asunder with Kurdish element running its own state.

Japan and Germany were largely culturally hegemonic countries, major powers, reasonably educated and reasonably developed with well developed if corrupted civil society and institutions.

Iraq and Afghanistan are fake countries – ethnically and religiously fragmented, no civil society, not well developed, not well educated.

Japan and Germany were already industrialized countries with well educated populations. It was just a matter of rebuilding their economies and establishing democratic institutions after WWII.

Iraq's various ethnic groups were forced to coexist in relative peace by a dictator in a secular regime, until the US decided to force-feed democracy down the country's throat and make a mess of things. What about Libya? See above.

Afghanistan has never been and perhaps never will be anything more than a godforsaken hellhole characterized by primitive tribalism and religious extremism. If there's ever a "country" that's ungovernable, it would be on top of the list.

We still have troops in Japan and Germany. The elections after the war were 'guided' by the US.

We supported a lot of dictatorships from the 40s to the 90s. In virtually every case they became functioning democracies.

Dn Jackson is right. We stayed in Japan and Germany and made sure things went as expected. I also think we gave sovereignty back to Iraq and Afghans far too soon.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

Load of codswallop. By that definition Saudi Arabia or Bahrain or Qatar should be democracies instead of fundamentalist dictatorships where they practice virtual slavery – US troops have been there on and off for 30 years. And Turkey is backslipping into dictatorship despite US bases being there for decades.

Thailand falls in and put of dictatorship despite US troops being present there for many years and the Philippines where US troops spent nearly a whole century and then came back in recent times is largely a dysfunctional chaotic place where now vigilantes endorsed by President Duterte have murdered thousands upon thousands in extrajudicial killings.

Anyone that thinks US troops = democracy is delusional.

But if you are happy to have young Americans dying or having their limbs ripped off in IED explosions so Afghans can have "democracy" whilst cops in America murder American citizens by standing on their necks for 9 minutes whilst your healthcare system becomes increasingly third world and your country dies a slow death then fine.

Another big difference with Germany and Japan is that both of those countries were soundly defeated at the conclusion of WWII. I'm not just talking their leadership and military, but the entire civilian population was crippled by massive bombing campaigns on their industry infrastructure and thus knew they were truly defeated. Contrast that with the precision air strikes in the Gulf war which tried to avoid collateral damage. Germany and Japan were at rock bottom by the end of the war. There societies had also been more homogeneous then Iraq with its many factions fighting a thousand year old religious schism. So in some ways it was easier for Germany and Japan to make a fresh start. Also many errors in post Iraq management. Firing the entire Sunni Iraqi army was a mistake. It led to complete lawlessness and a newly unemployed and pissed off military now with time on their hands to form ISIS.

+ 1 arealdeadone

firing the entire Sunni Iraqi army was a mistake.

I agree it probably would have helped nullify the Sunni insurgency.

But that army and the government as a whole had no influence in Kurdish north and little control over the Shia south.

I suspect this would not have changed if Hussein's army survived.

The problem with Iraq is that it is actually 3 separate peoples. It should be 3 separate countries but the world is unwilling to move on from those ill-conceived early 20th century mapping exercises, themselves based on Ottoman organisations with no basis in reality.

Thus Iraq as a concept is doomed from the start.

Same with Afghanistan and its 4 major and multiple minor ethnic groups and Shia minority.

Same with Libya and its numerous tribal groupings with a major divide between eastern Cyrenaica and western Tripolitania.

Same with a myriad of other countries whose sole raison d'etre are lines drawn on a map by long dead Europeans.

Germany and Japan were both democratic before being taking over by fascist/militaristic regimes. Japan was relatively democratic in the 1920s as was the Weimar Republic.

It's much harder to establish democratic institutions from scratch and I contend this was never the intention in Afghanistan or Iraq. It was an afterthought in both cases.