Encouraging Democracy

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Why doesn't the West tell Iraq that if it becomes a functioning and stable democracy, it can develop WMDs as much as it likes!

Also, does the concept of 'deterrence' have any meaning nowadays?

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 07:48 (twenty-three years ago)

chile...

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 07:55 (twenty-three years ago)

(ok i spose that was during the cold war so there were other "issues" apart from "functioning and stable democracy")

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 07:58 (twenty-three years ago)

(Mark my qn is not serious really - its just a way of asking about the conditions under which 'we' tolerate WMD development)

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 08:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Can we discuss whether WarGames was pro disarmament or was the ultimate Mutually Assured Anxiety showcase?

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 08:01 (twenty-three years ago)

the issue is, who is "we", as usual: i've always maintained that bush snr was — in part, there are many other factors — an electoral casualty of the justification rhetoric before and during the (first) Gulf War: internal US support was gathered on the promise that Something Was Being Done abt this Evil Anti-Democrat (saddam i mean)... and then suddenly nothing *was* done.

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 08:09 (twenty-three years ago)

"We" = 1. Our elected governments. 2. Us (i.e. individually)

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 08:13 (twenty-three years ago)

it seems to me that one of the great embedded promises in modern western life (made by 1 to 2 over the last 50 years) is that, if only the russians [etc etc]. then freedom and peace and justice and democratic prosperity wd be available for all, worldwide, hurrah: promises can and are often broken, but they're never broken w/o cost

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 08:23 (twenty-three years ago)

One thing I had hoped would be done with this (hopefully permenantly postponed) war and was disappointed didn't occur with the Gulf War is that the U.S. (or, ahem, the U.N.) didn't establish a democracy in the mideast (outside of Israel or "Egypt"). Iraq was understandable, but simply restoring the monarchy in Kuwait was inexcusable, convenience and alliances be damned. One negative of the creeping isolationism in American policy (which you can tie back to the end of the Cold War, Vietnam, who know's maybe even Korea) is that while their isn't a greater reluctance to use force - we'll gladly kick ass, name the time and place - there is a greater reluctance to do the 'nation building' (and note how even that term is almost always used as a negative) that is necessary afterwards (even the presence of American troops in Bosnia how many years after is more a result of bureaucratic inertia than any actual policy. See also: Korea). In the past the notion of spreading democracy was understood to not only be consistent with American ideals but vital to American security. Now stability and closure seem to be the highest priorities, which is why ten years after the Gulf War almost nothing has been resolved.

― James Blount (James Blount), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 08:30 (twenty-three years ago)

the largely uncritical acceptance of the general goal of 'regime change' speaks volumes as to how not-on-the-table democracy in iraq is. mind you, this should not be surprising -- we're still on very cosy terms with musharraf, who has just handed himself some more (ahem) extrajudicial powers and is, frankly, well on the way to emulating hussein in many respects.

maybe he would be a good person to ask how much meaning 'deterrence' has nowadays. or kim chong-il -- don't see bush beating a path to his door.

― mbosa, Tuesday, 17 September 2002 08:44 (twenty-three years ago)

"the largely uncritical acceptance of the general goal of 'regime change' speaks volumes as to how not-on-the-table
democracy in iraq is": i don't understand this => do you mean, the fact that people in the west think saddam should go means they have zero interest in the desires of the iraqi people?

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 08:50 (twenty-three years ago)

Well again, that's because we're right outside it (N. Korea's door that is). In that matter I'd say Bush has beaten too much of a path (forgive me for straining a metaphor poorly); there was genuine progress being made very late in Clinton term 2 (remember the all the symbolic gestures at the Sydney Olympics), and Bush tossed it aside to decry a dictatorship that was ready to throw it in. Musharraf is troubling, but hardly, alas, inconsistent with America's tendency toward choosing horrible bedmates in the mideast. Short-term stability over long-term good.

― James Blount (James Blount), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 08:56 (twenty-three years ago)

mark s: not at all. but the term 'regime change' not only immediately calls to mind the ousting of hussein (which is what i think people like about it), it also implicitly makes clear that what is expected to emerge is another regime.

this is why i think getting it to be more or less uncritically accepted across the board is, in fact, quite an accomplishment, but by no means an unusual one.

― mbosa, Tuesday, 17 September 2002 09:00 (twenty-three years ago)

as a matter of interest, who here thinks the cold war status quo was BETTER than what we currently have (ok, this is a new thread)

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 09:01 (twenty-three years ago)

cold war thread

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 09:05 (twenty-three years ago)

"the term 'regime change' not only immediately calls to mind the ousting of hussein (which is what i think people like about it), it also implicitly makes clear that what is expected to emerge is another regime." - show me one pro-regime change editorial where this is remotely implied. The model for post-Saddam Iraq has been left far too vague, but I certainly don't think simply putting another thug in place would wash.

― James Blount (James Blount), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 09:13 (twenty-three years ago)

james -- i kinda took n. korea's inclusion in the axis of evil to be bush hedging his bets in the long-term national enemy (that isn't china) stakes. iraq (best-case at time of the speech) maybe could be 'settled' within a year; iran is an enigma as far as us intel goes -- it might even implode on its own at some point for all the cia know.

ergo, n. korea should see me through at least this term, bush thinks, if the other two turn out to be paper tigers. and considering that, domestically, he was always going to need an ass-kicking foreign policy, i think it was a fairly cautious tactic.

but i honestly don't think bush, as crazy as he is, would beat the drum for n. korea the way he's doing for iraq right now.

― mbosa, Tuesday, 17 September 2002 09:18 (twenty-three years ago)

Sure we should encourage democracy. And we should begin by doing that at home ... see Bush v. Gore, John Asscrotch, and Stupid's saber-rattling rhetoric.

― Tad (llamasfur), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 09:22 (twenty-three years ago)

i was under the impression that 'regime change' was coined by the administration, not a journalist. is this not the case?

― mbosa, Tuesday, 17 September 2002 09:22 (twenty-three years ago)

North Korea's was included in the Axis of Evil so that it wouldn't be entirely comprised of Mideastern countries. I doubt if Bush has given North Korea more than two hour's thought since he took office. Also, North Korea's belligerence have been directed almost entirely at South Korea. And, there's hardly a sense of urgency to the Korean peninsula (the Mideast however remains forever sexy as a hotspot of fucked up chaos and misery).

― James Blount (James Blount), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 09:33 (twenty-three years ago)

North Korea's belligerence have been directed almost entirely at South Korea

well, they don't have much in the way of vulnerable neighbours ('china?' 'nope' 'russia?' 'nope' 'bugger...'). no, hang on, didn't they fire a 'test missile' over japan a little while ago?

as for a sense of urgency, it seemed pretty bloody urgent when they were a 'rogue nation' developing long-range rocketry to deliver nukes to the west coast. or did they postpone that program out of respect to the us' diverted attention? maybe sdi can be cancelled after all...

mmm... chaos and misery... [/gurgle]

― mbosa, Tuesday, 17 September 2002 10:00 (twenty-three years ago)

not to hold c.hitchens up as any kind of angel of sense or consistency these days, but the trip to N.Korea he wrote up in vanity fair abt 14 months ago (?from memory?) painted a picture of a nation for which the phrase "paper tiger" (GREAT phrase, incidentally: is it Chinese, like "running dog"?) is way overstating the threat. If the NKs cd deliver ONE functioning missile beyond their own borders w/o four falling short and obliterating four (well, two, let's say, since I doubt they wd all actually work at all) of their own huge, sad, concrete-dwarfed city populations, I'd be astonished. Not that I have anyone's ear that counts obv.

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 10:15 (twenty-three years ago)

i'd agree with all of that.

but it's my understanding that most cold war-era nuclear missiles were known to be of limited reliability (maybe they still are) and it didn't seem to diminish the undesirability of catalysing an attack then. sure, there's the issue of scale but i doubt the japanese would afford themselves such a detached perspective. and it's not like n. korea is known for concern for its own population so you wouldn't want to push your luck without compelling reasons.

all i'm saying is that (a) bush needs a steady source of warmongering in his portfolio (b) iraq and iran are better suited to the war-on-terrorism zeitgeist but (c) they may fall too quickly so better keep n. korea on the backburner and (d) the nuke factor gives them (n. korea) undoubted potential longevity as national enemies. oh, and they're good to have around to talk up star wars as well.

i'm not particularly invested in this theory, btw. it's just the impression i got at the time of the speech and i haven't really considered how it could use revising / wasn't right in the first place.

― mbosa, Tuesday, 17 September 2002 10:43 (twenty-three years ago)

Two types of people can have "weapons of mass destruction":

i) us and our pals

ii) people with so many "weapons of mass destruction" that if we tried it on with them they would destroy us.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 11:11 (twenty-three years ago)

do you ever get the idea that "weapons of mass destruction" are somewhat less than massively destroying? my suspicion is that a SCUD carrying a nervegas warhead would kill considerably less people than died when the USA dropped that bomb into that air raid shelter in the last gulf war.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 12:56 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't know - ask a Kurd.

― James Blount (James Blount), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 12:59 (twenty-three years ago)

didn't it turn out that *all* of the israel-aimed iraqi SCUDs got through in 1990? (ie not just one, as was i think claimed at the time?) => on-ground damage-diff between all-but-one being shot down and none being shot down = negligable?

i am suspicious of claims for technology at the best of times (three of the new-ish macs at work just gave up the ghost in the same week, and the fkn A3 PRINTER drives me totally fkn insane) but weapons tech is by its nature generally untried in war conditions (some ppl argue that the two reasons the US lost in vietnam = M16s and helicopter gunships)

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 17 September 2002 13:03 (twenty-three years ago)

"functioning and stable democracy"...."functioning and stable democracy"?!!!! ROFLMAO No such beast ma'dear. Direct democracy cannot possibly function and the representative variety is inherently unstable. And last time i checked, appealing to platonic ideals doesn't work all that well. Why don't "we" just come out with it and tell "them" that "they" can have all the atom bombs that "they" want, as long as "they" stay on the side of god while we're at it. geez, the impertinance of some idealists. :)

― , Tuesday, 17 September 2002 15:44 (twenty-three years ago)

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