2020-07-03
Democratic Imperialism
With the aid of a geostrategy roleplay (see here) I have been able to bounce ideas off people and gauge reactions.
First of all, there are people in every country in the world, who will respond "yes" to the question "do you support the use of force to spread democracy?". These are "democratic imperialists". It is an ideology. These people (like myself) care little (morally) about national boundaries. They see individuals yearning to vote rather than respecting dictators.
There are other people who have a different worldview, and are violently (sometimes literally) opposed to using force to spread democracy. You can see examples of this worldview (France, Spain, Tibet). You can try to debate with this worldview, to try to get them to switch over to your side, but you are unlikely to be successful. Alternatively you can simply go to war with them over this issue (the equivalent of murdering an individual whose worldview you dislike). This enables you to change the education system to teach children how horrible the leader was for holding such a horrible worldview.
In the 2003 Iraq war, there were multiple countries (and individuals) involved, many of whom were at least partially driven by the ideology of democratic imperialism. But the French government opposed this action, making them anti-democratic imperialism. The French could have actually felt so strongly about the issue that they would send the French military to protect Saddam's dictatorship. In the game, France was actually willing to protect Hitler! In real life, France just voiced its opinion rather than sending its military, or arms, or even nukes, to Saddam. We were very lucky about that. But in the game, France is far worse.
Either way, if the US (or UK) got really pissed off by France's anti-democratic imperialism, it could have lashed out at France, and invaded. At that point, the US is acting as an anti-anti-democratic imperialist. If at that point, if Poland (which supported democratic imperialism in Iraq, as one of the coalition members), thought that France had a right to (say) verbally oppose the Iraq intervention decided to defend France from US aggression, it would be acting as an anti-anti-anti-democratic imperialist.
Note that dictators can choose to ally themselves with any of these movements, e.g. if Tunisia hated France because of their imperial past, they could join with the Americans to attack France, even though they're not actually anti-anti-democratic imperialist per se.
These were the fault-lines in 2003 Iraq, and this is what political science should teach, instead of teaching lies that this was a resource war and that the US wanted to steal Iraq's oil.
P.S. Note that democratic nations can't say this out loud, because otherwise they will get a hostile alliance of dictators allied against them, as actually happened in the game here and here.
P.P.S. To provide a framework for others to understand, this is basically "Democratic Peace Theory", with the incentive for war being to increase the number of democracies in the world.
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First of all, there are people in every country in the world, who will respond "yes" to the question "do you support the use of force to spread democracy?". These are "democratic imperialists". It is an ideology. These people (like myself) care little (morally) about national boundaries. They see individuals yearning to vote rather than respecting dictators.
There are other people who have a different worldview, and are violently (sometimes literally) opposed to using force to spread democracy. You can see examples of this worldview (France, Spain, Tibet). You can try to debate with this worldview, to try to get them to switch over to your side, but you are unlikely to be successful. Alternatively you can simply go to war with them over this issue (the equivalent of murdering an individual whose worldview you dislike). This enables you to change the education system to teach children how horrible the leader was for holding such a horrible worldview.
In the 2003 Iraq war, there were multiple countries (and individuals) involved, many of whom were at least partially driven by the ideology of democratic imperialism. But the French government opposed this action, making them anti-democratic imperialism. The French could have actually felt so strongly about the issue that they would send the French military to protect Saddam's dictatorship. In the game, France was actually willing to protect Hitler! In real life, France just voiced its opinion rather than sending its military, or arms, or even nukes, to Saddam. We were very lucky about that. But in the game, France is far worse.
Either way, if the US (or UK) got really pissed off by France's anti-democratic imperialism, it could have lashed out at France, and invaded. At that point, the US is acting as an anti-anti-democratic imperialist. If at that point, if Poland (which supported democratic imperialism in Iraq, as one of the coalition members), thought that France had a right to (say) verbally oppose the Iraq intervention decided to defend France from US aggression, it would be acting as an anti-anti-anti-democratic imperialist.
Note that dictators can choose to ally themselves with any of these movements, e.g. if Tunisia hated France because of their imperial past, they could join with the Americans to attack France, even though they're not actually anti-anti-democratic imperialist per se.
These were the fault-lines in 2003 Iraq, and this is what political science should teach, instead of teaching lies that this was a resource war and that the US wanted to steal Iraq's oil.
P.S. Note that democratic nations can't say this out loud, because otherwise they will get a hostile alliance of dictators allied against them, as actually happened in the game here and here.
P.P.S. To provide a framework for others to understand, this is basically "Democratic Peace Theory", with the incentive for war being to increase the number of democracies in the world.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 21:22 
