3 ms·

This ignores that during the Cold War there were more than just "democratic and communist governments". There were also plenty of military dictatorships, autho

• macspoofing 7y ago
  >This ignores that during the Cold War there were more than just "democratic and communist governments". Yes. The original label of the 'Third World' was applied to non-aligned nations. Those nations were still influenced by the global order created by US and Soviets, and later just the US. >There were also plenty of military dictatorships, authoritarian one-party-states and theocracies, and a fair share of those were firmly in the USA's sphere of influence. That's right, and not the point. The initial state of the world (for our purposes, let's start with the period between WWI and WWII but the earlier you go the more it reinforces my position) did not begin with all democracies. It began with a tiny number of democracies[1]. In the posted link you can see we went from democracies representing between 5% and 10% of world governments to more than half. Don't tell me it just so happens to be that the world adopted the political system of the major super-power. You can also look at it another way, America will exert strong pressure for democracy and market-based economy but it may not succeed and sometimes practical considerations take precedence (like the fact that the nation was locked in an existential struggle with the Soviet superpower - which had no qualms in pushing their ideology on the non-aligned world) [1] https://ourworldindata.org/democracy https://ourworldindata.org/democracy