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Failed at installing democracies elsewhere? Aside from Afghanistan where has the US done that? More often the US has installed or propped up autocrats w/ varyin

Failed at installing democracies elsewhere? Aside from Afghanistan where has the US done that? More often the US has installed or propped up autocrats w/ varying degrees of success

reissbaker 3y ago
Japan, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine. Technically Iraq as well, although I don't think the Iraqis were particularly happy about that.
- cpursley 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - thephyber 3y ago
    Yes, the same Ukraine that is still actively at war for its existence after being invaded by a nuclear superpower. The capital is still being bombed, the democratically elected leadership is still under threat of assassination, so many of those infringements upon freedom are actually reasonable.
    - cpursley 3y ago
      Suspension of civil rights is NEVER okay in democratic societies. If you suspend them, you’re no longer democratic - Period.
      - nabakin 3y ago
        You don't seem to understand what an invasion does to a country. This is an existential fight. Any country fighting for swaths of its territory is forced into authoritarianism and hopefully bounces back once things stabilize, but don't blame them for trying to survive. Blame Russia for forcing this state of affairs.
      - smsm42 3y ago
        I share your disappointment at virtually every Western country no longer being democratic. Indeed, suppression of basic freedom of movement, speech, association, rights to earn one's living and even going as far as freezing one's assets and confining people to their homes, without them being convicted of any crime, proves conclusively countries like US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, etc. are no longer democracies. Ukraine would do well to follow example of democratic countries - but unfortunately, almost none left in existence.
      - mensetmanusman 3y ago
        So Marshall law means the US isn’t a democracy (which is true, being a republic)…
        thephyber 3y ago
        Democracy (as in will of the people) doesn’t really exist during wars on domestic soil. Martial Law declarations are at least the honest admission of that. And the democracy / republic pedantry is tiresome. We are a Democratic Republic (and also a Constitutional Republic). They are not mutually exclusive.
        dragonwriter 3y ago
        > And the democracy / republic pedantry is tiresome. We are a Democratic Republic We’re a functionally plutocratic federal republic with some very loosely representative-democratic elements. Ironically, as a result of federal rules imposed on the states but not on the federal government itself, like one-person, one-vote, the states, while still more than a little plutocratic in practice, do a better job of approximating representative democracy in their formal structures (and many also have elements of direct democracy.)
      - oneshtein 3y ago
        > Suspension of civil rights is NEVER okay in democratic societies. Except in case of war.
        cpursley 3y ago
        No, NEVER. The very point of civil rights is to protect citizens FROM their own government when times get tough.
        oneshtein 3y ago
        You are talking about liberal democracy, right? Because regular democracy doesn't contain this important bit. However, even in case of liberal democracy, there is exception from the rule in case of war, because SOMEONE WILL DIE ANYWAY. If you think that liberal government cannot send a men X to the front line, then government must sent a men Y, or accept that woman or children Z will die. Someone will die anyway. Moreover, if the men Y sent to front line where he can die from enemy action, or woman or children Z dies from enemy action, why the men X should be exempt from that?
      - cpursley 3y ago
        Oh, and I forgot they took full control over media and have greatly restricted speech.
        nabakin 3y ago
        Yes. As happens in every single existential war because it is necessary to survive. It is truly a dark time when it's more important to suspend rights than to keep them, but that is what an invasion does. It shifts priority from more privileged things like having a good life, to trying to survive so that you can have a life in the first place. It might be hard to imagine coming from a life of peace, but this is one of the many reasons why war is despicable and why Russia should never have started it. The blame falls squarely on Russia's shoulders imo.
      - thephyber 3y ago
        “Is never okay” is not a rational argument in any philosophical or legal framework. You are projecting theoretically pure ideas into the real world where they don’t exist in any pure form. Ukraine was Soviet Socialist for most of the 20th century, so any positive democratic movement is an improvement. In 2014, the people overturned a highly Russia-aligned and corrupt government (for which Russia invaded Crimea and fomented a rebellion in the Donbas). Zelenskyy was elected on a populist anti-corruption platform (again, further movement towards democracy). The party bans you mention happened within a month after Moscow invaded Ukraine with eyes on the capital. And every single banned party was Socialist-leaning + most likely closer aligned with Russia than Ukraine. Again, not exactly a huge regression when it comes to democracy. The sad fact is that Ukraine has never been highly democratic. The post-2014 trend is towards more individual freedom and less government corruption (as far as I can tell, not speaking the local language). Your standards are a great example of “perfect should not be enemy of the good”, much like the original US Articles of Confederation, which only lasted a few years.
        cpursley 3y ago
        > In 2014, the people overturned a highly Russia-aligned and corrupt government Adorable that you didn't use the word "coup" - especially considering how much money the US spent aiding it (info is in the public domain). A coup against a democratically elected leader (even a really really shitty one) is by it's very definition, undemocratic. As is canceling elections. Ukraine was never a democracy and the most corrupt country in Europe before this started, now it’s a dictatorship if we apply western standards.
        thephyber 3y ago
        Ukraine is not democratic and never has been. We are talking about a spectrum where one end is fully democratic (values). 1991 to 2004 to 2008 to 2014 to 2019 to 2022 have been moving towards the democratic end of the spectrum (except perhaps 2008 to 2014, but the country remains heavily corrupt (the same reason the EU and NATO were not serious about accepting UA). The 2014 coup was followed by massive popular protests. The voters demanded president Viktor Yanukovych leave office and significant government + constitutional change and more independence from being under Russian influence and oligarch control. Popular protests don’t happen just because foreign money is thrown at the issue. You pretend like the pre-2014 elections were “Democratic” in any sense of fair elections. You should go back and read about the 2004 UA Presidential Election and the findings of the UA Supreme Court, which overturned the election and forced a redo. The UK cancelled elections in 1940 due to WW2. Is the UK a dictatorship? Even the EU has set policy standards for what conditions merit dissolution of specific political parties[1]. And when UA dissolves those parties, the dissolutions were upheld by the court (so the UA was not far off of EU standards for the same action. Again, UA took some pretty extreme anti-democratic measures towards domestic political allies of RU after they were invaded by RU and after those same political parties had been supporting the violent rebellion in the Donbas region since 2014. I don’t think your standards are reasonable. [1] https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-INF(2000)001-e https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?p...
  - _kbh_ 3y ago
    > The same Ukraine that’s disbanded all opposition political parties They didn't though, they only disbanded the political parties that had ties to Russia, the country thats currently trying to invade and annex them. > suspended elections and is under martial law? The elections are suspended per their own constitution. They are under martial law because they are in a war.
    - cpursley 3y ago
      Can't have those pesky ethnic Russian Ukrainians voting wrong now, can we?
      - _kbh_ 3y ago
        > Can't have those pesky ethnic Russian Ukrainians voting wrong now, can we I think it’s more to do with the difficulty of conducting elections during an active war zone. I’m also not sure how those ethnically Russian Ukrainians feel about Russia after all Russia has done to them.
        cpursley 3y ago
        President Zelensky was just publicly complaining about Ukrainians partying it up as if there were no war. They can manage an election.
        _kbh_ 3y ago
        > President Zelensky was just publicly complaining about Ukrainians partying it up as if there were no war. I cant find a source for this can you provide one?. > They can manage an election. just because some people far behind the front line can afford to forget the war doesn't mean everyone can you. I don't think elections work in an active war zone with such a dynamic front line.
- thephyber 3y ago
  Iraq is an artificial country created by western powers. Kurdistan (parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran) should probably be a sovereign country, separate from Iraq. Sunnis and Shiites hated their swap of power roles after the 2003 invasion. Those who were elected to government post-2003 were too concerned with punishing the others rather than unifying the country. Also, people lose their minds when basic security is lacking and the policy of debaathification in post-2003 turned out to create a brain drain from government, military, police, and utilities. Sometimes I wonder if Iraq’s instability was caused by the US’s migration to high tech military, which reduces the need to have 5x the numbers of soldiers on the ground as happened in Japan and Germany.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - psunavy03 3y ago
    > Sometimes I wonder if Iraq’s instability was caused by the US’s migration to high tech military, which reduces the need to have 5x the numbers of soldiers on the ground as happened in Japan and Germany. This is squarely the fault of Donald Rumsfeld, who was given plans pre-war by General Eric Shinseki and the rest of the Joint Chiefs that involved significantly more forces. Instead, Rumsfeld pitched a fit and made them redo the OPLAN so it fit his whole high-tech "revolution in military affairs" crap.
    - thephyber 3y ago
      I’m not defending Rumsfeld, but this is entirely too simplistic. Rumsfeld was hired by Bush. Colin Powell sold the invasion to the US public and the UN. The US Congress overwhelmingly supported use of force. Who knows exactly the extent of Cheney’s involvement. Rumsfeld only had authority because of the chain of events before that.
- Redoubts 3y ago
  South Korea and Taiwan were autocracies until relatively recently
  - leereeves 3y ago
    Also the US didn't install the Taiwanese government.
    - reissbaker 3y ago
      OP said "installed or propped up" — the US propped up the Taiwanese government and continues to prop it up militarily.
      - leereeves 3y ago
        I don't believe defending Taiwan from China counts as propping it up. That phrase should be limited to helping the government suppress internal resistance. But if it counts, then the US propped up every country in NATO by defending them from the USSR and Russia.
        reissbaker 3y ago
        Taiwan/China, for the first few decades of their respective existences, were considered internal resistance by both the PRC (China) and the ROC (Taiwan), with the US backing the ROC. While sentiments about that are obviously pretty different in Taiwan today (although not in China!), I also think that the US/Taiwan relationship is still meaningfully different from, say, the US/UK relationship, and I think it counts as "propping up" to a greater extent than simply being a NATO member.
        leereeves 3y ago
        The island of Taiwan/Formosa did have people on it before the RoC fled there, but they were not Chinese, they were aboriginal. Or Japanese, because the island was a Japanese colony until 1945. Rule of that island was hardly a Chinese internal matter, as it was in fact decided in 1945 by the United States (part of the surrender of Japan). And the U.S. State Department's official position in 1959 was that Formosa was not a part of China as a country. In short, the RoC lost the civil war completely and fled to new territory. After that, there was just the threat of the CCP pursuing the RoC beyond what were (certainly as recently as 1945) the borders of China.
- crabbone 3y ago
  This is some bizarre nonsense about Ukraine: in what way did the US "try to install democracy" there, let alone "failed"? The only sizable presence of anything of the US origin in Ukraine were Protestant missionaries, unlikely supported or directed by the US government. Everything else was there in such low numbers that it was, essentially, unnoticeable. If anything, the US didn't really pay attention to this part of the world...

Failed at installing democracies elsewhere? Aside from Afghanistan where has the US done that? More often the US has installed or propped up autocrats w/ varying degrees of success

reissbaker 3y ago

Japan, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine. Technically Iraq as well, although I don't think the Iraqis were particularly happy about that.

cpursley 3y ago
[flagged]
- thephyber 3y ago
  Yes, the same Ukraine that is still actively at war for its existence after being invaded by a nuclear superpower. The capital is still being bombed, the democratically elected leadership is still under threat of assassination, so many of those infringements upon freedom are actually reasonable.
  - cpursley 3y ago
    Suspension of civil rights is NEVER okay in democratic societies. If you suspend them, you’re no longer democratic - Period.
    - nabakin 3y ago
      You don't seem to understand what an invasion does to a country. This is an existential fight. Any country fighting for swaths of its territory is forced into authoritarianism and hopefully bounces back once things stabilize, but don't blame them for trying to survive. Blame Russia for forcing this state of affairs.
    - smsm42 3y ago
      I share your disappointment at virtually every Western country no longer being democratic. Indeed, suppression of basic freedom of movement, speech, association, rights to earn one's living and even going as far as freezing one's assets and confining people to their homes, without them being convicted of any crime, proves conclusively countries like US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, etc. are no longer democracies. Ukraine would do well to follow example of democratic countries - but unfortunately, almost none left in existence.
    - mensetmanusman 3y ago
      So Marshall law means the US isn’t a democracy (which is true, being a republic)…
      - thephyber 3y ago
        Democracy (as in will of the people) doesn’t really exist during wars on domestic soil. Martial Law declarations are at least the honest admission of that. And the democracy / republic pedantry is tiresome. We are a Democratic Republic (and also a Constitutional Republic). They are not mutually exclusive.
        dragonwriter 3y ago
        > And the democracy / republic pedantry is tiresome. We are a Democratic Republic We’re a functionally plutocratic federal republic with some very loosely representative-democratic elements. Ironically, as a result of federal rules imposed on the states but not on the federal government itself, like one-person, one-vote, the states, while still more than a little plutocratic in practice, do a better job of approximating representative democracy in their formal structures (and many also have elements of direct democracy.)
    - oneshtein 3y ago
      > Suspension of civil rights is NEVER okay in democratic societies. Except in case of war.
      - cpursley 3y ago
        No, NEVER. The very point of civil rights is to protect citizens FROM their own government when times get tough.
        oneshtein 3y ago
        You are talking about liberal democracy, right? Because regular democracy doesn't contain this important bit. However, even in case of liberal democracy, there is exception from the rule in case of war, because SOMEONE WILL DIE ANYWAY. If you think that liberal government cannot send a men X to the front line, then government must sent a men Y, or accept that woman or children Z will die. Someone will die anyway. Moreover, if the men Y sent to front line where he can die from enemy action, or woman or children Z dies from enemy action, why the men X should be exempt from that?
    - cpursley 3y ago
      Oh, and I forgot they took full control over media and have greatly restricted speech.
      - nabakin 3y ago
        Yes. As happens in every single existential war because it is necessary to survive. It is truly a dark time when it's more important to suspend rights than to keep them, but that is what an invasion does. It shifts priority from more privileged things like having a good life, to trying to survive so that you can have a life in the first place. It might be hard to imagine coming from a life of peace, but this is one of the many reasons why war is despicable and why Russia should never have started it. The blame falls squarely on Russia's shoulders imo.
    - thephyber 3y ago
      “Is never okay” is not a rational argument in any philosophical or legal framework. You are projecting theoretically pure ideas into the real world where they don’t exist in any pure form. Ukraine was Soviet Socialist for most of the 20th century, so any positive democratic movement is an improvement. In 2014, the people overturned a highly Russia-aligned and corrupt government (for which Russia invaded Crimea and fomented a rebellion in the Donbas). Zelenskyy was elected on a populist anti-corruption platform (again, further movement towards democracy). The party bans you mention happened within a month after Moscow invaded Ukraine with eyes on the capital. And every single banned party was Socialist-leaning + most likely closer aligned with Russia than Ukraine. Again, not exactly a huge regression when it comes to democracy. The sad fact is that Ukraine has never been highly democratic. The post-2014 trend is towards more individual freedom and less government corruption (as far as I can tell, not speaking the local language). Your standards are a great example of “perfect should not be enemy of the good”, much like the original US Articles of Confederation, which only lasted a few years.
      - cpursley 3y ago
        > In 2014, the people overturned a highly Russia-aligned and corrupt government Adorable that you didn't use the word "coup" - especially considering how much money the US spent aiding it (info is in the public domain). A coup against a democratically elected leader (even a really really shitty one) is by it's very definition, undemocratic. As is canceling elections. Ukraine was never a democracy and the most corrupt country in Europe before this started, now it’s a dictatorship if we apply western standards.
        thephyber 3y ago
        Ukraine is not democratic and never has been. We are talking about a spectrum where one end is fully democratic (values). 1991 to 2004 to 2008 to 2014 to 2019 to 2022 have been moving towards the democratic end of the spectrum (except perhaps 2008 to 2014, but the country remains heavily corrupt (the same reason the EU and NATO were not serious about accepting UA). The 2014 coup was followed by massive popular protests. The voters demanded president Viktor Yanukovych leave office and significant government + constitutional change and more independence from being under Russian influence and oligarch control. Popular protests don’t happen just because foreign money is thrown at the issue. You pretend like the pre-2014 elections were “Democratic” in any sense of fair elections. You should go back and read about the 2004 UA Presidential Election and the findings of the UA Supreme Court, which overturned the election and forced a redo. The UK cancelled elections in 1940 due to WW2. Is the UK a dictatorship? Even the EU has set policy standards for what conditions merit dissolution of specific political parties[1]. And when UA dissolves those parties, the dissolutions were upheld by the court (so the UA was not far off of EU standards for the same action. Again, UA took some pretty extreme anti-democratic measures towards domestic political allies of RU after they were invaded by RU and after those same political parties had been supporting the violent rebellion in the Donbas region since 2014. I don’t think your standards are reasonable. [1] https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-INF(2000)001-e https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?p...
- _kbh_ 3y ago
  > The same Ukraine that’s disbanded all opposition political parties They didn't though, they only disbanded the political parties that had ties to Russia, the country thats currently trying to invade and annex them. > suspended elections and is under martial law? The elections are suspended per their own constitution. They are under martial law because they are in a war.
  - cpursley 3y ago
    Can't have those pesky ethnic Russian Ukrainians voting wrong now, can we?
    - _kbh_ 3y ago
      > Can't have those pesky ethnic Russian Ukrainians voting wrong now, can we I think it’s more to do with the difficulty of conducting elections during an active war zone. I’m also not sure how those ethnically Russian Ukrainians feel about Russia after all Russia has done to them.
      - cpursley 3y ago
        President Zelensky was just publicly complaining about Ukrainians partying it up as if there were no war. They can manage an election.
        _kbh_ 3y ago
        > President Zelensky was just publicly complaining about Ukrainians partying it up as if there were no war. I cant find a source for this can you provide one?. > They can manage an election. just because some people far behind the front line can afford to forget the war doesn't mean everyone can you. I don't think elections work in an active war zone with such a dynamic front line.
thephyber 3y ago
Iraq is an artificial country created by western powers. Kurdistan (parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran) should probably be a sovereign country, separate from Iraq. Sunnis and Shiites hated their swap of power roles after the 2003 invasion. Those who were elected to government post-2003 were too concerned with punishing the others rather than unifying the country. Also, people lose their minds when basic security is lacking and the policy of debaathification in post-2003 turned out to create a brain drain from government, military, police, and utilities. Sometimes I wonder if Iraq’s instability was caused by the US’s migration to high tech military, which reduces the need to have 5x the numbers of soldiers on the ground as happened in Japan and Germany.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- psunavy03 3y ago
  > Sometimes I wonder if Iraq’s instability was caused by the US’s migration to high tech military, which reduces the need to have 5x the numbers of soldiers on the ground as happened in Japan and Germany. This is squarely the fault of Donald Rumsfeld, who was given plans pre-war by General Eric Shinseki and the rest of the Joint Chiefs that involved significantly more forces. Instead, Rumsfeld pitched a fit and made them redo the OPLAN so it fit his whole high-tech "revolution in military affairs" crap.
  - thephyber 3y ago
    I’m not defending Rumsfeld, but this is entirely too simplistic. Rumsfeld was hired by Bush. Colin Powell sold the invasion to the US public and the UN. The US Congress overwhelmingly supported use of force. Who knows exactly the extent of Cheney’s involvement. Rumsfeld only had authority because of the chain of events before that.
Redoubts 3y ago
South Korea and Taiwan were autocracies until relatively recently
- leereeves 3y ago
  Also the US didn't install the Taiwanese government.
  - reissbaker 3y ago
    OP said "installed or propped up" — the US propped up the Taiwanese government and continues to prop it up militarily.
    - leereeves 3y ago
      I don't believe defending Taiwan from China counts as propping it up. That phrase should be limited to helping the government suppress internal resistance. But if it counts, then the US propped up every country in NATO by defending them from the USSR and Russia.
      - reissbaker 3y ago
        Taiwan/China, for the first few decades of their respective existences, were considered internal resistance by both the PRC (China) and the ROC (Taiwan), with the US backing the ROC. While sentiments about that are obviously pretty different in Taiwan today (although not in China!), I also think that the US/Taiwan relationship is still meaningfully different from, say, the US/UK relationship, and I think it counts as "propping up" to a greater extent than simply being a NATO member.
        leereeves 3y ago
        The island of Taiwan/Formosa did have people on it before the RoC fled there, but they were not Chinese, they were aboriginal. Or Japanese, because the island was a Japanese colony until 1945. Rule of that island was hardly a Chinese internal matter, as it was in fact decided in 1945 by the United States (part of the surrender of Japan). And the U.S. State Department's official position in 1959 was that Formosa was not a part of China as a country. In short, the RoC lost the civil war completely and fled to new territory. After that, there was just the threat of the CCP pursuing the RoC beyond what were (certainly as recently as 1945) the borders of China.
crabbone 3y ago
This is some bizarre nonsense about Ukraine: in what way did the US "try to install democracy" there, let alone "failed"? The only sizable presence of anything of the US origin in Ukraine were Protestant missionaries, unlikely supported or directed by the US government. Everything else was there in such low numbers that it was, essentially, unnoticeable. If anything, the US didn't really pay attention to this part of the world...