Should the United States try to change a dictatorship to a democracy when it can, or should the United States stay out of other countries' affairs?

Is a policy of intervention something the United States can sustain over time?

According to World Net daily, a Gallup poll conducted this year posed this question.
"...by nearly five to one Americans said, "Stay out." Fifteen percent said 'yes' to the Bush commitment. Sixty-nine percent said to stay out of the internal affairs of other countries."

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribunereview/opinion/columnists/guests/s_499875.html

I think this question is somewhat misleading - since we have turned democracy into a dictatorship several times

Guatamala- overthrew the democratically elected goverment to install a military dictatorship, Pinochet, Shah of Iran,

Well, you get the idea- in fact, we CANCELLED free and fair elections in South vietnam, since it was clear ho-chi-mingh would win.

So, are we even doing that REALLY?

But no, we should stay out of other nation's internal affairs.

We have never been succesful as far as I know, with the possible exception of Grenada.

So, we have never done it on any scale, succcesfully, ever= so it is obvious that we CAN'T sustain it, because we haven't been sucesful YET.

Should the United States try to change a dictatorship to a democracy when it can, or should the United States stay out of other countries' affairs?

Complex issue. The U.N should be a main forum when it comes to war issues in my opinion. Why I say this is simple I think. You really have two main forms of war, when a country invades, or when something like a genocide occurs. I think most of the civilized world really should ban genocide and act directly against it. The civilized world in total has more then enough energy and matter to make that a reality. Then you have the other type of conflict, how about we say its illegal to conduct war, and if you do boom headshot your gone. Then its the world together saying no to war, then its an economical issue, which by and far i would say is a more progressive medium for healthy change then say warfare, in which WW2 is the only real sign of war being able to change things, but WW2 unlike Vietnam or Iraq was total all out war. This does not mean a nation has to surrender sovereignty, or its army, it just makes war something you don’t want to engage in. America would be screwed if the rest of the world really did have nothing to do with it like any nation.

Is a policy of intervention something the United States can sustain over time?

Attempting to rule the world is a fools game that will fail in time, even more so by force of arms.

Is a policy of intervention something the United States can sustain over time?

Well, the answer to that is "yes, no, depends" Since it all revolves around the depends, I'll address the variables.

First, it depends on what the criteria are that we use to determine intervention. The broader the criteria, then potentially the ability to sustain over time drops. How do we define a "dictatorship"? Do we treat a benevolent dictatorship (the Duchy of Monaco comes to mind) the same as we treat a regime like Pol Pot's? Is the cost to ourselves in blood and treasure a factor?

Second, what forms of intervention do we engage in? Do we limit ourselves to providing asylum to dissidents? What of information intervention, aka Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, for examples? From these there is a whole spectrum of intervention ending with killing the dictator and all her cronies and inviting the populace to join the US as a new state(s). The level of intervention determines the cost, has some bearing on the success, and definitely impacts the sustainability.

Third, what level of involvement in post-dictator-toppling are we talking about? If our approach is to swoop in, snatch/kill the dictator and his immediate henchfolk, drop them out of the helicopter over the sea at a few thousand feet w/o parachutes and head home, calling it a day and leaving the democracy building to the locals, then we can sustain those operations indefinitely. If, on the other hand, our intention is to completely remake the society, that's a little tougher. Right now we have assets directly and explicitly involved in that mission in four countries in the world that I'm aware. Germany, Japan, Afghanistan and Iraq. Knock off the dictators, destroy their dominant subculture, remake the general culture, set up structures for democratic government, monitor while things settle out. The mission in Germany and Japan is pretty much done, but even barring the Soviet threat, I doubt anybody would have seriously called for the withdrawal of American troops from either country until at least the mid to late 1950s...

Fourth, sustain in what sense? Economically, we can sustain 5 Iraqs right now without breaking a sweat. Militarily, the same, if the political will is there. And that's the kicker. The only limit to our ability to knock over tinpot dictatorships in most of the world is our will to do so. With the exceptions of China and Russia (authoritarian but not yet a dictatorship), there isn't a dictatorship in the world that can seriously hurt us without using a surprise attack. Now, I'm talking about hurt on a strategic level. As terrible as this may sound, nothing short of successful WMD attacks on multiple American cities would have that effect.

As a hypothetical, let's consider what could happen if a Citgo truck tries to run the Presidential motorcade off the road and Bush goes all cowboy on Chavez as a result. Chavez's new military toys jump all over an American fleet excercise (at the same time as the Citgo truck incident) and not one, but two complete US Navy carrier task forces are sent straight to the bottom of the Carribean. (Hey, I did say "hypothetical").

What's the strategic effect? The US Navy would now have a force multiplier equivalent to the next 12 navies in the world, combined, rather than the next 17. The US Navy would have 10 fast attack carriers rather than 12, whereas the rest of the world would still have, ummm, 3, sort of.... the UK and French carriers don't exactly match straight up with the US carriers, although they are the best of the non-US carriers in the world. The Indian, Brazilian, Spanish and Italian carriers are even less capable, although they're not bad ships, with the latter two being helicopter carriers iirc.

So, the upshot is, for the forseeable future (in real terms, not in faith based anthropogenic global warming terms), we can sustain interventions as long as we're willing

BD- we have NEVER been succesful since Korea of ANY kind of sustained oppression of a poeple- I say oppression, because we sure as hell haven't exported freedom-

if you are talking blowing things up- sure- we are great at that- but, actually transforming a country into a democracy? That is probably the most both ignorant AND stupid thing we can attempt- why? Because we haven't been able to do it yet!

Really- name one country, of over, oh., 10 million poeple- that we have even HELPED obtain freedom- much less ACTUALLY obtained freedom- the list is long on our failures, and very, very short on our successes- EVERY country we have occupied post Korea is WORSE off now than when we got in there- with the possible exception of Grenada and possibly, Pannama. I would have to talk to a Panamanian first to even debate that. Well, Panama is pretty much our vassal- so let's call it a wash

Bikerdad- if you want to claim we COULD do a thing- you have prove that we HAVE done this thing, sometime, in oh, the last 50 years?

Let's. however, look at all the countries that have had to pay a TERRIBLE price for our intervention, and have only been able to recover from our intervention after years of doing for themselves, and many, never really getting out of the grips of our "liberation" we inflicted on them.

Vietnam
Iran
Iraq
Kuwait (we re-installed the Kuwaiti family in thier former positions- pretty much sent it back to the fuedalist Sauid Arabian model- hardly a model of democracy!! A constitutional monarchy with only 15% of the population allowed to vote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwait
Cambodia
Chile
Peru
Guatamala
Nicaruagua

I probably missed a few, because we have pretty much been the scourge of the world for the last 50 years.

It is time we came to grips with that and realize it is NOT a good thing to stick our nose in other's biz, unless genocide is the stated intent.

So, if past behavior is any indication Bikerdad- we are very good at killing off large portions of populations and starting and extending civil wars-

we have a near total "skunk" when it comes to "installing democracy"- because, with all our power- we simply haven't done that!

To add to your list there, we supported a (basically) dictatorship of Batista in Cuba before the communist Castro revolution.
And yes we have a skunk in the area, because as we have shown the world, you cannot force your ways upon other people.
The British tried to do so in India, you can see how that turned out. They hated the British, millions died of hunger and disease that weren't present in the pre-British era, and the push for independence was unbelievable.
We actually, in our history, have installed or tried to install and failed more dictatorships to prevent the country from going Communist than us trying to see what really is best for the people there.

Its fact: when you try to force your ways on other people and cultures, they don't like it, and they'll resist. The only way you can effectively convert people is to, well, kill them all. And we're kind of against that

hmmmm, successes....

Japan
Germany
Poland
Czech Republic
Hungary
Slovakia
Bulgaria
Ukraine
Russia (perhaps slipping away now?)
The Baltic States

All over 10,000,000 souls...

Under 10,000,000 souls - Panama

Its mighty curious that both CR and stormkeeper choose to limit themselves to Cold War activities. Democracy building wasn't our #1 priority, that was taken by communism. Even today, if our #1 priority was democracy building, we'd take out Musharref, the Sudanese gov't, and Mugabe, not to mention that old warhorse Fidel. DB is simply something thrown into the pot to "sweeten" it for the Wilsonian types amongst us. It is to our interest to see robust, civil democracies replacing dictatorships, so when other factors coagulate to bring action against dictators, voila, we generally try to seed democracies. However, we don't do so when the risk of failure of the democracy is considered (rightly or wrongly) to be too high.

Why is that? Because, to the horror of idealists everywhere, our national interests usually take priority in our foreign policy. We do, I believe, extend ourselves much further than most, if not all, other countries in actions that are neutral to our national interests (Bosnia, anyone?), but only a fool would seek to hold the US to a purely altruistic standard. Well, perhaps not only a fool. Those who seek to preen upon the moral podiums are wont to do so as well. One way to recognize them is they'll often take a question about whether or not we should attempt to change dictatorships to democracies and attack the US for doing the opposite, leaving the original question unanswered...

The examples of Japan, Germany and Italy show that it can be done. So the question would be, why did we succeed in Japan, and fail in Haiti?

Should the United States try to change a dictatorship to a democracy when it can, or should the United States stay out of other countries' affairs?

In grade school, I was taught Abe Lincoln's definition of Democracy, "Government of the people, by the people, for the people..." (I may not have the correct order - it's been fifty years.) In that contest, I fail to see how a democracy can be imposed on another nation.

One of the best suggestions that I ever saw for spreading democracy was to print our Bill of Rights on the obverse side of the one dollar bill and make every tourist and traveling businessman an American Ambassador.

Is a policy of intervention something the United States can sustain over time?

Niccolo Machiavelli wrote a book called The Prince which outlined how to use and exert power. The Fathers of Our Country wrote and adapted a Constitution. My opinion is that the Constitution has served us better as a guide for how to govern. The Doctrine of Manifest Destiny said that our nation would some day stretch from coast to coast. We have gone beyond that. Let's accept the fact that the world does not need to be under the rule of a single individual.

Interesting take on these things, BD. We were talking about people who major in political science, and how that can become very depressing when the truth of situations is looked at. Think you're cynical now? Study history from the poli-sci perspective, that is, without the rose-colored glasses of nationalism interfering.

We're all a bunch of [self-censored list of curse words here]. Makes me want to believe that the human race survived only because of snoring and smelling/tasting bad to predators. Oh yeah, and being very good liars.

I think the Marshall Plan had a lot to do with the success after WW II, plus the crushing of traditional armies, the dropping of atomic bombs, and the overall desire to rebuild after a really bad war. Why have some of the cold war attempts at manipulation either failed or made things worse? Got me, I bet there are books out on this written by very cynical people who majored in poli-sci.

Should the United States try to change a dictatorship to a democracy when it can, or should the United States stay out of other countries' affairs?

If it were up to me, and it never will be, I'd keep my nose out of other countries' internal politics. But then it might be impossible to avoid this situation. I can see enough of the politics to figure this might be true.

Is a policy of intervention something the United States can sustain over time?

Not the way things have been going in recent years, if one accepts that the Iraq project really is about building a democracy. Iraq has become our money-sucking white elephant fixer-upper house built on bad soil and loaded with termites, wasp nests, bees in the belfry, over an ancient Native American gravesite, stinking of old meth labs, and having bad neighbors with chainsaws and hockey masks.

First off - POST Korea dude- I made that clear-

however- I TOTALLY disagree with the US having ANYTHING to do with the baltic states issues- that is pure US propaganda garbage. There is no US causation having really anything to do with the changing of the oligarchy of the former Eastern bloc- you can keep that delusion if you wish- but I have been there, done biz in those places, and have famly there.

That is one of those "reagan myths" right up there with the easter bunny and Santa

And who cares if those countries "went communists"- it was THOSE poeples decision to make- NOT ours- that is why we are hated so much in the world- NOT because "they hate our ideals"- it is because we NEVER allowed them to express their freedom, and in fact BRUTALLY supressed it- we ARE the scourge to them- WE created this suffering-

Japan, Italy, Germany. I would say you could probably put the USSR on the list as well.



No, you said anything in like the last 50 years. Each of these examples became successes in that time frame--the USSR was well within it, and would certainly be post-Korea. Further--why restrict your question to only those examples you feel are failures? Either we've done it in our past, or we haven't. Assuming you're willing to now agree that we have done it in our past, the question would then be what differentiates the successes from the failures, and how could we apply that knowledge in the future.

The USSR?!
That was by no means the U.S.
The only thing we may have done to help bring down the Soviet Union is keep up the very very expensive and demanding Weapons/Technology Race. The dissolution of the Soviet Union was purely internal caused by the perestroika and glasnost. Gorbachev proposed and made these changes to the Union, opening up the populace to Western media. When the citizens, who received a fixed wage and could only buy basic food with it saw the Western people with brand new sports cars and consumer goods, they wanted them, and the opportunity to make money and make a good life for themselves. The citizens of Russia and the Satellites pushed for a free market economy. The coup occurred, failed after several days, and power was returned to Gorbachev. Then the other Soviet Republics declared independence. Gorbachev resigned, gave power to the President Yeltsin, and the Soviet Union a few days later soon officially ended. It was by internal struggle and strife alone. The U.S., although with our nationalistic views, want to see it as we ended the Soviet Union, this is false.

edited to add definitions: perestroika glasnost

I chose pretty much post Korea- because that was the era before Korea where we had just really became a worlds superpower reallly capable of global imperialism on the scale we attempted it- We really couldn't, or didn't, do it unilaterally all over the globe, like we are talking in this context of this debate- it was the obliteration (nearly) and rebuilding of Europe that allowed the US to really exert it's super-power might.

And Korea, though pretty much dominated by the US at that time the UN had a great deal to do with that war, was not only the first skirmish in the east-west issue- but it was still very early in US foriegn policy post WW2.

Everything after that really was the "new" policy in context of the debate here- "forcing" democracy.

So , no I do not agree we have EVER done it in the past in the manner we are talking here- Japan, Germany etc was completely different than anything that followed it, a true mobilization of ALL the powers of the world into war, a war of true survival.

Also-- I really equate Russia vs US into Stalin and after Stalin, and then another period of completely different stuff under Kruschev, and then Breshneve and the settling into the current goverment and policies they have today under Putin.

When you talk in context of US vs USSR, post Stalin is very, very different than during Stalin's time, because the aim of the Soviets was quite different.

Stalin really did riegn supreme, and was another Hitler figure, not much different than Hitler at all, and his ACTUAL economic policies WERE NOT socialist OR communist- they really didn't deviate at all that far from the way Czarists ran it before-

and Stalin saw himself as in the same mold as Ivan the Terrible, and was pretty imperialistic, though also paranoid and defensive.

After Stalin, the normal inward looking and xenophobia of the Russian cultre took hold, and, most importantly, Kruscheve DID NOT riegn supreme as Stalin did, and was even removed after 11 short years (for a ruler in Russia that didn't die ) Breshnev was the golden age of Russia- the Russian poeple were never better off in thier entire history, as a society, as they were under Breschnev, and they still haven't risen to that standard of living under Putin!

So post Stalin, our intentions were far, far more unethical than they were pre-Stalin. Makes a HUGE difference- and then, our own intentions were horrible as well EVEN DURING the 1950-55 in Iran and Guatamala- there , we actively opposed democracy, NOT to stop communism or Stalin- but to pander to corprorate interests- Guatamala was nothing more than saving Chiquita banana from a land re-distrubution plan, because Chiquita CERTAINLY deserved to have thier entire board of directors hanged for their behavior in that country towards their virtual serfs that worked for them. So we overthrew a popularly elected official- who got 85% of the vote- for not AMERICA'S interest- but Chiquita banana's interest-

I mean, how evil do we got to be for one to see that we have NEVER exported democracy post Korea?