Spreading Democracy -- McRomniani versus Ron Paul

I watched the GOP debate Sunday morning, and there was an excellent question by Stephanopolous on the military-industrial complex's longstanding love of making/keeping the world safe for democracy.

"there have been free elections in Gaza; they elected Hamas. There have been free elections in Lebanon; they empowered Hezbollah. There have been free elections in Iran; they elected President Ahmadinejad. Has President Bush’s policy been a success? And would the spread of democracy be the core of your foreign policy?"

The responses walked a difficult line. On the one hand, voters tend to like, well... voting, as a general rule. On the other hand, it is a hard and fast rule of neocon policy that overwhelming popular support does not mean that the person/thing supported should actually be implemented (i.e. that all the BS about "consent of the governed has to get out of the way).

Of course, before we could get to the "real" candidates (the MSM's darling celebrity frontrunners) we had to endure the sane, coherent responses by Huckabee and Ron Paul. Y'know, variations on "who the hell are we to parade around the planet telling everyone how to run their countries when our system is probably dysfunctional beyond repair?"

Whew! Glad that kind of thinking is out of the way. On to the GOP debate.. go ahead Giuli:

the way you’re defining it is incorrect. Democracy is not necessarily immediately going to elections... democracy also requires the rule of law. It requires stability.

So my ears perk up, because I hope we're going to get another great Giulianian/Orwellian redefinition of a simple concept (Cf. "Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do"). Please tell us how democracy means something other than "rule by the people", Giuli.

McCain and Romney echoed this, and as a matter of fact I'm not in total disagreement. Holding elections without a "civic infrastructure" invites demagoguery -- "the most popular tyrant" -- and does not amount to truly democratic society.

What I do not share is the sunny view of how easy it is to bring about the conditions for the possibility of democracy. Romney says "There have to be the underpinnings of democracy: education, health care, people recognizing they live in a place that has the rule of law". These contribute to democratic development, but the emergence of actual, independent civic society takes generations.

This is either the best- or worst-kept secret about our foreign policy, and in particular our middle eastern foreign policy: Everyone knows that stabilizing Iraq or Afghanistan will take decades. All of those who say we have to "finish the job" know that the job will take decades. The timeline might look like:

Years 0-5: get the Iraqi government to actually have regular meetings. (Status: working on this, could conceivably happen by next summer, that is to say by the end of Year 5)
Years 6-10: Get a reliable police force in place so that most people feel relatively safe most of the time. (Status: just started this recently)
Years 11-15: Develop a curriculum for publically-funded education that people do not kill each other over. See if you can sneak in the concept of freedom of speech and/or public assembly. Good luck.
Years 16-25: Educate a generation of young people in these principles; hope that they accept them and/or put them into practice. If not try again with the next generation (unless the education system has been dismantled, restart at year 11)

This is the real timeline, and the guys who say "we just need some more time" are talking about this much time.

Because this takes for damn ever, our actual foreign policy is to support democratic/monarchic/dictatorial/whatever regimes if they can maintain enough control to enter into relatively stable trade agreements with us. That is our actual foreign policy. Here's Romney:

We’d love it if we could all just come home and not worry about the rest of the world, as Ron Paul says. But the problem is, they attacked us on 9/11. We were here; they attacked us. We want to help move the world of Islam toward modernity so they can reject the extreme

Whether to "move the world of Islam toward modernity" is not the question. Everyone thinks that would be nice. Wouldn't it be nice if there was freedom of religion somewhere -- anywhere -- in the middle east? Sure. The difference between Romney and Paul is that the former thinks it can be done by military means. He is therefore committed, whether or not he knows it, to a very long term military occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, and perhaps other countries.

The Ron Paul alternative is not isolation; it is a realistic, historical approach to the immense task of moving the world of Islam. Non-intervention means respect for a nation's sovereignty, trade, promoting your ideals with the carrot, rather than the stick. If your democratic ideals are actually more important than your economic self-interest, you will forego lucrative trade with dictatorial regimes. This is the only method of spreading democracy that has worked reliably in the past.