Democratization

I thank Legitdebater for this debate! I anticipate a great discussion! In this round, I will make some observations about the framework, and then I shall present my case.FRAMEWORKThere are three key terms we need to clarify in order to understand the resolution: moral obligation, promote, and democratic ideals. Once we understand what these phrases indicate, we can begin to debate the topic.Firstly, "moral" means "based on right and good," whereas "obligation" means "a duty or responsibility." [1] Therefore, to say that the U.S. has a moral obligation to do something is to say that it has a responsibility to do so based on what is the right thing to do.Next, "promote" means "to help something happen, develop, or increase." [1] Therefore, democratization need not be violent or instantaneous. It can be a gradual process that is encouraged by the U.S. Finally, democratic modifies "ideals" intimating that we are talking about ideals inherent to and of democracy. "Ideal" can be defined as "thing conceived as embodying such a conception or conforming to such a standard, and taken as a model for imitation." [2] We can simplify this to the following: an ideal is standard of something else--in this case, we are talking about standards and principles of democracy.With these clarifications made, I will proceed to make my case.PRO's CASEContention One: Democracy is a desirable form of government.“Democracy provides the best institutional arrangement for holding rulers accountable to the people. If leaders must compete for popular support to stay in power, they will respond to their citizens’ preferences. Rulers who do not need popular support to gain or maintain power will likely be more responsive to whatever group – the family, the military, the mullahs, or the communist party – controls their fate. The larger the number of people needed to elect a leader, the more inclined that leader will be to pursue public policies that benefit the majority. Not surprisingly, therefore, democracies ‘have consistently generated superior levels of social welfare’ compared to autocracies at similar income levels. Second, the institutions of democracy prevent abusive rule, constrain bad government, and provide a mechanism for getting rid of corrupt or ineffective leaders. Truly oppressive leaders cannot remain in power for long if they must seek the electoral mandate of those being oppressed. Autocrats face no such constraints. Mass terror and genocide occur in autocracies, not democracies. Democracies do not prevent all abusive behavior, but over the centuries, democratic leaders have unquestionably inflicted less pain and suffering on their people than have autocratic leaders.” [3]This analysis is easily backed up by empirical analysis. If we look at the world's democracies [4] and compare them to the world's most free nations [5], we can see that there is a positive correlation between democracy and freedom, and a negative correlation between authoritarianism and freedom. When examined by economic freedom, 31 out of the 34 most free nations or self-governing regions are democratic in nature. [6] Finally, when examined by levels of corruption, democracies also outperformed other nations in that democracies tended to have less corruption. [7]Contention Two: Nondemocratic regimes have killed millions."The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the more it is diffused, checked and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide [government mass murder]. At the extremes of Power, totalitarian communist governments slaughter their people by the tens of millions, while many democracies can barely bring themselves to execute even serial murderers…more people died from democide in the 20th century than from all its wars combined...To this I would add that the less democratic two states the more likely that they will fight each other...They create an oasis of peace...In total, during the first eighty-eight years of this century [millions of] men, women, and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; or buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens or foreigners. The dead even could conceivably be near 360,000,000 people. This is as though our species has been devastated by a modern Black Plague. And indeed it has, but a plague of Power and not germs. Putting the human cost of war and democide together, Power has killed over 203,000,000 people in this century. As the arbitrary power of a regime increases massively, that is, as we move from democratic to totalitarian regimes, the amount of killing jumps by huge multiples.” [8]Consider that the worst regimes know to human history were nondemocratic ones. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Suharto, Enver Pasha, Idi Amin, etc. were all authoritarians.Therefore, we can conclude that the less democratic a nation is, the more it suppresses freedoms and the more it harms its citizenry.Contention Three: The U.S. has a moral obligation to actSub-point A: Human rights carry moral weight“Human rights express ultimate moral concerns: Persons have a moral duty to respect human rights, a duty that does not derive from a more general moral duty to comply with national…legal instruments. Human rights express weighty moral concerns, which normally override other normative considerations…It is, for the future of humankind, the most important …task of our time to set development upon an acceptable path. It would be entirely irresponsible to deprive ourselves of any moral basis for the assessment and reform of our global order. And the only such basis that could be both plausible and capable of wide international acceptance today is a conception of human rights.” [9] Therefore, states that fail to respect their denizen's rights lose legitimacy. “In a Lockean sense, the state is constrained in its behavior through the duty to preserve and protect the fundamental rights of its citizens. When the state fails in this imperative, however, its legitimacy is forfeited and the moral defensibility of non-intervention wanes.” [10]Sub-point B: Mass violations of human rights are the worst moral wrongs"Humanitarian crises pose grave problems to human rights. The degree of human suffering typically involved – torture, killing, rape, physical injury, death, starvation, and so on – is the worst moral wrong that can happen to an individual. A serious humanitarian crisis involves the mass violation of basic human rights. As such, it involves (1) the worst moral wrong (2) on a massive scale. Accordingly, it is of the utmost moral importance that a serious humanitarian crisis is halted.” [11]Sub-point C: Sovereignty is no barrier for action"State sovereignty is not such an unencumbered absolute as to be above all external pressures, especially as it impacts human rights concerns. The concept of ‘fundamental human rights’ is featured prominently in the Charter of the United Nations; consequently, every member state of the UN is obligated to recognize and protect these rights. Likewise, there have been numerous regional and global conventions adopted to protect against human rights abuses such as slavery, apartheid, piracy, and genocide. ‘Many of these rules protecting human rights have consolidated into customary rules of international law, binding States whether they have ratified those Conventions or not.’ State sovereignty is thus hemmed in by UN directives and international conventions where human rights are concerned." [12]Sub-point D: The international community has a moral responsibility to act“The duty to assist is not indeterminate. It is correlated to the individual rights that have been abused and stays there, in peaceful advocacy of change from within, unless the sovereign goes further and pushes abuse to the level of wholesale murder or massacre, ethnic cleansing or genocide. At this point, an individualized duty to assist and support rights claimants would evolve into a responsibility to protect whole populations whose existence is threatened.” [13]Thus, I rest. I turn the debate over to Con...SOURCES1 - http://www.merriam-webster.com...2 - http://dictionary.reference.com...3 - McFaul, Michael, 2010 [Hoover Senior Fellow, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law at Stanford and nonresident associate at Carnegie] “Advancing Democracy Abroad,” p. 35-374 - http://en.wikipedia.org...5 - http://en.wikipedia.org...6 - http://www.heritage.org...7 - http://cpi.transparency.org...8 - http://www.hawaii.edu...9 - http://www.scribd.com...10 - Di Stefano, Paul, 2011, [Prof. of Humanities at John Abbott College in Montreal, Quebec], “Human Rights Violations and the Moral Permissibility of Military Intervention,” Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 23:537–545 (2011)11 - Pattison, James, 2010, [Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Manchester] "Humanitarian Intervention and Responsibility to Protect: Who should intervene?" 12 - http://voices.yahoo.com...13 - Ignatieff, Michael, 2001, [former Leader Liberal Party of Canada, member of the UN-mandated International Commission for Intervention and State Sovereignty. Currently, a fellow at the University of Toronto] “Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry,” ed. A. Gutmann, p. 40Thanks!