Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Quella sinistra che esporta democrazia

Dal NYT, Micheal Ignatieff, intellettuale liberal che non disdegna l'idea
che la democrazia abbia un valore. E che valga la pena esportarlo.
Passaggio saliente:
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America may be more unpopular than ever before, but its hegemony really has
coincided with a democratic revolution around the world. For the first time
in history, a majority of the world's peoples live in democracies. In a
dangerous time, this is about the best news around, since democracies, by
and large, do not fight one another, and they do not break up into civil
war. As a result -- and contrary to the general view that the world is
getting more violent -- ethnic and civil strife have actually been declining
since the early 1990's, according to a study of violent conflicts by Ted
Robert Gurr at the University of Maryland. Democratic transitions can be
violent -- when democracy came to Yugoslavia, majority rule at first led to
ethnic cleansing and massacre -- but once democracies settle in, once they
develop independent courts and real checks and balances, they can begin to
advance majority interests without sacrificing minority rights.
==============================================
December 12, 2004
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
Democratic Providentialism
By MICHAEL IGNATIEFF
uring this year's election campaign, President Bush liked to wind up his
stump speech with a peroration about freedom -- and therefore democracy --
being not just America's gift to the world but God's gift to mankind. This
line went down well, maybe because it carried the happy implication that
when America and its soldiers promote democracy overseas, they are doing
God's work, even in Iraq.
The name for this idea is democratic providentialism. It has become the
organizing vision of an administration that took power in 2001 actively
disdainful of highfalutin foreign-policy uplift. All that John Kerry and the
Democrats could put up against it was prudent realism, and to the extent
that the election was a referendum on vision, prudent realism lost hands
down. The 2004 election closed out the final chapter in a fascinating
realignment in American politics. Democrats, who once were heirs of big
dreamers like Franklin Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, risk becoming the party
of small dreams, while the Republicans, who under Nixon and Kissinger seemed
determined to divest foreign policy of high moral purpose, have become the
party that wants to change the world.
Of course, there is nothing necessarily good about dreaming big. Big dreams
can be crazy. And dangerous. A lot of people -- including people of
Christian faith -- found it alarming that a president could actually claim
to know what God's plan might be, and scarier still that there were
evangelical Christians divinely certain that George W. Bush was himself part
of that plan. 
But while you may not like the providential aspect of democratic
providentialism, it remains true that the promotion of democracy by the
United States has proved to be a dependably good idea. America may be more
unpopular than ever before, but its hegemony really has coincided with a
democratic revolution around the world. For the first time in history, a
majority of the world's peoples live in democracies. In a dangerous time,
this is about the best news around, since democracies, by and large, do not
fight one another, and they do not break up into civil war. As a result --
and contrary to the general view that the world is getting more violent --
ethnic and civil strife have actually been declining since the early 1990's,
according to a study of violent conflicts by Ted Robert Gurr at the
University of Maryland. Democratic transitions can be violent -- when
democracy came to Yugoslavia, majority rule at first led to ethnic cleansing
and massacre -- but once democracies settle in, once they develop
independent courts and real checks and balances, they can begin to advance
majority interests without sacrificing minority rights.
Democracy has other advantages, some of them chronicled in a persuasive new
book called ''The Democracy Advantage,'' by a trio of authors led by Morton
Halperin, who had a hand in setting up the ''community of democracies''
during Madeleine Albright's time at the State Department. The real test of
democracy is not how it does in countries that are already rich. The richest
countries are all democracies, but they're the lucky ones that have cashed
in the long-accumulating benefits of good geography, stable institutions and
the profits of empire. The test is whether democracy works in poor countries
without these advantages. Some analysts, like Fareed Zakaria, question
whether you can stabilize democracy in countries where per capita income is
below $6,000 a year. If you can't have democracy until development reaches
this level, and if you need autocracy to get growth, then, according to some
theorists, it might be smart for the U.S. to support growth-oriented
autocracies like Vietnam or Singapore.
Halperin and his colleagues disagree with this ''development first,
democracy later'' thesis. Democracy's advantage, they show, becomes apparent
when you compare countries below $2,000 in per capita G.D.P. that have
turned to democracy -- like the Baltic states, Mozambique, Senegal and the
Dominican Republic -- with authoritarian states like Syria, Angola,
Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe. The poor democracies deliver more growth, lower
infant mortality and higher life expectancy. And the recent sight of tens of
thousands of people out in the freezing streets of Kiev, night after night,
reminded jaded democrats everywhere that democracy is the one political
system that says to every individual: you matter and your vote matters. So
bad leaders can't treat democrats like fools and expect to get away with it.
While everyone likes the dignity conferred by democracies -- public-opinion
surveys of Arab countries, for instance, indicate a clear preference for
democracy -- not everyone believes they can deliver the goods.
Disillusionment with democracy is growing in Latin America because the new
democracies that replaced military rule in the 1990's failed to deliver
promised growth. Some economists charge that democracies run up social
spending to please voters, then get into trouble with deficits and can't
sustain tough economic policies. Halperin and his co-authors argue that
democracies tend not to run higher deficits, and while democracies sometimes
lack discipline, they invariably avoid the worst errors -- like China's
forced industrialization, which cost millions of lives in the 50's and 60's.
Despite the mistakes they have made, the Chinese pose a problem for the
thesis that democracy works better than autocracy. Nasty, corrupt
single-party rule in China has managed spectacular economic growth, with
incomes growing nearly fivefold, from $186 to $944, between 1982 and 2002.
Compare this with democratic India, which managed only to double its per
capita income in the same period. China continues to attract an
extraordinary share of investment going to developing countries. Its market
is huge, its labor is cheap and the government keeps things stable. The
question, however, is how long growth and autocracy can be combined. The
Communist Party now represents no more than 5 percent of the population, its
corruption angers millions of people and sooner or later both the winners
and losers of the Chinese boom will demand a say in how they are governed.
Democracy may take a while to arrive in China, but unless it does, it is not
obvious how the party is going to manage China's growing tensions -- between
city and country, classes, regions and sectors -- peacefully. In the recent
Indian election, by comparison, the Hindu-dominated B.J.P. government kept
claiming credit for the Bangalore-led software and call-center booms of the
1990's, but poor voters, who had not seen any trickledown, threw them out of
office. If the incoming Congress Party government keeps its promises to
these voters, democracy will show how it can balance growth with greater
equity, a lesson China had better learn fast.
Promoting democracy -- not just good governance -- is such a good idea that
Halperin and his colleagues even suggest that the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund abandon the technocratic pretense that they just
dispense economic advice and start promoting democracy as a prerequisite for
economic progress. The Bush administration's ''millennium challenge
account'' does just that: it aims to distribute up to $5 billion of U.S.
overseas assistance for the first time to those countries that ''govern
justly'' and ''invest in their people.''
For Americans, the problem is what to do when democracy and national
interest conflict. Speaking to the National Endowment for Democracy last
year, the president acknowledged that America won't have a viable political
strategy against Islamic terrorism unless it stands up for democracy in the
Islamic world. The problem is that if the U.S. does so, new regimes voted
into power after elections in Egypt or Pakistan might be violently
anti-American. ''One man, one vote, one time'' is another genuine concern:
Islamists (or secular authoritarians) using electoral democracy to abolish
democracy itself. 
So promoting democracy is risky, but propping up autocrats only delays the
day of reckoning with popular anger. Throughout the cold war, the U.S.
backed authoritarians like the shah in Iran, which put America on the wrong
side of a genuinely popular uprising against tyranny, the Shia revolution of
1979. The United States has been paying the price in terrorism, nuclear
proliferation and hostility ever since.
Trying to set elections aside when they go against your interests is another
mistake, as France learned when it supported the Algerian military in
canceling an election that would have brought Islamists to power in 1992.
It's better to have the Islamists in office -- making mistakes, learning the
disciplines of serving electorates -- than to back autocracies that fail
their people. The ruling party in Turkey is Islamic, and democracy, plus the
hope of joining Europe, has disciplined its radicalism.
The hardest lesson of all for a powerful democratic people to learn,
however, is not whom to back but how to manage their own grandiose
expectations. The United States can promote, encourage and sustain
democracy, but it cannot impose it. In 2000, adroit American assistance to
the Serbian opposition helped topple Slobodan Milosevic, but that is bound
to remain an exception. The United States can help give people a chance at
free elections, but it is the people themselves who must anchor free
institutions in their own soil. Democratic providentialism feeds the
illusion that America is the driver of world history. America has power and
should use it, but history does not always serve American grand designs.
The pessimists say democratic providentialism, having apparently squeaked by
in Afghanistan, will meet its Waterloo in Iraq. Already, influential Sunni
parties are calling for a postponement of the elections, lest widespread
Sunni abstention and the difficulty of holding elections at all in Sunni
areas combine to bring the Shia masses to overweening power. The insurgency
is trying to strangle democracy at birth by killing any Iraqi who signs up
to work for the Allawi government. If the insurgency succeeds, the cost of
failure -- to ordinary Iraqis, let alone to the U.S. -- will be enormous.
Unless Iraq gets semilegitimate institutions next year, and a constitution
that allocates resources and powers to each of Iraq's constituent peoples,
the U.S. invasion will have traded a dangerous dictatorship for a failed
state and terrorist enclave.
Pessimists say the U.S. is imposing democracy at gunpoint in Iraq, but the
evidence is that millions of Kurds and Shia, and some Sunnis as well,
passionately want free elections in their country. There is no reason that
American soldiers cannot help them ensure a relatively free electoral
process just as they have helped out in Afghanistan. This moment,
frightening and precarious as it is, is the last chance Iraqis have to exit
from the black tunnel of Ba'athist rule and the chaos of incipient civil
war. 
Giving them this chance requires the administration to live up to its
rhetoric. The president's faith that God is on the side of freedom and
democracy may be one reason that he has been so casual about detail and was
so astoundingly assured in claiming ''mission accomplished'' in Iraq when
the mission had barely begun. Another question mark over the
administration's commitment to democracy abroad is its attitude toward
democracy at home. Democracy is something more than red-state majority rule.
The democratic faith also requires respect for the judiciary, deference to
constitutional separation of powers, decent respect for the opinions of
mankind, not to mention democratically ratified treaty law like the Geneva
Conventions and, last but not least, the humility that goes with knowing
that you serve the people, not a providential design that only you and other
true believers can understand.
Michael Ignatieff is a contributing writer for the magazine and the author,
most recently, of ''The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12WWLN.html?ex=1103691600&en=66a7
ad1a2b192060&ei=5070&oref=login&position=&pagewanted=print&position=

 war. 
Mi ricorda il detto: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating", cosi' 
mi trattengo dallo sghignazzare sulla democrazia sganciata dagli F 16, 
cantando 'Singing in the Rain'...
Am.

 Am.
Trattieniti pure. Non c'è problema.
Tb

Bringing Democracy to Iraq:
http://www.undermars.com/gallery52.html
52 +

 che la democrazia abbia un valore. E che valga la pena esportarlo.
In sostanza, uno di quegli "amici" che rendono superflui i nemici. Oppure,
semplicemente, anche l'esportazione di democrazia si paga: una curiosa forma
di monopolio (chi, oltre il Faro, può esportare la democrazia?) e di
costrizione all'acquisto (se non compri, ti ammazzo). Dopo il comunismo, ora
anche la "democrazia" (le virgolette sono dovute al fatto che *io*
attribuisco un tale valore alla democrazia da non svilirla al livello infimo
di un Bush o di un Ignatieff qualunque) viaggia "sulle punte delle
baionette". E dalle baionette verrà respinta, a Satana piacendo. Bye.
Namib

 baionette". E dalle baionette verrà respinta, a Satana piacendo. Bye.
Respinta per avere... cosa?
Palmiro Pangloss
-- 
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 Palmiro Pangloss
La fine di una demente rottura di cojoni, chiamata Invasione e 
Occupazione.
Se, mai... Perche'' Bush mette le mani avanti, oggi o ieri, dicendo che 
la Grande Elezione Democratica non risolvera' tutto. Quindi altri test 
di democrazia seguiranno, a cannonate di Abrahams. Buon 2005!
Am.

Quindi altri test di democrazia seguiranno, a cannonate di Abrahams.
Se lo dici tu...
-Stefano

 che la democrazia abbia un valore. E che valga la pena esportarlo.
toni, stai cominciando a postare roba inquietante, imho
A
P.S: i processi storici del compimento di una democrazia.
perchè la democrazia non è la salsa di pomodoro che la butti sugli spaghetti
e li condisce subito
quali processi storici e culturali sono necessari per arrivare a un regime
democratico.
postami roba su queste domande complesse.
(esportare? ma che razza di verbo è mai, applicato a un sistema di una tale
complessità????????????
Si esportano le scarpe e i profumi, Toni, non la democrazia)

 Si esportano le scarpe e i profumi, Toni, non la democrazia
Beh, insomma. Si è fatto robusto export anche di democrazia, per quanto
sia brutto dirlo.
Tb
-- 
Alcuni di noi hanno storie di merda che fanno male. 
Il solo kiwi che ha tastiera nel culo con fronde di quercia, 
spade e diamanti

 
A me sembra che c'hai la memoria breve.
0. Crollo delle torri gemelle
1. Dopo il crollo delle torri gemelle Bush prende la parola in 
televisione e annuncia  'Li cercheremo dapertutto e li prenderemo'
Gli americani capiscono: vendetta! E applaudono
2. Guerra in Afghanistan. Non si prende una minchia. Bush annuncia: 'In 
qualsiasiparte  del mondo vi siano dei terroristi, noi li staneremo e li 
prenderemo. Chi non e' con noli e' contro di noi'
Gli americani capiscono: vendetta! E applaudono
3. Bush prende la parola in televisione e annuncia: Saddam ha armi di 
distruzione di massa. E' inollerabile per la sicurezza del mondo. Vocina 
contraria di Blixen. Buffonata all'ONU di Powell con le diapo.
Gli americani capiscono: vendetta! E applaudono
4. 2nda Guerra del Golfo. Presumibilmente 30 o 40.000 morti nelle prime 
due settimane. Presa di Bagdad, rovesciamento della statua di Saddam. 
Bush sulla portaerei: Mission accomplished
Gli americani capiscono: vendetta! E applaudono.
5. Le armi di distruzione di massa non si trovano. Saddam viene 
catturato, le armi non si trovano lo stesso.
ALLORA, coordinandosi tra di loro su sponde opposte dell'Atlantico Bush 
e Blair in coro annunciano. 'E' vero che WMD non si trovano, ma ci 
potrebbero essere E COMUNQUE noi siamo andati a portare la democrazia'. 
(nota l'argomento capziosissimo)
Gli americani capiscono: vendetta e' fatta! E applaudono.
Conclusione: tu pensi che agli americani gliene freghi uno stracazzo di 
aver portato la democrazia in un paese verso cui non hanno mai provato 
nessuna affinita'?
No, sono andati li PER VENDETTA. Una vendetta come cojo, cojo, visto che 
non c'era ne Osama ne le WMD.
Pero' noi sapppiamo dalle audizioni in Senato USA del responsabile 
antiterrorismo, uomo della CIA presso il presidente, che Bush eil suo 
Consiglio concentrarono la loro attenzione sull'Irak PRIMA dell' 
attentato nine eleven, e che una volta la guerra in Afghanistan fu 
finita Bush CHIESE ai suoi consiglieri di lasciar perdere Osama e di 
concentrarsi su un attacco all'Irak.
Abbiamo cosi' una spiegazione della guerra all'Irak, anche se non ne 
conosciamo tutti i motivi.
In definitiva agli americani e' stata data la VENDETTA che volevano (a 
cui manca solo OSAMA) con 100.000 morti o giu' di li.
All'Opinione Internazionale, su suggerimento di Blair, e' stata 
raccontata la FAVOLETTA dell' 'andiamo li' a portare democrazia'-
Ex post, dopo che l'AGGRESSIONE non  aveva fatto saltare nessuna WMD.
Adesso i Neocon si stracciano le vesti ad inventarsi una Teoria Generale 
dell'Esportazione di Democrazia, ma anche loro lo fanno EX POST. In 
realta' si e' sempre trattato di esportazione di *Vendetta* onde 
garantire tramite l'odio la rielezione di Bush
 (e forse qualche interesse occulto dei petrolieri Texani,  o il 
silenzio di Saddam che con loro aveva trattato).
Adesso vorrei che qualcuno contestasse l'ordine di questa ricostruzione 
e mi contestasse dall'alto della sua Teoria Generale dell'Esportazione 
di Democrazia che le cose non siano andate realmente cosi. Perche' a 
parte l'ultimissima clausola sono avvenute sotto gli occhi di tutto il 
mondo.
Am.
In questi utimi due giorni i sondaggi americani danno una netta perdita 
di consenso in USA, mentre la situazione viene sempre piu' paragonata al 
Vietnam, altro paese in cui si era esportata democrazia a grosse dosi.
E come in Vietnam ci si chiede, e' necessario mandare altri soldati per 
non perdere la faccia? E il pubblico: Irak, what the fuck after all. 
Bring our boys home. Vendetta e' fatta.

 sia brutto dirlo.
eh, è brutto, sì.
Mi ricorda gli inuit rintontiti da Beethoven.
A loro faceva schifo, eh.
A
(sì, c'entra, la storia degli inuit)