What have the Romans ever done for us?*

The (potential) immediate crisis may never be over.

Or Mobutu (though it didn’t really seem to function fine at all)

A very thoughtful post, with which I broadly agree. One of the problems with dictatorships is that, while they may genuinely be able to achieve positive things in the short term, they tend to outlive their positive side, and become a brake on further positive development. And the longer an obsolete dictatorship remains in power, the more it is likely to jeopardise or negate its earlier achievements. If, thirty or forty years ago, Castro had managed a transition to democracy in Cuba, instead of being determined to keep his regime in power indefinitely, one might evaluate the Cuban Revolution less negatively.

On the other hand, if the ‘gains of the revolution’ dissolve as soon as the dictatorship falls and democracy is introduced, then those ‘gains’ were a castle built on sand in the first place. In which case the dictatorship wasn’t worth it.

A final judgement on a dictatorship’s alleged achievements can be made only after democracy has been introduced, and we can see just how many of those achievements have proved durable.

Look at Yugoslavia functioning fine under Tito and turning into bloody hell almost immediately after his death.

Tito died in 1980; Yugoslavia remained unbloody and non-hellish for the rest of the decade, with the wars only breaking out in 1991. I don’t think they were the result of “ancient ethnic hatreds” so much as the product of the desire by the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav government to keep hold of bits of the country that wanted to secede.

“So if an elected successor regime abolishes something established under the previous regime that might be good in itself, that only goes to show that it was never worth having?”

Well, if a dictatorship makes certain ‘reforms’ that lack popular acceptance, and an elected successor regime then reverses those reforms on the basis of a popular mandate, then I don’t think those transient reforms can have justified the abuses that the dictatorship involved.

Define democracy. Define dictatorship.

I do not agree at all that states usually called “democracies” by liberals are in any way “morally” (whatever that is) superior to certain states usually called “dictatorships”. Internally, capitalist democracies use softer methods of control, and yeah, I’d agree that they are preferable to, say, the Gulag. Externally, however, advanced capitalist nations routinely engage in imperialism and neocolonialism, and this changes the equation.

Who are we to tell the victims in Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iraq, Somalia, etc. pp. that they should rejoice, b/c their suffering was caused by a democracy?

In light of this “universal violation of human rights”, human rights absolutism is profoundly apolitical; it disregards power differentials; it leads to equating the oppressor and the oppressed.

A democratic Cuba of the sort you want was never on the cards. Way back then it was Castro or Batista and at the very least Castro was and is an immense improvement on Batista. Undemocratic regimes can still be legitamite, as long as they (largely) keep the support of their people; for all that the exiles disagree, Castro has mostly had this support.

Roman dictatorship

In the early Roman republic, the dictatorship was a constitutionally limited office. A dictator would be elected by one of the popular assemblies for a limited term (defined either by a time interval or the achievement of a set goal), with the particular laws he was allowed to circumvent specified in his election.

In almost all cases, the reason for the election of a dictator was a military emergency, and the laws the dictator was allowed to set aside involved the normally strict controls on recalling veterans to military service. The early republic had a purely citizens’ army, with no training other than the on-the-job training of fighting and surviving a military campaign. The veterans of one or more such campaigns were thus of much greater military value than first-time citizen soldiers. But, because these citizen soldiers had less dangerous day jobs that they needed to attend to, there were strict legal limits that required the burden of military service to be rotated to green citizens in order to spread that burden evenly. These restrictions resulted in the army usually available to the annually elected consuls being small and inexperienced, and not infrequently getting into trouble that required a dictatorial army to be raised to restore the situation.

This is exactly what happened with the famous dictaroship of Cincinnatus. The small and inexperienced bi-consular army for that year had managed to get itself trapped by the Samnites. So Cincinnatus, who had had already been a consul in a prior year and successfully led the army, was elected dictator with the power to ignore the usual exemptions granted by prior service in drafting an army to deal with the emergency. So he raised a large army of veterans, quickly rescued the biconsular army, and then, the term of his office ended upon accomplishment of its assigned task, he marched his veteran army home to disband it, and himself, back to their day jobs.

The more modern usage of “dictator” to mean someone who grabs power outside of and against the law, derives from the abuse of the office in the late republic. There this previously constitutional office was used as a PR mask to lend some semblance of legality to the raising or maintaining of armies outside the usual restrictions by generals who then used these forces to rule by force.

I amazes me that everything in these arguments comes down to simple dichotomies and binary logic. It’s stupid. The debate is more about ego (and taboos) than anything: Who is closer to sainthood? “Well, not you obviously!!”
While many of the dictators the west supported overthrew democracies, Castro and others were nationalists who overthrew dictators who were clients of the west, or threw out colonial powers themselves. And many of them were in turn thrown out with the support of the west. These leaders like Suharto, who “returned” their countries to the earlier order (the sort who would have replaced Castro if we could find a way to do it) were the the most bloody by far. The historical pattern: first national autonomy, then democracy. Stabilization takes time, and lives. Western mechanizations add another bloody stage. Castro fed the poor at the expense of economic “freedom.” Sweden does the same thing, but by consensus. Apartheid S Africa was a colonial power. In Angola, Cuba was not. Castro was a dictator. I would take the ranting over him more seriously if it did not come from those without much of a record of supporting autonomy in the first place.

There is no need to defend dictators and dictators or dictatorships to understand that societies at some point have to make their own way to political maturity. Post-colonial babysitters are the grandchildren of colonial overlords, and they have their own interests, as people do here. Call my moral logic long term consequentialism if you want, or realism. Most of this debate is about the need to feel good about yourself, not the obligation to understand yourself or others. Again self-awareness is not a strong point of anyone here at CT.

And the defenses of Israel, a state that bases its autonomy on the lack of it for millions, that has maintained a crushing military occupation for 40 years, I find utterly grotesque. Again more about post war psychology of jews and western goyim than anything. I’m more convinced than ever that context free rationalism is just way to avoiding moral responsibility, a way of avoiding the moral complexities of the world. This discussion has been absurd from the moment it began.

John, your points might work except for the example of Palestine. What has “free and fair elections” brought them in the last few years? They voted for the least corrupt party, and they got a blockade, a coup and multiple incursions.

Why should we think Cuba would have been any different at any point in the last 50 years, and until we have a reason to think that, why should we accept that “democracy” would have been anything (in reality) except a rapid return to right-wing (instead of left-wing) dictatorship.

I also note that this year I have been reading accounts of starvation deaths in Argentina, apparently a liberal democracy with free markets. What should I make of this?

Wasn’t it the Aequians? I thought the Caudine Forks was the Samnites.

A final judgement on a dictatorship’s alleged achievements can be made only after democracy has been introduced, and we can see just how many of those achievements have proved durable.

One could say roughly the same thing about any particular democratic government’s achievements. However, those of us who live in democracies are expected to vote every three to five years, which requires making a working judgment about the most recent government’s achievements.

A democratic Cuba of the sort you want was never on the cards. Way back then it was Castro or Batista and at the very least Castro was and is an immense improvement on Batista.

I don’t agree with this. It’s too deterministic. Politics in every country I know about in detail throws up surprises, why would Cuba be the only country to have two choices?

Who would have predicted that Germany would turn into a democratic country post-WWII? Or that India would get through its 1970s constitutional crisis so well? I remember in high school faithfully writing letters to the NZ government about East Timor for AI, and regularly getting replies back saying that the occupation of East Timor was a done deal and there was no point in putting any pressure on. As a result of East Timor’s independence despite the NZ government’s opinion, I place very low value on statements that say things like “a democractic Cuba was never on the cards”.

“secularization, women’s rights…”
Both of which lacked a solid foundation outside authoritarian control. Similar situation in Iran under the Shah, Afghanistan under Najibullah and the Soviets, and Turkey. The beginnings of modernity in the most complex sense, rooted in society as a whole, are evident in the cultural renaissance in Iran in the 90’s, tied to the contradictions of new wealth, and in what we are seeing in Turkey now. The religious party is now the modern one, in both countries, though in Iran the moderns are fighting religious leadership and in Turkey they’re fighting a secular elite. Secularism will win out in due time, but not by command. If Mossadegh had stayed in power, their would not have been the backlash and delay.

Mat, a suggestion: If you’re going to make an argument, please refer to large groups of people and their actions, not one or two and their ideas. You might be surprised.

Well, if a dictatorship makes certain ‘reforms’ that lack popular acceptance, and an elected successor regime then reverses those reforms on the basis of a popular mandate, then I don’t think those transient reforms can have justified the abuses that the dictatorship involved.

I would disagree with this.

I think that this is a two-axis question, and collapsing it to one axis confuses matters.

On one axis, you have dictatorship/absolute monarchy on one end, and direct democracy for everything on the other.

On the other axis, you have tolerance/property rights on one end and “whatever is not required is forbidden” on the other.

Dictators(TM) are unaccountable AND intolerant, but many real-life democracies are also intolerant, and many real-life unaccountable rulers are more tolerant than popular sentiment would be. (Best example is the difference between the Austrian monarchy’s attitude toward Jews and those of the state formed from its breakup.)

Tolerance and accountablility are both goods, and in history they’ve often been competing rather than complementary.

Dictatorships are accountable too – Louis XVI, for example, lost his head.

I think on the sweetness continuum I prefer honey to small chunks of potassium.

“I amazes me that everything in these arguments comes down to simple dichotomies and binary logic. It’s stupid. The debate is more about ego (and taboos) than anything: Who is closer to sainthood? “Well, not you obviously!!”

I’m one of the guilty parties here, but I think Seth has a point. Overstated, maybe, but he’s at least partly right about me and some others I could name (but won’t).

re 31: oforgodsake. We (smug historians) look back with favour on those regimes of the past that seem to accord with our current values or are bound up somehow with our current self-image (eg. through being appropriated by previous generations of historians and other political speakers as support for various ideological points). We frown on regimes that deviate from the evolutionary path that we see stretching from our own feet back into the past. “Totalitarian” is a label we reserve for a subset of those regimes we consider irreconcilable with our own path: claiming it’s an exception is a kind of tautology.

Vibrant social culture is the kind of vague value judgment that many art historians are embarrassed about these days: it confuses history with art criticism, or appreciation. simply better, more complex, more subtle. More free is a moral judgment dressed up as an aesthetic one and, I’ll bet, hard to break down into anything approaching an argument.

Mass murder outside the walls of the city seems worse to us than mass murder within them. I beg to differ. Or are you insisting that Auschwitz was not a city but a factory? How about Batavia, Nanking, Dresden or Hiroshima?

Marko, you seem to a proponent of Fukuyama’s “end of history” theory:

“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

But I don’t think most people find this theory very convincing, evolution doesn’t just stop like that. Thus Castro’s Cuba or Saddam’s Iraq might, possibly, evolve into something different than the end-point you envision. Well, obviously not Saddam’s Iraq, but Cuba still represents it’s own branch; sure, probably a dead-end, but who knows…

Re Yugoslavia, try tracing the troubles to the IMF imposed “shock therapy” in 1988-89, which destroyed the workers’ self-management system and resulted in mass unemployment. That Tito did manage, partly through repressive means, to forge a relatively unified and functional multi-ethnic society out of the internecine conflicts of WW2 would constitute a cautionary counter-example to the easy assumption of the virtues of “democracy” trumping the evils of dictatorship, especially since it was the interventions and abandonments of outside “democracies” that contributed so much to the troubles.

Re: “Ancient Hatreds” canard in Yugoslavia (and elsewhere). Historic memories of injustice have to be dredged up (or sometimes made up) and are made into a coherent narrative (from a bunch of incoherent fragments) and they have to be told and retold for them to become “common sense”. This is how nations are made, and communities (and their enemies) are imagined. Of course people doing peace-keeping after the war are going to find these narratives there. It doesn’t mean that the hatreds are “ancient”.

Re: Saddam and women. Actually, it was the Ba’ath party that brought not only women’s rights, but also one of the most progressive public health and education system in the Arab world in the 1970s. When Saddam came to power in 1979, both through direct action and indirect [and unexpected] consequences, many of these gains were rolled back.

Re: democracy, I am with Christian H. at #10. I don’t believe a “democracy” can be designated through a simple “yes/no” binary, nor that it can be assessed simply as something exercised within the interior of one’s boundaries. The definition has to be much more precise than the simple negation of dictatorship. In fact, if the US is such a democracy, how come the people most directly and catastrophically affected by its decision-making (in places like Colombia, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) have no say WHATSOEVER in the way these decisions are made? What sort of democracy is that? In fact, haven’t there been a number of political theorists and historians who have written about the ways in which “democracy” in the Metropole was bought (or legitimated) through the exploitation of the colonies?

Finally, the argument about whether or not social goods enduring after the end of a regime are an indication of how good (or bad) that regime was is a fallacious way of looking at historical/political transformations. These transformations are constant processes, born of struggle between a whole series of competing and opposing forces, sometimes defined by intention, more often through unintended consequences. Whether an institution endures or doesn’t has as much to do with today’s struggles as it does with yesterday’s pasts.

History does not condemn violence, it condemns self-pity and insecure, pompous, bloviating hypocrisy. It won’t condemn Snoop Dogg but it will condemn George Bush.

Sir I submit to you that you know nothing about Snoop Dogg.

“From my recollection, a further problem was that the foreign policy establishments of the European powers tended to side with their “historic allies” in the early stages of the conflict, the Germans being pro-Croat and the French and British pro-Serb.”

John, it’s a myth that the Germans and Croats were ‘historic allies’. Hitler supported a unified Yugoslavia and opposed Croat separatism right up to March 1941. He dismembered Yugoslavia as his ‘Plan B’, after a British-backed coup in Belgrade. Even then, he was more interested in Serbia than in Croatia, and kept Serbia in his exclusive sphere, while assigning Croatia to the role of Italo-German condominium and buffer-state.

The ‘historic German-Croatian friendship’ is a myth for which lazy and ignorant journalists in the West are largely responsible.

Seth @16

I think you’re trivializing this debate on the basis of the context of this debate. For some people these are not blog arguments or contests for sainthood, they are debates over policy that can affect the lives of millions or billions of people. Do you impose an embargo or ‘blockade’ on an undesirable regime or do you make them a ‘puppet’? When it comes to an economic, political and military power as influential as the US, there seems to be little middle ground. While there may be an opportunity to make all manner of moral judgments, there are, at the core, much more significant matters at stake.

On what basis should policy makers base these decisions? National self interest is the easy answer because it frees you from having to take a position on matters that are often not simply black or white. But as you demonstrate, the cynical choice has consequences.

There is no need to defend dictators and dictators or dictatorships to understand that societies at some point have to make their own way to political maturity.

No nation has ever had the opportunity to ‘make their own way to political maturity’. It is impossible to create an environment that is free from external influence or consequences. Furthermore since foreign policy is one of the outcomes of the political process, I’m not sure how your statement makes sense.

“Do you impose an embargo or ‘blockade’ on an undesirable regime or do you make them a ‘puppet’? When it comes to an economic, political and military power as influential as the US, there seems to be little middle ground.”

“No nation has ever had the opportunity to ‘make their own way to political maturity’. It is impossible to create an environment that is free from external influence or consequences.”

The first quote says we’re the policeman who’s responsible for the block. The next one says we’re just a neighbor.

Which is it? And why?
They’re both wrong of course.

“When you are the US, anything you do will take on a significance beyond intention.”

Look up the Platt Amendment. Look up the history of economic relations between the US and Cuba, and look at the lease for Guantanamo. Ask yourself why others respond cynically to US professions of good will.
If you’re a neighbor you try to avoid unilateral action. If you’re a big man behave like a wise man not a bully. Of course in the real world things aren’t so simple. America acts like a bully and claims to be a wise man; what do you expect?
Not much. But I’m not going sit and listen to bullshit and lies.
Power corrupts, that’s why we have laws. Big men should follow them even when they have more guns than the cops. It makes things safer for all of us.
The US never embargoed Guatemala, did it?

sg @49

‘that’?

You may be taking the significance of my post beyond intention.

…it’s sadistic

Only under the assumption that Cuba is entitled to pursue anti-neoliberal socio-economic policies. It appears that the less you’re willing to submit to the neoliberal juggernaut, the less you’re compatible with what’s called “liberal democracy”.

Marko, you are wrong about the German-Croatian alliance. Bavaria is full of weekend warriors who would drive to Croatia to fight with the Croats in the early 90s. I’ve seen the videos.

Whether it is 1914-1918, the Catholic Church or memories of summer holidays I couldn’t say but there is a strong current in Germany on the side of Croatia and a partial description of Hitler’s policies is no kind of refutation of such a claim.

Jack, there certainly is a seedy underbelly of German history which can be readily exploited by Bavarian weekend warriors and other people stuck in the past, but I’ve seen no evidence that the actions of the German foreign office were determined by it.

“Marko, you are wrong about the German-Croatian alliance. Bavaria is full of weekend warriors who would drive to Croatia to fight with the Croats in the early 90s. I’ve seen the videos.

Whether it is 1914-1918, the Catholic Church or memories of summer holidays I couldn’t say but there is a strong current in Germany on the side of Croatia and a partial description of Hitler’s policies is no kind of refutation of such a claim.”

It’s certainly true that Germany provided diplomatic support for Croatia in the autumn of 1991. The point is, this support had nothing to do with any supposed ‘historic German-Croatian friendship’, because there never was such friendship. Rather than seriously analyse the reasons for German support for Croatia in 1991, a lot of journalists just fell back on lazy Basil-Fawlty-style stereotypes about Germans and Hitler. And the stereotypes have unfortunately stuck.

Marko, a politician’s response but I’m not being Paxman. I’m talking about actual individual Germans going to fight for Croatia voluntarily and from the early days. If that’s not a sign of allegiance I don’t know what is.

I don’t follow your logic. I’m sure there is plenty of superficial journalism (which is not always reflective of laziness) but that doesn’t mean it was all wrong. Their fixation may not have been entirely random.

I’m also curious to know if you really only believe that something actually counts as a good thing if it is permanent in an absolute sense. Does that also apply to bad things?

I am going to say very unequivocally that democratic regimes are better than dictatorships. And with the same brazen assurance, I will say that a country can’t be considered a democratic regime if some derivative of capitalist economic policy is practiced.

We have here in this country a plutocratic class that has devolved into electing a dictator to four-year terms. While the full extent of power for a President of the United States is fluid, it is currently not consistent with any prior precedent in law and has no conceivable limits that are not self-imposed. Namely, Bush has had several gross violations of the established law with no official sanction. What further violations he could impose are at his discretion, and are probably calculated by what he thinks is right and what he thinks he could get away with.

People seem to look at these concepts in very simple ways and avoid all the messy details that are the most important features of any conceptual framework. Cuba right now has a one-party state that propounds a socialist ideology with state control of most assets. What if this was changed to a multi-party state that propounds a socialist ideology with assets being controlled by the state, localities, and individuals in concordance with the laws passed by the party in power. From the perspective of the US plutocrat would this be democracy?

Unreformed(19th century) US capitalist ideology promotes individual and private control of all aspects of the economy. This has also been combined with an elected government to fixed-terms to form the core of what most people in this country consider ‘democracy’. Yet there are only two major political parties in the entire country and the turnover of elected officials on the national level is extremely low. Concordantly, the US government would much rather support a rightwing dictator that promotes individual control of all aspects of the economy(a Pinochet) over a democratically-elected socialist regime, even if the US mainstream has moved away from unreformed capitalist ideology.

Capitalist republics will therefore always react in a disproportionate way to those that hold the capital in their society. Capitalist power structures are much more similar to rightwing dictatorships then they are to very democratic societies, since in the end democratic control is a huge inefficiency in the decisionmaking process that is better to be avoided when running a money-making operation.

Thus the premise of the question is largely void because it presumes that we have a sizeable sample of nations within which to examine the facts. As international norms have trended away from autocratic power, it has been important for many regimes to retain at least the facade of electoral consent. One party states still have elections, especially if they are autthoritarian/totalitarian leftwing parties, and even extreme rightwing nationalist dictators like Saddam held mock referendums on his regime. But if this topic is to be considered on the true foundations of what democracies and dictatorships mean- distributed power versus centralized power- then I have to say that there is never a situation where dictatorship is preferable. A true democratic process doesn’t allow for the harassment and death of any national minority as small squads of individuals conform to mini-dictatorships. That might be a false tautology, but when arguing in the abstract the only system of governance that preserves the decency of individual and collective power is that of democracy.

Bavaria is full of weekend warriors who would drive to Croatia to fight with the Croats in the early 90s. I’ve seen the videos.

Ockham’s Razor sez: Croatian emigrants going back to do their bit/wave their willies/clean up on ciggie smuggling deals.

Jack, for the third time, the activities of weekend warriors from Germany in Croatia in the 1990s have no bearing whatever on whether there was or was not a ‘historic German-Croatian alliance’.

If, as you say, the German weekend warriors were motivated by their experience of holidaying in Croatia, then that obviously had nothing to do with any supposed ‘historical alliance’.

Jack, if you or John or anyone else has any proof that there was a ‘historic German-Croatian alliance’ then please do let us have it. The presence of German weekend-warriors in 1990s Croatia does not prove this.

“What are you trying to imply by suggesting that many Serbs fought on the German side in WWI? That there was no significant nationalist aspect of the conflict?”

That’s a non-sequitur if ever there were one.

Since large numbers of both Serbs and Croats fought on the German side in World War I, it makes no sense to attribute German diplomatic support for Croatia against Serbia in 1991 to any German memory of WW1 alliances.

Atilla Hoare sez:
Well, if a dictatorship makes certain ‘reforms’ that lack popular acceptance, and an elected successor regime then reverses those reforms on the basis of a popular mandate, then I don’t think those transient reforms can have justified the abuses that the dictatorship involved.

What if those reforms did have popular acceptance, but an elected successor regime abolishes them anyway? You seem to be assuming that elected regimes with a “popular mandate” (a weasel set of words, I’ve always thought) will always act with the will of the people. But we’ve seen plenty of liberal democratic regimes that have abolished popular institutions, or implemented reforms that were unpopular. You have the whole neoliberal New Zealand mess, the extremely unpopular pushing of private initiatives/PFI into the NHS in the UK to name but two (preceded by some extremely unpopular privatisations). Currently we are seeing another example of “democracy” with the European constitution which is being passed by elected parliaments, despite the fact that a pretty similar version was rejected by popular referendums.
In the third world this is far more common, sometimes with IMF connivance, sometimes without.

If Kohl was not playing into ethnic religious tension by design it seems he did so nonetheless. And Bush is doing the same thing in Kosovo. The same stupidity.

tracy w, #57 “General advice to “behave like a wise man” is useless.”
It’s generally assumed and for good reason that if you’re the big kid on the block, violence on your part is unnecessary. Ask a bouncer who’s good at his job. He’ll explain. If you’re interested in more than peacemaking, if you’re interested in control, that changes things. “Of course in the real world things aren’t so simple. America acts like a bully and claims to be a wise man; what do you expect? Not much. But I’m not going sit and listen to bullshit and lies.”
I guess you’d have me do just that.

“It relates to a point you made earlier and I think your conclusion that Serbia and Croatia were not significantly on different sides in WWI is perverse to say the least.”

Jack, with all due respect, you obviously know nothing about the ethnic geography or history of the former Yugoslavia. Are you even aware that there is a substantial Serb population outside of Serbia ?

The Serb population of Croatia, present-day Vojvodina and Bosnia lived in Austria-Hungary at the time of World War I. Consequently, large numbers of Serbs as well as Croats fought in the Austro-Hungarian Army, many of them very loyally, on Germany’s side in World War I.

“I do, with you, doubt that the German diplomatic corps were motivated by an explicit desire to stick with their WWI allies but I don’t think it is coinicidence that they ended up coming down on the same side both times.”

There was no ‘German-Croatian alliance’ in World War I, because Croatia did not exist as an independent state at the time of World War I. It’s like saying that there was a ‘Russian-Irish alliance’ in World War I.

Jack,

“Marko, you are wrong about the German-Croatian alliance. Bavaria is full of weekend warriors who would drive to Croatia to fight with the Croats in the early 90s. I’ve seen the videos.

Really?
Where did you see the videos? And how many people were in it?
Somehow I don´t remember any media reports telling me most young German men of military age departed Bavaria on weekends to fight in Croatia?
Girls and young women surely would have complained? :)

If you´re telling me that some Germans might have done so, okay. Likewise, if you´re telling me that Croatian immigrants in Germany have done it.

But “Bavaria is full of weekend warriors who would drive to Croatia to fight with the Croats”?
My job requires a lot of “away from home” work. Including weekends. Believe me, a sudden large surplus of lonely young women wouldn´t have escaped me. :)

Marko,
The Serb population in the Austro Hungarian Empire was not without its discontents I believe.
Would you use the fact that Jovan Divjak is a Serb to dismiss any talk of an ethnic divide in Bosnia? Do you really mean to suggest that the Serbs were as much for and the Croats as much against Austro Hungarian rule as each other? You might as well use British rule over Ireland as proof of Irish loyalty to Britain.

Detlef,
In a college room at a British university. “Full” is definitely hyperbolae but my feeling was that there were probably hundreds and that they had an order of magnitude more sympathisers and they in turn held a strong version of a more popular view and therefore that they reflected strong current of opinion not mirrored on the other side and that it also indicated the default bias at least of that part of Germany. I’m fairly sure that the pattern was repeated in Austria.

I rather spent all my anti-dictator energy on the last thread about Castro, but just a thought. It is possible for a democracy to exist without requiring abuse of its populace. Whereas, and I’m happy to be proved wrong on this, it seems to be a prerequisite of dictatorship that it is repressive and abusive of human rights. Anyone have an example of a dictatorship that doesn’t fit that mould?

So I take it the answer to my question then is “no”.

Therefore the question becomes whether or not the citizens of a country would prefer a native dictator (one who is not a murdering psychopath) to the dominance of a foreign democracy.

But, you see, the neocon types will argue that the foreign dominance will come in the form of democracy for the local population, albeit within certain parameters (required degree of neoliberalism). They will also claim that these parameters are objectively in the best interests of the population, which is, of course, a universal authoritarian argument. Sophistry, of course, but apparently quite convincing.

Democracy institutionalizes an orderly process for regime change that favors the majority. Dictatorship institutionalizes resistance to regime change and so favors those who can force or resist change through intimidation or violence. That’s why most dictators wear military uniforms.

It is difficult to imagine a situation where members of the majority would be intrinsically better off under a dictatorship.

Dictatorship institutionalizes resistance to regime change…

I think that’s right.

Democracy institutionalizes an orderly process for regime change that favors the majority.

I don’t think it’s true that it favors the majority, necessarily. What typically happens is that the population, pre-conditioned by the mass-media, is given the choice of two directions; for example, they can choose between ‘bear right’ and ‘sharp right’. Perhaps the course that favors the majority is ‘sharp left’ but that can’t be facilitated by democracy because the electoral process, mass-media, and other powerful institutions (internal and external) all favor the direction ‘right’. If the population still refuses to follow recommended direction, they can be convinced by more direct means: sabotaging their economy, military attacks, terrorism, etc.

Over time the majority itself can be shaped, is shaped, or bred if you want to get Darwinian. The same processes that created the Dachshund out of the Dobermann are at work on human beings, as they are on every organism. This is maybe why so much resistance to the idea of evolution occurs in the demographic it does. A turning away from that awful thing in the mirror.
Given enough time under the right conditions the majority will be what was once a minority. Dramatic examples being the US in the 17th c., the US now, Australia 18th c. and now, etc.
It’s too obvious to run away from without schizoid self-delusion when it’s locational like that. When minority qualities are induced and enforced into becoming qualities of the majority, like shades of orchid, it’s more than subtle enough to be ignored, especially since looking at it directly’s so scary. Given cowardice is one of the more desirable attributes in a slave population that not-seeing will be reinforced, where slaves are the goal.
Which brings us around to Edenbaum’s “Ignorance is not good for the republic.”
True, but as with domestic animals, because it makes them malleable and less likely to rebel, ignorance and cowardice are sought-after qualities in slaves. And slaves are good for empire.

Well, wikipedia suggests Napoleon Bonaparte, Anwar Sadat, Kenneth Kaunda, Józef Piłsudski, Omar Torrijos, Juan and Eva Peron and Fidel Castro as benevolent dictators, so there you go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictator#.22The_benevolent_dictator.22

But, again, there might be some confusion of cause and effect here. In a place like Noway where there’s little tension of any kind – ethnic, class, religious or whatever – there’s, naturally, little need for coercion, violation of human rights, or dictatorship. But in a place/situation with high level of tensions and contradictions it just may be inevitable.

#92 – I got stuck in Noway once. Man, it was hard to get out of there.

Geo, once again I’m going to have to point out that my point was not that democracies always secure all rights (political, civil or economic), but that it seems to be inevitable that a dictatorship will stamp on some or all of them.

On that note, I’m going to have to snort derisively at the Wikipedia list of “benevolent dictators” if it includes Castro on the list. With all the toing and froing on this and the previous thread about how bad or how inevitable Castro was or wasn’t, I never heard anyone deny that he had stomped on various, even numerous, human rights, unless those 69 political prisoners were suddenly freed while I wasn’t looking.

“General advice to “behave like a wise man” is useless.”
It’s generally assumed and for good reason that if you’re the big kid on the block, violence on your part is unnecessary. Ask a bouncer who’s good at his job. He’ll explain. If you’re interested in more than peacemaking, if you’re interested in control, that changes things.

Cool – let’s hand over international relations to a bouncer! ‘Cos there is absolutely no difference between controlling a bunch of drunken louts in a bar and managing relationships with a foreign dictatorship whose first concern is staying in power – and whom you are very likely going to have to deal with again not just tomorrow for years and years.

Oh, and you don’t just want to keep them from beating up your neighbours, you have to worry about climate change policy and deforestration and them supporting groups of people who are trying to attack your government, and you also have to worry about the other neighbours, and your own government is dependent on votes from people who have strong opinions about what should be happening in the dictatorship country (there are a lot of Pacific Islanders in NZ).

Nope, foreign policy is absolutely dead simple, and anyone who doesn’t immediately appreciate the obvious brilliance of advice like “act like a wise man” is simply expecting you to waste your time listening to bullshit and lies. Simple slogans and talking to bouncers is the way to go!

What the Romans did for us was to introduce the idea of a universal citizenry with equality under the law (however much this may have been honored in the breach). There is much confusion in the posts above with legitimate governments and dictatorships (tyranny). Under dictatorships there is no rule of law.

The law may often be an ass, it may be applied imperfectly, but on the whole it is preferable to lawlessness.

In Monarchies the rule of law is above all, even the king, though some quibbled that he was bound only by God’s law (in Catholic lands interpreted by the Pope and enforced threat of excommunication and/or regime change as directed by the Papacy.)

Despite its officially sanctioned racism and other grave defects, such sanctioning the opium trade, it is my impression that the British Empire did bring a (relatively less corrupt than previously) Rule of Law to, say, British Hong Kong (mentioned above) and that this was one benefit that the inhabitants were grateful for.

The little tin gods of academe.