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Comment by mustafa_pasi | Hacker News Reader

There is no such thing as countries spreading democracy and I am not aware of any country that has ever went to war to spread democracy. The only time the US attempted to "spread democracy" is when their influence over a foreign country was being challenged by anti-imperialist entities. At this point they invade to make sure the country transitions to a democracy, which when it comes to a poor country with little international clout, democracy amounts to it being very susceptible to foreign interference. And of course the US also invades actual democracies when they elect anti-imperialists that challenge US interests in the region.

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You spread democracy by showing it is better system.

A lot of countries that converted to democracy did this because their populations looked up to US and wanted to have better lief.

You also put pressure on other countries when they claim are democratic but fail to do this in practice (which is the case of Belarus or Poland where I live).

US does this actively and frequently in many forms, by voicing "concerns" or putting embargoes on countries that break their own rules.

Obviously, that pressure is much less effective when you do same things you try to pressure other countries to not do.

I am not sure it is always a better system in all situations. Democracies are very easily corrupted by foreign influence. This is one of the reasons rich western countries love to "export democracy". One of the reasons strongmen rise to power in third world countries is as a reaction to imperialism. In that situation it is not even clear you can have a functioning democracy, and then the choice is between a puppet of foreign interests or a strongman.

There exists no system that is best in all situations.

Case in point, a system that does not care about rights of their inhabitants is usually much more effective at running large scale projects. For example, China just deciding to shut down everybody in their houses in Wuhan and shoot if you don't comply. And just like that they got their pandemic under control.

> One of the reasons strongmen rise to power in third world countries is as a reaction to imperialism

No, they rise because they can.

And not just in third world countries. Germany was definitely not a third world country when it allowed Hitler to rise and start a global war. What about Putin?

We see these guys mostly in third world countries now mainly because without democracy it is difficult to keep up with democracies without some special situation (like Saudi Arabia being gifted with huge oil reserves).

In non-democracies normal people have trouble preserving their wealth over long periods of time. You need to be "in favours" of the ruling entity to be wealthy and the wealth vanishes if you fall out of it.

Democracies are on the other hand, by definition, people ruling themselves, and this should in theory mean a lot of focus is on personal security and freedom. This should mean it is safer to conduct business over long periods of time, accumulate wealth and generally contribute to GDP.

Go visit Japan, South Korea, Germany.

I am the first one to be vocal of US imperialism, but you can't deny that it is US influence that caused several modern countries to be democratic.

But my point is their intention is to exploit the weakness of the democracy they enforce on the target country. And that is assuming this is a situation where they are exporting democracy. There are also the opposite situations where they declare democratic outcomes invalid because they don't bow down to US interests. They happily support dictators in that case.

People really over sell the spread of democracy in these places. By US design, Japan was a one party state until after the Cold War, with ~six years of opposition party rule total. Similar happened in South Korea, who considers it's first free election in ~2000, and even then one of their few elections saw intelligence agencies ensure the win of their former dictator's daughter. And Germany had a history of democracy without US influence.

Coming out of the 1st and then 2nd World wars the US seemed to be the voice of reason and alongside Britain (and possibly France) had a strong desire to make the world a better place and not repeat the mistakes of the past - which were all around to see.

But I feel after the 1960's the US has slowly lost that ideal, and the visionary leaders (Woodrow Wilson, Roosevelt or Eisenhower) are no longer anywhere to be found (whether the electorate don't tolerate or desire them I'm not sure).

I think you've got an overly rosy view of pre-1960's history. Post WWI saw all three of those powers continue their colonialist land grabs, and post WWII saw all three commit many atrocities in the effort to check Russian advances.

Both the Japanese and Korean antidemocratic moves took place in that pre 1960 era for example.

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