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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

The cultural aspect is critical and people have overlooked in many places. The Optimism for Russia after the fall of the USSR, Ukraine and Afghanistan, Libya, etc. Places with no democratic foundation or tradition but plagued by corruption.

It needs to grow over decades organically for the people to get used to the idea and the institutions, for example, like in Hong-Kong. Singapore is another example and they yet don't have completely open democracy.

The ground must be fertile, as they say in allegorical terms, for democracy to take root. You can't impose it and then wish it to work and have it work. You can't throw money at it (as AF has shown us). It's a messy process. Sometimes, like Panama, you have the right accidents happen and it works --but at least then they could rely on the legacy of Marti (as they were part of Columbia during independence from Spain) and they had the US administer the Canal Zone till '00, I believe.

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In Bangladesh, we have had real elections, leaving aside the the assassinations and that one military dictatorship. But we're back to one-party rule as the leader of the opposition party has been jailed. And that's after having 800+ years of civilization under the Sultanates and 200 years under Britain.

It's not economics--our PPP GDP per capita is about what the U.S. was at in the late 19th century (at which point it had been a successful multi-party democracy for 70-80 years).

You don't have to neglect that no country is invaded to spread democracy. And people learn from that. Not from what you say, they learn from what you do and that is defending your interests. The spite will be larger than the love for freedom and democracy, hell, the US doesn't currently make the impression that they like freedom very much.

That is not a clear cut in Afghanistan. Perhaps the US just invaded because the Russian tried and it was believed that its hub location could enact control on neighboring countries. Terrorism netted the needed excuse, but it continued after Bin Laden was out of the picture.

> USSR, Ukraine

Many former USSR countries are doing quite well with their new democracies. Consider, for example, that Ukraine had basically as much democratic tradition as Poland had (big parts of it literally being parts of Commonwealth of Poland for centuries), and yet Poland’s democracy has been doing much better.

I agree that culture and traditions matter, but with your examples, you are overstating your case.

I don't know about Poland, but Ukraine is certainly not a democracy. Starting from the fact that the presidents are appointed by oligarchs (you may call it a conspiracy theory, but it's true), the country is plagued by corruption. Ending with the fact that current president and his party are closing media of opposing parties (so much for "freedom of speech").

Nor does it help the Ukraine. All the industry was destroyed in the last 30 years. And agriculture is not enough: if you seed all available land of Ukraine, it would produce only about $40 bln of agricultural products, while Ukraine yearly imports from abroad are $60 bln. The country is unsustainable, it would eventually collapse. It's not the only country in the world that consumes more than it produces, but other countries have some kind of advantages allowing them to subsist while being netto importers. E.g. USA also consumes more than it produces, but it can freely print world reserve currency and buy whatever it needs. If someone objects, it has most expensive army with bases all over the world to suppress any discontent. Ukraine doesn't have a single possible way out.

Eventually people that have any skills and energy will migrate to Europe/Russia/other countries (I was constantly surprised how many there're Ukrainians working in every part of the world - even the most remote ones), existing population will wither. There's a conspiracy theory that Ukrainian government is afraid to organize population census (the last one was long time ago), because they know that results will be unpleasantly surprising.

> I don't know about Poland, but Ukraine

It looks like you know nothing about Ukraine too.

typical Russian imperialistic brainwashed conclusions. I'm sorry.

I'm not going to discuss all of your wrong assumptions, just mentioning "closing media". Do you know the narrative those media were spreading? Do you know who is Medvedchuk? These media were pro-russia propagandists.

But am I wrong in the assessment of the economical situation and population decline in Ukraine?

Am I wrong that all the industry in Ukraine was destroyed (aviation, shipbuilding, cars and trucks, etc)?

Am I wrong that energy consumption in Ukraine is declining (means that industry and/or population are declining)?

> am I wrong in the assessment of the economical situation and population decline in Ukraine

Yes you are. You showed (without evidence but let's assume) that $40bn of agricultural exports don't cover the $60 of Ukraine imports. Only 15% of people there work in agriculture. The other 85% of workers are just as capable of creating value for export.

> Am I wrong that all the industry in Ukraine was destroyed

Yes, and it is so obvious a lie that it strains credulity. Even just ignoring the well known mining/iron ore/iron/steel/pipe industry that has at least a dozen well known big companies. Plus of course Ukraine manufactures a lot of other things from cars to armament to confectionary.

And if it came to an export/currency collapse people would and could adapt and buy the local food/cars/trucks (even if they don't have the same quality or variety as foreign goods).

Many of my friends who are from Ukraine actually prefer to work in St. Petersburg and Moscow due to better opportunities and higher pay. Granted, compared to the US Russia's economy is horrendous, but the opportunities are still greater than what is available in Ukraine, at least as perceived by 20-something aged Ukrainians.

Ukraine is poor. It is corrupted. Its population is declining. It has a chance still: there is a social demand for a different lifestyle and organisation of the state, which eventually will solve many problems Ukraine has and will make it a place not worse that any other East-European country. Now it's on the way of building democracy and it may fail without help, unfortunately. What we need from the West is constant pressure on our establishment to setup effective institutions, especially in the anti-corruption domain.

Source: I'm a Ukrainian still staying in Ukraine because I believe the above is true. Otherwise I'd move to EU with very little effort or to Russia with no effort at all.

What about Hungary?

Libya? Plagued by corruption? Oh, you mean _after_ the U.S. destabilised it? Okay.

The petro-dollar is a bit of a catch 22. Either we produce our own domestically and purchase with Canada (ideally using the keystone pipeline - but we know how that played out) or we throw out all of our internal production for "environmental" reasons and continue to pillage the middle east to make sure we have enough oil.

IMO, taking a bit of an environmental hit or trading with Canada is far superior to spending trillions blowing up the middle east and causing more problems than were there to begin with in an already historically unstable region.

Germany had no democratic tradition either, it was corrupt too. And, as someone else said, many former USSR countries are doing quite well with their new democracies.

The factors are way more complicated then just that.

Of course Germany had democratic traditions, going back to the early/middle of the 19th century. The Frankfurter Nationalversammlung at 1848, while it failed quite spectacularly, consisted of people from all over Germany debating. Even before that in many of the smaller kingdoms the people had achieved some representation and constitutions they guaranteed them the basic democratic rights of assembly, speech and a parliament in which to voice their opinions.

The Kaiserreich had a parliament. Weimar failed in the end and had plenty of problems but still it was a democratic government and that despite major challenges (Civil War, lost World War, bad economy).

And if you are willing to look into the many states and small countries that made up Germany before its unification you have 'democratic' city-states going back to the middle ages. Don't forget that Germany was and is deeply federal (Its official name is 'Federal Republic of Germany' after all).

Even right before the democracy was abolished by the Nazis the largest federal state was governed by the Social Democrats (Prussia).

Hell, our social democrats keep telling everybody that their party was founded on 23 May 1863 even if nobody cares.

Weimar was forced on them and was seen as disorderly mess by population. Yes, they had parliament pre-WWI and they still were not democracy. They were monarchy run by royal families. They were also highly militarized country at that too.

Some debates and some representation does not constitute "democratic tradition".

Weimar was forced on Germany? The Kaiser had abdicated, there were revolutions all around Germany, the navy was in full on mutiny. Of course it was seen as disorderly mess but it was in no way forced upon the population from outside and instead was the result of a dozen different forces inside of Germany pulling and pushing to achieve their own personal goals. While it started with bloodshed (Mainly between the communists and the democratic left) in the following elections the social democrats where elected with a wide majority, which in large parts was a testament to the level of public support they and their democracy had.

And I am really curious what would constitute a "democratic tradition" in your opinion. By 1945 the German people had been organizing themselves for around a hundred years in different parties, unions, parliaments. They had newspapers discussing everything from politics, culture, society and democracy. They had organized countless nationwide strikes and participated in two revolutions. The first chancelor of Germany after 1945 had been a democratically elected mayor of Cologne for around 15 years. Was part of a political party since 1907.

Maybe look at the Kapp Putsch. Right wing politicians and militias occupied Berlin in 1920. The democratically elected government called for a general strike and for the next couple of days the whole country stood still. No trains. No work in any factory. No news paper. No telephone. In Berlin there was no water. No electricity. Absolutely nothing. This doesn't happen in a nation with an apathetic populace which has no democratic tradition and just wants it's Kaiser back.

Democratic tradition doesn't just consist of having a parliament as the highest authority in your country if you ask me.

> Some debates and some representation does not constitute "democratic tradition".

Those things are the foundation for what becomes democracy. To use England as the clearest example, Democracy there evolved with feudal aristocrats creating a parliament to have input to the king’s decision making, and from there parliament taking on more and more power and eventually being turned over to popular control through elections.

Germany had the conditions precedent to democracy, as did Japan: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-afghanistan-occupation.... Things like rule of law, market economies, etc.

An authoritarian regime that liberalizes the underlying foundation of the country often creates the stage for a functional democracy. That happened in Germany, South Korea, Singapore, etc. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_of_Freedom

But you can’t go from being a tribal society based on kinship ties and the only rule of law being the decisions of village elders to democracy.

>Germany had no democratic tradition either

Germany differs from Afghanistan in having had centuries of experience with bureaucratic society, e.g., implementing the world's first welfare state in the 1870s.

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