Sunday, June 18, 2006

Democratic Alliance

Just to flesh out my thoughts a bit more on my post from this week on summoning an alliance of democracies, I think this could be made to work by having charter members, associate members, and perhaps an observer tier. Charter members would be established democracies, say having had stable democracies for >25 yrs. This would be not just the West but also India and Japan. After achieving 25 years of democracy with stability and respect for the normal societal protections, countries would join the first rank. This would serve as an aspiration magnet: countries would see that benefits of this club (free trade with the West, India, Japan, some sort of military umbrella, cultural and scientific exchange, and so on) were real yet earnable. A positive ideal of carrots without the fluff and corruption and garbage of the UN to complement the steel backbone necessary to take out the trash. The Cold War's battle of ideas was won by a positive vision; something similar should be deployed by the US and friends, and the sooner, the better. It brings to mind the exchange from Star Trek:
Spock: "One man cannot summon the future"
Kirk: " But one man can change the present"

1 Comments:

At 10:26 PM, Blogger 49erDweet said...

I like your basic suggestion, as well as the current modifications. Please continue pushing for this result.

I also respect your approach to the massive problems we national republicans have created by: 1. Failing to govern the country with a positive vision for the future; and 2. Selecting for congress a group of ill-prepared and unskilled representatives whose so-called ethics evaporated on the first warm day they happened to stroll the banks of the Potomac.

This is not to say the minority party's minions are any better. They're even worse! But after 20 odd years with them in power we already knew that.

But I'm off-thread so will cease yapping. Keep up the interesting thought processes. We have to do something to make a change, and your ideas are the best, yet, I've read.

 

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