More Flies with Sugar

In regards to My Foreign Policy Revolution, I’d like to clarify a point that has been brought up in comments: This policy is my solution for making people free.  I’m not suggesting that it’s hopeless and we just allow people to remain subjugated.  I’m saying this is the answer to that problem.  Because this is what’s always worked and nothing else has.

For as much as we talk about supporting freedom and democracy, what does that mean?  How do you go about that?  It’s my belief that we do so by including those countries into our system, selling them our goodies and buying their goodies.  And overall, showing them how great America is and why they should trust us and be like us.

And the chief aim of this is to develop multi-layered power structures in these countries.  To encourage entrepreneurship and whatnot.  That way, the evil leader doesn’t have all the strings of power.  As the economic system expands and more businesses are needed, the leader will have to rely more and more upon other people to handle everything.  And prosperity will also mean more work, and increasing wages and skills in these countries.

Soon, they’ll have a strong middle-class that will demand the freedoms that an economically impoverished people can not.  Rather than freedom being granted by the evil leader, it will be taken by the middle and upper classes, who the leader needs to satisfy.  Eventually, this will form into a democracy that could never be attained by bullets and bombs.

This is a really simplistic version of what happens, but this is how it works.  This is how we promote freedom.  Not through economic sanctions, which will always do far more harm to the people we’re trying to save; but through economic freedom.  First comes the money, then comes the power, then comes the women…or something like that.  But this really is how it works.

So rather than alienating countries and creating all kinds of pressures to make this happen, we just need to sit back, share the wealth, and watch it happen on its own.  And sure, that takes longer; but nothing else has worked.  And this has always worked…eventually.  Remember, dictators want an enemy, they want their people poor and powerless; so why are we giving it to them?  

I say we deny them this, give them their recognition and trade deals; and just wait for them to be undermined by our system.  Capitalism and democracy aren’t the best systems because people like them.  They’re the best systems because they work the best; if we’ll let them.  And we need to stop putting artificial roadblocks in the way preventing that from happening.  We do these things to punish the leaders, but we’re not pushing leaders, we’re punishing the citizens.  And it’s not working and only helps the leaders we’re trying to punish.  And it’s all arbitrary anyway, where we often coddle evil leaders who would be overthrown if we’d allow them to be.  This is insane.

I’m not suggesting that we turn a blind-eye to open genocide.  But Cuba, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, and all kinds of other hotspots are taking advantage of our lame policies by allowing us to stifle the very system we believe in.  And I can guarantee you that China’s starting to do the exact opposite; and is going to be granting more and more freedom every year.  They can’t help it.  We keep buying their shit, and they keep having to share the wealth and power their shit brings in.  This is how it works.  We need a policy that will let that work everywhere.  It will take time, but it’s the only thing that works.


By the way, this theory of mine was stolen from Isaac Asimov, and his Foundation Trilogy (which ceased being a trilogy when he screwed up by writing crappy additions in his old age).  Specifically, from the first book in the series, Foundation, which is totally awesome.  It also comes from Churchill’s History of the English Speaking People, which is quite interesting, but not nearly as fun as the Asimov.