8 replies to this topic

[Beorht]

(Reuters) - U.N. members appeared deeply divided on Wednesday as they sought to resolve the crisis in Mali, with France and some of Mali's neighbors backing possible military intervention while the United States said the West African nation first must have an elected government.

http://www.reuters.c...E88P1N720120926

Don't know if you've been following what's going on in Mali but Islamist militants, with links to al Qaeda, have been taking control of the north of the country and occupied Timbuktu with predictable results.

[TheUnknowable]

hasn't the US tried to set up elected governments in other countries before, only to have it backfire?

[Beorht]

I can think of Iraq and Afghanistan but they followed military action and forcible regime change - but generally speaking I think recent foreign policy has been about the establishment of representitive governments in countries that had been dictatorships before.

[TheUnknowable]

and why else would a dictator or monarch give up their power to an elected official? The only times I can think of that it happened without a coup or military force behind it, it was gradual, and each dictator or monarch gave up a little more power to an elected office. like England, France, Japan, etc.

[Beorht]

Yeah, gradual through reform - to resist reform can lead to revolution.

[Shadout]

hasn't the US tried to set up elected governments in other countries before, only to have it backfire?

I can think of Iraq and Afghanistan but they followed military action and forcible regime change - but generally speaking I think recent foreign policy has been about the establishment of representitive governments in countries that had been dictatorships before.

The USA is admirably flexible on this issue, or at least it has been in the past. It will intervene politically, or destabilise a dictator if it is in the USA's interests to do so.

Unfortunately, the same can be said of it's approach to democratically elected governments...

[TheUnknowable]

They think that a democratically elected government has the ability to fix itself. It is a bit better off than a dictatorship in that area, but that doesn't mean it works for the majority of citizens under its control. Nor will the change come fast enough for the people under it.

[Rhuen]

America is shit in the eyes of some countries because we would take down democracies if they didn't do what we wanted.

American special forces undermined and took down a democratic government in Central America because that government was awarding homestead status to its citizens over Bannana plantations of American interest. So American forces took down the democracy and attempted to put in a puppet dictatorship so we could keep the Bannnana plantations.
The dictatorship eventually turned on America.

I don't think we should have waited for foresight to realize how stupid that sounded.

http://en.wikipedia....coup_d'état

[Beorht]

I think it made liberals and leftists suspicious of the government and to infer the lowest possible motive in its foreign policy.