Justin Raimondo: Gang of Democracies ... Woodrow Wilson's dream may yet become our nightmare
[Justin Raimondo is editorial director of Antiwar.com. ]
When I hear the word "democracy," I reach not for my revolver, but for my wallet. I freeze and wait for the next blow to fall: a tax hike, another war, a new form of knavery masquerading as well-intentioned ignorance.
Imagining a "League of Democracies," as a number of foreign-policy mavens have, I reach instead for the history books and recall the many incarnations—and failures, most of them bloody—of this perennial panacea. The League of Nations, Woodrow Wilson's stillborn brainchild, was supposed to be just such an agency, deterring aggression and enforcing the right of nations to self-determination. The lineage of this idea goes back even farther, originating in the imagination of H.G. Wells, whose 1933 novel, The Shape of Things to Come, projected an idealized portrait of an international brotherhood dedicated to Science, Reason, and Order and to cleaning up the mess of a second global conflict. Yes, Wells predicted World War II, which in his version lasted 100 years and culminated in a worldwide plague. Of course, the "Dictatorship of the Air," as Wells dubbed his legion of world saviors, subdued retrograde elements by means of sleeping gas, which rendered nationalists and other unsuitable persons helpless.
In the real world, it wasn't sleeping gas that gave would-be saviors their power, but armed force, as Lenin realized. Neoconservative calls for an international federation of designated "democratic" nations, which would act in concert ostensibly to defend and extend democracy worldwide, have a distinctly Soviet flavor.
When the Soviet empire was at the height of its expansive phase, advancing into Europe in the wake of Hitler's defeat, it set up "People's Democracies" from Warsaw to Sofia. Of course, these weren't democracies at all but dictatorships coated with the thinnest veneer of "democratic" formalism.
When the Communist-dominated "League Against War and Fascism," which had previously opposed U.S. intervention in the war, turned on a dime on the Kremlin's orders, this "peace" group of left-wing ministers and hardened Communist cadres changed its name to the "League for Peace and Democracy." It was the signal that the left-wing "peace" movement was about to defect to the War Party, and, to be sure, the Communists wasted no time in becoming the most ferocious warmongers on the block. Regardless of whether one believes that the war of the "democracies" (including the Soviet Union) against the Axis could have been avoided, the principle holds: when you hear talk of spreading democracy, the beating of war drums is sure to follow.
Instead of a war-making machine, the idea of an international league of supposedly free states is presented as a "Concert of Democracies," but whatever music is produced will no doubt have a distinctly martial tune. This is no symphony but a pro-American version of the Warsaw Pact.
What we are witnessing is a twisted replay of the Cold War, with the U.S. taking the part of Russia....
Read entire article at American Conservative
When I hear the word "democracy," I reach not for my revolver, but for my wallet. I freeze and wait for the next blow to fall: a tax hike, another war, a new form of knavery masquerading as well-intentioned ignorance.
Imagining a "League of Democracies," as a number of foreign-policy mavens have, I reach instead for the history books and recall the many incarnations—and failures, most of them bloody—of this perennial panacea. The League of Nations, Woodrow Wilson's stillborn brainchild, was supposed to be just such an agency, deterring aggression and enforcing the right of nations to self-determination. The lineage of this idea goes back even farther, originating in the imagination of H.G. Wells, whose 1933 novel, The Shape of Things to Come, projected an idealized portrait of an international brotherhood dedicated to Science, Reason, and Order and to cleaning up the mess of a second global conflict. Yes, Wells predicted World War II, which in his version lasted 100 years and culminated in a worldwide plague. Of course, the "Dictatorship of the Air," as Wells dubbed his legion of world saviors, subdued retrograde elements by means of sleeping gas, which rendered nationalists and other unsuitable persons helpless.
In the real world, it wasn't sleeping gas that gave would-be saviors their power, but armed force, as Lenin realized. Neoconservative calls for an international federation of designated "democratic" nations, which would act in concert ostensibly to defend and extend democracy worldwide, have a distinctly Soviet flavor.
When the Soviet empire was at the height of its expansive phase, advancing into Europe in the wake of Hitler's defeat, it set up "People's Democracies" from Warsaw to Sofia. Of course, these weren't democracies at all but dictatorships coated with the thinnest veneer of "democratic" formalism.
When the Communist-dominated "League Against War and Fascism," which had previously opposed U.S. intervention in the war, turned on a dime on the Kremlin's orders, this "peace" group of left-wing ministers and hardened Communist cadres changed its name to the "League for Peace and Democracy." It was the signal that the left-wing "peace" movement was about to defect to the War Party, and, to be sure, the Communists wasted no time in becoming the most ferocious warmongers on the block. Regardless of whether one believes that the war of the "democracies" (including the Soviet Union) against the Axis could have been avoided, the principle holds: when you hear talk of spreading democracy, the beating of war drums is sure to follow.
Instead of a war-making machine, the idea of an international league of supposedly free states is presented as a "Concert of Democracies," but whatever music is produced will no doubt have a distinctly martial tune. This is no symphony but a pro-American version of the Warsaw Pact.
What we are witnessing is a twisted replay of the Cold War, with the U.S. taking the part of Russia....