[barry-cotter]

I read a Crooked Timber thread recently comparing the US's treatment of Latin America to the Soviet Union's treatment of the Warsaw Pact. The world made slightly more sense after that.

The US is intimidating. It has made all non-democratic forms of government illegitimate by waging wars of extermination against them, it is a quarter of the world economy by itself, its military black budget is almost certainly larger than anyone else's open budget and its open budget is greater than the rest of the world's military budget summed.

The US is the global hegemon. Russia, China and maybe Iran are independent of it. The US does not truly view the rest of the world as sovereigns but as subjects.

[cafard]

"It has made all non-democratic forms of government illegitimate by waging wars of extermination against them"

Curious, then, how many Chinese and Russians there are yet. Is the US inefficient, or are you reaching a bit? And the US can be disgustingly good buddies with non-democratic governments: the Greek and Argentine juntas, various Middle Eastern states.

[barry-cotter]

I'm not claiming the US wants certain peoples dead. I'm claiming that given any opportunity or excuse it went to war with states whose basal ideology was not of rule by the people unless they were American clients.

[gaadd33]

It has made all non-democratic forms of government illegitimate by waging wars of extermination against them

What about all of the dictatorships that the US created or propped up? Saudi Arabia, Iran pre revolution, Panama under Noriega, etc?

[barry-cotter]

Clients. None of these are remotely models for other countries to follow, alternative paradigms of government like Imperial Germany or Japan, or the totalitarian regimes that are now dust except for North Korea. The closest thing to an alternate respectable paradigm of government now is managed democracy, like in Singapore or Russia, which appears to be unstable, one more variety of anocracy.

The key is legitimate. Are there any dictatorships that don't even make a nod towards the idea of popular sovereignty? Any states where someone could say "L'etat, cest moi."?

As far as Panama goes, the US's Warsaw Pact.

[WildUtah]

It has made all non-democratic forms of government illegitimate by waging wars of extermination against them

I agree with a lot of your post, but it wasn't anything the US government did that made all non-democratic forms of government illegitimate. They have all been illegitimate since the very first time a gang of stronger men beat and killed a weaker one just because they could.

[jemfinch]

Except that democracy itself consists of a gang of more people beating up gangs of fewer people just because they can. It merely substitutes numbers for strength.

Neither might nor popularity makes right.

[barry-cotter]

Illegitimate as in outside the bounds of polite society's discourse, not as in something you abhor.

[mindslight]

But when the beating is instead performed by a large gang of weak men, it's legitimate?