[BgSpnnrs]

I think a more commendable tactic would be to not stick their oar into sovereign state's business with a mind to ruin their systems of government. I suppose not killing people is commendable, but it is pretty low bar for moral behaviour.

[bayesianhorse]

If you believe in democracy, you can't believe in any "moral right" or legitimacy of a non-democratic government. Castro, Assad, Putin, neither of them has a moral right to run their countries, as only a freely elected government in a human-rights respecting state can have legitimacy.

That doesn't mean these leaders don't have "a claim" to power, or that you necessarily have to actively start deposing them.

Yet the only reason a democratic government does not depose an antidemocratic government is if it can't do so. And the latter is true for almost all situations. It stops to be true when there is a specific oportunity to improve the situation.

[gclaramunt]

But you need to be careful to discern what's """real""" and what's propaganda.

From the outside, I can also paint a bleak picture of US election process (vote fraud, electoral college, gerrymandering) and if I select the correct news, the US have a presidency bordering on dictatorship that's bent on taking basic rights from the population, and a repressive police force.

Besides, the qualification of "human-rights respecting state" might be too much if you consider recent (and not so recent) history.

[bayesianhorse]

No democracy ever has been perfect. But You need to apply some serious distortion if you want to say the US is less democratic than Russia. At the very least you have to ignore that there is no opposition in Russia, virtually no dissenting media, virtually no investigative journalism and absolutely legendary corruption.

You also need to focus very specifically on "repressive police force", which is easier to do in the US, where the press will hunt down these incidences like sharks will hunt blood in the water.

Transparency actually hurts the democratic image of the US, whereas Russia won't ever have these kinds of public scandals...

[gclaramunt]

I never claimed that, for sure IMHO a good indication of a healthy democracy is presidency turnaround. But if you want to give the rights for state to intervene in the matters of another, you have to thread VERY carefully: "bring democracy to Irak" didn't work very well and the actual intentions were transparently different. tl, dr: separating a state's geopolitical interests from "helping democracy in other places" is very hard

[bayesianhorse]

The Iraq War wasn't about installing democracy. After 9/11 the US was in a shocked, irrational state of mind. I would hope other nations would behave differently given the same situation and power, but I have my doubts about that also.

There was a shortage of enemies to punish, so Saddam Hussein was the next best villain. After all, he did not only have weapons of mass destruction previously, but also used them.

I actually live in a country where regime change worked emphatically well (Germany). I can't recall any such "regime change" project though were the major intent was to install democracy. In Iraq it was the WMD pretense and a diffuse sense of retaliation. In Libya it was to stop an army from shelling civilian living quarters. Mostly the intention is "just stop killing people, dammit!" And it actually works. You can never say for sure, but for example if Syria is any indication, it worked in Libya. While there are tons of problems in Syria, continued shelling and bombing of civilians isn't one of them any more.

[bayesianhorse]

I actually meant Libya in the last sentence. Sorry. Shelling and Bombing is very much a reality there now.

[morgante]

I'd be the first to admit that the US isn't perfect, but we're certainly doing better at democracy than Cuba.

When it comes down to it, in Cuba there's one and only one candidate for president. That's not distortion, and that's not democracy.

[gclaramunt]

Sure, but claims of moral authority to intervene are pretty weak.