10 November 2003

Thought Experiment on Imperialism and the Spread of Democracy

More and more with each passing month it seems that the United States is intent on Nation Building.

Not that they have much of a choice in the matter, really. I mean, they took down the Taliban government in Afghanistan to get at Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, Al-Qaeda. They also took down the Saddam Hussein government in Iraq, largely because of the belief that he was harboring weapons of mass destruction. In both of those cases if the American forces had packed up their toys and left after the job was done the enforced order of the previous regime would have been replaced by chaos and anarchy and the end result would have been a thousand times worse than what was there before. Thus, nation building. Not only did we take down the government that was oppressing and abusing you, but we will also help you build up a new government to replace it with.

On the one hand it's just good politics and it's the only way that you can get out of there with your perceived national integrity intact. On the other hand it's also the next step in the creation of an American Empire, because the states now have the opportunity to install local leaders who are loyal to American ideals and controlled by American installed advisors whose job it will be to make sure that the local figurehead does nothing to honk off the motherland.

I could go even deeper into the politics of the whole thing, but all that would do is start me on a tirade about neo-conservatives and how George W. seems to be controlled by his advisors and a whole bunch of other things. And I am sick and tired of complaining.

I have therefore decided to take a different tack with the whole thing.

Now maybe I'm a bit paranoid, but I don't see an American Empire as a necessarily good thing. Certainly it would not be without mixed blessings. And Empire is definitely where things are going. So let's try a little thought experiment.

Picture the following scenario. George W. has successfully been elected for a second term. During the course of his second term he has managed to virtually complete the destruction of the global terrorist groups and he is asking himself, what next? Naturally his eye goes right to the Middle East, which is the viper's nest that spawned a number of the more virulent terrorist groups. There isn't a single democracy in the region that isn't either American installed or American influenced. All the remaining governments out there are some form or another of monarchy. "We can't have that, now can we?" George says to himself. "These people are missing out on everything American Democracy has to offer them. Something must be done about this."

So he rolls out the carrier groups and sends in the Army and the Air Force and the Marines and he topples all the non democratic governments in the region: Saudi Arabia, Syria, Kuwait, the whole nine yards. Naturally he would install American controlled democratic governments in their place.

Of course this operation would take more than a single term, and legally a president cannot sit through more than two terms. But George must see the operation through to the bitter end. So Congress passes a new law which removes the restrictions on the number of terms a single president can serve. When the next election year comes around, George just plain forgets to call the election, and all the Republican and Democratic candidates who roll out for the Election That Never Happened are found dead of "Natural Causes" within a month of their announcements. By the time the next election year rolls around everyone would have remembered what happened during the previous non-election and no one would come out to challenge him.

But back to Nation Building and Imperialism.

With all the governments in the Middle East now sporting American style democracies governed by American installed figureheads, George would look to his trusty globe and begin to notice that there are still communist governments in the world. Communist governments? Like any good American George would be outraged just by the sheer mention of the word, for everyone knows that Communism is Evil. So George would roll out the Armed forces and set about crushing the Red Menace. Malaysia, China, and all the other Communist governed nations would all be forced into regime changes and American installed democracies would be installed in their places.

Well, then George would look at his globe and notice something really interesting. There are democracies in this world that aren't American style democracies. Canada and Great Britain and all the other Commonwealth nations, for example. None of us directly elect our Prime Ministers. The leader of the party with the majority in the House of Commons becomes the Prime Minister. Thats not True Democracy and it sure as hell isn't American Democracy! We can't have this!

So once again, the Armed Forces would be rolled out and the Commonwealth would be brought down in favor of introducing American style democracy to us backward yokels.

I don't propose this scenario to honk anyone off or to start any fights. I propose this scenario for the purpose of inviting rational debate, but there's another purpose as well. You see, I think that the resulting world that would be created would make for some really cool near-term science fiction.

So, this is what I'm going to do. In addition to being posted at The Keep, this is being cross posted to a number of other discussion forums, all of which are frequented by writers such as myself. Their comments and your comments about the world that would result from this scenario will be compiled into a document which would define the necessary timeline and other details that all of us use in defining the cultures and worlds we create. This document would then be posted at one of the several locations in which I have free web space I'm not using at the moment.

The reason that it would be made readily available like that is that I would make the universe that would be created a shared universe, meaning that anyone who wants to is welcome to write stories for it. And brother could we get some really cool stories out of this. Hell, the whole Democratic Conquest of the World would make a fantastic Tom Clancy style Epic if done correctly, don't you think?

I could just hang onto this and write the stories myself, but I think that by opening the concept up to the greatest number of creative minds possible we would get the best amount of logical realism for the stories, certainly more so than if I held onto the idea for my own purposes.

Besides, there's always the possibility, however remote, that if we talk about these things now we can work towards keeping them from ever happening, and I think that is a very good thing.