Assertion #3

3. The realization of democratic values abroad will (on the whole) help to secure them at home and therefore should be encouraged, but not enforced.

We cannot ignore the potential benefits of a continuing spread of “democratic” values., or in different terminology, providing an appealing democratic ‘witness’ abroad, is an important part of maintaining the plant at home. It is obvious that democracies generally make “better and more reliable partners than monarchies and tyrannies”[1] for a variety of quite valid reasons. Though everything truly depends on how you define both war and democracy, it has become axiomatic that democracies do not war with each other.[2] There are lower likelihoods of episodes of ‘royal caprice,’ succession politics or a lack of reliance on the public will, and a much smaller chance of domination by hawkish military elites., democracies tend to prosper economically, and prosperous countries both increase the worldwide market for goods from other prosperous countries and are generally less likely to suffer from issues of internal weakness and strife. The rhetoric of the America’s current National Security Strategy, namely that: “Championing freedom advances our interests because the survival of liberty at home increasingly depends on the success of liberty abroad,”[3] is excessive, but the important role played by external conditions in the promotion of both autocracy and democracy remains undeniable.[4] The reversal of stable democracies such as the United States would likely require a great deal of such external influence, and if our international neighbors are edging toward democratic institutions of their own then they are much less likely to pressure or influence our own foundations toward autocracy.

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[1] Meade, Walter R. and Richard C. Leone. “Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World.” Routledge: New York, NY. 2002. p. 162-3
[2] Rioux, Jean-Sébastien. “A Crisis-Based Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition.” Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 31, No. 2. (Jun., 1998), pp. 263-283.
[3] “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America.” Washington D.C., March 2006. http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/sectionI.html

[4] O'Loughlin, John; et al. “The Diffusion of Democracy, 1946-1994” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 88, No. 4. (Dec., 1998), pp. 545-574.