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June 25, 2007
Authoritarian Great Powers
An excellent article from the current issue of Foreign Affairs is reprinted at www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/06/the_return_of_the_gr.html
This is a very big picture look at world history of the 20th and 21st Centuries. The author discards ideological terminology and looks at nations solely in terms of how they organize their economies and their politics. They are either capitalist or communist, democratic or authoritarian. The US and western Europe are capitalist and democratic, thus "liberal democracies." Russia, despite calling itself a "guided democracy" is capitalist and authoritarian. China, despite being run by the Communist Party, is also capitalist and authoritarian. They are the Authoritarian Great Powers referred to in this article.
Communism has failed in its competition with capitalism as the better way to organize an economy. But whether democracy is superior to authoritarianism as a more efficient and effective way to organize the body politic is by no means clear. We in the US believe it is, and point to victories in the two world wars as proof. But in fact Germany and Japan were medium sized powers which lacked the resources to defeat the US allied with Russia, the British Empire and China. Germany and Japan did at least as good a job as the allies mobilizing their countries to support the war effort, and Germany was on a par with the US and Britain in science and technology. The axis lost because its member countries were too small.
The outcome of the emerging competition between liberal democracies and authoritarian capitalist countries is by no means certain.
Posted by rob at June 25, 2007 05:30 AM
Comments
Posted by: Anonymous at June 25, 2007 05:30 AM