Pakistani Martial Law

If Musharraf weren't pretending to help the U.S. capture bin Laden, who here thinks that the U.S. would, as of today, with Musharraf taking measures to make it impossible to remove him from office, be demanding that the international community suspend trade, diplomatic relations, etc.? Instead we have Rice "urging" Pakistan to return to democracy. So much for Bush's declaration that the U.S. would no longer support non-democratic nations even for strategic reasons.

This is not to say that I think suspending trade and diplomatic relations actually has any sort of beneficial effect. Right off the top of my head, I can't think of a single incidence where that happened. My point is that nothing has really changed with the way we support dictators -- including dictators that everyone has to know isn't actually doing a thing to help us, but is only putting on a show for us.

So what should we be doing? How about free trade with everyone, entangling alliances with no one? History has shown that the U.S. has had far greater positive influence on those countries with which we have had good diplomatic relationshiips and free trade agreements. China is an excellent example of things moving in the right direction (and also a good example of the fact that things don't turn around overnight. One does have to have patience); Cuba is an example of a place that is still in the mess it's in, with the U.S. taking the opposite approach. If we want to spread democracy, the only real way to do it is to freely trade with countries, allow the people to become wealthier and the society to become more complex, and then democracy will come on its own, from the people of the country. People who are poor and beat down and are surviving day by day can't revolt. And typically don't. Look at who really revolted in history: it was the well-off who decided they had had enough of the government aggravating them all the time. Often they are the well-educated. So we need to get people wealthy and well-educated in other countries if we want to spread democracy. The way that we can do it is through free trade.