Good Wednesday morning Fellow Seekers of Wisdom and Truth,

Most U.S. military adventures are justified by their proponents, at least in significant part, as expressions of the U.S. commitment to the spread of democracy.

The history of U.S. wars and covert interventions, and their relationship to democratization, plus the long-standing close alliances between Washington and some of the world’s most repressive regimes do not lend much credibility to this nostrum.

The most recent evidentiary problem is the comparison of the cases of Iraq and Burma.

In Iraq, when the WMD and Al-Qaida connection justifications for the Iraq war fell through, the Bush administration relied on the urgent need to establish a model democracy in Iraq that would create pressure and momentum for democratization across the Mideast.

Pres. Bush spoke of the universal longing for democracy, of the benefits to the U.S. of the spread of democracy in areas of terrorist operations, and of the (historically fairly silly) claim that democracies don’t start wars. (In the post-World War II era, the United States has started far more wars than any other nation.)

Now we have Burma (its military dictators prefer that we call it Myanmar). This particular junta has ruled since 1988. Its anti-democratic credentials are among the world’s best. The winner of the last election (1991 Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi) has been under house arrest for most of the past 20 years. Now the regime is reduced to roughing up Buddhist monks.

Last week, at the U.N., Pres. Bush said:

“Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma, where a military junta has imposed a 19-year reign of fear. Basic freedoms of speech, assembly, and worship are severely restricted. Ethnic minorities are persecuted. Forced child labor, human trafficking, and rape are common… Every civilized nation also has a responsibility to stand up for the people suffering under dictatorship.”

Over the preceding 20 years, the United States has occasionally denounced the bloody Burmese dictators. It has participated in some sanctions. It has never taken the lead on the issue, never adopted a goal of “regime change” for Burma, never offered to contribute U.S. troops even to a U.N. authorized multilateral force to bring democracy to Burma, and never come within very loud hollering distance of an unauthorized, unilateral, invasion/occupation to put Burma on the path to freedom and democracy. Nor did Pres. Bush talk about doing so last week.

The United States in general (under the first Pres. Bush, Pres. Clinton and now under the current Pres. Bush) bears little of the blame for the almost total absence of freedom and democracy in Burma, unless, that is, you buy into the notion that liberating the oppressed, toppling the most brutal and repressive dictatorships and spreading democracy are special duties of the United States.

Me, I favor democracy and the rule of law for all who want it and am happy to see dictators replaced by benign, progressive, elected governments wherever it can occur. But I don’t favor sending U.S. troops to whichever country hits the top of the dictator charts, and I don’t trust the U.S. president to decide who’s on top of that chart.

That’s mostly for four reasons:

because with few exceptions, the lives of U.S. troops should be saved for defending the United States against attack and serious, verifiable, imminent threats of attack;

because sending U.S. troops hither and yon also serves to scare the hell out of the world, which becomes reasonably concerned about whom the U.S. will decide next to attack and occupy;

because it’s against international law to invade a country that hasn’t attacked your country, except when it’s done with the backing of the United Nations as a multilateral enforcement action against a grave threat to world peace;

because the history of such U.S. invasions, proxy wars (and covert overthrows, don’t forget those) includes too many instances of the United States overthrowing (or helping overthrow) democratic governments (in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Congo in 1960, and Chile in 1973, to name four of the best documented cases), then establishing long, close friendships with the dictators that replaced them to take seriously the idea that the United States actions in the world are fundamentally influenced by a strong preference for democracy.

The rhetorical device of using a concern for democracy to justify U.S. interventions seemed to work for a while, at least domestically and especially in the context of the Cold War. In a 1988 poll, 91 percent of U.S. adults said the United States was accurately described by the statement: “Its goal is to ensure that every nation that wants democracy can have it.”

The rest of the world long ago tuned out the America-arsenal-of-democracy meme. Recently, not even the U.S. public is buying it. I assume the proposition has taken enormous recent damage from the Iraq adventure.

When the Pew Global Attitudes Project conducted 45,239 interviews in 47 nations this year, they asked respondents to choose between these statements:

• The United States promotes democracy wherever it can or
• The United States promotes democracy mostly where it serves its interests.

In 46 of the 47 nations the second answer was the majority or plurality winner. (The exception was Nigeria, where, by 48-46 percent, the first answer was a plurality winner.)

In many cases and especially in Europe among traditional U.S. allies, the ratio was stark. In 38 of the nations, fewer than 30 percent believes the U.S. favors democracy for all. In Britain, only nine percent, in Germany, four; in France, three.

By the way, among the 47 nations surveyed was the United States. Thirty percent of U.S. respondents agreed with the statement that the U.S. promotes democracy everyone and for democracy’s own sake; 63 percent said no, only when it serves the U.S. interest.

What think?