Quote:
Originally posted by Spanky
Iran under the Shah was growing a little but not much. His regime was corrupt and there was massive state intervention. The lack of growth, the actions of the secret police, and the corruption turned the middle class against the Shah. That revolution would not have happened without the support of the middle class. We put up with the Shahs bad economic policies because he was anti-communist and pro-isreal - kind of like Marcos in the Phillipines.
Iraq was a Kleptocracy in the seventies and eighties. The Baathist regime was a socialist and arab nationalist party. Under the Baathists the standard of living did not improve much if at all.
Flat. Wrong. Pressure for them to adopt good economic policies will not cause them to go the way of Iran and Iraq. Iran and Iraq did not go "bad" because of influence from the US to adopt prudent economic policies. And we did not put pressure on South Africa to adopt prudent economic policies, we put pressure on South Africa to adopt prudent political policies. South Africa was by far the most successful economy in Africa. At the time the apartheid regime stepped down the per capita income of the black population in South Africa was higher than the rest of Africa. However, there are some things more important than prosperity, and no amount of economic growth justified apartheid. Apartheid, like Genocide, is such an abhorrent political reality that anything justified its removal.
Subsidies won't help Mexico. That would just be throwing good money after bad. Prudent economic policies are the only thing that will help. Like Ireland, if Mexico would just open its economy and do some other things that Ireland did, its location next to the US would let its economy explode (like Irelands did).
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I hate these fragmented responses.
Yeh, our pressure was mainly political on South Africa. But, on Iran, do you really think Iran was not rapidly growing during the 70s, when the price of oil was shooting through the roof? Or that there was not a large Westernized Middle Class there at the time? Each were products of the Shah's government, which we supported, and that Middle Class was indeed looking for Westernized Democracy - but, they didn't prevail.
If you think pressure to adopt World-Bank approved economic policies doesn't carry risks in Egypt and Algeria, then you know a lot more about the area than the World Bank's economists, who are indeed worried about the political repurcussions of their policies. Indeed, it has been a huge topic of research that they have actively supported.
I happen to be a fan of policies that grow a sizable middle class (and organized working class, I'd add) as one component of encouraging Democracy. But we're smoking something if we don't think there's a lot more to it, especially in the Islamic world. My bet right now is that if successful in bringing democracy to Iraq, we will create the World's first Radical Islamic Democracy.
