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With pomp and flummery piled atop economic and ethnic chaos, democracy inevitably has a hard time. Though nearly all began by being governed in mufti, some dozen of the new postwar nations are now ruled by their military establishments. More and more, the military-officer corps plays the role of constitutional monarchy with emergency power. In the past nine months, seven African nations have been taken over by the military. "It is these men," says Gabriel Almond, president of the American Political Science Association, "who are initially most appalled at the signs of corruption and breakdown." New-nation armies by and large are not only the most honest, disciplined and organized elite in their countries but, paradoxically, the most democratic force around.
In the wake of the latest round of coups, Lord Caradon worried aloud that "people are going to say: 'These miserable little places should never have been allowed to exist.' They are going to reject these nations with disgust. That would be a bloody disaster." Nations have to begin somehow; occasionally just plain good luck comes along to give them a boost. A few years ago, feudal Libya was written off as a hopeless non-nation—until oil was found floating beneath the deserts. Barren Mauritania may yet bloom from the rich iron and phosphate deposits in its crust. Some unlikely nations have been struggling along for many years—little San Marino smack in the middle of Italy, Haiti and the Dominican Republic—and there is not much hope that their situation will improve. On the other hand, a minuscule country like Switzerland, divided into several parts by language and custom, is proof that some fairly difficult obstacles to nationhood can be surmounted.
A Safety Net
Today's new states are born into a large and particularly complicated world. One of its complications is, of course, the cold war rivalry, which so far has worked to the new nations' advantage by providing two competitive founts of aid. "The bipolar power structure provides," says Harvard's Joseph Nye, "a safety net underneath these nations as they play on their tightrope." If ever the U.S. and the Soviet Union get together and agree on spheres of influence, however, the new nations may find themselves with no net to fall into; in the interim, they had better acquire some bounce. The 20th century's other complications do not help either. The non-nations find themselves small and technologically blighted in a world that is fast integrating its trade and increasing its industrial and scientific prowess. Most of them simply cannot get up the ante to enter the race, let alone run the course on their meager human and natural resources. There is always the prospect of neo-imperialism, in which the stronger new nations would take over the weaker, but the votes and voices of other small nations in the U.N. are a deterrent to such country grabbing.