The falls of Ferdinand Marcos and "Baby Doc" Duvalier have inspired a flurry of agitation with the simple theme, Let's do the same elsewhere, everywhere. The hit-wish list is breathtakingly long, including South Korea, Indonesia, Pakistan and many others. Just pull the plug of U.S. support for all these nasty dictators, so goes the argument, and democracy will flourish.
This represents a naive view of democracy, of the extent of U.S. power and of the nature of different regimes too easily swept up under the label "right-wing dictatorships" (or, with special enthusiasm, "tyrannies").
Some critics blame the U.S. for the existence of just about all the world's non-Communist dictatorships. While it is true that many of these receive U.S. support, the forces that lead to dictatorship are usually beyond American control. Take Haiti. It may be possible to bring about a lessening of corruption and brutality. But no amount of American intervention will soon turn that country into a democracy, since politically it is starting from scratch, with a literacy rate of 30% and an annual per capita income of $280.
Take the Philippines. It is widely suggested that Marcos was an archvillain from the start and that only U.S. support kept him in power. The fact is that despite deep and beneficial American influence, Philippine society has always had difficulty in sustaining democracy. When Marcos declared martial law, the country was in violent turmoil. For years his regime was quite tolerable because it provided stability, and supporting Marcos was a sound U.S. policy --up to a point. Exactly when that point was reached is hard to determine. It can be argued that the U.S. should have pulled back from Marcos well before the assassination of Benigno Aquino. Maybe. But such decisions are not simple, at least for people with responsibilities in the real world.
When Corazon Aquino emerged from practically nowhere as a political Joan of Arc and replaced Marcos, most Americans rightly cheered this as a success for democracy. Yet she soon found it necessary to dissolve the National Assembly and the existing constitution amid promises that new and improved models of both would be supplied within a year. If some right-wing general or politician had done this, there would have been screams of protest everywhere. As it is, Aquino's pledge of her democratic good intentions is taken at face value, and it should be. But her intentions are not the issue; her skill and strength are. The Philippines is such a faction-ridden, contentious country that the return to, or advance toward, democracy is likely to be slow and halting at best. At worst, the end could be another dictatorship.
All this underlines the fact that democracy is a complex, subtle system that requires a certain history and certain cultural conditions to function.
The mere mention of history and cultural conditions is regarded by many critics as arrogant, elitist and racist. "What makes you think," say those critics, "that only advanced and educated people are capable of democracy? The poor and the ignorant also yearn for freedom, and why should we assume that they are not capable of free government?"