Woolsey is on fire

From a pre-Iraq war article in The Atlantic:

"This could be a golden opportunity to begin to change the face of the Arab world," James Woolsey, a former CIA director who is one of the most visible advocates of war, told me. "Just as what we did in Germany changed the face of Central and Eastern Europe, here we have got a golden chance." In this view, the fall of the Soviet empire really did mark what Francis Fukuyama called "the end of history": the democratic-capitalist model showed its superiority over other social systems. The model has many local variations; it brings adjustment problems; and it encounters resistance, such as the anti-globalization protests of the late 1990s. But it spreads—through the old Soviet territory, through Latin America and Asia, nearly everywhere except through tragic Africa and the Islamic-Arab lands of the Middle East. To think that Arab states don't want a democratic future is dehumanizing. To think they're incapable of it is worse. What is required is a first Arab democracy, and Iraq can be the place.

"If you only look forward, you can see how hard it would be to do," Woolsey said. "Everybody can say, 'Oh, sure, you're going to democratize the Middle East.'" Indeed, that was the reaction of most of the diplomats, spies, and soldiers I spoke with—"the ruminations of insane people," one British official said.

Woolsey continued with his point: "But if you look at what we and our allies have done with the three world wars of the twentieth century—two hot, one cold—and what we've done in the interstices, we've already achieved this for two thirds of the world. Eighty-five years ago, when we went into World War I, there were eight or ten democracies at the time. Now it's around a hundred and twenty—some free, some partly free. An order of magnitude! The compromises we made along the way, whether allying with Stalin or Franco or Pinochet, we have gotten around to fixing, and their successor regimes are democracies.

"Around half of the states of sub-Saharan Africa are democratic. Half of the twenty-plus non-Arab Muslim states. We have all of Europe except Belarus and occasionally parts of the Balkans. If you look back at what has happened in less than a century, then getting the Arab world plus Iran moving in the same direction looks a lot less awesome. It's not Americanizing the world. It's Athenizing it. And it is doable."

While I wholeheartedly agree with Woolsey's fundamental premise that the Middle East is nothing but a bloody firetrap, I can't help but wonder about his tactical approach. Somewhere around the part about casual flirtations with Stalin I began to question the idea of the democratic nation-state as a viable model for the continued progress of civilization. If his logic is drawn out to its inevitable conclusion, it seems to me the world will come to resemble the utopian geopolitical vision of the creators of "Risk": political sovereignty concentrated across broad swathes of land, seamlessly bridging ethnic and cultural divides with an arbitrarily designated color.

The Australasian and South American landmasses would be very much the same as they are in the game. Predictably, they would be unified under the relatively benevolent leadership of the Mongols who, though [fiscally] demanding, are just trying to party. Europe would be either merged into Eurasia or acquired by a savvy, fast-talking oil-man from West Texas, goes by the name of Edward TEE Willups, thank you very much. Flawlessly executing the old rope-em-punch-em-sally maneuver (from his high-school football days), Ol' Tee can spread democracy like butter on toast, believe you me, yessirree. So far, nobody's hurt and the US-Europe-Russia axis of justice is still spinning merrily. But...

What, then, of the Middle East and Asia? Europe left a lot to chance when they concentrated all of their cannons and cavalry on the now compromised Soviet border. Now their military prowess has been diluted throughout the Eurasian landmass, the Iron Curtain melted down for helmets, spears, and espresso machines. All the while, China has been using lean manufacturing techniques and cutting back on nutritional intake for centuries; their long-suffering, culturally sterilized diligence in pursuing this strategy is coming to fruition RIGHT THIS INSTANT as they stockpile piece after plastic piece of artillery in a now giddy preparation for a momentous roll of the dice against the makeshift defenses of their Western neighbor, the Middle East.

Fortunately for us, Woolsey and his crack team of pediatric geneticists have devised a counter-offensive so ingenious it defies explanation. That's right, folks: the ATOM BOMB.

But seriously, what is going on? Who won the Cold War? What war is this?

-FSyria, I wanna talk to the Ayatollah