The Weaknesses of Democracy

Winston Churchill on his 71st birthday

THE WEAKNESSES OF DEMOCRACY

Democracy’s current problems should remind its supporters that it has serious weaknesses that we must constantly address. As Winston Churchill famously noted, “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried.” In particular, democracy has a fundamental flaw: its success depends on informed voters choosing enlightened leaders. But as the ancient Greeks warned, demagogues constantly seek power by playing upon popular fears and prejudices. In today’s brave new world, domestic demagogues are even being helped by social media campaigns secretly waged by foreign demagogues.

Democracies suffer from many other problems, too, especially policy inconsistency. American presidents think ahead only eight years, at most. South Korean leaders can plan for only five years in power due to a one-term presidential limit. But North Korea’s leaders think in terms of decades. In trying to stop North Korea’s nuclear program over the past quarter century, both the United States and the Republic of Korea often changed their policies when their administrations changed. Making matters even more difficult, sometimes the policies of the two allies diverged. During the same period, North Korea had only two supreme leaders, father and son, and they worked consistently on their top priority of achieving the ability to threaten the United States homeland with nuclear attack.

Some of democracy’s greatest strengths can also be weaknesses. For example, North Korea has exploited the transparency of our democracies. Both South Korean and U.S. media report in great detail on the thinking of their governments about North Korea and even on differences of view among individual officials and political leaders. Pyongyang’s leaders follow these reports extremely closely. Based on the insights they gain, they change their official talking points and external propaganda to deepen divisions within South Korea and the United States and mislead international opinion. The transparency factor is also evident in the political controversy in the South over the United States’ THAAD missile defense deployment there. North Korea maintains strict secrecy about virtually all its military activities. It is unimaginable that North Korean leaders would allow local residents to try to veto a military deployment, as periodically happens in South Korea.

Pyongyang has also taken advantage of democracies’ sense of accountability to their own people and those of their allies. While North Korea’s leaders have never worried much about the lives of their people, early on they realized that South Korean leaders were very much concerned about their people and that American leaders, too, would not risk attacking North Korea for fear it would retaliate by destroying Seoul. As Kim Il-sung privately told Romanian leader Nicolai Ceausescu in 1971, Washington’s weak responses to his provocations such as the capture of the USS Pueblo indicated that it was “not their [the American] intention to fight the [North] Koreans again.” Thus, the North Koreans have continued to feel free to threaten and attack South Korea over the decades.

Given the problems that democracies face in dealing with dictatorships, we should neither be discouraged nor complacent. Dictatorships are inherently weak over the long run. Unlike democracies, which rely on informed citizens, dictatorships require misinformed citizens to remain in power. The inability of dictators to trust their people greatly limits their countries’ potential. North Korea may have developed nuclear weapons and missiles, but in all other respects it is incomparably behind South Korea, and will remain that way. 

 

https://thediplomat.com/2017/10/democracy-vs-north-korea/

 

—David Straub, “Democracy vs North Korea,” The Diplomat, October 13, 2017 

Observations about democracy apply to the Philippines and the nascent dictatorship.

IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH DEMOCRACY?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/24/world/is-there-something-wrong-with-democracy.html?mc=adintl&mcid=facebook&mccr=edit&ad-keywords=GG

—Max Fisher and Amanda Taub, “Is There Something Wrong with Democracy?” The New York Times, January 24, 2018

 

Under Duterte, the Philippines could go the way of Venezuela. Democracy in the Philippines is gravely at risk.