> Behalf Of s346223
> On Wed, 23 May 2001, Gautam Mukunda wrote:
> > its essentials, the same policy. One of the traditional
> critiques of
> > democracies is that they can't plan for the long term. Anyone who
> > says that needs to explain the behavior of the United
> States - and, to
> > a lesser extent, all of the governments of Western Europe
> - for the 44
> > years of the Cold War.
> Gautam,
>
> long term is a very relative term. I recall reading a Chinese (CCP)
> leader stating somewhere or other that they had yet to see
> the real impact
> of the French Revolution. Long term?
>
> Ibrahim Underwood
Zhao Enlai, I believe. He was asked to evaluate the French Revolution
and his response was "It's too soon to tell." The problem with that
is that it's impossible to make any sort of policy on that time
horizon. Two hundred years ago if you'd asked someone to predict the
future shape of the world, you can be fairly confident that they
_wouldn't_ have replied that the United States would be the most
powerful nation since the Roman Empire, and quite possibly even longer
than that (the Roman Empire had at least near peers in China, India,
and the New World). 44 years is a very, very long time in politics.
For a democracy to maintain an extraordinarily difficult (two wars
with around 80,000 Americans dead) and expensive (total defense
spending by the United States during the Cold War, even _without_
adjusting for inflation, probably approaches $10 _trillion_) policy
for that period of time is a remarkable achievement, in my opinion.
For _any_ country to do it would be remarkable, in fact, but
particularly for a democracy.
********************Gautam "Ulysses" Mukunda**********************
* Harvard College Class of '01 *He either fears his fate too much*
* www.fas.harvard.edu/~mukunda * Or his deserts are small, *
* [EMAIL PROTECTED] *Who dares not put it to the touch*
* "Freedom is not Free" * To win or lose it all. *
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