DISADVANTAGE/DEMOCRACY PROMOTION

IMPACT: DEMOCRACY IS THE BEST WAY TO SOLVE ALL GLOBAL PROBLEMS

DEMOCRACY IS THE BEST WAY TO DEAL WITH THE SIX MOST LIKELY THREATS TO GLOBAL ORDER

Larry Diamond, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, December, 1995; Promoting Democracy in the 1990s, http://www.carnegie.org//sub/pubs/deadly/diam_rpt.html // acs

On any list of the most important potential threats to world order and national security in the coming decade, these six should figure prominently: a hostile, expansionist Russia; a hostile, expansionist China; the spread of fundamentalist Islamic, anti-Western regimes; the spread of political terrorism from all sources; sharply increased immigration pressures; and ethnic conflict that escalates into large-scale violence, civil war, refugee flows, state collapse, and general anarchy. Some of these potential threats interact in significant ways with one another, but they all share a common underlying connection. In each instance, the development of democracy is an important prophylactic, and in some cases the only long- term protection, against disaster.

DEMOCRACY PROMOTION ADVANCES EVERY POSSIBLE GOOD OUTCOME, EVEN THOUGH IT DOESN'T WORK EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME

Larry Diamond, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, December, 1995; Promoting Democracy in the 1990s, http://www.carnegie.org//sub/pubs/deadly/diam_rpt.html // acs

Globally, the expansion of democracy serves the national interests of the United States and other established democracies by advancing peace, stability, legality, human dignity, property rights, and environmental protection in the international system. But it does not always do so immediately and everywhere.

DEATHS FROM WAR, GENOCIDE, MASS MURDER, AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ARE DIRECTLY LINKED TO A LACK OF DEMOCRACY

Larry Diamond, Hoover Inst, Stanford Univ., 1999; DEVELOPING DEMOCRACY: TOWARD CONSOLIDATION // acs P. 6

Beyond the violence between states and between or against ethnic groups within states lies a more stunning generalization: "Power kills, absolute power kills absolutely. 112 2 Rudolph Rummel's exhaustive study of deaths from war, genocide, mass murder, and domestic violence in this, history's most murderous, century, demonstrates that every instance of mass murder by a state against its own people has happened under authoritarian rule and that the more absolutist the regime the greater the tendency toward democide (genocide and mass murder of innocent civilians. Thus, "the way to virtually eliminate genocide and mass murder appears to be through restricting and checking power. This means to foster democratic freedom."