"State is Metternich with satphones"

Letter 3

Glad you enjoyed the analysis but look how much you conveyed in one short sentence! Yet Metternich had his excuse: the times in which he lived. What is the State Department's excuse?

If State continues on the same path it places America in grave danger because having recanted we can't say "Fooled you twice" without unleashing implacable rage and distrust.

Bush had a bad moment in East Europe when (after talking about America's support for democracy) he was confronted by a reporter about the phony Orange Revolution. He made an incoherent reply but what could he say? "I have no control over the State Department?"

Yet his democracy doctrine has been swimming upstream just because of the Orange Revolution. China's leaders and every other despot (including Assad) point to the example of the Orange putsch to justify cracking down on genuine democracy movements -- on the argument that they're protecting their people from American meddling!

"Remember the Orange Revolution" has become the cry used by despots to justify everything from crackdowns on the Internet to public protests. The Orange Revolution has been used to mock every speech that Bush (and Rice) have made in defense of democracy.

We've gotten two breaks: Bush didn't fully articulate the democracy doctrine until after the travesty in Ukraine, and the successes of the Afghan and Iraq elections came close in time. But we are now inviting the world to believe in our commitment to genuine democracy. If we go back on our word now I do not want to think about the consequences.

State is not the only one with satphones: it is now virtually impossible to pull off a phony revolution without many people finding out -- except in America, of course, where most of the population still doesn't know that the Orange Revolution was a stage show that utterly failed to meet State's objective.

The larger issue is that Metternich's view is suicidal in an era of human megapopulations. I've been inching (okay, careening) toward that realization for years and this past year of blogging helped me crystallize it. It struck me with great force that democracy is no longer a choice for humanity; it is the only model of governance that is suited to deal with megapopulations.

When societies get into the tens of millions, the oligarchical and monarchical models of governing collapse. Then rulers have two choices: "winnow" the population down to a more manageable size (via genocide, driving populations to another region, etc.) or open up the governing process to a larger number of people.

Democracy is the only protection against the race dying from its very success. The more viewpoints represented, the more input, the more problem solving ability brought into the governing process, the better the chance at solving the problems that face megapopulations.

This defense of democracy is divorced from a value system and thus might be too cold-blooded for many tastes. Yet it rests, I think, on unassailable data drawn from every kind of management situation and indeed every human social experience:

When a company or family gets too big, more help is needed to manage it and once the numbers become great, diversity of experience and knowledge are critical to effective management. This diversity can only come from the democratic process.

Metternich's viewpoint was built from managing a very small population; State's view was honed during an era when most of the world was in effect a small population from the American viewpoint. That's because most of the world had no way to protest being treated in the manner of chess pieces. Today, a nuke in a suitcase explains that the unwashed masses will make their displeasure heard by one means or another.

A new age is here, and State is dangerously oblivious to it.