Bread and Circuses

I have a concern about the upcoming Iran nuke deal that doesn't actually have anything to do about Iran's nuclear capability.

During a trip to the gym, I had the radio on, not really to listen to but to provide some non-engine background noise.  The program had a story on Iran and its people's reaction to the potential for lifted sanctions, and mentioned that the country's rulers hoped that improved economic conditions would make the population less unruly.  And I suddenly had second thoughts.

See, one of the big theories I studied in grad school was the democratic peace theory, oftentimes called the "Kantian peace" after early proponent Immanuel Kant.  The short version is that democracies are very unlikely to go to war with each other, so it'd be great if every nation in the world let people vote for their leaders.  A book I read about it focused on three elements to this theory: democracy itself, economic interdependence, and shared involvement in international organizations, as mutually-reinforcing principles that could bring about this type of peace.

It's a nice theory, and sounds appealing.  So in Iran's case, its leadership being willing to negotiate with world leaders over its nuclear program could lead to it cooperating more with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the like.  These organizations have their own rules and protocols, and by participating in them, Iran would theoretically learn more about how to run a democratic government.  At the same time, eased economic sanctions and increased foreign trade would create financial ties between Iran and other nations, or in other words a disincentive to threatening those ties through behavior that might convince countries to impose sanctions again.  And I suppose copies of the Declaration of Independence are being smuggled in along with that increased trade, as another nudge towards democracy.

The book I read - Triangulating Peace by Russett and Oneal, if you're interested - used a lot of statistics and regressions and all that numeric stuff to prove their point, and I'm not the one to examine that sort of thing, I much prefer a concrete example.  And we can look at history and see the inverse of the theory playing out, when post-WWI Germany had an economic crisis and rejected international governance as it discarded democracy in favor of authoritarianism.  The problem is that when I examine the world right now, I don't see a strong positive example.

Consider China.  The country prefers to be an exception to rules rather than conforming with the international community's expectations regarding things like water boundaries, but it's certainly abandoned communism and become one of America's most important trade partners, which helps to take the edge off the crises caused by the aforementioned disputed water boundaries.  But is this trade helping the country become more democratic?

Not to my knowledge.  The events in Tienanmen Square in 1989 have been so heavily suppressed that most Chinese don't know those pro-democracy rallies and subsequent crackdowns even happened.  Dissidents issue Charter 08 and get detained by the authorities, websites discussing it get shut down, and of course the media isn't allowed to mention the thing.  Hong Kong held protests against voting restrictions just last year, but it's a Special Administrative Region with a history of democracy.  There's been no "Chinese Spring," no mass demonstrations against corrupt and authoritarian leaders.  China's government still sucks, and its people aren't taking much action to change this.

Here's my concern - back in the days of the Cold War, we had two systems of government competing to see which could create the best society.  And towards the end, when things loosened up a bit, one of the contributing factors to the fall of the USSR was its citizens could see that communism had created a country that couldn't even feed itself, while the capitalist pig-dogs in America had Coca-Cola, denim jeans and awesome music.  This created outrage that was usefully destructive.

But today, thanks to global trade, every nation can get the material benefits of a First World, democratic society.  American fast food chains span the globe, our Apple gadgets are being built in China, and Hollywood churns out Michael Bay movies to liquefy audiences' brains through excessive explosions and incomprehensible cinematography.  So even if you live in a repressive regime like China, you've got lots of ways to take the edge off it.  You may not be able to vote or browse the internet freely, but you can catch the latest Transformers garbage on your phone-puter.  And isn't that easier than taking to the streets to protest the latest round of arrests?

We're exporting bread and circuses to non-democratic regimes, in other words.  They can enjoy the fruits of a free and open society, and their subjects have less incentive to make their own countries the same way.

So back to Iran.  If all goes well and the country begins to behave less like a rogue state and reaps the economic benefits of doing so, is it likely to cast off its theocratic regime and become a peace-loving, human rights-respecting democracy?  I hope so.  The major difference between Iran and China is that the former was a functioning democracy until we Americans screwed it up, while China went from an imperial system to an illiberal "republic" to Mao's deranged attempt at communism.  Even today Iran is sort of democratic, it just has a religious government making sure the Iranian electorate don't vote for the wrong people.  Meanwhile in China, the only places with a democratic heritage are the former foreign holdings of Hong Kong and Macau.

Iran knows better than China what a democracy should look like, so they should have an easier time bringing one about - which is not to say that convincing all those security forces and religious militias to bow to the will to the people will necessarily be easy.  It'd be great if the increased prosperity from lifted sanctions allowed Iran's middle class to expand and grow strong enough to challenge its priest-tyrants.  But that would take a lot of effort, and it's so much easier to sit back and watch a movie on your smartphone...