March 1, 2005
SO GEORGE BUSH WOULD BE RIGGS?:
Revolution
Freedom, our most lethal weapon against tyranny. (Michael Ledeen, 3/01/05, National Review)
We are living in a revolutionary age, that started more than a quarter century ago in Spain after the death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. At that time, hardly anyone believed it possible to go from dictatorship to democracy without great violence, and most Spaniards feared that the terrible civil war of the 1930s — which ended when Franco seized power and installed a military dictatorship — would begin anew. Instead, thanks to a remarkable generation of political leaders, some savvy priests, and the grossly underrated King Juan Carlos, Spain passed smoothly and gracefully into democracy.It was the beginning of the Age of the Second Democratic Revolution. Spain inspired Portugal, and the second Iberian dictatorship gave way to democracy. Spain and Portugal inspired all of Latin America, and by the time Ronald Reagan left office there were only two unelected governments south of the Rio Grande: Cuba and Surinam. These successful revolutions inspired the Soviet satellites, and then the Soviet Union itself, and the global democratic revolution reached into Africa and Asia, even threatening the tyrants in Beijing.
The United States played a largely positive role in almost all these revolutions, thanks to a visionary president — Ronald Reagan — and a generation of other revolutionary leaders in the West: Walesa, Havel, Thatcher, John Paul II, Bukovsky, Sharansky, among others.
There was then a pause for a dozen years, first during the presidency of Bush the Elder, who surrounded himself with short-sighted self-proclaimed "realists" and boasted of his lack of "the vision thing," and then the reactionary Clinton years, featuring a female secretary of state who danced with dictators. Having led a global democratic revolution, and won the Cold War, the United States walked away from that revolution. We were shocked into resuming our unfinished mission by the Islamofascists, eight months into George W. Bush's first term, and we have been pursuing that mission ever since.
Thank Franco. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 1, 2005 10:13 AM
Actually, the person to thank is Manuel Fraga, who was his economic adviser from the 50s to his death. He moved Franco away from the corporatist model, then preferred by both the Fascists and the Church, which had held the Spanish economy in stasis for decades, and towards a more free enterprise model which persists to this day. The relative prosperity of Spain at the time of Franco's death kept the place from erupting into another Civil War. All the potential players had too much to lose.
Posted by: Bart at March 1, 2005 10:38 AMBart:
Uh-huh. What would have been left of Spain by the 50s but for Franco?
Posted by: oj at March 1, 2005 10:47 AMYou mean had they not started a civil war in the first place and allowed a democratically elected slightly left-of-center government run by Azana and dependent upon Companys' Catalan Nationalists for their majority to sink or swim on its own merits? Then, when the mandate expired have another election?
Posted by: Bart at March 1, 2005 12:08 PMYes, it's called Menshevism and ends in Bolshevism.
Posted by: oj at March 1, 2005 1:41 PMNonsense, Negrin had no voters and the anarchists got votes only in Barcelona. Azana wasn't very different from Blum, an upper middle-class professional pol. Their government would have proved inept and some center-rightist like Melquiades Alvarez would have gotten a shot.
There was no need for a shooting war.
Posted by: Bart at March 1, 2005 4:08 PMgrossly underrated King Juan Carlos
Certainly not unnderrated by me, nor, I expect, by Orrin. Still, I suppose Ledeen was primarily referring to Important Media People, so his point stands.
Posted by: Kirk Parker at March 1, 2005 4:09 PMThe King was a creation of Franco.
Posted by: oj at March 1, 2005 4:33 PMBart, read Stanley Payne's latest book (2004). The communists were growing in influence. Both they and the anarchists were itching for revolution and the elected gvt -- more left than center-left -- was in any case powerless vs. them.
BTW. The book OJ links to is nonsense. Trust Payne on Franco not the authors. I'm willing to give Franco a lot of credit for the state of Spain when he died and its economic health and readiness for democracy.
But . . . the guy did send 50,000 men to the Eastern front which probably meant 50,000 more Germans were freed up to kill Americans in NAfr and Fr. Plus he passed info on allied shipping passing thru the straits of Gibraltar to the Nazis, and gave their uboats facilities.
Pace the jacket blurb of the book OJ reviews: Churchill detested Franco b/c of the above. And Churchill was confident that Franco wouldn't enter the war fully on the Nazi side not b/c of faith in Franco's patriotism, but b/c Spain depended on Brit and her allies for important foodstuffs. (As he wrote to Cardinal Hinsley during the early stages of the war when Hinsley was worried that Franco would pull a Mussolini and enter the war on the German side.)
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at March 2, 2005 12:40 AMJim:
The Eastern Front. Had the Allies had as much sense as Franco a hundred million lives would have been saved. Franco understood Stalin and communism as FDR and Churchill did not.
Posted by: oj at March 2, 2005 12:54 AMAs long as Franco was alive, there was no way Spain could ever have been allowed in NATO. The British hated him and so did the entire French political spectrum.
If I can believe the Packers will be fine when Favre retires, then OJ can believe we should have fought the Soviets in the 40s. We all need our delusions and pipe dreams to get us through the day.
Posted by: Bart at March 2, 2005 7:26 AM