End the Campaign to Spread Democracy

Global citizens are familiar with democracy’s joys and pains, and there is no need for proponents to promote the system of governance. Citizens in any given land must exercise self-determination in selecting a government, argues Dov Ronen of Harvard University. Referring to Woodrow Wilson, who as US president prioritized self-determination in the Covenant of the League of Nations, Ronen suggests that some analysts have misunderstood reasons behind the end of the Soviet Union’s collapse. “The end of the Cold War was a major turning point because it began removing, everywhere in the world, the restraints and self-restraints that the Cold War’s 40-year ideological confrontation imposed on human beings who wished then to rebel against their own ideological camp,” Ronen writes. “It is this removal of restraints and self-restraints that planted the seeds of rebellion around the world.” Ronen anticipates regional forms of governments of all types taking shape, along the lines of the European Union and perhaps a new global order. – YaleGlobal