Sometimes, dictatorship makes more sense than democracy

The West, during the “Arab Spring” of 2013, gave air support to the overthrow of despots of the Middle East and North Africa and achieved a similar result.

The declared objective is always to establish democracy. Give people the right to vote and, hey presto, there’s another democracy. This illustrates that Europe and the US simply do not understand democracy. They use the same argument against Thailand. Well, Thailand has had universal suffrage since 1931, but the last government elected met an ignoble end: It was totally undemocratic and supported by violence. Thankfully a benign military saved the country from disaster.

Egypt is now effectively under military control. A coup there ousted fundamentalist Muslims from power and the military is currently attacking the Islamic State in Libya, where the jihadist group is growing in strength. Among the usual IS atrocities, it murdered Egyptian Coptic Christians because of their religion. In Syria the government is fighting fundamentalists, only to be strongly opposed by the West.

The naive idea that a popular vote equals democracy and democracy is the answer to world stability is absolutely wrong. As with Egypt and Thailand, dictatorship is often the way to stability. Even despots are preferable to the likes of IS, which, thanks to the actions of Western powers, is metastasising westward.

JC Wilcox