Promoting Democracy

After reading if “Should Promoting Democracy Abroad be a Top U.S. Priority?” even though I do not think it should be our nation’s top priority, I had to agree with Joseph Siegle. Prior to reading the article I thought I would agree with Cofman and say it shouldn’t be a priority, but Siegle had good information and great points on why we should be promoting whereas I didn’t see really any strong points Cofman may have had. Siegle’s main point that seemed to be stated throughout his half of the article was “Democratizing states move to establish and strengthen these institutions of shared power tend to develop more rapidly” (Pg/43). He started off with saying, “a large amount of political science research in the 1990s suggests that democracies have historically been less likely to fight wars with other democracies” (Pg/41), which is understandable because when I think of a country that has an established democratic government the country handles its own by words instead of action. In other words things like to be settled verbally instead of by force.
There was one piece I took from Cofman, “Why, after all, should Arab democrats believe us?” Which I think does make a good point because the United States has degraded our credibility with others in the world, but we are still putting ourselves out there to try and help things move along even though it may not seem that way to many. It seemed as if Cofman was beating around the bush as to why we shouldn’t be promoting democracy to others. I found his best argument was that it is an enormous cost, but what isn't these days and helping others to have an established government which will provide for better living standards is worth it; Siegle claims, “it is widely recognized that almost all of the world’s prosperous states are democracies” (Pg/47). I do believe we should try to promote democracy best we can to other countries as long as we are very careful as to how we do so.