That’s the idea that the best way to deal with oppressive regimes is to do business as usual with them, and keep our mouths shut about their human rights abuses in hopes that we’ll give them a civilized contact stone. Why, in no time at all, their leaders will be buying Armani suits from Perez Musharaf’s tailor, vacationing on the Riviera and seeing for themselves all the wonderful benefits of not running their countries as labor camps. In short, if we can give them access to all the superficial amenities of the Western lifestyle, we can train thugs to act civilized and eventually they will be civilized.
What a lovely idea. What a nice idea. If only there were one – just one – example of it ever having worked. Unfortunately, we kind of need those thugs to run their countries on the labor camp model in order to keep our economies going and the thugs we’re trying to civilize know it. So who’s training whom?
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