The Democracy Trap: Perils of the Post-Cold War World

Argues that the end of communism does not mean the end of national and world problems, and suggests that the end of the cold war will result in a questioning of American values

The "democracy trap" of the title refers to the false belief that with the collapse of the Iron Curtain we are automatically moving toward a democratic world order. Despite its progressive aura, this political manifesto betrays profoundly anti-democratic sentiments. A RAND Corporation analyst and former CIA forecasting chief, Fuller ignores the agency's well-publicized history of subverting democratic movements around the world. Positing an underclass in the U.S. as more or less inevitable, the book calls for state-run work programs to "recruit out of it those individuals who show the necessary talent and will." Fuller scoffs at "more money for education as the means to bandage all our social wounds." He caricatures the ecology and animal rights movements in terms of "misplaced sentimentality." He suggests the introduction of "sin taxes" on "socially harmful . . . media" like pornography or romanticization of drugs, with screening to be done by state-elected review boards. In general, he purveys the old whine of Cold War ideology in a new bottle.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Several years ago, Fuller and Francis Fukuyama (see above) were colleagues at RAND Corp. When the latter's notorious ``The End of History?'' was published in The National Interest, Fuller (a sometime Foreign Service officer and CIA aide who's still employed at RAND) felt obliged to draft a response to his friend's controversial 1989 article. While the text at hand is no match for Fukuyama's masterly new treatise, it earns attention on the basis of Fuller's perceptive diagnoses of what currently ails the body politic. Cautioning that the end of the cold war, though a magnificent victory for Western values, does not signal the onset of a utopian future, Fuller offers a savvy appreciation of the many challenges facing liberal democracy in general and the US in particular. In fact, he warns, uncritical extension of current limits and loosening of institutional ties that bind could stabilize rather than strengthen representative government throughout the Global Village. Absent the articles of faith attendant to the existence of a Communist threat, which could be used to explain away societal failures, the author argues, postindustrial America is confronted by challenges that may produce greater uncertainty and moral anxiety than ever did ongoing battles against Soviet-style totalitarianism. Among other urgent items on the domestic agenda, Fuller identifies ethnic unrest, racial anger, the growth of an underclass, a cultural context that encourages a widespread sense of entitlement, environmental issues with geopolitical implications, and a lack of national purpose. Fuller points out that the dilemmas facing the US are, at best, susceptible only to tradeoffs between conflicting aspirations. Moreover, he concludes that impatient idealists counting on peace or other forms of benefaction to accrue automatically from the presumptive triumph of liberal democracy are doomed to bitter disappointment. An informed and informative exegesis that spells out many of the reasons why a weary world may have to wait yet a while for a genuinely millennial age. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.