I just completed a book by Condoleezza Rice titled Democracy, Stories from the Long Road to Freedom. I give it four stars. Ms Rice writes very well about atopic that most of us know about, or al least we think we know about, i.e. Democracy. There are many new things I learned about condo as she unfolded this narrative, like she reads and speaks Russian, has worked in the government for many years in Russian affairs, and served as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under George W Bush. She has a Doctorate degree in Politics Science and currently teaches at Stanford University.
When she speaks on Democracy it is because she has personally worked with many countries trying to establish democrats systems. She confirmed my own thoughts regarding our policy of Nation building, I isn’t easy. Often while watching the news during the Iraq war and afterwards it always confounded me that the people in Iraq believed that once Saddam Hussein was gone that democracy would descend upon them from the heavens and life would be beautiful. It doesn’t work like that. In her book Condoleezza provides example after example of countries like Russia, Kenya, Brazil, China, and more of how leaders struggle with the concept and even more so with the implementation. If it were easy, the whole world would be living in a democracy. Maybe someday it will, but right now there isn’t a chance in hell that I will see a democratic world in my lifetime.
Another thing I learned is that Ms Rice truly believes that Democracy requires a huge Government to work. Throughout she explains that many countries fail because they do not have the necessary components in place. In my opinion there are three necessities: Executive, Judicial, and Legislative. We don’t need the huge bureaucracies that we have now. It doesn’t really matter, Condoleezza has written an insightful book with great explanations about how many countries have taken on the task, and in some cases have done so successfully. As I mentioned above her writing style kept me reading, and I thoroughly enjoyed every chapter.
This book is available on Amazon, but Democracy is not.