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catching up" is easy. A country, when poor, can enrich itself simply by copying its rich neighbours. Such catching up can be achieved by any regime - during the 1920s and 1930s even the Soviet Union grew swiftly. But once a country has caught up, it can further enrich itself only by innovation, entrepreneurism and risk-taking. Those activities flourish only within an individualistic culture where property is secure under the law. In his analysis, Huntington overlooked a simple historical principle: causes precede consequences. Western individualism and the rule of law preceded, and therefore did cause, its wealth.

Reducing as it does to "correlation = causation," that last line is unproven as it stands. It is however true because in a capitalist melieu with its constant creative destruction, attempting merely to "catch up" leaves you constantly building obsolescent equipment.

You have to run as fast as you can merely to stay in place, and to truly "catch up" you must run even faster. Faster, that is, than an authoritarian system can run--its speed being limited by its inability to manage risk properly. Authoritarian regimes may make grand mistakes, but cannot take small ones in stride as capitalism does (Not that the individual capitalist enjoys the experience!) because they tend to humble the arrogance of power.

These are all excellent points Lynn. As a coda, I'd like to observe that there's more than one kind of adversarial relationship.

We have contests between those who Make and those who prefer to Take. This might actually have given rise to governments in the first place; see Franz Oppenheimer's book The State for an extended analysis.

We have contests between groups that are simply, amorally, fighting over an asset that they cannot share. If you look at the continuous border skirmishes between the Soviet Union and Red China from about 1965 to 1990, you'll see a good example of this.

We have punitive contests, in which our enemy is not a nation but its government, and not in an unlimited sense. A government must sometimes be punished for its excesses, yet be left in place because the consequences of toppling it entirely would be worse. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 was of this type. Despite a crushing victory, the German Empire preferred that France be left politically intact. Though I disagree with the assessment of Saddam Hussein as preferable to a power vacuum in Iraq, the Persian Gulf War may also be placed in this category.

We have contests between groups that view one another as morally intolerable. That is, each one sees the other as evil. This is the pattern into which our war with Afghanistan falls. The same is true for World War II.

No doubt there are other categories.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
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