Democracies Versus Autocracies Isn’t a Close Fight
Why does democracy have such a long winning streak? Charles Dunst explains.
Facing off.
Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Americans have a history of overestimating their authoritarian rivals. In the early 1960s, several economists, including Nobel Prize winner Paul Samuelson, predicted that the Soviet Union’s economy would eclipse America’s within a couple of decades. Little wonder the CIA was blindsided by the quick collapse of the USSR in 1992.
Similarly, totalitarian enemies have a tradition of underestimating America’s capabilities. Nazi Germany’s air marshall, Herman Göring, reportedly said early in World War II that the US could never build an air force because “Americans only know how to make refrigerators and razor blades.” Some 300,000 American-built aircraft later, the Germans surrendered.