In the year 1919 the Finnish general and regent (and future president) Mannerheim was actively promoting a war against the Bolshevik regime. However, the Western powers didn't take Mannerheim's advice, and the communist regime stayed in power. Countless people died in the hands of Lenin and Stalin.

According to the article, Mannerheim was a visionary who saw that eliminating the Bolshevik regime from power would save the world from a lot of suffering in the future. The writer makes the point that the current powers in Washington are similarly visionary, and the war on Iraq is justified.

I'm not too much against the elimination of dictators who cause misery for their nation. But perhaps there is something wrong with this simple picture. For example, what is the cause of there being a dictator in the first place? And what happens when the dictator has been eliminated?

Of course, the superpowers have been taking part in local politics for a long time. Usually, however, the results have not been convincing. Look at the outside interventions in the last 100 years in Asia, Africa, or South America, for example. Often the superpowers have tried to safeguard their commercial interests, or acted against their opponents in the global superpower game. These actions have generated a lot of misery, and resentment against the meddling powers.

Now that there is only one hyperpower in the world, the situation has changed. The United States and its close allies (NATO countries, Australia Japan and South Korea) have a larger military budget than the rest of the world combined.

I don't think that military action can be effective without large investments in other areas. Similarly, the Mannerheim's program in Russia would have been successful only if the Western countries would have supported the people of Russia in reaching a better state of living at that time.

Perhaps a winning strategy for U.S. would be to invest half of its military budjet on aiding the poor and the oppressed people of the world. This would constitute about $200 billion (based on U.S. military budget request for Fiscal Year 2003). This aid should be channeled through a neutral agency, such as the United Nations. This way the aid could not be used to strengthen the Western economic hold on these nations. Using the existing UN structures, U.S. could help the less-well-developed countries to build up their education, medical care, and local industry. And I'm not writing about the sweatshops here.

I don't think the above strategy will be adopted in the U.S. This is unfortunate, because using military power without similar investments in the healing of the woulds of war will generate new dictators, new terrorist groups, and generate new instability in the world.

I believe the Western countries have already made their choice, and the world is of their making. In the developing nations and the dictatorships there is hunger, disease, and oppression. In the developed countries there is a high standard of living, and a small possibility of dying in a terrorist action. Perhaps this is a reasonable tradeoff.