Paris, France -- The war in Iraq shows us, in retrospect, that the USA was right not to intervene in the Hungarian upheaval of 1956. It would have unleashed a bloody and protracted war in Europe, even if it ended in victory. Thirty-five years after the failed revolt in Hungary, the whole Soviet block collapsed from inside without any bloodshed.
The lesson to be learnt is that democratisation cannot be forced upon a country, it must be the result of a domestic political process, even a lengthy one. The case of Japan and Germany does not contradict this thesis because Western democracies did not fight Nazi Germany and Japan to restore democracy. They fought to protect themselves from military aggression.
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