And U.S. actions pre-1948 made the country a lot *more* democratic than it was at that time trending to be. I wish that U.S. reconstruction policy toward Japan had been a couple of steps further left. I reject the characterization of U.S. occupation policy toward Japan as an anti-democratic countercoup.
>I believe -- and please stop me if I am overreaching -- that your (Brad's)
>counterclaim is that the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Indonesian
>anti-communist reaction, etc. were all necessary to keep the region from
>even more repressive governments.
For Korea clearly yes: I don't know anyone sane who wishes that Kim Il Sung had been allowed to establish hegemony over the whole Korean peninsula in 1950. For Vietnam clearly no: we killed a hell of a lot of civilians, deforested a huge amount of the countryside, and it didn't work. We can agree that had Ho Chi Minh decided not to support the NLF but to focus on building socialism in the Red River Delta that South Vietnam would in all likelihood be better off than it is now--somewhere between Thailand, the Philippines, and Taiwan, depending how lucky they turned out to be. But anyone who resorts to large-scale violence had better be damned sure that the side he or she is supporting is the less-worse guys, and damned sure that he or she can carry it off. In Vietnam that wasn't the case.
Indonesia is a much harder case. Suharto was a brutal thug. Under Suharto Indonesian standards of living quadrupled. If you want to know what life under the PKI would have been like, look at other Communist regimes in Asia--Laos, the Khmer Rouge, Vietnam, North Korea, Maoist and post-Maoist China (perhaps I should throw in Kerala). That makes me guess that the PKI would have had perhaps one chance in seven of being a better regime than Suharto--and three chances in seven of being much, much worse...
Brad DeLong