Chalmers Johnson on the failure of 'democratisation': "On the eve of our entry into World War I, William Jennings Bryan, president Woodrow Wilson's first secretary of state, described the United States as 'the supreme moral factor in the world's progress and the accepted arbiter of the world's disputes'.

"If there is one historical generalization that the passage of time has validated, it is that the world could not help being better off if the American president had not believed such nonsense and if the United States had minded its own business in the war between the British and German empires. We might well have avoided Nazism, the Bolshevik Revolution, and another 30 to 40 years of the exploitation of India, Indonesia, Indochina, Algeria, Korea, the Philippines, Malaya and virtually all of Africa by European, American and Japanese imperialists."

"The Federation of American Scientists has compiled a list of more than 201 overseas military operations from the end of World War II until September 11, 2001, in which we were involved and normally struck the first blow.... The current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not included. In no instance did democratic governments come about as a direct result of any of these military activities."

Chalmers Johnson on the failure of 'democratisation': "On the eve of our entry into World War I, William Jennings Bryan, president Woodrow Wilson's first secretary of state, described the United States as 'the supreme moral factor in the world's progress and the accepted arbiter of the world's disputes'.

"If there is one historical generalization that the passage of time has validated, it is that the world could not help being better off if the American president had not believed such nonsense and if the United States had minded its own business in the war between the British and German empires. We might well have avoided Nazism, the Bolshevik Revolution, and another 30 to 40 years of the exploitation of India, Indonesia, Indochina, Algeria, Korea, the Philippines, Malaya and virtually all of Africa by European, American and Japanese imperialists."

"The Federation of American Scientists has compiled a list of more than 201 overseas military operations from the end of World War II until September 11, 2001, in which we were involved and normally struck the first blow.... The current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not included. In no instance did democratic governments come about as a direct result of any of these military activities."