When the belly is full the brain starts to think

But once the basic needs are met then these people are willing to discuss higher order issues, such as governance. They want a say in how they are being governed.

Ironically, dictators such as Indonesia’s Suharto create their own problems by encouraging economic growth and plugging their country into the global economy. In the 1990s, Indonesians were not satisfied with just economic growth - they eventually wanted a say in how the country was being governed. They assumed that if there were more democracy, then there would be more freedom of opinion, more accountability and transparency, less corruption and police brutality, and more economic growth. They could see how other people lived overseas and they too wanted the good things of life.

There are three implications here. First, how will China manage the transition? The old men running the country have forgotten their Marxism. Marx argued that economic change brings on political change. Hence Gorbachev’s attempt to encourage both economic change and political reform - in the hope of controlling the political reform, while the economic change took place. Instead, of course, the political change got out of hand and Gorbachev was swept away by the political reforms.

China’s old men think that they ignore the trend of history by encouraging economic growth while retaining tight political control. The problem for the rest of the world is that China’s economic growth is now so important for many people overseas. In 2003, global economic growth was 3 per cent. The largest single country was China at 1 per cent (the US was only 0.7 per cent). An upheaval in China threatens the global economy.

Second, I doubt that the US can inject democracy into Iraq. Iraqis need to work things out for themselves. This may take years, if not decades. After all democracy did not suddenly occur in the UK or US - it evolved over centuries. In the meantime, Iraq needs economic growth and the recreation of the middle class (wrecked by the US’s sanctions in the 1990s).

Finally, given that the tidal wave of democracy eventually sweeps away even the most brutal of dictators (such as Suharto) could this process have worked in Iraq under Saddam Hussein? This is an intriguing question that will never be answered.

With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps an alternative grand strategy for the US to have followed in the 1990s would have been to have eased up on the sanctions, allowed economic growth to take place, enabled the middle class to revive - and then let political events take their course domestically.

This possible chain of events seems hard to imagine. But it worked elsewhere.