Didn't South Korea and Germany both receive massive investment from the US, in order to create successful democracies on the peripheries of Soviet spheres of influence. Neither where self contain miracles.
Omitting the military expansion of empires and trade zones in that list is strange, especially given that Ferguson believes that foreign incursions are valid, for moral reasons as I understand it.
Ferguson represents a revisionist view of history and in particular the british Empire and the American "Empíre" which playts well with those on the American right he has previously advised. That's an observation, not a criticism. Interesting character, but certainly not universally accepted.
Of course, "grow up Argentina" completely ignores history it's prescriptive child like simplicity.
I don't even think Ferguson would be on for ignoring history...
Precisely! Thank you for including some historical facts! I was waiting to see i ANYBODY would pick up on that regardless of "ideology".
Germany and Korea are both particularly productive people. Germans are known as the tool-makers for the stuff-makers (China), but it was not always the case. They had to begin by substituting British Imports and they had to pay dearly when they finally surpassed their teachers right before WWI.
And yet the people who work the most hours per week in the World seem to be first the Mexicans (in between siestas probably since many work night shifts too) and the Poles (probably for German capital).
Comparing Korea and Germany during the 20thC to Argentina is a terrible mistake (precisely for being in the periphery of the Soviet Union, etc), but is a mistake first began by the same Argentines in the 1920s (the Germany comparison). After they invited more immigrants than they needed for an agricultural country (a lot more than Australia for instance), progressive ideas such as Democracy and Industrialization by substituting imports gained force. The latter would put Argentina in an awkward position with Britain during the 1933 Commonwealth Negotiations, and the former would eventually (under Peron) cause Argentina to declare "war" against the British and Americans for the first time after almost a century of cooperation (I believe Rosas was the last strong-man to reject the British and the French).
I have this perverse theory that "True" Peronistas (I believe those are the opposite of those that Matias calls true), and by that I mean the coronel himself and his first supporters, have only one thing to say about Argentina's economic situation
"If only the Germans had won...."
That nostalgic lamentation sounds so plausible.
So what are the alternatives? How are Argentina's Southern Cone neighbors doing and why? Should Argentina compare itself only to Chile and Uruguay or should Paraguay and Brazil remind us that Argentina is not the southernmost part of Latin America but an integral of it.
Should Argentina insist on cmparing herself with a Commonwealth country, I should suggest that Cape Town is the Paris of Africa, and that perhaps South Africa in general should be taken into the mix to lower the expectations of becoming an American Australia/NZ. It would also be more truthful a comparison if only when considering that having maids and service and separating society in castes was a very common thing both in Cape Town and Buenos Aires, but no so much in the Australian outback.
These are the other seven countries at the same latitude as Argentina without counting Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland.
-Chile, Uruguay,
-Paraguay Brazil
-Australia and New Zealand:
-South Africa
