Edward Luce argues that “the only unqualified success in US democracy promotion was the Marshall Plan for postwar Europe” (“Biden’s awkward democracy summit”, Opinion, March 30). This overlooks General Douglas MacArthur’s plan for the transformation of Japan into a democratic economic powerhouse and the US role facilitating democracy in South Korea.

Yet, as Joe Studwell explained in How Asia Works (2013), these countries’ transformation was in inverse proportion to their adoption of the western free market model and was not tied to their democratisation. Park Chung-hee, South Korea’s “strongman” president, particularly understood the need to “make public pronouncements about the importance of free markets, and then go quietly about your dirigiste business”; especially in land redistribution, export-led manufacturing and central control of finance.

In Japan, democracy was delivered by an American occupation; in South Korea democracy followed prosperity rather than creating it. Democracy is said to be the worst system apart from all the others, but there are other systems that can achieve escape velocity to widespread prosperity. As Luce notes, the west struggles to relate to these systems, yet its continued influence in a multipolar world depends on solving this conundrum.

Rupert Boswall
Staplehurst, Kent, UK