Does 'Democracy Kill'?

At the Book Festival last year the BBC foreign corresopondent Humphrey Hawkesley challenged the idea that Democracy is always best. He quotes Barack Obama 'If we think we can just plunge in and, say, create a democracy from scratch in five years, then we've mistaken.' His thesis is that 'the mantra in our Western society is that democracy equals feedom and prosperity. But are we in fact imposing our free-market democracy with the same arrogance that colonial missionaries claimed they were civilising poor natives a century ago? Is perhaps democracy merely a fig-leaf to protect strategic strategic interests and access economic markets? Or is it simply that no one has yet had a better idea?'