America has a history of attempting to preserve democracy

The argument

US President Harry S. Truman had such a meaningful foreign policy that the "Truman Doctrine" is still a term used to this day. Since Truman, political pundits on both sides of the aisle have—at one time or another—called on the country to adhere to the Truman Doctrine, which is a measure of how deeply the principle it names is embedded in how America explains itself abroad. It's time that same policy applies to Puerto Rico. During and after World War II, the US had a foreign policy geared towards liberating countries from Soviet rule and installing free and fair democracies abroad. The standard it set was not merely the absence of an occupying power but the presence of genuine self-government, and it drew a sharp distinction between real democracies and puppet governments answerable elsewhere. However, even during that period of US liberative foreign policy, America continued to cling to Puerto Rico. The inconsistency is the point: if the goal of the Truman Doctrine was to instill free and fair democracies abroad that were more effective than puppet governments, then the same reasoning applied closer to home means Puerto Rico should be granted its freedom. The situation on the island meets the doctrine's own description of what it opposed. The government in Puerto Rico is restrained by US law, which they never asked to be affiliated with, so the laws that bind Puerto Ricans are made in a legislature they do not control. A government whose powers are limited by an authority its people never consented to is not self-governing in the sense the doctrine demanded of others, and a policy that insists on that standard abroad while declining to apply it here is not a principle but a preference. Puerto Rico cannot be a true democracy until it has its independence, its freedom, and makes its own decision on how to govern the island.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Puerto Rico is more likely to have a democratic government under US rule. Colonies and territories all over the world have fallen victim to violent, autocratic, and dictatorial governments. In Colombia, for example, an uprising and liberation movement led to an independent government, but culminated in a violent uprising in the late 1940's and early 50's. If the US actually seeks to promote democracy on the island, they should keep control as to not let a violent uprising or tyrannical government appear in Puerto Rico.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The Truman Doctrine was a Cold War policy of containing Soviet expansion; reading it as a general commitment to liberate and democratise is a characterisation the argument asserts rather than defends. [Rejecting P2] That the United States retained Puerto Rico through that era is offered as an inconsistency, but an inconsistency in American foreign policy is an argument about American conduct, not about what would be best for the island. [Rejecting P3] The premise treats independence and democracy as the same thing. The counter-argument disputes exactly that, and the argument never addresses the other option on the table — statehood with full congressional representation, which would equally end the condition of being bound by laws the island has no vote on.