Thursday, August 03, 2006
"A little democracy is a dangerous thing..."
"...so let's have more of it."
So wrote Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian this morning, and I agree wholeheartedly. (Barely) fair use excerpt:
[T]ransitions from the politics of violence to democratic compromise are always messy. They involve negotiating with terrorists, letting some past wrongs go unpunished and accepting that a movement's militant rhetoric may lag behind the more pragmatic reality of its position. Everything, in fact, that the US practised in its relations with the Kosovo Liberation Army, which it initially characterised - with reason - as "without any questions, a terrorist group".
Two diametrically opposite conclusions may be drawn from these first strange fruits of democratisation in the Middle East. One is to say that the whole Bush agenda of supporting democratisation in the Arab and Islamic world was misguided from the start - the product of a naive, missionary-cowboy approach to international politics. It destabilises. It brings terrorists and extremists to power. The cure is worse than the disease. So let's get back to seasoned old "realism". Let's not try to transform these countries or expect them to be more like us, but take them as they are. Let's pursue our national interests - security, trade, energy - with whatever allies we can find. Stability comes first. Your friendly local despot may be a sonofabitch, but at least he'll be our sonofabitch. Or so we fondly imagine.
This is the default position of much European diplomacy. It's the wisdom of Jacques Chirac. Curiously enough, it's also where some of the European left ends up - taken there by its opposition to "war for democracy" à la Bush and Blair, or simply by the kneejerk "If Bush is for it, we must be against it". But following the American debate closely over the past weeks, I find that opposition to the democratisation agenda is also growing inside the US.
There has always been a Republican "realist" position, associated with figures such as Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to Bush Sr. After Iraq, and this latest imbroglio, it could regain the upper hand in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election. It could win out on the other side of American politics too. If one looks at the foreign-policy debate among Democrats, one finds a strong strain of such "realism" - though tagged with "progressive". The argument that the US should pull back from this poisonous world, look to its own economic interests and find allies wherever it can appeals to a significant part of the Democratic electorate. For many Democrats, the fact that the current president has identified himself so strongly with the promotion of democracy is another reason for being sceptical about the promotion of democracy. If democratising the Middle East means Iraq, Hizbullah and Hamas, better not try it.
I believe this is precisely the wrong conclusion to draw. In the long run, the growth of liberal democracies is the best hope for the wider Middle East. It's the best hope of modernisation, which the Arab world desperately needs; of addressing the root causes of Islamist terrorism, inasmuch as they lie in those countries rather than among Muslims living in the west; and of enabling Arabs, Israelis, Iranians, Kurds and Turks to live side by side without war. But it will be a long march.
We know from elsewhere that the intermediate period of transition to democracy can be a dangerous time, that it can actually increase the danger of violence, especially in countries divided along ethnic and religious lines, and where you rush to the party-political competition for power without first having a functioning state with well-defined borders, a near-monopoly of force, the rule of law, independent media and a strong civil society. That's what happened in the former Yugoslavia. That's what's been happening, in different ways, in Palestine, in Lebanon and in Iraq. Full, liberal democracy contributes to peace; partial, half-baked democratisation can increase the danger of war.
What we in the community of established liberal democracies should do is not abandon the pursuit of democratisation but refine it. Recognise that only in exceptional circumstances (such as postwar Germany and Japan) do democracies grow from under military occupation, and that the purpose of building democracy does not justify military intervention. Accept that, as the Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji wrote in the New York Times, it's better for people to find their own paths to freedom, and our job is to support them. Learn from experience that well-defined borders, the rule of law and independent media are as important as an election - and may need to precede it. That along the way you have to negotiate with nasty people and regimes, such as Syria and Iran. And that, in this dirty, complicated world, advocates of armed struggle - terrorists, if you will - can become democratic leaders. Like Menachem Begin. Like Gerry Adams. Like Nelson Mandela.
So let's not throw out the democratisation baby with the Bush bathwater. There's a seriously good idea there. It just needs to be a lot better executed, and with patience for the long haul. The right conclusion is strange but true: a little democracy is a dangerous thing - so let's have more of it.
I am less keen than Ash for the idea that we or Israel should speak with people who stand for our annihilation. To my knowledge none of Begin, Adams or Mandela proposed the extermination of people that they opposed, and the same cannot be said for Hamas or Hezbollah. That detail aside, I strongly agree with most of this, including that the United States has a lot to learn about the promotion of democracy in places that lack the institutions of "civil society." Ash is especially correct in his conclusion, that democracy is the only long-term solution to the pathologies that permeate that world. Until the Muslim world builds governments that are morally legitimate and worth fighting for -- as opposed to the clown dictators and ridiculous kings who claim legitimacy by dint of tyranny rather than consent -- ordinary Muslims will not take up arms against the jihad. Since we will not be rid of these bastards until they do, we cannot give up on the democratization of the Arab and Muslim world. We have to improve it and make it work. I fervently hope that American politics allows for that choice in 2008.
Meanwhile, in the department of tiny steps in the right direction, I was very pleased to see that the United States will undertake to train and arm the Lebanese Army. We could have used that proposal about two weeks ago, but it is good to see the administration at least trying to catch up.
6 Comments:
By 
Final Historian, at
Thu Aug 03, 07:26:00 PM:
Two weeks ago? Two months would have been better.
Ash doesn't seem to understand the nature of Democratic Revolutions, something more people need to pay attention to.
By Dawnfire82, at
Thu Aug 03, 08:43:00 PM:
There are still sedition laws and gag orders. I think what you mean are the Alien and Sedition Acts of the late 18th century. The Sedition Act expired in 1801 and the Federalists were hammered in the 1800 elections because it went against the principles of free press and speech and they enacted it.
People need to realize that democracies do not share some universal set of social values simply because they are democracies; look at the huge civic differences between Germany, Switzerland, and the US. Democracies reflect (to an extent) the will of the people. If the majority of people don't want X, chances are X will be illegal. (converting from Islam to another religion, for example, or allowing gay marriages, or whatever) It's not a panacea.
By Jimmy K., at
Thu Aug 03, 09:56:00 PM:
I think he has hit upon something here:
....only in exceptional circumstances (such as postwar Germany and Japan) do democracies grow from under military occupation.... Carpet Bomb them back to the stone age and start over. You must break their will to fight period.
By Papa Ray, at
Thu Aug 03, 09:59:00 PM:
Until Islam is reformed from within (which is the only way it will change) everything else is just talk. The Islamic world is divided now, but not by anything that we understand. They are divided by things that happened centuries ago where murder and betrayal split them and made them enemies for all time.
What other religion has been that way? Well, Christanity was, but we got over killing each other and decided that for the future of our children we needed to not only get along, but to work together.
The Muslims have not figured that out and by my yardstick, won't for a long long time, if ever.
They are their own worse enemy, they will not only kill each other but force us to kill them.
Which is what is going to happen, in wholesale lots, with rivers of blood and a lot of it will be ours.
Islam allows only dead unbelievers or converts or slaves.
I don't think the world is going to settle for those three choices.
Papa Ray
West Texas
USA
By Dawnfire82, at
Fri Aug 04, 07:10:00 PM:
Example: The Reformation spawned the most horrific war Europe had ever seen up until World War I... the Thirty Year's War. If I remember correctly, the population of Germany (the main battleground for all sides) fell by 3/4(!) in that period. Ultimately the conflicts were indecisive and the reultant Treaty of Westphalia established the international system that we know today, including concepts of sovereignty and the principle of non-interference, (somewhat) free religious practice, and secular superiority over the ecclesiastical.
Maybe the Middle East needs a Thirty Years War too...
By 
, at
Sat Aug 05, 01:56:00 PM:
I applaud this action by the administration. Up until now I haven't seen any mention or concern of what to do *after* southern lebanon & hez have been bombed to smithereens. Now what about infrastructure & social services?
