How do we achieve democracy? Or do we?

[DocDiggs]

The Pursuit of Democracy

What Bush gets wrong about nation-building.

By Michael Kinsley


The case for democracy is "self-evident," as someone once put it. The case for the world's most powerful democracy to take as its mission the spreading of democracy around the world is pretty self-evident, too: What's good for us is good for others. Those others will be grateful. A world full of democracies created or protected with our help ought to be more peaceful and prosperous and favorably disposed toward us. That world will be a better neighborhood for us than a world of snarling dictatorships.

There is no valid case against democracy. You used to hear a lot that democracy is not suitable for some classes of foreigners: simply incompatible with the cultures of East Asia (because deference to authority is too ingrained there), or the Arab Middle East (because everybody is a religious fanatic), or Africa (because they're too "tribal," or too predisposed to rule by a "big daddy,"… or something). But this line of argument has gone out of fashion, pushed offstage by free and fair elections in some surprising places. Even those who still harbor doubts about whether democracy is possible in this place or that—and even those who think that any democracy achieved in such places is likely to be a real mess—don't generally oppose the attempt. As someone else once said, "Good government is no substitute for self-government."

But the case against spreading democracy—especially through military force—as a mission of the U.S. government is also pretty self-evident, and lately it's been getting more so. Government, even democratic government, exists for the benefit of its own citizens, not that of foreigners. American blood and treasure should not be spent on democracy for other people. Or, short of that absolute, there are limits to the blood and treasure that the United States should be expected to spend on democracy elsewhere, and the very nature of war makes that cost hard to predict and hard to limit.

Furthermore, the encouraging discovery that free elections are possible in unexpected places has a discouraging corollary: If tolerance and pluralism and suchlike Western values are not essential preconditions for democratic elections, they are not the necessary result of elections either. By definition, democracy produces a government that the people—or some plurality of the people—want, at least at that moment. But it may not produce the kind of government that we wish they would want, or—more to the point—that we want.

The present debate over when to use American power in defense of democracies other than our own is at least more wholesome than the previous debate about using force to thwart or overthrow foreign democracies. The argument against tolerating Communist governments elected fair and square used to be that the election that brought them to office would likely be the last. "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people," as Henry Kissinger famously put it in reference to the election of Salvador Allende in Chile. (And we didn't just stand by and watch.) But today's concern about what we might call "nasty democracy" (defined as election results we don't like) is in some ways more profound and depressing. It is not that a regime will use democracy in the short run to stifle it in the long run (thus emboldening us to destroy democracy in order to save it). The danger is that democracy will reveal the people's true and continuing preference for a society with no place for all the other Western liberal values that our founding document calls "self-evident" (equality, freedom to pursue happiness, and so on). Even worse, these societies may decide to export their distaste for Western values just as we try to export the values themselves—and they may not agonize, Western-style, over the distinction between violent and nonviolent means of persuasion.

Recent news has left us awash in examples: the triumph of Hamas (religious fanatics dedicated in both theory and practice to the destruction of Israel) in the Palestinian elections; the emergence of a similarly attractive group, the Muslim Brotherhood, as an electoral force in Egypt; and above all the result of the American-sponsored election in Iraq, which seems to be just about the opposite of the lion-and-lamb tranquility that democracy enthusiasts had hoped. The Bush administration denies a report in the New York Times that it is actively trying to undermine the Palestinian election result. And the evidence in the Times story did seem to describe a totally justified withdrawal of support more than anything like an old-fashioned CIA coup. But if these developments gave Bush any pause about his aggressive democratization project, he gave no sign of it Tuesday during his surprise drop-by in Afghanistan. From Bush's description, that legendarily bloodthirsty land has been transformed into something like Minnesota. It's a place where "men and women are respected" and "young girls can go to school" and "people are able to realize their dreams." We shall see.

In his biography of Margaret Thatcher, the British journalist Hugo Young used the term "inspirational certainty" to describe the strength that some political leaders get from refusing to let anything give them pause or change their minds. Thatcher had it, and so did Ronald Reagan. Bush would like to have it. But on this particular issue, at least, he can't because he actually has changed his mind. In the 2000 election, he opposed what was then called nation-building—and he opposed it for all the self-evident reasons. Now he supports it, for equally self-evident reasons. If the arguments for both sides of some policy question are self-evident, the correct answer must not be. But Bush avoids the trap of complication by taking his self-evident truths sequentially.

Bush parries any challenge to explain his change of views with the simple assertion that Sept. 11, 2001, changed everything. It's easy to see how that day might have changed his opinion about the urgency of the war on terrorism. But how exactly is it supposed to have changed his opinion about the aggressive pursuit of democracy as a tactic in that war?

Democracy now stands as the only remaining official rationale for the Gulf War (which the administration insists is a battlefield in the larger war against terrorism). This is grimly amusing, given that George W. Bush's Gulf War is really a continuation of his father's, which was in defense of two feudal monarchies and had nothing to do with democracy.

We don't want a President Hamlet, publicly rehearsing his doubts as he leads the nation into battle. But the men and women risking their lives for democracy in Iraq deserve at least a tiny sense that the president who sends them there has taken the trouble to consider the evidence and arguments against his policy—and that he knows why he rejects them.

Michael Kinsley is Slate's founding editor.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2137276/

[BrianK]

Interesting article but I didn't see any recommendations on how we should defend against another attack like we experienced on 9/11. Not the authrors responsibility to propose defense, more to raise awareness.

I read several speculative sentences spread out through the well arranged paragraphs. The kind that get you to thinking that maybe we should just back out of everything that goes on in the world like the lesser able countries do.

But then the thinking sneaks in that governments do what they perceive as working for the benefit of their citizens.

The article gave me the impression the author would be happy if we were attacked in some fashion, we should respond only to that attack. Any pre-emptive or proactive action is us forcing our values on others. Could be seen that way I suppose but then I see planes flying into the twin towers as someone else forcing their thinking on us. A toss up for sure, should we wait & see when, where or how, or go looking?

Of course while were looking the effect of being well trained and well equipped and able to be there isn't lost on those that have an income of a few dollars a day to live on.

Maybe the way of the future would be better served if we just supplied computers and let 3rd. world people find out for themselves that driving a 6000 lb. SUV is preferable to walking. That they to can enjoy the benefit of democracy and pork up to the point of needing massive amounts of meds to enjoy life.


All in all the article generated lot of random thinking for me.

[DocDiggs]

Thinking as opposed to reaction! Marvelous! I so like that....

[Snowden]

Democracy now stands as the only remaining official rationale for the Gulf War (which the administration insists is a battlefield in the larger war against terrorism). This is grimly amusing, given that George W. Bush's Gulf War is really a continuation of his father's, which was in defense of two feudal monarchies and had nothing to do with democracy.

If one doesn't already believe Slate is one of the most Bush-bashing liberal rags, this would cause him to reel in that direction, thoughtwise.

The minor loss of life on 9/11, or so they seem to consider that "incident," couldn't possibly have anything to do with why we are fighting in Afghanistan, could it? After all, many of those deaths were of foreignors, and who cares about them?

We went into Kuwait to protect the Kuwaiti oil fields, at the request of the Kuwaitis - who are allies in this current fighting in Iraq where we hope to do the same in protecting those oil fields from being used by bin Laden and his ilk of terrorists. The intent then was to stop Saddam from using that oil for terrorist activity (or whatever he wanted it for) as is our hope in protecting the Iraqi oil fields from other terrorists. We weren't interested in the form of government, but we were interested in helping where that help was requested. It was an honorable request, and it was answered honorably. The claim of Saddam that the land of Kuwait had formerly been land belonging to Iraq was of no importance, since the nation of Kuwait had been established long since. We see this same "unfair" claim made by Arab nations against Israel.

We don't want a President Hamlet, publicly rehearsing his doubts as he leads the nation into battle. But the men and women risking their lives for democracy in Iraq deserve at least a tiny sense that the president who sends them there has taken the trouble to consider the evidence and arguments against his policy—and that he knows why he rejects them.

I think we have had a "tiny sense" of this, and that our administration did and apparently still does, consider fighting terrorism to be a necessity, not something to apologize for. If we don't agree, and many don't, that's to be expected in a free society. However, we have only to look at the headlines about Islamic oppression worldwide to make us stop and consider carefully what we are fighting, and to realize that we're fighting for an end of this suppression.

Look at the Philippines, where Christians are being killed - oh, we don't hear much about that. I put in a thread here by Zenit to this effect, about the slaughter of Christians by Muslims there. Today we see the bombing of Hindu religious sites by Muslims in India. There is Muslim oppression, murder and rape in the Sudan, reported endlessly - and mostly ignored by free people elsewhere. Various nations in Africa and in Asia are reporting fighting with Islam.

I believe this is more than a "tiny sense" as to why we are fighting a war against terrorists and that we do tend to overlook that as being the reason for our presence in Afghanistan and in Iraq. The oil fields in and location of Iraq are vital to freedom. We must try to keep them out of the hands of the terrorists. What choice is there, if anybody is to remain free?

[RalphZ]

Originally Posted by Michael Kinsley

...George W. Bush's Gulf War is really a continuation of his father's, which was in defense of two feudal monarchies and had nothing to do with democracy.

About the only truth in this is that the First Gulf War was not about democracy.

Originally Posted by Snowden

We went into Kuwait to protect the Kuwaiti oil fields, at the request of the Kuwaitis...

I disagree, although I realize this is a widely held view, as is the idea that the current intervention in Iraq is all about oil.

In my opinion, the First Gulf War was first and foremost fought in defense of the widely held international principle of respect for established international borders. Perhaps it is easy to forget that historical moment and the significance a lot of world leaders attached to affirming the legitimacy of existing borders. The context of the war was extremely important to the willingness to go to war with Iraq in a decisive manner.

Now, for those who have forgotten, in 1990 East and West Germany were in the process of unifying after being forceably divided since 1945. The Berlin Wall had come down only a few months earlier and I still remember a frustrating conference late in 1989 in which a majority of participants felt the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh was of greater concern than the possibility of German re-unification. They were proven wrong within months.

European powers were very uneasy about German unity. Postwar Poland incorporated a great deal of former German territory. The USSR (now Russia) held a chunk of German territory too. Even France nominally had disputed German territory. There were rumblings about what to do about it. While most responsible individuals argued for respect for the status quo (recognition of the defacto new boundaries), and the Germans seemed more than agreeable to this, there was a feeling that something more definite than a legally dubious agreement to respect existing borders was what was needed.

The Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait probably could not have happened at a better time. Here was an opportunity for the world community to demonstrate its commitment to the respect of existing borders and signal its willingness to respond to the use of military force to alter status quo. It is the only time in the history of the United Nations that the Security Council actually showed itself more-or-less united in calling for a military intervention. Prior to the actual fighting, there was a widely held belief that the Iraqis were well enough dug in with a relatively good enough army (with a lot of veterans of the Iran-Iraq War) to put up serious resistance. US military experts estimate that 10,000 American casualties as a result of the fighting were likely.

Of course, the actual war proved to be a widely lopsided affair. But the Bush administration, with the support of just about everybody (including signifcant British and French contingents) was willing to fight even though there was an expectation of thousands being killed.

While it is case that Iraqi annexation of Kuwait would have implied Iraqi control the largest single reserve of oil in the world, it was probably more significant to the international community that Iraq had a long standing claim on the territory of Kuwait. Recognizing the Iraqi annexation would have made little difference to the availability or price of oil. It would have made an enormous difference to how other potential border disputes might be settled. And, of particular concern to the great powers at this moment in history, was the question of ambiguous postwar territorial redistribution at the expense of Germany.

The First Gulf War was one of the few wars fought specifically about a principle of international relations. It had nothing to do with democracy or oil. It was a war fought against the idea of allowing the use of military aggression to resolve a territorial dispute. In this limited sense, the present intervention in Iraq has little to do with the First Gulf War.