Continuing the Conversation
By Leon H Wolf Posted in War — Comments (9) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Yesterday, my friend Paul J. Cella continued the conversation we've been having over the potential effects of "democracy" on totalitarian Islam, in light of the recent elections of Hamas in Palestine. For those with extra time on their hands, previous posts on this topic may be found here and here and here and here.
I think that we are edging ever closer to common areas of concern, but I feel that certain areas of Paul's and Josh's concerns deserve further rejoinder.
More below...
It is represented that the critique of democracy is fatally wounded by its implied nostalgia for the settlement of the Cold War, wherein the resentments and agitations of the Arab world were dismissed in the name of stability. Harsh oppression was tolerated so long as the oppressors were anti-Communist (or at least not pro-Communist). This settlement, the argument continues, left us with the growing and largely unexamined threat of Islamic radicalism seething under oppressive states, which was, in short order, to explode into the conflagration which only finally impressed itself upon American minds after September 11.
I don't know that it has necessarily been argued (and I know it has not been argued by me) that those skeptical of Middle Eastern democracy even are nostalgic for the settlement of the Cold War, much less that their argument is fatally wounded by this nostalgia. However, it is accurate to analyze our current response to the crisis which totalitarian Islam presents in light of the geopolitical situation as it was at the end of the cold war, as Paul of course does:
I answer: The Cold War settlement by which America favored (let’s not mince words here) right-wing dictatorships against the marching madness of Communism was hardly an unmixed catalogue of woe. It worked well in Spain, tolerably well in Latin America, and considerably less well, though still not disastrously, in the Middle East. Many of my interlocutors will not gainsay this assessment; they will reply that, whatever its wisdom under the rubric of the Cold War, this settlement, after the Cold War, gradually developed in malignancy and volatility, until, again, the disaster of September 11 made us finally take note of it. Conceded.
I find this analysis to be pretty much spot-on, except that it neglects to consider those left under the oppression of the right-wing dictators. I would not take support for these totalitarian regimes as a necessary implement for winning the Cold War - but even if I granted such necessity, I would not for a moment condone it as something morally right, or (even worse) to be continued or neglected after the greater evil of communism fell (more or less). This is an important point, because it seems that Paul would demand that a mirror-image response is, in and of itself, necessary to the defeat of totalitarian Islam:
Indeed, it seems to me that a perfectly defensible position for a man to take, that what America desires in the Middle East is not so much democracies as regimes antagonistic to Totalitarian Islam. If these two prove compatible or even congenial, all the better; but if they do not, what we should prefer is the latter to the former. What really interests us is encouraging the growth of stable — yes, stable — states inhospitable to the religion of our enemies.
To this suggestion I would reply, "Where would such regimes be found?" We stopped the spread of communism in part, by fencing the communist empire on all sides with these totalitarian (sometimes Islamic) regimes. Now communism has fallen, where shall we find regimes to fence their growth with? The erstwhile communists? It may fairly be said that the transition to democracy and capitalism has exposed these areas as weak; both financially and militarily. Should we support totalitarian regimes in the former communist states we sought so very hard to free, in an attempt to provide opposition that is "stable" to our enemies? Is the East a giant and neverending game of whack-a-mole? And, quite apart from the geopolitical consequences, what of the billions of everyday citizens who are to be occasionally crushed beneath the brutal thumb of totalitarianism, while they serve as a means to our geopolitical ends?
There comes a time when geopolitics must give way to principle - to at least the attempt of principle - to the belief that perhaps all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among these being life, liberty and property/pursuit of happiness, and that such rights ought to be afforded to peoples of the East, regardless of what they will make of them. Put another way, I would sooner see the people of the East enslave themselves to totalitarianism (if it comes to that), than to actively participate in their enslavement to serve a foreign policy goal.
But the President and his defenders have not demonstrated — and, by and large, have hardly even attempted to demonstrate — exactly why democracy must be antagonistic to Totalitarian Islam. They have not demonstrated why popular government under Islam will not be rigidly and forcefully Islamic.
With respect, I believe that this is an unfair criticism of the Administration's policy. How many times has the President himself said, "Free societies are peaceful societies," or some derivation of my argument, which is that individuals who have hope for their own prosperity are not predisposed to terrorism. One may disagree with the argument, but that is not the same as saying that the argument has not been made. And, so far as practical demonstrations have been made in modern times, Afghanistan serves as a useful example - not of what we would wish the United States to be, necessarily, but of what we could certainly live with when it comes to governments in the Middle East. The counterexample is Palestine, but I have already explained why the Palestinian experiment is not truly representative of Democracy whatsoever:
It is impossible to think of such "freedom" currently existing in Palestine. In the first instance, the Palestinians do not enjoy anything approaching sovereignty over either their land or their populace. They are, alternately, the puppets of their crooked leaders, who have grown fat off the monetary sympathy of the EU, or the tools of the politically cynical governments of Jordan and/or Syria, who deliberately displace them into a land which has no natural resources, no national economy, and where they have no semblance of control over their own destiny. Palestine of today is not a Democracy, it is Bleeding Kansas extended to cover two generations.
This is not to say that I have any certainty that "democracy" (standing metonymously for "freedom") will succeed in the Middle East: only that I find the alternatives untenable, from both a public policy standpoint and a moral one.
In conclusion, however, Paul and I do share one very similar concern:
Moreover, they — and the President himself — have made a lot of us nervous by regularly announcing that popular government under Islam, in their vision, will not draw on “our” traditions but will look “very different” from “our” particularly version of democracy. For what are our traditions but those things that give life and decency to democracy, and distinguish it from mob rule? What are they but those very things that would, assuredly, make democracy inhospitable to Totalitarian Islam? Liberty, the rule of law, the security of private property, a loyal opposition, respect for the minority — these are our traditions! It is not pleasant to contemplate popular government shorn of those things which make democracy, in our parlance, so much more than its mere textbook definition. We have not seen many democracies that any sane man might recommend, which do not rest on these traditions.
And if it is urged, that these traditions are not in fact “our” traditions — that they are the patrimony of civilized man or some such emollient — then the force of my argument is not weakened even a little. Very well: they are not “our” traditions. Rather they are the traditions of English parliamentarians and French peasants and German monks; of Frankish itinerants and Polish noblemen and Austrian princes; of Byzantine Platonists, Latin patriarchs, Irish missionaries and Italian Aristotelians; of reformers and priests and theologians and bishops; of mediaeval man more than modern man, for most of the free institutions of the Western world were the achievements of Christendom. They are not “our” traditions; they are the traditions of the West, built up patiently, painstakingly, at times dramatically, very often unconsciously, over fourteen hundred years of human toil — over precisely that period of time, as it happens, that the West was menaced by another civilization, which has always moved and reflected and fought under the word Submission.
And here, I think, is the most legitimate criticism that can be made with reference to the failings of the Bush foreign policy vision. If the exercise is worthwhile, if democracy is a noble goal, why must it not be Western democracy? Is there another kind of democracy, which truly is a metonymy for freedom? Paul says, "No," and with this I heartily concur. Further, the events of this past century have shown that it is not impossible to "impose" a Western democracy upon an Eastern culture. After all, in the wake of the defeat of Japan in World War II, no Japanese were commissioned to write a constitution, which then faced ratification by the public. The Japanese were given a Constitution entirely drafted by the West (United States), and told, "You will accept this constitution, or we will bomb you some more." While this solution is no doubt positively shocking to the delicate sensibilities of modern man, it is extremely difficult to gainsay its effectiveness as a governing document, or the genuine friendship that Japan enjoys with America to this day.
To this extent, we are in total agreement. Westernism works. To concede that it is a non-starter in the philosophical battle against totalitarian Islam is to concede defeat without firing a single shot, and it strikes me as a terrible waste of human life and energy to engage in such an enterprise, if failure is conceded from the beginning. However, to the extent that Afghanistan continues to be a success, and the jury remains out on Iraq, there remains hope that we are both in error on this point.
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Re: As I read you here, you are happy to explode the distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian, thereby condemning, for example, our support for Franco as a base calculation than implicated us in something as awful as the Nazis or the Commies.
I do not read Leon's comments as claiming that "Franco was as bad as Stalin". I do however read them as stating that support of illiberal regimes carries with it a cost and potential consequences which may range from mild (e.g., Spain) to possibily catastrophic (e.g., our support for the Shah of Iran). And while such support could have been justified during the Cold War by the need to contain the Soviet Union, in the present situation such suupport would need to be looked at with great skepticism, as where are the Spains and Portugals* of the Middle East? Are there any regimes (at least of any strategic importance) that are A) Stable, B) friendly to US interests and C) hostile to Islamism? Maybe Jordan. Any others?
* re: Spain and Portugal. Our support of these dictatorships carried the least cost for us, and ended with the best outcomes, mostly because we came to that support late in the game: we did not install either ditator, and they were not dependent on our assistance to remain in power. Compare this with Greece where our involvement with the colonels of 1967-74 has left a strong residue of anti-Americanism in almost the whole population, regardless of ideology.
Your repeated references to Afghanistan are fascinating to me. It should be recalled that the war against the Taliban was not premised on the promotion of democracy. That war was justified on traditional just war (or national interest, if you prefer) grounds. Sure, the democracy talk was in the air back in October and November 2001, but it had not yet taken hold as our guiding policy. It is striking, no, that the example you hold out is precisely the one where we did not set out to build a flourishing democracy, but rather to destroy an enemy and replace him with a friend?
And you will recall that the war in Iraq was premised as such, as well. Violations of cease-fires, accumulation of WMDs, harboring terrorists. So, while there has been a lot of rhetoric about "democracy," it has, in my view, been in the vein of "what now, that the war is over?" not, "why should we go to war?"
Why are you conceding wholesale to the Left on one of the big debates of the Cold War? I refer, of course, to Jeanne Kirkpatrick's authoritarian vs. totalitarian distinction. In defending Franco's Spain, for example, it was argued that the despotism there was much milder than in the Communist bloc, and content merely to defend its own interests, rather than, as in a totalitarian state, indoctrinate by force in subjects into the preferred ideology.
That's a fair criticism of my post, but would you respond that the support of Spain was justified, whereas support for the Shah/Chiang Kai Shek was not? Upon what basis would you make that distinction, and would the Cold War have been successfully prosecuted otherwise?
Supporting totalitarian [which the US didn't do] or authoritarian regimes[which the US did] that support the US abroad in lieu of support of democracies that do not support the US is a defensive strategy. The US would never have supported Franco or Somoza or Marcos if there were no need to maintain a world wide balance against a coalition [willing or unwilling] of communist agressors. It was the possiblity that the USSR could achieve a predominance of resources that would make free markets unstable or render defense costs too great combined with the USSR's ability to defend itself that led the US to containment, and so to cooperation with whatever otherwise repellant governments happened to be on the fronteirs.
Bush's departure is one of leaving behind the defensive mindset. Totalitarian Islam is not composed of enough people or tanks or even oil to threaten the US at home in the same way Soviet strategic rocket forces could do. It is possible to move over to offensive operations against this odioum.
It may be possible to have a democratic regime that can hang together long enough to support fighting a long aggressive war. It may be possible that there is enough unity amongst the Islamic peoples of the world that they can put aside their differences to fight against their own political and market freedoms. This has not happened amongst the Islamic countries in several hundreds of years, and has not happened amongst democracies in memory.
Islam is not a unitary structure. Like Christianity it claims to be unitary, but just as the Baptist refute the primacy of the Popes, the muslims of one sect or one country refute aspects of foreign teachings or foreign leadership. It is the outcast or self-outcast people of these countries who have made up the terror elements abroad. Marginal people in autocratic societies are smart, resourceful, and independent. It is these attributes that would lead them to intergration and influence at home if their own countries were democratically ruled. Rising to power within their own society they would be more hesitant to risk the gains they and their own people had made in a fight that if they would not lose, one that they would surely suffer losses. Additionally the rise of local leadership, presumably one with local appeal and local differentiation from 'world wide islamic fundamentalism' (tm) would splinter any trans- or inter- national effort to harm US [or world] markets.
Support of governments like Turkey continues to have its place in US policy. Turkey combines democratic freedoms for the most part, allowing political discourse subject to the review of a dedicated cadre of professional soldiers who know they cannot rule independently, with islamic governance. One day Turkey's model will be obsolete as western style internal confrontations take primacy over foreign concerns in all islamic countries. I would hope that US policy would favor the creation of 'madcap' democratic countries as a point of departure from totalitarian dictatorships, where internal structures would lead toward reimposition of totalitarian rule, but would favor Turkish style over watching of democratic instutions in countries where government institutions had enough independence and enough institutional history of regeneration to make creation of a nonpolitical 'proctor' to supervise the growth of democratic thinking in the masses.
I would think the Gulf states [with a cadre of British trained, patriotic elites] to be more likely to follow a Turkish model, while former Soviet satellites and radical terror sponsors [recovering from the moral deficiencies needed for totalitarian rule] would be more likely to be pushed toward the Iraqi model. It will be harder work to shepard or cajole these societies forward, but it will be more rewarding.
More importantly establishing a cordon sanitare around the islamic world would require the participation and cooperation of the rest of the western and eastern world. This is not likely given that domestic US opposition would be strong given that transnational relativists and other leftists who oppose free markets and societies would make constant attacks on any politician who followed such a program. Further cooperation from developing countries, such as China and India would be uncertain given their soon to be ravenous desire for trade.
Would X's article have been so well recieved if he spoke of the military aspects of containment as Soviet 'Whack-a-Mole'?
And you will recall that the war in Iraq was premised as such, as well.
Good point, although it is certainly true that the democracy promotion policy was, by spring 2003, firmly in place whereas in fall 2001 it was not. But of course it was only part of the argument for regime change in Iraq, and as you say its importance grew after the war.
would you respond that the support of Spain was justified, whereas support for the Shah/Chiang Kai Shek was not? Upon what basis would you make that distinction, and would the Cold War have been successfully prosecuted otherwise?
I'm afraid the limitations of my knowledge restrict my response here. My instinct with China is simply to point to free Taiwan vs. the unspeakable bloodletting of Mao's Communism. Chiang may have been a thug and a tyrant, but he was not a totalitarian. I recall that in Modern Times, Paul Johnson lays much of the blame of the Iranian Revolution at the feet, not of the Shah, but of the meddling Western Liberals who forced "land reform" (dread phrase) and, by demolishing the security of property, thereby undermined the state.
this is some new paradigm or new development. These questions have been wrestled with several times, and the conclusions were indeed to force individual rights and force representative democracy at the point of a sword. It was not believed at that time that those governments would be born and immediately run with the herd like some gazelle shaking off the pre-birth at high speed, but rather that this would open the door to allow peaceful change and stability over a long period of time.
What happened with all the other totalitarian regimes that we've destroyed? Are you saying that the Nazis and Japanese were less fanatic than the people of Afghanistan and Iraq? Why do you feel that an Islamic country's dictatorship is so different from the Nazis, or Imperial Japan? I would argue that in several key places those two totalitarian governments posed greater problems, with respect to the establishment of a republican form of government, than either Afghanistan or Iraq, or Iran for that matter. In fact, we know that there are strong elements in all these countries who understand and are committed to self determination.
This is not uncharted ground. This is nothing new and innovative. This is what we do once we win a war and create a power vacuum within the vanquished country. This is a proven strategy, but it takes a very long time to get both the political and civil society of a formerly totalitarian country to create the infrastructure to function at a level we would recognize as similar to our own. For at least two generations it is not going to be something that is readily comparable to our own society. It is not that we are changing the cultures and ideals of these people. It is that we are giving them a vehicle to change themselves peacefully. Failure or success is largely dependant on them, not us. We have provided the opportunity for these countries to join the rest of the world. It is up to them to meet the challenge of the struggles ahead, and so far there is no reason not to be optimistic.
IMHO, the only Middle Eastern country where democracy would not currently work is Pakistan. Musharraf may be a military dictator, effectively, but unfortunately he's also probably the best ruler that could keep power there presently. If you think Hamas winning control of the Palestinian elections is bad, just imagine a similar group winning control of the 6th most populous country in the world, including their nuclear arsenal.
Which is not to say that Pakistan will never be ready for democracy; but I do think it'll take a while longer for democracy and peace to take root in the Middle East before a Pakistani democracy will be stable and sane.
Re: I would argue that in several key places those two totalitarian governments posed greater problems, with respect to the establishment of a republican form of government, than either Afghanistan or Iraq, or Iran for that matter.
Neither Germany nor Japan had any real history of totalitarianism. Japan became totalitarian through infection with Western ideas in the late 19th, early 20th centuries. Previously it had been a limited feudal monarchy: not any kidn of democracy to be sure, but a not a particularly nasty autocracy either as its rulers were severly limited by custom and tradition, from which they derived their power (rather than from ideology).
Germany had been a monarchy, but one with quasi-democratic insitutiosn in place and a basic undersatnding of the cocmnept of human rights: as with much of Europe the earlier wave of absolutism and fanaticism had been burned out there in the Wars of Religion. Hitler and the nazis were an aberration that but fro the specific evenst of the inter-war period could never have come to power, and the infection was speedily purged afterward.
Paul's point, with which I have some (but not total) agreement uis, Where in the Middle East, in all its millennial traditions, do we find aything other than autocracy and absolutism?
Germany was an advanced Western state, one of the most cultured in Europe. It was also a mono-ethnic state, which preserved it from the bane of Democracy in the 3rd World - ethnic voting. Japan, following WWII, kept the Emperor which meant that the overall framework of government was still the same, only the method for getting a prime minister and his authority were changed.
Besides, Japan was also mono-ethnic (small island minorities don't really count) and had been told by the Emperor to cooperate with the Americans. That was the same as Allah himself telling the Iraqis to cooperate with the Americans.
Most Middle Eastern nations are multi-ethnic. Whether in the Balkans or in Iraq, multi-ethnic states are frequently unstable and prone to domestic violence.
Better models for building Democracy in the 3rd World would be the Phillippines, Haiti, and the Latin American countries such as Cuba. The U.S. occupied Haiti to bring Democracy for 30 years in the early part of the 20th Century. It didn't work. The U.S. took the Phillippines from Spain to build an 'empire of liberty.' That didn't work, and still hasn't. The islands are still a basket case. The U.S. knocked over the government of Honduras, Guatamala, Nicaragua, and more besides. Those nations have only recently, after 100 years of U.S. intervention, started to build civil societies.
This is only part of the American record, if you expand it to look at Western nations and their interventions in the 3rd World, the record looks even more abysmal.
No one, that I know of, has a problem with Muslim countries in the Middle East founding democracies and voting on their own accord. The problem comes with the U.S. either a) meddling in the internal affairs of other nations to force Democracy, b) the U.S. using 'spreading Democracy' as the basis for military action, c) use of U.S. pressure to force allied regimes (Egypt, Jordan, etc.) to allow free elections that will bring radicals to power.
If we are going to pursue any of these courses of action, then the only rational basis would be to assume that the expenditure of blood (civilian and military - Muslim lives count too) and treasure (hundreds of billions) would be 'worth it.' In other words, we'd need to be bloody well sure that at the end of the day, the U.S. would be more secure that it is today. As Paul has pointed out, there is no rational basis to believe that there will be a payoff for these efforts. That rational basis does not exist. There is no reason to believe that an Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood would not be a massive threat to the United States. Same is true of Jordan. There was no reason to hold the election that brought Hamas to power, but the U.S. insisted on it.
Democracies are not necessarily peaceful. Look at our own history of 'wars of choice' against Mexico and Spain. If the U.S. is willing to spend lives at the service of ambition (territorial gain) or idealism ('empire of liberty' 'free Cuba'), then why would other democracies be any different? They aren't. Democracies can support terrorism, have supported terrorism, and will support terrorism. They simply call them 'freedom fighters,' sounds better in the press.
The lie is given to the 'spread Democracy' movement by Pakistan. Who is advocating free elections in Pakistan? No one is. That is because they have nukes, and we can't afford for those nukes to be in the hands of Muslim extremists. Well, it would be a bad idea to have Muslim extremists ruling in Cairo and Amman also. If the Pakistanis can't be trusted with Democracy, why do we insist on ramming it down Mubarak's throat? The Egyptian government currently cooperates with us in the War on Terror, if we replace them with Muslim radicals that is guaranteed to change, and we will have Bin Ladin clones walking the streets of Cairo and running offices openly.
Let the Middle East develop on its own. Let the societies progress at their own speed. There is no reason to destabilize nations whose governments are friendly to us simply because we dream of a better future for their people. Simliarly, there is no reason to overthrow regimes (like in Syria) when the likely alternatives are actually worse than what we currently have.
If the Egyptians themselves, for example, rise up and cast off Mubarak, then I would never advocate crushing them over it to re-install the regime in power. But I don't see any reason why we have to make that a reality given the potential dire consequences, or the potential consequences elsewhere in the region.
None of this, of course, has much to do with Iraq. Once we were there, then of course we had to try to build a Democracy in the nation as best we could. The difference is that invading Iraq didn't have to become a global crusade to 'end tyranny.' That is where I get off the President's train. He can keep doing what he is doing in Iraq, without turning this into a blank check, global effort to make everyone's business in the world our own, even when so doing actually hurts American security.
I find this analysis to be pretty much spot-on, except that it neglects to consider those left under the oppression of the right-wing dictators. I would not take support for these totalitarian regimes as a necessary implement for winning the Cold War. [my emphasis]
Why are you conceding wholesale to the Left on one of the big debates of the Cold War? I refer, of course, to Jeanne Kirkpatrick's authoritarian vs. totalitarian distinction. In defending Franco's Spain, for example, it was argued that the despotism there was much milder than in the Communist bloc, and content merely to defend its own interests, rather than, as in a totalitarian state, indoctrinate by force in subjects into the preferred ideology. Moreover, Kirkpatrick persuasively argued that the transition from authoritarian to free state was dramatically easier than from totalitarian to free. This debate provides much of the backdrop to the rancorous arguments of the 1980s over Latin America. As I read you here, you are happy to explode the distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian, thereby condemning, for example, our support for Franco as a base calculation than implicated us in something as awful as the Nazis or the Commies.
It strikes me again that if this sort of capitulation is what is required to get on broad with the President's project, so much the worse for it. If I have to concede all this ground to the anti-anti-Communists of the 70s and 80s in order to come around to Bush's view, then the heck with it.
With respect, I believe that this is an unfair criticism of the Administration's policy. How many times has the President himself said, "Free societies are peaceful societies," or some derivation of my argument, which is that individuals who have hope for their own prosperity are not predisposed to terrorism.
He has said that "free societies are peaceful societies"; but he has not shown why democracy in the Middle East will issue in free societies. Again, truly free democracies are largely a Western achievement, and even in the West have come with some grim failures (Revolutionary France, Nazi Germany, the Confederacy). So it is not the connection between "free" and "peaceful" that I question; it is the connection betweem "democratic" and "free."
Afghanistan serves as a useful example - not of what we would wish the United States to be, necessarily, but of what we could certainly live with when it comes to governments in the Middle East.
Your repeated references to Afghanistan are fascinating to me. It should be recalled that the war against the Taliban was not premised on the promotion of democracy. That war was justified on traditional just war (or national interest, if you prefer) grounds. Sure, the democracy talk was in the air back in October and November 2001, but it had not yet taken hold as our guiding policy. It is striking, no, that the example you hold out is precisely the one where we did not set out to build a flourishing democracy, but rather to destroy an enemy and replace him with a friend?